Red Sister

‘The Persus Hall.’ Jula finished tying her hair back with a black cord. ‘After Emperor Persus, third of his name, whose line ended when the current—’

‘Everyone calls it the Heart Hall because it was built for the shipheart.’ Clera led up the steps of Blade Hall, almost running but not quite.

‘What’s the ship—’

But Clera had already pushed open the heavy door and slipped inside. Ruli followed.

‘I still don’t understand who paid your confirmation fee.’ Jula came up behind Nona.

Nona didn’t understand either. She worried that perhaps it had been overlooked and this evening or maybe tomorrow a sister would come with ledger and quill and a demand for ten gold sovereigns. Talking about it with the others seemed like tempting fate.

‘Nona!’ Sister Tallow called her name the moment Nona stuck her head around the door. ‘Come here beside me.’

Nona, saved from answering Jula, hurried across. The old woman shot her a narrow look then returned her gaze to the rest of Red Class, the last few of them lining up in a second rank. Arabella, now in a habit, stood at Mistress Blade’s other side, golden and perfect, her hair looking as if a trio of handmaids had spent an hour combing and pinning it.

The hall extended about half the length of the building, ending in galleried seating around a short tunnel that led to the remaining chambers. The ceiling vaulted above them high enough for an oak tree to grow to maturity at the centre. Apart from a collection of a dozen or so man-height leather-wrapped wooden posts on stands in a far corner the hall lay echoingly empty, the floor an inch of sand over flagstones.

‘I need partners for these two.’ Sister Tallow had enough steel in her voice that even simple observations became life or death ultimatums. She cast a dark eye across the girls lined before her. ‘Novice Ghena, you will be with Nona. Novice Jula, with Arabella.’

Ghena fixed her gaze on Nona and allowed herself a thin smile. Jula looked surprised.

‘Time to change.’ Sister Tallow clapped her hands. ‘Anyone dawdling gets their head shaved.’ She directed her attention to Ghena who, now that Nona considered it, looked as if she might have suffered just such a fate only a few weeks ago. ‘Make sure the new girls get habits that fit.’ Another clap of the hands. ‘Go!’ And the dozen novices were off, running towards the tunnel beneath the tiered seating, sand spraying out beneath their heels.

Ghena moved swiftly and Nona had to sprint to catch up. The gloom of the tunnel stole Nona’s sight after the brightness of the hall. As she slowed to let her eyes adjust Ghena pulled away while others came pounding up behind. At the end of the passage most of the girls bundled to the left, but Jula led Arabella to the right, and Nona followed.

Ghena was waiting for them in a long and narrow storeroom. She pulled back the shutters and light from the window at the far end revealed both walls lined with shelves. Further back all manner of goods were stacked: earthenware jars, rolled mats, heavy leather balls, staves, sticks, canes, even the hilts of what might be daggers or swords. Closer at hand shelves boasted piles of neatly folded tunics and shoes of thick black cloth.

‘The smallest are by the door. Make sure you get one that fits well,’ Jula said. ‘Too tight and if someone wants to get a hold they’ll have to grab a handful of you as well. Too loose and you’ll be tripping up or have it pulled off.’

Nona and Arabella pulled out fighting tunics, each top paired with ankle-length trousers, holding them against themselves under the critical eye of their partner.

‘Too small, even for you,’ Ghena barked. Jula had already led Arabella off to the changing room, the new girl seemingly more anxious to keep her golden curls than worry overmuch about the fit of her tunic.

‘It looks about right …’ Nona hadn’t ever chosen clothes before, but it did look about right.

‘When someone grabs you.’ Ghena lunged forward and seized a fistful of the tunic. ‘Do you want them to have a handful of this or a handful of your skin?’

‘I don’t want them to grab me,’ Nona said. ‘A loose tunic makes it easier.’

Ghena snarled and ripped the tunic top from Nona’s hands. ‘You’re partnered with me, farm-girl. Every mistake you make makes me look bad. Mistress Blade will test you and if you fail I get punished. And if that happens I’ll take it out on you.’

Nona snatched the top back. ‘Winning is never a mistake.’ She met Ghena’s dark and furious eyes, feeling her own snarl begin to twist her face, remembering how she had screamed out her fury as she ran towards Raymel Tacsis. A second later the heat blew from her, as if a cold wind had rattled through the room. She saw the hangman’s sheet again, Saida just a shape beneath it. Anger hadn’t saved her. Winning hadn’t saved her. Nona took the tunic two places along from the one she’d tried last and held it up against her. ‘Good enough?’

‘Good enough.’

They reached the changing room to find the first novice already leaving. ‘You two will make a lovely couple with your shiny heads.’ Ketti ran her hands over her brow as she passed them, grinning, her own thick cascade of black hair tied back tightly with a white cord.

‘… pigs and cows.’ Arabella broke off, aiming a bright smile at the door as Nona and Ghena entered. All the novices laughed, a couple trying to hide it behind their hands.

Nona set her teeth, and finding a space on the long bench began to struggle out of her unfamiliar clothing, throwing it up on the pegs above as the other girls had. The room smelled of old sweat, of bodies packed close – you could smell it out in the main hall, faint but pervasive. It reminded her of the village.

‘Hurry up!’ Clera offered the advice apologetically as she left, ready in her fighting habit, belt tight about her waist, hair scraped back with not so much as a single curl escaping.

‘Come on! Come on!’ Jula stood at the door frantically looking down the corridor. ‘Arabella!’

Arabella ran for the door and both of them sprinted away. Nona and Ghena were last to leave the changing room.

‘Come on!’ Ghena started running.

