The Girl and the Moon Page 2

  Archon Eular had shaken his head, the white mask hiding his expression. “I don’t trust that. I want their blood on the ground before me.”

  “You don’t trust drowning?” Abbess Claw’s trilled laugh sounded all wrong. Mali had never heard the abbess laugh before. “Do you think the ice tribes are part fish, archon? I doubt they can even swim, though that’s immaterial; they will be weighted.”

  “Perhaps they have powers . . .” Irritation coloured the archon’s voice.

  “Powers?” The abbess raised a brow.

  “You have to ask? In this place where half your novices show the old bloods?”

  Abbess Claw pursed her lips. As close to a shrug as Mali had ever seen. “And we have to scour the empire for them. And even then not one of the girls here can breathe water.”

  “I insist—”

  “Archon Eular.” Claw lowered her voice though the whole of the Persus Hall could still hear her, its collective breath held as they watched on, amazed that the abbess would defy an archon over so small a thing as the manner of four foreigners’ deaths. “Archon Eular, you are new in your post and perhaps less familiar than you might be with the convents and monasteries that you now oversee on behalf of the high priest. Within the confines of this convent the laws by which we have lived for more than two centuries are paramount. Church law says these four must die. Convent law says it will be by drowning. It would be unfortunate for us to put your authority to the test so early in your new post over such a minor detail. Sister Owl will keep close watch on the prisoners and in the unlikely event that they attempt to use magic to escape their fall, she will counter any such efforts.”

  The archon drew breath to answer. Abbess Claw beat him to it. “But I will have tradition followed.”

  “Fine.” Eular had thrown his hands in the air. “Drowning it is, then. I will be attending the execution so let’s make it as soon as possible.”

  * * *

  “Thurin Hellanson!” Abbess Claw called across the sinkhole. “You have—”

  “Not him. Put the girl in first,” Archon Eular interrupted.

  Abbess Claw turned her head slowly and gave the archon a hard stare. “Quina of—”

  “The other one! The darker girl.”

  Despite her promise to Sister Owl, Mali started to try to force her way to the ice-tribers. She tried to see the Path but instead the damned sigil filled her vision, splitting her head with a wedge of white agony. “This is murder! These people helped me!”

  Someone put a knee into Mali’s spine and a gag into her mouth, pulling back until she was forced to her knees. Still she tried to fight them. Yaz was a powerful quantal, and when she unleashed her power, people Mali loved might die. Mali could warn the nuns, but even if she was believed, Mali couldn’t take away the tribers’ last remote chance of escape, however doomed any such attempt might be. Worse still was the idea that Yaz’s efforts in rescuing Mali, pulling her from death on the ice through that distant gate, had drained her: she’d not used the Path to fight Haydies or his guards, even when the three-headed dog was on the point of slaughtering everyone. And although those events seemed as distant in time as they were in space, they were actually only on the previous day.

  The abbess drew a deep breath, fingers drumming on her crozier. “Yaz of the Ictha, you have been found guilty of the crime of murder by a court of the Church. Sentence is now to be carried out. May the Ancestor have mercy and join your soul to the great tree.” Abbess Claw made the sign of the arborat, one finger starting low, tracing the taproot, another finger joining to trace the trunk, then all fingers spreading as they rose to trace the branches. “Have you any last words?”

  Across the empty yards Yaz frowned, her mouth struggling to shape unfamiliar words. “Priest . . . Eular . . . lies.”

  The abbess gave a curt nod and Sister Pine pushed Yaz forward. She fell without a scream and hit the water, vanishing before the splash cleared. Quina started to wail.

  Mali broke free for a brief moment, howling behind her gag. The abbess glanced her way with an unreadable expression as two nuns wrestled her back down.

  Abbess Claw raised her voice to execute a second sentence. “Thurin H—”

  “The other girl next,” Archon Eular cut across her. “But let’s be in no hurry about it.”

