Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (62 page)

For the first time, Tierce’s arrogance was shaken. She stared at Gair. ‘You?’

‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘Go and rouse the sisters. They number thirty-four, including the Superior. Make sure no one is left behind.’

She darted away and he turned to Alderan. ‘This is my fault. If I hadn’t gone out with them this morning—’

‘We’d very likely have ended up in exactly the same situation, only with two dead nuns on your conscience,’ the old man finished for him, still squinting between the shutters. ‘I don’t think you started anything that wouldn’t have happened anyway, as soon as Resa showed she wasn’t afraid of them – although I’d have liked a little more time to work through those books after coming all this way.’

He straightened up, dabbing at his still-leaking nose with the back of his hand. ‘Damned thing. I thought you were going to fetch my scrip.’

‘And I told you there’s no time.’

Before Alderan could protest, Gair seized his head between both hands and opened himself to the Song. Brilliant colour flooded his mind, sweeping through him and into the other man in a rush of glorious music. It was too late to worry about subtlety now.

When he let go, Alderan reeled against the wall, breathing hard. Sweat shone on his brow.

‘Holy Mother Goddess!’ he gasped. ‘You definitely need practice. That was brutal.’

‘You can see out of both eyes now, can’t you?’ Gair snapped, heading for the stairs.

In his room he snatched up his few things and stuffed them into his saddlebags, a chilly foreboding gnawing at him. Nothing, not a single thing, had gone right so far. He looked around to be sure he hadn’t left anything, then did the same for the old man’s belongings and carried all of their baggage back down to the common room.

Alderan was still watching out of the window. The torchlight outside looked brighter now, and someone had begun pounding on the street door to the rhythm of an angry chant.

‘Sooner or later one of them will figure out which is the business end of an axe,’ he muttered. He palpated his still-swollen nose tentatively. ‘You could at least have straightened it.’

Gair ignored that. ‘Where’s Canon?’

‘I sent him to fetch the horses.’

‘What about Tierce?’

‘She hasn’t come back yet.’

Blood and stones. The wretched girl had probably followed her brother and to blazes with anyone’s skin but her own. Gair loped for the door.

‘I’ll find her, then meet you in the yard.’

Outside, the increased number of torches in the street beyond the wall had polluted the clear silver-blue of the moonlight to a muddy-river brown that gave the yard an unfamiliar aspect. Shadows lurked and leapt as the torches moved, creating a hundred places amongst the outbuildings and stores where Cultists could have hidden, if any of them had given thought to climbing over the wall instead of targeting the gate. Each heavy thump shook the thick door in its frame.

Across the yard the stable door opened, sending out a widening beam of lamplight that pushed the shadows back. A black-robed shape followed, soon recognisable as Canon, leading Alderan’s grey gelding. There was no sign of Tierce with him. She must have gone into the main preceptory building after all.

At the head of the steps the iron-strapped door was closed and no lights burned within the Daughterhouse that Gair could see. Instead each upper window blazed with reflected torchlight from the street as if the entire place was on fire. In Zhiman-dar the Cultists had burned books. If the ugly tone of the chants and the resounding blows against the street door were anything to go by, the ones in El Maqqam were aiming a little higher.

The door was unlocked and opened easily when he lifted the latch. Only a little moonlight entered through the high windows, draping the stone-flagged entry hall with shadows. Summoning a glim at his shoulder he hurried towards the stairs. He had only the vaguest idea where the dormitory might be, but it was reasonable to assume it would be on one of the upper floors.

On the first landing he heard muffled voices and followed the sound to a side passage where a group of nuns fluttered in the darkness like startled doves. Tierce stalked back and forth, hissing and growling at them to hurry up, and her impatience only added to their nervousness.

‘For pity’s sake,’ Gair muttered and threw half a dozen more glims into the air overhead. People always felt safer when they could see.

Several sisters squeaked in alarm at the sudden illumination, but they stopped fluttering. Frozen in place, they stared at him with fear-bright eyes.

