Holy Sister

Nona hauled herself over the edge of the cliff and lay on her back on the cold stone, just inches from the fall. Her arms trembled, her body knew the bone-deep exhaustion of prolonged mistreatment, but her mind still raced, images rising from the darkness, one after the next. Denam’s anger, Regol’s surprise, Markus’s caution, a hundred other scenes, drawn by threads of memory.

In time she rolled onto her side and levered herself up. She passed around the far end of Blade Hall, slipping along the perimeter of the courtyard before Heart Hall. Moving between moonshadows she skirted the buildings, placing each foot with the caution of one born to the Grey.

‘Novice Nona.’ A soft voice at her shoulder. ‘You smell of man-sweat.’

Nona turned, unable to see anyone in the darkness behind her. ‘And you smell of apples, sister. One red Apple, to be more precise.’

‘Then our sins are evenly matched.’ The shadows melted from Sister Kettle and she stepped forward with a half-smile.

‘Perhaps.’ Nona grinned. ‘But I earned mine in front of an audience—’

‘Well, that’s novel.’ Kettle widened both eyes and her smile.

‘In a ring at the Caltess.’

‘No Regol tonight?’ Kettle frowned.

‘That’s a habit I should discard,’ Nona said. ‘This one, I should keep on.’ She patted her garment. ‘I’ll be taking a nun’s vows soon. If they don’t mean more to me than the promises novices make then I shouldn’t say them.’

‘There are other ways to serve.’ Kettle pursed her lips. ‘You don’t have to stay. Nor do you have to be perfect. But … you do have to go to bed.’ She pointed.

Nona nodded. ‘Bed sounds good. A bath would be good too. But I would probably fall asleep and drown.’ She shrugged and turned to go.

‘Watch out for Joeli.’ Hissed at her back.

Nona approached the dormitories. She examined the main door before opening it and entering the hall beyond. A sleepy novice emerged from the Red dorm, lantern in hand, and passed her without looking up, bound for the Necessary. Nona moved on, climbing the stairs to the Holy floor at the top of the building.

She studied the door to her dorm more closely than she had the main one. Defocusing her sight, she picked out a glowing thread laid across the floor just in front of the door, another looping the handle, both veering off at strange angles to the world. They were trip-threads most likely, set to warn Joeli of her comings and goings, but there could be more to them. Some threads could cut you, others could just make it hurt as much as if they had cut you, others could wreak more complex damage, or adhere and trail out behind you, providing information to anyone holding them closer to where they joined the Path. How many of those tricks Joeli had mastered, Nona couldn’t say, except that she had definitely used both trip-threads and pain-threads in the past. Nona’s own talents still lagged behind, but not so far as they once had.

Nona removed the threads, pushing them temporarily out of alignment with the world. They would return shortly and appear untouched. She saw the third thread just as she reached for the door handle, gossamer thin, turning virulent green as she brought it into focus. Something new and unfriendly. Fortunately it too gave way when she worked to remove it from her path, though it scalded her fingertips before it vanished.

A moment later Nona entered the dorm. Almost half the top floor was given over to individual study rooms. The Holy Class novices slept in a long hall not much bigger than the one given over to the novices in Red Class. The girls were not yet trusted with the privacy of a nun’s cell, but the class code was to overlook each other’s indiscretions, and Wheel would undoubtedly have apoplexy were she to watch a typical evening unfold.

Nona moved silently down the row of beds, her eyes returning several times to the long curves beneath Joeli’s blankets. The abbess had been forced to accept the girl’s return a year earlier as part of the emperor’s efforts at reconciliation and unity after the events at Sherzal’s palace. Lord Namsis had secured his daughter’s re-entry by having her submit to the Inquisition. The interrogator had been armed with one of Sister Apple’s bitter little truth pills. To the astonishment of everyone who knew her Joeli had affirmed her innocence with a black tongue. She had used her thread-work against Darla and Regol only with the intention of scaring them into retreat, hoping to end the bloodshed that way.

Nona slipped into her bed, still watching Joeli in the dim glow of the night-lantern. Her own thought was that Lord Namsis had paid an Academy man, a quantal thread-worker, to undertake the delicate task of altering Joeli’s memories. The girl now believed her own story and hadn’t lied, even though what she said was not true.