  Where Yaz had fallen the ripples were still spreading out towards the opposite wall. A scattering of bubbles rose lazily from the spot where she had gone under. For what seemed an age everyone watched in silence as the ripples faded away. One lone bubble broke the surface.

  “Making them wait is cruel, archon.” The abbess raised her hand to signal Sister Pine. “At Sweet Mercy we are not cruel. We are just.”

  Eular caught her arm and pressed it down, though Mali had no idea how he saw it. Or indeed how he had known that Yaz’s bronze skin was darker than Quina’s pale one. “Indulge me.”

  Abbess Claw sighed and stepped back.

  On the far side Erris pitched forward without being pushed. He hit the water with an enormous splash.

  “Stop them!” Eular roared. “Don’t—”

  But Thurin was already falling as Erris hit the water. With a desperate wail Quina fell to her side and rolled over the sinkhole’s edge, screeching as she dropped.

  “Stop them?” The abbess turned to fix Archon Eular with a curious stare, head tilted to the side. “It was your sentence that demanded their lives.”

  Eular stood staring at the churning water, fists balled at his sides, as if from behind the closed ceramic of his mask those empty sockets might see all the way down into the Glasswater’s murky depths.

  2

  Yaz

  Yaz had fallen much further before and into colder water, but never wearing an iron yoke that weighed half what she did and kept her hands immobile. She hit the water hard enough to leave her head ringing with the impact. In the next moment everything was bubbles and churning light, the yoke swiftly dragging her down. Terror surged, trying to force her last breath from her lungs. The depths into which she was sinking were black, beyond the reach of daylight, and she had no idea how long it would take her to reach the bottom. Already pressure was building around her, pressing on her chest to release its air, weighing against her eardrums, and promising to crush her like rotten ice.

  Thurin was supposed to go in first. Thurin was supposed to go in first. Eular had seen through their plan and now she was going to die.

  She hit the bottom unexpectedly and black mud swirled, replacing the weak light from above with impenetrable night. The mud enfolded her in a slimy embrace. She fought against panic. She couldn’t tell if she was entirely within the muck or lying on some yielding surface. Somehow drowning in mud seemed worse than drowning in water. The yoke’s weight provided a definite sense of down but she couldn’t find any footing to right herself. Instead she forced herself to stillness. The air in her lungs would turn sour more swiftly if she struggled.

  She lay in the cool embrace of the slime, knowing that the bones of others murdered in this manner must be lying all around her, the skulls of young girls most likely, watching her with blind, mud-choked sockets. She thought of Eular up above in the sunshine and wanted to scream, wanted to fight. Eular’s last-moment interference in how the execution was carried out had left their plan in tatters. Holding her breath would only drag it out. She could die now or live brief minutes longer while Eular revelled in her torment. She was glad he couldn’t see her. Once he had seemed a kindly old man, wise but vulnerable, a guiding hand. He’d tricked her well then, and once again he’d caught her by surprise in a final, fatal deception.

  The air wanted out of Yaz now. It wasn’t just those fathoms of water pressing down on her chest: her body had taken what it needed from what her lungs held. It had to be expelled in order to draw another breath. Her heart pounded against her chest. Her blood thundered in her ears. Blind and deaf, out of reach of friend and foe alike, Yaz remembered the feel of her brother’s arm in her hands, her utter determination that she would not let go as the dagger-fish pulled them ever deeper. She had no memory of drawing cold water into her lungs, just the fight, the struggle. The end itself had been merciful oblivion. This time there would be no Ictha hauling her to safety as her boat broke the surface.

  So many things could go wrong. Yaz was sure that they had. Where was Thurin? She was going to die alone in the dark. Murdered by someone she hated. Air escaped at the corners of her mouth, bubbling away despite her teeth being clamped together so tight her jaw ached. She was going to die. She was—

  Strong hands closed around her legs. A moment later they were on her yoke, lifting her. Still she couldn’t see or breathe. Erris had found her. Only Erris could lift her and the yoke with such ease. She might still die but at least she wouldn’t be by herself. Her body began to convulse, air escaping her in bursts; the terror held at bay for so long flooded through her, blowing reason from its path.

