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“Meaning is overrated,
“There might not be a meaning to the world, or in it, but that does not mean that what we do has no meaning.”
It was raining that day. The heavens wept to see such cruelty.
The bonds that formed a branch of the great tree of the Ancestor, a chain of humanity reaching back through eons to the singular taproot of the arborat.
“Dead dog’s bollocks!”
How many novices saved from making the same mistakes at some later point in their lives with consequences more dire than any of Apple’s punishments?
One came close and Zole snatched it from the air. She reversed it, took two paces forward, and flung the missile back, her arm cracking through the air. A second later an archer among the riders toppled from his saddle. “I didn’t . . . know we could do that . . .” Nona said in a small voice.
“And the black ice?” Nona had an uneasy feeling that she knew the answer. “Is where the klaulathu have polluted the ice as it moves across the place where such a temple was sited. The corruption, the evil of an entire race tainting this world again.”
As always the Path’s touch lit her whole being, as if the Ancestor had reached out and plucked her like a harp string.
“I cannot die.” She tossed the weapon aside. She sounded like Raymel had at the last.
The abbess had taken on more powerful enemies than Nona had, and bested them by playing the long game, a game her opponents had thought they were winning right until the moment of their defeat. The abbess had never raised her hand in anger, but the blows she struck were more powerful than any taught by Sister Tallow.
“A million words won’t push the ice back, not even the breadth of a finger. But one word will break a heart, two will mend it, and three will lay the highest low.”
“Keot?” A whisper. In this frozen place of horrors, so deeply buried, anything familiar could be counted a comfort. Even a devil carved from the mind of one of the Missing eons ago. “Is that you?”
“I know you’re a hole.”
“More of those who leave the Corridor die on the ice than below it. Walk with respect here, Nona Grey. The white death waits.”
“I’m Mistress Path, child. I go where I please.”
anything you can do to keep Wheel from marching us into ten thousand Scithrowl while singing at the tops of our voices will be much appreciated.”
The Path’s energy still burned in her, demanding release.
Nona had never seen someone walk the Path and fail to own what they took. She never wanted to see it again.
“I’m a Bride of the Ancestor!”
“YOU’VE BEEN SPYING on me?”
“To the place from where the black ice flows,”
“But I cannot. I made a promise.”
“Adoma’s Fist is coming.”
“Wait here. I’ll deal with this.” Sister Pan began to walk towards the city wall.
“I haven’t reached the Path in twenty years because in all that time I have never left it.” Sister Pan glanced again at Nona. “Run, child. Please.”
She felt the step that took Sister Pan from the Path. The Path where she had walked every day and every hour of Nona’s life. What that might be like lay beyond Nona’s imagining. She only knew that not even the Ancestor could own that much power. Sister Pan had walked in glory all this time, knowing that to leave would be the end of her.
“Damaging?” Ruli spat out a bloody laugh and Nona loved her for it.
Bitel rang out. It seemed fitting. The bell had never heralded anything but disaster.
The Book of the Ancestor says that for everything there is a season. This was a time to reap. A time for death. A time to die.
“Just bring them. Bring them all. And we’ll see who sinks and who swims.”
As Keot had once told her: your foes shape your life more than friends ever could.
“If you had truly known Abbess Glass then you would have known death would not stop her.”
“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size,” Jula quoted,
“Now it’s over.”
the application of knowledge could unlock doors that her flaw-blades couldn’t so much as scratch, and it could bring down those so mighty that no feat of arms would stay their hand.
“Very hard.” Zole’s eyes held something as close to fear as Nona had ever seen.
“Let Nona guide the moon.”
Go home.
“At Sweet Mercy they made a weapon of me. They honed every skill into a sharp edge. They put a sword in my hand, because there will always be foes who must be opposed, always violence that must be met with violence. “But that was never the heart of Sweet Mercy. The shipheart wasn’t the foundation of the convent. It was always the faith.
“To sow knowing that you will not reap is an old kind of love, and love has always been the best key for unlocking the future.”
MOONS MIGHT RISE and fall, empires wax and wane, even the stars come and go, but there are constants too, and though the story of our kind is ever-changing it is also always the same.