In the warmth of her blankets Nona released the breath she had been holding and surrendered to exhaustion. The next day would be a long one. Not only would she undergo her final Blade-test, she needed to steal the convent’s seal of office from the abbess. Neither task would be easy.

4

Three Years Earlier

The Escape

‘Nona’s not going alone!’

‘Correct, she is not going alone. She’s going with Zole.’ The abbess turned from dispensing brief advice to Nona and set a hand to Ara’s shoulder. ‘We have a long road ahead of us, novice, charged with the protection of the emperor’s subjects, including many of his most powerful supporters, your own uncle among them. Would you leave us with a lone Grey Sister and a single Inquisition guard for protection? We will likely need someone among our number who can call on the power of the Path …’

Nona saw the anguish in Ara’s expression and tried to ease her mind. ‘We have to bring two things back to Sweet Mercy to make it right again. Zole and I will bring the shipheart. You’ll bring the abbess.’

‘But …’ Ara glanced up the curve of the road towards Zole, painted in violet light amid the darkness. ‘Sherzal will send an army after you!’

‘When we make it to the ice armies won’t matter,’ Nona said.

‘Because the ice will kill you!’ Ara shook the abbess’s hand from her shoulder, anguish on her face.

‘Zole was raised on the ice.’ Nona smiled. ‘You’ll be in more danger down on the plains than we will up there.’

‘Also,’ Abbess Glass interjected. ‘Consider that if Sherzal doesn’t get the shipheart back she will very definitely find her alliance with the Scithrowl in tatters. And likely the Noi-Guin turned against her. As soon as the odds shift against recovering the heart Sherzal would be sensible to recall her forces to defend the Grand Pass against the Battle-Queen’s hordes. It’s certainly what any sane person would do. My guess is that if you reach the ice she won’t dare risk mounting further pursuit in any significant numbers.’

There were no preparations to be made, no rations to be apportioned, no equipment save clothing to be dispersed. Nona stood ready, wrapped in Kettle’s coat. She was armed with a Noi-Guin sword, a knife, and eighteen throwing stars.

Kettle embraced her next. ‘It’s a hug, Nona, not spiders running down your back. Relax.’

Nona tried to unstiffen, and smiled. ‘Get the abbess home.’

Ara hugged Nona next, her hunska quickness allowing her friend no escape. ‘Come back to us,’ she breathed into Nona’s ear. ‘To me.’ She pressed some coins into her hand. ‘This may help.’

Kettle and Ara retreated, leaving Regol standing before her, looking almost nervous.

‘Careful on the ice.’ His old smile covered up any uncertainty.

‘I should watch for hoolas and ice-bears?’

‘If you like. I just meant that it’s slippery.’ He turned to go. ‘You should visit us at the Caltess when you get back.’ And walked off to rejoin the group. ‘I know Denam misses you.’

Nona watched as Abbess Glass, flanked on the drop-side by the Inquisition guard, Melkir, led the way down towards the main road and the long descent from the mountains. Ara brought up the rear, Regol by her side. Nona knew a moment’s jealousy. A day earlier she would have blamed it on Keot. She turned back towards Zole further up the track. In the distance the flames from Sherzal’s palace lit the slopes but seemed less vigorous than they had been.

‘Time to go,’ she said to nobody in particular: now that she had lost her devil, she lacked both an audience for her passing thoughts and a scapegoat for unworthy emotions. The peaks loomed somewhere above her in the darkness and an arduous journey lay ahead with only Zole for company.

‘Do not fall behind.’ Zole led the way, her gaze fixed upon the fractured rock before her.

‘I’ll try to avoid falling in any direction.’ Nona snatched a cold breath and hauled herself up.

Kettle’s coat blunted the wind’s teeth. Other items of warm clothing had been recovered from two guests who made it into the carriage but thanks to arrows from Sherzal’s soldiers did not make it out again. She wore a dead man’s shoes, a poor fit but better than bare feet on icy rock. Back on the road Nona had considered herself well wrapped. On the slopes, despite the strenuous climb, she found herself shivering each time they rested.

Nona kept a distance of no less than two to three yards while following Zole. If she came closer the beat of the shipheart started to vibrate through her bones and each thought threatened to coalesce into its own creature that would then run roughshod through her mind. Any further away and she lost the light.

The shipheart’s glow served both to draw any pursuit and to illuminate the girls’ progress across the mountains’ slant. Nona quickly began to learn how to interpret the confusion of night-black shadows and dull violet surfaces revealed by Zole’s strange lantern. Gravity and rocks provide a harsh but swift education.

