Yaz and Mali
Yaz had walked on water her entire life, and now in this place where it fell molten from the skies they planned to drown her in the stuff.
She knelt on the rock, staring down into a sinkhole at the water some forty feet below. A black depth waited for her, unrippled by the wind, untouched by the sunlight that reached only halfway down. The sheer-sided hole might have been poked into the stone by the finger of a god. The far wall lay more than ten yards away and on that side an iron ladder led down into the depths, marking the stone with rusty tears.
Even if the ladder were on her side it would be of little help to Yaz. Her hands were held out to either side of her neck by a heavy iron yoke that had already scraped her wrists raw. The metal was hot, having soaked in the sun, which seemed to shine more strongly here on Abeth's belt. To her left Quina knelt, similarly yoked, her ankles bound with rope where Yaz's remained free. To Yaz's right, Thurin then Erris wore the same iron restraint and watched the same dark waters.
Throughout all her troubles since dropping into the Pit, Yaz had never come quite as close to death as that day fishing the Hot Sea when the dagger-fish had dragged her brother beneath the waves and she'd gone down with them, unable to let go. Here she was again, facing the same end.
The audience this time was much larger and far less friendly. Nobody would be paddling to the spot where she went down. None of them would try to save her.
Eular, who had been high priest at the Black Rock, was somehow a major figure in a very different faith down here in the green lands. Now he stood with his masked and eyeless face turned towards Yaz and the others from the far side of the sinkhole. Standing with him were the abbess and the two sisters superior: Mistress Path-or Sister Owl as she had first introduced herself-and Mistress Shade. Nuns and novices ringed the perimeter. None of them looked happy about the proceedings.
Yaz kept her gaze on Eular. She remembered the debris in the hidden room behind Arges's statue back in the Black Rock's temple: a shattered gate. It was clear now that the gate had been broken after Eular used it to escape to the Corridor, and that he must have used it many times before that day. His double life between the caves of the Broken and the Black Rock had been a triple life. He'd maintained yet another personality, using the wonders of the Missing to skip through time and space, supporting at least three separate existences. Somehow he'd carved out a position in the green lands among the people he claimed had blinded him. His manipulation of threads could only have taken him so far-the rest must have been down to external help. Seus must have been at work in this place for years.
From her place on the rim of the Glasswater sinkhole, Novice Mali watched the four ice-tribers on their knees awaiting execution. Unlike them she had been allowed to stand, but like them she wore the yoke. The device was designed to restrain people with two hands, and Mali would have found it easy to pull her wrist stump clear, but Sister Cup had secured her elbow to the ironwork with rope. In any event, there was little Mali could have achieved with that arm free. The stump ached all the time and became agony at the lightest touch.
Oddly, when she didn't look at the stump, Mali could imagine she still had the hand. She could even wave the fingers or make a fist, almost as if there were a ghost hand there, and that in some parallel Abeth an unmaimed Mali occupied the same space. She'd even found that when it came to manipulating the invisible threads that join each thing to every other, it was her missing fingers that were the most deft, capable of feats of dexterity her fingers of flesh and bone were not.
Mali forced herself to look at the four ice-tribers who had saved her. Sister Pine stood behind them in the white habit of the executioner. Yaz and her friends looked so lost in Mali's world, just as she had been lost in theirs. She remembered their tears of wonder when she'd led them out of the cave, as if the trees and bushes had been heaped mounds of gold and gems. Everything had amazed them: chickens, nuns' habits, the archon's horse . . . And now, a day after their arrival, they were all to be killed. Mali's heart hurt worse than her wrist.
The trial in Persus Hall had been a farce. Mali had answered the archon's questions, protested when he called her a liar, and hung her head when he laughed at her talk of gates that crossed thousands of miles in an instant. Archon Eular had called one of his Church guards to the stand, a woman he said had survived the ice-tribers' raid in which the white box, later found on Yaz, had been stolen from a priest named Pather, who had sadly been killed in its defence.
The woman had pointed at Mali and with unwavering conviction had stated before the court and beneath the timeless gaze of the Ancestor that Mali had been with the raiders, though possibly a prisoner.
The tribers had, Archon Eular maintained, captured Mali on the ice, slaughtered her friends, and coerced her to lead them through the empire in search of plunder. Having murdered Father Pather and stolen Church property, they came to Sweet Mercy seeking new things to steal. It seemed, he said, that they had used unknown magics or poisons to break Mali's will. It was the only explanation for her lies, unless of course she had turned willingly to their cause. Eular had produced the handful of stardust taken from Yaz and claimed it as an example of the corrupt magics of the ice they had used to twist Mali's mind. He had snuffed out its light, claiming that he channelled the purifying power of the Ancestor, and had let the lifeless grains tumble through his fingers to the floor.
Yaz and her friends had said nothing during the trial. In fact nobody had asked them to. Sister Owl and the archon were the only ones who could speak to them, and Yaz had told Mali not to reveal that the two of them could understand each other. Sister Owl had watched the whole proceedings, stony-faced, saying nothing despite her curious interest in Erris. Apparently her respect for the office of archon prevented her from contradicting him in court. And, truthfully, what could the old woman say on the subject that did not come directly from the mouths of the accused?
So now Mali stood yoked beside the Glasswater. Her yoke bore a sigil that prevented her reaching the Path. She knew she wouldn't be drowned, at least not today: the sigil made the yoke far too powerful to risk losing it in the mud fathoms down at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Although Abbess Claw had been largely silent during the trial she had been insistent on two points. Firstly, there would be no rush to judgment in the case of a novice of Sweet Mercy. If Novice Mali had been controlled then the means of that control would be identified and neutralized. Secondly, when Archon Eular had called for his men to take the tribers out into the square and behead them Abbess Claw had stood from her chair.
"At Sweet Mercy we drown."
The archon had raised a brow at that. "I beg your pardon?"
"We execute by drowning in the sinkhole."
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.
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