A sturdy grey-haired nun was the first to recover herself. ‘Merciful saints!’ she exclaimed, drawing herself up. ‘Who are you, bringing this deviltry into the Goddess’s house?’

Gair spread his hands placatingly, palms down to keep the witchmark out of sight. There was enough panic in the air already.

‘I’m here to help, Sisters, that’s all. It’s no longer safe for you here. You need to leave.’

The nun stuck out her jaw. ‘Absolutely not. We are doing the Goddess’s work here – we will not be driven away by ignorance and mindless hate.’

Avis and Resa had tried much that line of reasoning in the square that morning, without success. ‘There’s no time to argue about this, Sister,’ Gair said. ‘There are Cultists at the gate, a lot of them, and they’re very likely armed. We have to go.’

He took a quick headcount of the women clustered around the sturdy nun and came up several short without spotting any familiar faces.

‘Isn’t the Superior here?’ he asked Tierce, who shrugged.

‘How should I know? They all look the same to me.’

Addressing the nuns, Gair raised his voice a little. ‘Where’s the Superior? What about Resa? Sofi?’

The sturdy one frowned. ‘Sister Sofi has gone to fetch the pyx-chest,’ she said. ‘I think Sister Avis went to the Superior’s lodging.’

Better hurry
, Alderan sent, pressing urgency into Gair’s mind.
They’ll be through the gate before long!

At the prospect of having to comb the corridors of the Daughterhouse to round up the missing sisters Gair almost swore, but remembered himself just in time. ‘Is there another door to the street? A lepers’ gate, some other way out of here?’

‘There’s a lepers’ gate behind the chapel,’ the nun said. ‘What’s happening outside? Who are you?’

‘A sinner, Sister Martha,’ said the Superior crisply, appearing from the far end of the corridor. Sofi, clutching a small chest, scurried in her wake.

The senior nun had donned her black habit but hadn’t bothered with a wimple, and lacking its stern frame her face looked younger, softer, surrounded by short brown curls that showed barely any grey.

‘A sinner with a sword, no less.
Barouks
to cover your habits, Daughters, then meet Sister Avis and the others at the lepers’ gate.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Quickly now, we have no time to waste.’

A familiar voice issuing instructions was all it took to galvanise the nuns and they hurried away. The Superior eyed the glims drifting along the vaulted corridor, then fixed her shrewd, pale gaze on Gair.

‘And other gifts, too, it appears,’ she murmured. ‘Who are you, my son? Truly?’

‘Please go with them,’ he urged her. ‘They’re frightened. We’ll join you as quickly as we can.’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

There was no
time
! ‘I am what you see, Superior – a sinner with a sword. Now please, hurry!’

‘You have surprised me,’ she said, ‘and I have not been surprised in a very long while.’ Inclining her head, she gathered her black skirts and glided after the departing nuns.

Tierce stalked back down to the yard behind Gair. Both horses were saddled and ready, tethered to a ring in the wall by the guest-hall door. Alderan limped out in his bloodstained
barouk
, a bundle of robes in his hands. Both his eyes were open now, if magnificently bruised, and the cuts and scrapes on his face had scabbed over. Dried blood had left stark lines in the creases of his skin, wild tufts and spikes in his hair; instead of a genial old lion, he resembled some tattooed shaman from the Belisthan forests.

He tossed the robes to Gair. ‘These are yours. Are the nuns leaving?’

‘The Superior’s assembling them behind the chapel.’

‘Good.’ A splintering thud shook the outer gate and the crowd in the street roared their approval. ‘We’ve not much time. Get upstairs and help Canon with the books.’

Barouk
half-on, Gair stared at him. ‘But what about the Sisters?’

Alderan gave him a terse shake of the head. ‘They’ll have to make their own way out. We haven’t time to ride shepherd if we’re going to get any of these books away from here.’

Gair couldn’t quite believe what he’d heard. ‘You’re serious? You’ll just abandon them?’