Navigating the raw flanks of the Grampains proved a worryingly slow affair. Nona had no experience of mountains and Zole had little more. The ice was, as she said, mostly flat. The first shock had been in discovering how quickly a sharp incline could sap your strength. Nona knew herself to be fit, but within half an hour her breath came in ragged gasps and her newly healed leg ached almost as badly as it had when the wound lay open. The strength and coldness of the wind was an unwelcome revelation too. The Grampains forced the gale to climb just as the novices must, and the wind seemed displeased by the task, dumping any warmth it might have held back on the plains as if to lighten the load. Above them the rocks glistened with frost, and ice collected in every crevice.

‘They’re catching up.’ Nona’s glance back showed a serpent of fireflies weaving its way along the ridge she’d toiled up not long before. Distance reduced each lantern in the pursuit to a glowing point. Slowly but surely Nona and Zole were losing ground. The soldiers giving chase knew these slopes and patrolled across them regularly. The advantage was theirs. ‘Close now.’

Zole grunted.

‘We’re not going to be able to outrun them.’ Nona felt as if she were whining but the truth was that she was frozen and exhausted. Also terrified of the invisible drops beyond those jagged edges picked out in violet light on either side. The unseen falls held more fear than the empty yards below the blade-path ever had. ‘Zole!’

Zole paused, not looking back. ‘We are not trying to outrun them.’

‘What then?’ Nona furrowed her brow.

‘I am looking for the best place to kill them.’

‘Kill …’ Nona turned to face the pursuit. ‘But there are hundreds …’

‘Hundreds foolish enough to follow into the heights someone who has already shown them a landslide.’

Nona watched the points of light twinkle, their advance almost imperceptible. A warm hand held each of those lanterns, other soldiers clambered up between them.

‘Can’t we hide instead?’ Killing came easy when an enemy raised their weapon against her, but to end so many lives, soldiers of the empire following the orders of their commander … it felt wrong. She pictured Zole’s face when she had first hauled herself up onto the road, lit from beneath by the heart-light, something demonic in the play of shadows. Did devils own her now? Their claws around her heart?

Zole turned and the light flooded across Nona’s shoulders, the pressure building, an almost physical push. ‘It is harder to hide ourselves in the rock than to bring it down upon them. And if we hid we would not be able to travel. They would surround us. There will be Noi-Guin among their number and some may be able to sense the proximity of the shipheart just as you and I can. We might not stay hidden long.’

Nona hugged herself and said nothing. There seemed to be nothing to say. For once Zole had said it all.

Dawn broke over the peaks, a grey wave spilling pale light across the slopes. The black serpent, its head now only a few hundred yards behind them, began to resolve into individual figures.

Zole set to scaling a rock-face so close to vertical that ‘cliff’ seemed a reasonable description. Nona, staring at the smooth stone, could see no way it could be climbed, and yet the Chosen One made relentless progress, the shipheart in her backpack now, its illumination no longer required.

‘How …?’ Nona shrugged, gathered her strength, and started to follow, stabbing her flaw-blades into the rock.

Here and there as she climbed Nona spotted patches where the rock-face looked different, the stone somehow rippled, like butter melted then returned to solid before it could flow away. Zole was digging herself handholds and allowing them to reseal as she moved on. It would buy them time. The soldiers would need to find a true mountaineer among their number to lay them a rope, or they would have to discover a longer path.

After sixty or seventy yards of climbing, Nona joined Zole on a ledge of fractured stone that led across the gradient, with another cliff rising above it. She hauled herself onto the flat space between the two rock-faces and lay bonelessly, drawing a deep lungful into her aching chest. Clera would have moaned, ‘Carry me.’ The thought made Nona cough out a painful laugh.

‘Are you well?’ Zole frowned at her from a perch several yards off.

Nona rolled to her front. ‘No.’

Below them the first soldiers had arrived at the base of the cliff and were starting to puzzle over how their prey had scaled it.

‘What now?’ Nona asked.

‘We wait.’

Nona didn’t argue. She lay as if dead until the coldness of the stone forced her to sit, huddled against the cliff for any shelter on offer. Seventy yards down, the soldiers gathered until they ran out of space. With a queue stretching behind them they began to argue, loud enough for the edges of their conversation to reach the novices.