  “Arrrrgghh!” Yaz screamed out the stale breath and hauled in a new one.

  Somehow she didn’t choke on it. Erris held her while she panted and gasped, unable to speak or even support herself.

  “Nooooooooooooo!” Quina’s wailing suddenly assaulted them, followed by a loud splat that cut it off completely. A few moments later and she was somewhere near, coughing and spluttering, still trying to scream. “No! What? Urgh! What is this stuff? Hel—” The mud reclaimed her.

  A small flame sprang up. Yaz was still too busy panting and wheezing but she was able to get her bearings now. Erris was supporting her with his good arm and in the palm of his other hand he held a flame, just like the one he’d produced long ago in the caverns below
the ice. The iron yoke was still around his neck, twisted at an odd angle, but he’d somehow got both hands free.

  “Up you get.” Thurin was there too. Still yoked, he couldn’t use his hands to help Quina stand but he managed to right her with his ice-work and set her standing in the waist-deep mud that coated them all. A black dome contained them, rather like the one they had found Taproot in, but much smaller, affording only enough room for the four of them. And it wasn’t made of whatever Taproot had built his from. This was just muddy water. Somewhere, although Yaz couldn’t see it, would be a narrow vertical tube connecting them to the surface. To bring down more air all Thurin needed to do was push the water back a bit.

  “We had to throw ourselves in.” Thurin’s voice was thick with strain. “That bastard Eular wanted to know you were dead before he sent the rest of us down. Probably knows about Erris. Definitely knows about me.”

  “He’ll wait up there until he’s sure we’re dead.” Quina sounded as scared now as she had when the plan had been explained to her. Yaz didn’t blame her. Quina was clever enough to be scared. Yaz felt that perhaps she herself was not brave, but just stupid enough to be able to fool herself into optimism. Thurin at least had control of the element they were supposed to die in, and Erris of course could stay down here for a month without problems.

  “We need to move up higher,” Thurin said through gritted teeth. “The less deep we are the less difficult it will be to hold the water back.”

  “And the more likely those up top will be to spot us,” Erris said.

  “Got to do it,” Thurin said, and the muddy water around their waists began to rise.

  “We can’t swim!” Yaz gasped as the water reached her chest.

  “Time for Erris to show us how strong he is!” Thurin snarled with effort.

  Erris pursed his lips. “That would be easier with two good arms.”

  “None of this is easy,” Thurin grunted.

  Yaz had hoped that Thurin might be able to lift them all, and their yokes, and maintain the bubble around them, but clearly she’d underestimated how hard it was to work against the weight of all those fathoms of water above them. They needed the yokes off, then they could swim up with the bubble to a lower depth. She turned to face Erris. “How did you get free?”

  “Well, I’m not exactly free.” Erris touched the yoke that still trapped his neck. “But I can do this . . .” He folded his hand in a way in which hands were never meant to bend, narrowing it so much that it was obvious how he had slipped it out. But even if Yaz could get her hands free she needed the whole thing off her if she was going to swim up with Thurin’s bubble to a depth where it was easier to maintain.

  Erris took hold of the end of Yaz’s yoke. She thought he would try the opposite end where the thing was locked closed with a rivet. When they’d hammered it home, hurting her ears with the crash of iron on iron and rattling her teeth, she had thought that it would be harder to remove than to put in. Instead he grasped the hinged end that had allowed the device to be opened then closed about her wrists and neck. He grasped it in his fist, curling his smallest finger around to press against the end of the hinge pin.

  “Hmmm.” Erris showed no strain, but he wasn’t built like other men. He could exert his full strength and hold a calm conversation. “It’s tight. Are you sure you can’t reach the Path, Yaz? It would help a lot . . .”

