Page 16

To her credit, Einsa refused to let the monster take her to the ground. The tight press of acolytes helped her keep her feet. Einsa staggered back, her face shading to crimson as she pulled silently at Lucia’s wrists.

Bek saw that Einsa hadn’t dropped the knife but instead had managed to stab Lucia in the stomach, leaving the weapon there, buried to the hilt. Frozen in the chaos and sheer horror of the moment, not only could Bek not force her body to act, her mind could think of no plan to act upon.

Tmanga had no such problems. The girl dropped to hands and knees, slithered forward through the confusion of legs and shifting feet, and grabbed the knife, hauling it down to enlarge the wound.

Astonishingly, Lucia didn’t even seem to notice the ongoing disembowelment. Einsa’s hands, which had thus far stopped her attacker’s undead strength from breaking her neck, fell away as the throttling choked off her consciousness.

Mollandra came out of nowhere, flying over the heads of the other girls. In retrospect Bek realized that she must have set up a stool and leapt from it, or perhaps made a running dive from the nearest upright table. She ended up wrapped around Lucia’s head and shoulders, a small blond fury anchored by both legs and one arm. With Mollandra’s free hand she repeatedly pounded her victim’s face, an attack that only made sense when Bek finally spotted the spoon handle jutting from the girl’s fist.

Lucia’s disregard for Tmanga’s sawing through her guts did not extend to the spoon attack. She discarded Einsa, who fell like a rag doll, and reached up for Mollandra, roaring.

The little girl dropped away down Lucia’s back.

“Push! Get her over!” Bek found her voice.

Some of the acolytes had fled, but enough remained to drive Lucia back with a surge, their high-pitched battle cries echoing Lucia’s anger now.

Lucia tripped over Mollandra’s hunched form and went down backwards. What followed was an exhausting fever dream where the acolytes took turns, reversing their stools to swing them by the legs and bring them overhead to crash the thick wooden seat into the struggling corpse.

By the time Lucia stopped twitching she no longer looked like Lucia, or like anything human. Almost every surviving acolyte had tired herself out pounding on her. It didn’t seem possible that the blood spattering so many dozens had come from a single girl, even one as big as Lucia.

Mollandra stood panting, her rags all but torn away, clothed more in blood than in cloth, her hair standing out at odd angles.

“You—” Bek heaved in a breath. “You were coming back for me. Why? Because I chose you yesterday?” She shook her head, unwilling to have the child attach herself so thoroughly to a sinking ship. “If another girl had been sitting on that bed, I’d have chosen her instead. Understand?”

Mollandra straightened, wiped her face, just moving the blood spatter around, and gave Bek a complicated look. Finally, she shrugged and turned away. “Sisters look out for each other.”

Bek reached for the girl’s shoulder, angry both at her presumption and at how deeply the words had touched her, but before she made contact, the forgotten Kindness pushed her way between then, ploughing on through the acolytes’ panting, gore-stained ranks, as serene as a barge passing through a cluster of little boats. She stopped beside Einsa, who Bek had shamefully forgotten about entirely, and who lay curled with her hands at her throat and her face to the floor.

Undu smiled around at them. “Our first lesson is over. Instructor Mary is waiting in the corridor outside—she teaches fitness, so it’s good you’ve had a warm-up. On Godsday you can go to the laundry, where you’ll be issued your robes. Until then, try not to smear the fixtures.”

With a wheezing groan, Einsa lifted herself onto all fours and retched, spewing her breakfast, which looked exactly like the porridge had in the bowl. The splatter came within inches of Undu’s feet.

Undu nodded as if this were expected.

“Welcome to the Academy of Kindness.”

9

Rue

Rue had fallen beneath the mercenaries’ blows. Instead of hardpacked earth, what received her had felt like rotten sailcloth, barely holding her weight.

The thudding of kicks became a dull, distant thing, save for one bony heel pressing impossibly hard between her shoulders. The weak fabric that had held her up now tore beneath the increased pressure, and without a scream she tipped into a second, far longer fall.

Silence and the darkness of her pain held her. Time passed without a heart to beat away the moments.

Slowly and against expectation, Rue heard a noise that she had spent years listening for. A smooth rushing sound that grew from nothing until, without ever seeming loud, it filled her mind.

Rue found herself standing before a black river whose waters ran between straight banks, swift as a horse with hardly a swirl or ripple. A black sun hung in the bone sky, and while a few stunted thorn bushes studded the grey soil around her, the far banks lay desolate.

Rue knew the river and its name ached on her tongue, daring her to speak it. She knew what waited for her on the opposite shore. Judgement. Judgement and a balance in which her soul would be weighed. Rue spat into the iron-grey earth at her feet.

Cawwww!

“Gods eat me!” Rue spun round, angry at being made to flinch, even in a place like this.

Caw! The crow eyed her, somehow revealed by its blackness rather than hidden by it.