‘They can’t fit any more down there,’ Nona said. ‘You should do whatever it is you’re going to do.’

‘Wait.’

‘What for?’

‘The leaders. And the Noi-Guin.’

‘How will you know when they’re here?’ Nona squinted at the helmed heads far below.

‘Once they start climbing, that will be the Noi-Guin. To see the officers watch where the troops face.’

‘There!’ Nona pointed to where one soldier, looking no different to the others, started to scale the unclimbable rock-face. ‘And there.’ Two more had started up a little further along.

‘We are never more vulnerable than when giving chase,’ Zole said.

‘Is that what they say on the ice?’ Nona snorted. ‘The wisdom of the tribes?’ There might be half a thousand soldiers on the mountain and they looked far from vulnerable.

‘Abbess Glass said it.’ Zole shrugged off her pack. She took the shipheart out, holding it in one hand. It looked too big for her to grip securely. ‘Hold on.’ She voiced Nona’s thought.

Zole brought her hand round in an overhead swing and smacked the shipheart into the top of the rock-face just below her. The impact was a strange one, no fragments of stone flew off, there was no great crash, just a deep pulse that seemed to spread out through the mountain. Nona felt it through her back where it pressed against the stone. All three climbers froze. A moment passed. Another. Then a lurch that sent Nona flying towards the drop. It seemed the whole mountain twitched. Only hunska reflexes combined with stone-piercing flaw-blades saved her from falling.

Everything below the two novices, except for the top dozen feet of the cliff, broke away and began to fall, a descending curtain of rock, fracturing as it slid over the deeper parts of the mountain that remained fixed. The scene below them vanished beneath a rising cloud of dust.

Zole stood and returned the shipheart to her pack. ‘Follow me.’ She began to walk away along the ledge.

‘If we keep climbing we could lose the survivors,’ Nona said, still staring at the dust in horrified fascination.

‘We do not want them to lose us,’ Zole called back, not looking around. ‘Just that they not catch us.’

Nona hesitated for one more moment, then hurried after the ice-triber before the wind-driven dust could take her from view. She didn’t feel like a shield, or anything else useful. Spare baggage at best. Her head felt fuzzy from the shipheart’s constant pressure, her thoughts unorganized and slow.

Zole led them back to the north for a way then began to climb on a south-leading ridge. She called a halt where a spire of rock offered some shelter from the wind, and marvellously produced both food and water.

‘How …?’ Nona accepted a strip of dried meat and a near-full waterskin.

‘I prepared for my journey.’ Zole crammed a strip of the blackened trail-beef into her mouth and began to chew methodically.

‘You came after me,’ Nona said. After so long surviving on cell slops the leathery meat seemed to explode with flavour, her mouth flooding.

‘I followed Sister Kettle.’ Zole spoke around the rhythm of her jaws.

‘But you knew she was looking for me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you come?’ Nona wanted to hear it from Zole’s lips.

‘You are the Shield. I need your protection.’ If the ice-triber was mocking her she let no sign of it show.

‘You don’t believe that stuff. It’s all made up.’ Nona forced herself not to drink too deeply from the skin.

‘Everything ever said was made up. The Ancestor, the Hope, all the small green gods of the Corridor who will die when the ice closes.’

Nona wiped her mouth. ‘And on the ice. Don’t you make gods of the wind?’

Zole shrugged. ‘Some do.’

‘And you tell stories about the future.’

‘Perhaps we have a prophecy about a black-eyed goddess who will save us all, and the four-blood child of the ice whose job it is to lead her home.’ The smallest smile quirked the corner of Zole’s mouth. She stood and shouldered her pack. ‘Time to go.’

‘Up?’ Nona’s heart fell.

‘Up.’ Zole nodded. ‘They will try to get ahead of us. The Noi-Guin will try to come at us from several different directions at once.’

‘Can’t you just drop rocks on their heads?’

‘It is … tiring.’ Zole rubbed at her wrist, where Nona had seen the devil. ‘It would be better if we do not find out whether I can or not.’

It was true. For the first time ever Nona saw lines of exhaustion in Zole’s face. The shock of it surprised her. Before she started to work wonders Zole had never seemed quite human.

5

Holy Class

Present Day

Nona rose with the bell, rolled from her bed, and hurried into her habit oblivious to the room around her. The rest of the novices were still dressing when she left, Ruli only just poking her head from beneath the blankets at Jula’s urging, hair in a tangle of amazing proportions.

