Sister Pan pursed her lips. “Who knows for sure? Lost is lost. The old books differ in their opinions. Palimpest holds the highest figure and claims one thousand and twenty-four.”
Nona’s eyes widened at that. Nations fought for control of the Ark. Emperors murdered their fathers and their sons. A thousand and twenty-four was a vast number.
“Consider, though,” Sister Pan continued. “Spread evenly across the ice-free face of Abeth that would still put five hundred miles between any one of them and the next. However many there are, they are rare. Rarer even than shiphearts.”
“Shiphearts? I thought there was only one!”
Sister Pan smiled. “Each ship that bore the tribes to Abeth had a shipheart at the core of its engines. Our forebears did not come here in a single ship. Even if each of the races came in a single ship that would be four shiphearts. I believe Sister Rule has seen texts in Orison that suggest there were a host of ships.”
“A host!” Nona tried to imagine them sailing the blackness between the stars.
“A host.” Sister Pan nodded. “Though I know of fewer than half a dozen shiphearts in all of the empire, and that number would not double even if you were to scour Durn and Scithrowl too.”
The cart drew to a halt before the wide and many-pillared portico of Academy Hall. The emperor’s own soldiers stood to attention on the steps behind the pillars, and behind them great doors of dark bronze, each set with a dozen polished bosses the size of shields.
Sister Pan told the driver to wait and escorted Nona, Ara, and Hessa up the marble steps. At the great doors Sister Pan steered them towards a smaller single door set into the leftmost of the pair. A rap of her hand saw the smaller door swing open and Sister Pan led through into a foyer every piece as grand as that of the Ancestor’s dome up on the Rock of Faith.
Nona let her gaze wander up the height of the surrounding columns and winced. The nausea that had plagued her periodically since her return from the Caltess twisted in her gut once more, not so sharp as before, but a warning echo.
“I know what Yisht is after.” Nona hissed the words to Ara as a tall, black-clad Academic led Sister Pan and the novices deeper into the building. “She’s trying to steal the shipheart!”
“But you said she was digging under the dome!” Ara hissed back. “And the shipheart is under Heart Hall.”
“It’s under the dome!” Nona insisted. She’d felt it, but not known what it was. The story about Heart Hall must be a deliberate misdirection in case anyone came hoping to steal it.
“What?” Ara stopped in the corridor. The doors all along it opened onto Academics’ offices.
“She’s right,” said Hessa, altering course to walk around the pair of them.
“What?” Nona and Ara together.
“How do you know?” Nona demanded. “You said you couldn’t feel it!”
“I don’t have to.” Hessa rounded them and carried on after Sister Pan. “You just follow the hot pipes back to where they came from. And it’s not Heart Hall!”
35
THE ACADEMIC BROUGHT them at last to a large chamber cutting up through all four layers of the hall to a many-windowed dome in the main roof. Galleries surrounded the perimeter at every level and scores of Academics or Academy staff stood watching, some leaning on the stone balustrades, others speaking together in small groups. Some more elderly individuals had had high-backed chairs brought out of their offices and positioned for a good view.
Nona found herself sweating, clutching her belly with one hand. It seemed as if whatever poison Raymel had got into her had merely gone into hiding and for some reason now chose to seep back into her blood.
The chamber itself held no furniture other than a long oak table at the back with a dozen chairs behind it, and eight plain wooden stools against the opposite wall. Four Academics and a priest of the Ancestor sat behind the table in robes of various colours, each a single shade. Sister Pan went to take her place behind the table and the black-robed Academic left the way he had led them.
One of the Academics in particular drew Nona’s eye. A sky-blue robe covered his painful thinness, though the ridging of his spine could be seen in the length of his neck, and the small head atop it held a skull’s grin. He watched her, eyes pale and without expression. She had seen him before: at the Caltess beside Raymel Tacsis. Perhaps the Academic’s magic had saved her enemy’s life, or maybe it had been the demons hiding beneath the gerant’s skin. Had it been the Academic who poisoned her in the moment she tried to take Raymel’s life? Was he here today under Tacsis orders to finish the job? Nona froze, feeling the jaws of a trap around her. She could tell Sister Pan, but what offence would the Academy take? Besides, the nun would just repeat the abbess, reminding her what Thuran Tacsis had pledged to the emperor himself. That the matter was closed. Nona ground her teeth as the nausea rose again.