‘If I had the choice, no, but there is more at stake here.’ The old man made an exasperated, impatient sound. ‘Look, the sisters have lived here for years. They know this city – they’ll be fine. Those books won’t be, unless we can take them somewhere safe.’

‘So you’ll just leave the women to the Cult? Let those bastards cut their tongues out and worse? Good Goddess, Alderan!’ Gair tugged the
barouk
across his shoulders, slung his
kaif
around his neck. ‘No. Not while I’m still breathing.’

A slow fire burned inside him. He knew what Alderan was saying, that depending on what the books contained potentially thousands of lives could be saved, but that was in the abstract, an impersonal rationalisation that would never have the same gut-punch immediacy of the very real, very present danger facing the sisters. He could not countenance abandoning them, not when he’d brought that danger down on them in the first place. It smacked too much of cowardice.

Frowning, Alderan cocked his fists on his hips. ‘Gair, I thought you understood. Those books might hold the knowledge we need to preserve the Veil. If they’re destroyed—’

‘And that makes them more important than the sisters’ lives?’ Saints and angels, the man was bloodless. ‘I came here with you like you asked and I’ve helped as much as I can, but I can’t do any more. I won’t. I caused this mess, and it’s up to me to get the sisters out of it.’

Gair jerked Shahe’s reins from the ring on the wall and flipped them over her head. He’d wasted more than enough time on those books; he wasn’t prepared to waste even a second more.

Canon emerged from the Daughterhouse with a stack of books in his arms that reached his chin. His sister went straight to him and they spoke urgently in Gimraeli. Her eyes gleaming over her veil, she snatched the grey’s reins and was off at a run.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Gair.’ The old man’s eyes were glass-hard, almost silvery in the strange light. ‘This is our best hope of stopping Savin in his tracks with the least blood spilled. You know that. I thought it’s what you wanted, to make him pay for what he did to you.’

His hand on the saddle horn in preparation to mount, Gair paused. ‘Oh, I want to make him pay all right.’ His voice trembled with the effort of keeping his emotions in check. ‘I want it so much I can taste it, but I won’t throw those nuns to the wolves to get it.’

He swung up into the saddle and Shahe immediately began to dance, unsettled by the smoke and chanting, the furious passions in the air.

The old man threw up his hands. ‘You don’t understand! This is the only thing to do if we’re going to have any chance of stopping him—’

‘No, it’s not! You’re wrong!’ Good Goddess, couldn’t the man hear himself?

‘It’s
necessary
!’ Alderan snarled. ‘Get down off your Knightly high horse for a minute and you’ll see it, too.’

‘What’s right and what’s necessary are not the same thing.’ Gair reined Shahe about in a tight circle, his heart thumping hard against his breastbone. ‘The nuns are my responsibility now – I’ll see them safely back to Syfria on my way north. You and your damned books can go to hell.’

A blazing torch whirled over the wall and bounced across the earth in gouts of sparks, close enough to make Shahe crab away, head tossing anxiously. Whooping voices followed it, the words unclear but the intent plain. He had to get the nuns out.

Behind him the thudding and chanting continued, regular blows shaking the stout door in its frame. A new-moon sliver of steel burst through the sun-whitened wood; the crowd outside cheered and more torches were hurled over the wall.

‘Then go with the Goddess,’ said Alderan as Gair brought his mount back under control. His voice was coloured only by a quiet resignation. ‘If you can, find Masen – he’s somewhere in the far north. You might be able to help each other.’

Then there was no time left and nothing more to say. Gair gathered Shahe up and urged her towards the chapel.

Tanith woke from an unsettling dream with her heart thundering in her ears and her hand across her throat, expecting any second to feel the kiss of a blade. A pale and pearly dawn seeped through the trees, the air heavy with the scent of damp leaf-mould – and something else, something dank and faintly rotten.

Sitting up, she looked around the clearing. The horses were tethered where they’d been left, their tails spangled with dew, but apart from a bucket of water for them to drink from there was no sign of the forestal. Beside her, Ailric’s blankets were empty. The tall Astolan stood near the stone pillars, one hand on each as he leaned between them.