‘Good luck today!’ Alata, flashing a grin as she plaited Leeni’s hair into a single red rope.

Nona paused only to check the doorway for malicious threads, then took the stairs four at a time. She was first into the refectory and was reaching for the bread as she slid her legs beneath Holy Class’s table. By the time Ketti joined her Nona had heaped her plate for the second time and was attacking a pile of bacon with purpose.

‘I wouldn’t be able to eat. Not with the Blade final in front of me.’ Ketti started to help herself to eggs.

Nona grunted around a mouthful. Meals at Sweet Mercy were not as large or varied as they had been when she had arrived as a starveling child. The Durns held much of the Marn coast and the Scithrowl had crossed the Grampains. With both advances slow but seemingly as inexorable as the ice, good and plentiful food wasn’t something that could be depended on, even within sight of the capital’s wall. ‘Eat while you can.’ Nona reached for her water. It was a point of regret to her that she’d proved unable to pack on any reserves. She would be the first to go in any famine, where someone like Sister Rose could lose half her body weight and still survive. Even so, she didn’t plan to give up on trying.

‘Good luck today!’ Jula sat herself opposite, eyes tracking across the various steaming bowls lined along the centre of the table. She always spent five minutes in careful consideration of her options. Then chose porridge.

‘Here.’ Ketti leaned forward and pushed the porridge bowl towards Jula.

‘I thought I might try something different today.’ Jula frowned at the mushrooms.

Ketti and Nona exchanged a quick ‘no, you won’t’ glance.

Joeli seated herself at the far end of the table, hair gleaming as if the sun had found a way through the clouds just for her. Somehow her habit looked as if it had been tailored to her personal requirements, as flattering as any ballgown. ‘Blade final! Why, Nona, you’re quite pink with excitement.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Pray Ancestor it will be a good one.’

They all ignored her. Joeli had been relentlessly nice since her return, as if they were all best of friends. Nona could almost imagine that Lord Namsis’s Academy man had rearranged Joeli’s opinions where she was concerned in addition to her memories regarding the events at Sherzal’s palace. The thread-traps scattered around the convent gave the lie to all those pretty smiles though.

Ghena came to the table, raindrops beading the tight frizz of her hair. ‘Good lu—’

‘It’s not about luck!’ Nona bit back a snarl and forced herself to lower her voice. ‘My thanks. I will try to acquit myself well.’ She regretted ever telling anyone that the test date had been set. She manufactured a smile, pushed her chair back from the table and stood to go, aware now of the tension in her limbs. Today she would face Mistress Blade, without armour, sword in hand, and her performance would decide whether she could take the Red.

A downpour greeted her exit from the refectory. She ran to Blade Hall, head bowed, crashing through the main entrance to stand dripping in the foyer. Ara waited in the shadows by the doors, a practice blade in each hand.

‘Thought you might want some help warming up.’ She offered one sword, hilt first.

‘Thanks.’ Nona slipped off her shoes and moved across the sand towards the changing room, skirting the area marked off for the test to come.

She emerged a short while later, wearing a white exercise habit to match Ara’s. The pair of them began the blade kata side by side, the slow version first, stringing together all the core movements of the form in a way that gradually warmed and stretched the muscles. Nona watched Ara move as she made her own forms. Although Nona knew her own kata met Sister Tallow’s exacting standards, somehow there was a beauty to Ara’s that made her heart ache.

‘You’ll be fine.’ Ara grinned, her breath now quickened following the double kata.

They crossed blades. Normally they would both be wearing the heavy blade-habit with a wire facemask. Today wasn’t going to be normal. Nona hadn’t any real concern that she would fail to meet the required performance. The question in significant doubt concerned her sword. She would receive her blade on taking orders, just like any other Red Sister. It should be an Ark-steel sword like Sister Tallow’s, a weapon that in the right hands could shatter a lesser blade and cleave a block from a castle wall in two. But Nona knew that none of the most recent novices to graduate to the Red had been given Ark-steel. Over the years swords had been lost and the Red Sisters’ ranks had grown. These days sisters new to their names were most often given a fresh blade. The steel for these came from the forges of the Barrons witches. As fine a steel as could be made within the Corridor, but nothing compared to that of the ancients.