The oldest of the Academics got to his feet, a white-haired man whose skin looked to have been terribly burned long ago and whose eyes held a milky blindness. “We welcome the last of our guests—Sister Pan of Sweet Mercy Convent, and three novices of an age with our year three students.” He paused as a polite smattering of applause ran its course through the galleries above. “My apologies, Mistress Path, but time presses. If you are prepared we will commence immediately.” He gestured to the stools beside the door and Sister Pan motioned for the novices to sit.
Five of the eight stools were occupied. Three Academy students sat in grey tunics, an intense blonde girl closest, then Chara and Willum. Chara looked as severe as Nona remembered her, black hair cropped so close to her skull you could see the darkness of her skin beneath. Willum seemed perhaps a touch less nondescript than he had been, two years leaving his chin more defined and his eyes brighter. Two novices in the brown robes of the Ancestor brotherhood occupied the last two stools: a large sandy-haired boy with red cheeks, and Markus, offering a twitch of a smile. Nona staggered to a free stool without waiting for permission and fell onto it, setting her back to the wall. Hessa settled beside her.
The Academic cleared his throat. “We will begin with . . .” He bent to set his ear by the mouth of the angular woman seated to his right. “With Novice Hessa and Proxim Chara.” He clapped his hands.
Sister Pan got to her feet with a sigh and walked across to a door in the left wall, beckoning Hessa. The Academic seated to the right got up and accompanied Chara through a door in the right-hand wall. Sister Pan had promised to explain what would be expected of each of them before the bouts, and Nona supposed that this was it. Her own chances of doing anything more than collapsing seemed remote.
While both Hessa and Chara were ensconced in the side rooms the black-robed Academic returned to set an iron basket of burning coals midway between the two doors. He retreated and a minute or so later a gong struck.
“Chara’s a fire-worker then.” Markus, two places along from Nona. She turned to look at him, managing to echo his nervous smile through her pain. “Students need an easy source.”
The gong sounded again and both doors opened to reveal the contestants. Chara hurried across to the coal basket and hunched over it, so close that Nona thought her hair must be sizzling. Hessa limped out on her crutch, frowning in concentration as she stared at Chara. Nona had expected Hessa to emerge deep in serenity. Hessa might not be able to manage a step unaided in the common world but on the Path she had more nimble feet than Ara, and both of them far outdid Nona, who was still unable to make more than glancing contact.
“What’s she doing?” Nona’s pain made the words a gasp.
“Thread-work,” Ara said.
Chara stood and the fire was in her eyes. She shaped her hands and flames flared among the coals, not dying back but coiling and rising until they became a serpent that wrapped around her. Somehow the snake’s heat failed to reach Chara, her skin remaining unblistered, her tunic not even singed. But Nona’s pain
built from bad to worse, ringing through her bones. She hunted the inner pockets of her habit with fingers curled around her distress. After an ecstasy of fumbling she brought out the vial containing the black cure.
“Concede, novice?” Chara asked, her scorn evident. She raised an arm towards Hessa, the serpent coiling along it, raising its head to strike.
Hessa’s frown smoothed away as if she had in that moment solved a puzzle. “There’s a thread that binds your fire to the coals.” While she spoke her hand moved, finger and thumb pinched together as if tugging on some invisible string. She stood there, her fingers working, the wisps of her hair lifted on a breeze that wasn’t there.
“What?” Chara’s turn to frown. Faster than it rose, the serpent spiralled back down her arm, back around her body, back into the fire-basket.
“They’re still bound together,” Hessa said.
Chara curled her lips, raised both hands in fists. Once again flames guttered up from the glowing coals, less fiercely than before, reaching for her tentatively.