  A fresh wave of panic rose around Yaz faster than the water. If Erris couldn’t get the yokes off, and Thurin couldn’t hold the water back long enough at this depth, then, like holding her breath, all this was just doomed effort, merely a cruel prolonging of the process of drowning. She’d already come very close to sucking in a lungful of liquid mud, and the thought of having to go through it all again made her want to break down in tears. The Path, however, remained hidden from her. She had used its power to forge many small stars into a single larger one, and then very shortly after in conjunction with Mali when pulling her from the ice through the gate. She could no more call on its power a third time in such a short span than she could breathe water.

  “Try mine,” Quina suggested. “What?” She met Thurin’s accusatory stare. “It might be looser. And if he gets one pin free he can use it to push out the others.”

  Erris tried Quina’s, then Thurin’s, then his own. “The hinge pins are too thin to press properly and the locking rivets are in too tight to move.”

  Thurin looked pale. Small blood vessels had ruptured in the whites of his eyes.

  “We need something small and hard,” Yaz said. “So you can press the pin out.”

  But everything had been taken from them, their knives, food, even the stardust Yaz had collected from the miniature demons in Haydies. They were standing in black mud that might hide the bones of previous victims but little else.

  “Move to the wall!” Quina started wading towards the black wall of water Thurin was holding back. “We can use the stone.”

  “It’s the other way.” Thurin stumbled as he tried to walk and he nearly fell. For a moment the whole bubble was collapsing, the walls falling in towards them. Somehow, gasping in pain, Thurin righted himself and pushed the walls back. Quina, who had been momentarily engulfed, stood coughing and spitting.

  The rocky wall of the sinkhole appeared after a few strides, slimy with mud and algae. Erris took hold of the end of his own yoke in one hand and used his inhuman strength to hammer at the wall. Chunks, chips, and shards of stone broke off beneath his blows. He scooped up a useful-looking piece before it sank into the mud.

  “Let’s try again.” Erris brought Yaz to the wall and anchored the end of her yoke in the small hole he’d made in the stone. Then, using just his good arm, he lined his shard of stone up with the end of the hinge pin and pressed. The shard broke. He tried again with the thicker end, pressing the corner into the pin’s end. “It’s not working.”

  Quina waded close. “Try mine.”

  Yaz ceded her place, thinking Quina overburdened with optimism. She eyed the walls of water sealing them against the stone. The light of the small flame still flickering in Erris’s palm danced across the black and undulating surfaces. Soon she’d be drowning again.

  Quina wedged the end of her yoke against the wall and Erris pressed a new stone shard up against the hinge pin. “Come on! Come on!” Desperation rather than optimism coloured her voice.

  “There!” Erris cried. “It moved!” He pulled the end of the yoke towards him, raising his flame. The pin’s head was no longer flat to the yoke, and beneath it a small fraction of an inch of bright metal showed. “Keep still.” Erris gripped the pinhead between finger and thumb. Slowly, very slowly, and accompanied by a tortured squeal of metal on metal, he pulled the pin out. A moment later Quina was struggling free of the yoke. It hit the mud with a splat and sank from view almost immediately.

  Erris took the pin and used it to push out the pins of Yaz’s yoke, then Thurin’s and his own. “We’re lucky these weren’t better built.”

  The instant Thurin was free he began to move the bubble up, with Yaz and Quina swimming to keep level with the air. Erris—too heavy to swim—called out before the water engulfed him. “I’ll climb the wall. It may take some ti—” The water covered his outstretched hand, quenching the flame and plunging them into darkness again. Suddenly Yaz was terrified, splashing around blind, worried she might blunder into the bubble’s edge and choke.

  As they rose a faint light began to finger into the inky blackness. Thurin’s expression became less strained. Slowly the disc of the sky made itself known, rimmed by the mouth of the sinkhole.

  “Don’t go too high or they’ll see us,” Yaz said.

  “They’ve got the light behind them. We’ll see them before they see us,” Thurin said.

  He reduced their rise to a crawl though, and shortly, distorted through the motion of the surface, shimmering figures resolved all around the edge of the circle.

  “How long do they need to watch for?” Quina snarled.

  “Maybe they’ll throw Mali in too,” Yaz said. “She did speak for us at the trial.”