“And all the parts of the coal are still connected . . .” There was wonder in Hessa’s voice, as if the proximity of the Ark were revealing in astonishing detail something she had only glimpsed before. “So many . . .” She leaned on her crutch and raised both hands, cupped, fingers parted, as if sieving strands from the air. The flames above the fire-basket sucked back into the glowing coals, smoke swirled, faster than was natural, and downwards, gathering itself from the heights above. And in the space of moments, despite Chara’s snarling resistance, the glow faded, the coals darkened, the fire vanished as if it had never been.
Chara fell to the floor, gasping, as though she had been holding her breath all this time and only now could breathe. Hessa stumped forward to offer a hand up, a genuine smile on her face. “Thank you for the lessons, proxim.”
Chara shrugged her off and returned scowling to her seat. Hessa returned to sit between Ara and Nona. Behind the table the Academics set to a whispered discussion and in the galleries above onlookers murmured their own observations to each other.
“Sister Pan tells you what to expect,” Hessa said. “We’re matched so that we don’t end up hurting each other.”
Nona sat as still as she could, the black cure held so tight in her knotted fist that she feared the flask might break. “What was Chara doing?” she gasped past gritted teeth, wanting to distract herself.
“A lot of marjals work the elements. Air most commonly. It’s easiest with something light. Then fire. Water is rarer. Earth very rare.” Hessa frowned. “Do you think she didn’t remember me? She looked like she didn’t know me . . . Are you all right, Nona? You look terrible.”
Nona waved the questions away. “How do you know this stuff? Sister Pan never taught us that. Did she?”
Hessa shrugged. “She covered some of it before you joined Red Class. Most of it I read in the library while you lot were punching and kicking each other.”
The senior Academic took to his feet again. “The next pairing is Novice Arabella and Proxim Willum.”
As before, Sister Pan went into one room with Ara, and an Academic took Willum into the opposite room. The fire-basket was removed and nothing put in its place. The two contestants emerged at the sound of the gong, Ara golden and glorious, Willum pasty and nervous. His student tunic had been replaced by a long-sleeved robe reaching to his feet and set all about with sigils stitched in gold thread. It looked to weigh as much as he did.
“Like the ones in Path Tower,” Hessa said. “Sigils of negation, specific to the Path.” She squinted. “And some more general ones. All negation, though.”
The two stepped closer. Nothing happened. They faced each other, Ara’s lips twitching with the echoes of her serenity mantra, Willum ignoring her, staring at his fists, clenched before him.
“Ah.” The gasp escaped as Nona’s pain flared. She raised the cure to her lips, her arm responding jerkily to her demands.
“Nona!” Hessa hissed, reaching out to stop her. “Are you mad?”
“P-poisoned!”
“Ask for help then! We’re in the Academy. There are more marjal blood-workers here than in the rest of empire put together!”
“W-what’s he doing?” Nona nodded towards Willum to distract Hessa. She wasn’t going to put herself in the hands of the Academics. The man sitting behind the table opposite was probably the one who had armoured Raymel against her blades. What other favours might he be prepared to do for the Tacsis?
“He’s building a wall,” Hessa said, not looking away. “An invisible wall. There are faults in . . . everything . . . flaws in the stuff of the world, places where the Path has slipped and left a defect. Willum is rotating them and gathering them into a wall. They say it feels like glass if you touch it. It’s a rare talent. His wall is static but they say grandmasters can make mobile walls. The Durn-mage was said to have a flaw-sword, an invisible blade that would cut through any steel raised against him!” Hessa put her hand out to cover Nona’s, keeping the vial from her mouth. “Don’t!”
“I need to. I—” But as Nona spoke the edge of her agony dulled and her rigid muscles released her to slump forward, retching acid onto the floor.
“He’s finished.”
Nona straightened, ignoring the disgusted look from the student to her left. Willum stood waiting. If he’d built any kind of wall she couldn’t see it. Minutes passed while Ara settled into her trance, Nona’s pain retreating to a dull ache and sharp nausea. She wanted to be back in the tunnels beneath the convent—both to see how close Yisht was to the shipheart and to seek a repeat of the relief it had given her the last time she had felt so ill.
Finally Ara spoke, her voice deep and resonant. “You’re prepared?”
Willum nodded, wetting his lips.
Nona felt the echoes of Ara’s footfalls as she walked the Path. One. Two. Three. Four. Ara had never walked so far. Perhaps in the presence of the Ark even Nona could manage a second step. Five.
Ara returned, jolting into her body, her hair flying up into a golden cloud about her head. The energies of the Path wrapped her in bright potential, shuddering through her flesh. Nona thought it would be too much for her but Ara swept the power forward and sent it lancing towards Willum in a jagged blaze that looked like lightning might if it were set on fire.
Ara’s attack struck Willum’s wall a yard from where he stood in a detonation that shook the room. Nona caught a brief impression of white-hot energy flattening out and spilling around a half-dome shape, just a faint echo of it penetrating to strike the student’s chest where the gold-worked sigils absorbed it as if they were holes into some other place.
A light round of applause went around the galleries. Willum gave a hesitant bow and retreated to the room he’d come from.
“What? Did he win?” Nona asked.
“No. Ara did. Willum would have been injured if he hadn’t been wearing a sigil-robe—and they’re worth more than most lords’ estates, so not part of the standard Academic’s wardrobe. But it was impressive that he could stop so much of such a powerful blast. It’s not as if Ara would be able to do another in a hurry.”
The Academics set to their discussions again, the senior man putting questions to Sister Pan in quick succession. Nona leaned forward to look at Markus. He’d grown into his looks over the past two years, or perhaps he’d always been striking and she hadn’t noticed. Handsome, but not in the Raymel Tacsis mould, where the arrogance made something ugly of even features and a square jaw.
“What can you do?” she asked him.
“I’m an empath.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well . . . I can make you laugh.”
“You can’t!”
He pulled a face, tongue out to the side, eyes crossed. A laugh burst from her, causing the discussion at the end of the hall to miss a beat.
“That’s cheating,” she hissed.
“Isn’t that what magic is?” He grinned. “But I can. I could reach into your head and make you laugh . . . or cry. Or if we’re pitted against each other I could make you surrender.”
“I don’t know about the laughing or crying but you couldn’t make me surrender.”
“Well. I’d give it a good try.” Markus smiled, without heat.
“It wouldn’t work. Giving up is not something I do. You do remember me, don’t you?” But as she said it Nona wondered what he might remember of her. She remembered him as a serious, competitive boy, a boy she saw few signs of there in the Academics’ hall. Two years at the monastery had changed him, or perhaps it had been his power that changed him. Perhaps you couldn’t reach into people’s heads without part of them reaching back and shaping you too.
“. . . Novice Nona and Proxim Luta.” The senior Academic had gained his feet while Nona’s thoughts had been elsewhere.
The third student stood from her stool, a tall girl with fair hair that hung across half her face. The visible eye was dark and hostile above a cheekbone that looked sharp enough to draw blood.
Nona followed Sister Pan into the preparation room. Her nausea subsided as she entered. She stood puzzled but relieved, gazing at the paintings hung around the walls while Sister Pan closed the door. Academics in black robes looked down at her on every side, their painted faces uniformly severe.
“Your opponent is a shadow-weaver, Nona.”
“She’s going to hide and jump out on me?” Nona frowned. “Can I hit her?”
“No!” Sister Pan stamped her foot. “No hitting!” She pushed her chin forward. “Or kicking, or biting, or head butting, or any other damn thing that Sister Tallow taught you. This is Path.”
“But I can hardly touch the Path. And how’s that going to help against shadows? Can I blast her?”
“I don’t think you can, Nona, no. But if you suddenly develop the facility—and stranger things have happened this close to the Ark—she will be wearing the sigil-robe and yes, you can blast her. It would be remiss of me not to add that the robe is rated up to ten steps. More than that and you risk putting a hole through an Academy student. Which would be a bad thing.”