Nona made to give chase but at the doorway she spotted one of the dark linen belts, abandoned on the floor. Without thinking, she scooped it up and took it with her to return to its owner, tucking it down the front of her tunic to keep her hands free. Moments later she was sprinting down the tunnel towards the bright hall beyond. Dazzled by the sunshine as she emerged Nona couldn’t see who ran past her in the opposite direction.

‘Cutting things fine, novice.’ Sister Tallow turned to watch Nona’s breathless arrival hard on the heels of Ghena’s.

Nona bowed her head and went to join Ghena at the end of the second row. She looked about … one person missing. She opened her mouth to comment but Ghena deployed a swift, sharp elbow to her ribs.

A moment of silence passed. Another. A whole minute where eleven novices watched the sandy floor beneath their feet and tension rose around them.

‘And here she comes.’ Sister Tallow dropped the words with the same weight the judge had spoken Nona’s death sentence.

Arabella came running from the tunnel, clutching her fight tunic closed across her chest. ‘I couldn’t find it! It wasn’t anywhere!’ She pulled up breathless and close to tears.

‘An inventive child would have taken a replacement from the stores and claimed it as hers. An attentive child would not have lost her belt within moments of receiving it in the first place.’ Sister Tallow returned her gaze to the class. ‘At convent the rules apply to king and commoner alike. Once the class is finished Novice Jula will shave Novice Arabella’s head and then Arabella will perform the same duty for her.’

Nona realized her mistake. She hesitated, then reached beneath her own tunic to draw out Arabella’s belt. ‘Sister—’

‘Ah!’ Mistress Blade proved to have quick eyes. ‘I see that Nona has demonstrated an enduring and valuable truth. We may fight here in this hall and think that because our battles are unconstrained by rules that we truly understand what it is to make war.’ Sister Tallow strode the length of the first line. ‘Do not be deceived. No real fight is bound by four walls. No real fight ends at a particular doorway or when we wash off the sweat and the blood. Fights end with defeat. And death is the only defeat a warrior understands. While we draw breath we are at war with our enemies and they with us.’ The nun turned at the end of the line and approached Nona, taking the belt from her hand. ‘In future, Nona, save such demonstrations of the secret war for Mistress Shade’s class where they will be better appreciated. Though try not to irk her. Our sister of the shadow is far less … kind … than I am.’ She tossed the belt to Arabella. ‘Laps! Sharlot, lead off.’

The tallest girl in Red Class, a willowy redhead, took off running, the rest falling in behind her.

Nona was used to laps from the Caltess and she fell into an easy rhythm. She could sense Arabella behind her, last in the running order, and doubtless staring daggers at the back of her neck. At each corner Clera glanced back, offering a grin. After the first few circuits of the hall Nona let her mind empty of everything except the pattern of her feet hitting the sandy floor. She let go of the story she had told at the sinkhole, let the worry over her confirmation fee slip away, let Arabella Jotsis and her revenge fade, even thoughts of Raymel Tacsis and his revenge becoming lost beneath the placing of one foot before the other. Only the line remained, bright and burning, as it had been in her dream.

‘I will repeat myself for the new girls,’ Sister Tallow said when she had them in two rows once more, sweating and labouring over their breath. ‘It’s a message many of you could do with hearing again. Perhaps you’ll take more meaning from it after so many lessons in this hall.

‘We are not built for war. We are not fast – most every animal can outrun or evade us, be it hound, cat, rat, or sparrow. We are not strong – a mule, a hoola, a bear, all of them are pound for pound three, maybe five times as strong as man. And you are not men.

‘What we are is clever and precise. These are our tools. Wit and precision. I am teaching you to fight without weapons for two reasons. First, because there are times when you will be without a weapon. Second, because in training for such conflict you will learn about pain without getting broken, and you will learn about rage without killing.’ She held up her hands. ‘These are poor weapons. When we fight we fight to win. This—’ From nowhere six inches of gleaming steel appeared in her hand. ‘This is a better weapon. However, I can punch you with my fist and you will learn a lesson. The knife’s lesson is short and terminal.’

Sister Tallow flexed her wrist and the blade vanished into her sleeve. ‘The stories tell us that battles are about right and wrong. That winning requires heart and passion. That the Ancestor will reach out to those who believe and lend strength to their arm. The truth is that the Ancestor will gather your essence to the whole when you die. I’m sure you’re told more about that in Spirit, but in Blade just know that until you die the Ancestor will only watch.

‘Fighting is about control. Control of your fear, your pain, and your anger. Control of your weapon. Control of your opponent. Fighting is about mechanics, levers, breaking points, and speed. Your body is a mechanism. It is time to learn how it works, how far you can push it or allow it to be pushed, not before it hurts, but before it breaks. Unarmed combat requires the application of force to disable the opponent’s machine before they disable yours.

‘In Blade we value quickness. Sufficient speed makes every other aspect of combat irrelevant. If your opponent is a statue it doesn’t matter how strong or skilled they might be – find their throat or an eye and make an end of them. Speed is the way of the sisterhood.

‘You will have heard the old stories of Red Sisters, of Sister Cloud and the Western King, or Sister Owl maybe, when she tamed the Black Castle. The wordsmiths in Verity will spin such tales out for you for a quarter penny and tell you about the fist storm, about a dozen of the king’s close-guard left lying in Cloud’s wake.’ Sister Tallow spat into the sand. ‘Stories are just words. Words have no place in a fight. The truth is that almost every time two people raise their empty hands against each other they will both end up on the floor long before one of them dies or is otherwise broken.

‘On the ground strength tells, and very often you will not be the strongest. I will teach you about joints. How they will and won’t move. In which direction they tear most easily. In which place the force you apply will find the longest levers to stress those joints. How to twist yourself out of similar holds. How to bite and gouge. How to win where winning is an option.

‘More importantly you will learn about pain, fear, rage, and control. You will learn how to balance the first three to achieve the fourth. And you will carry those lessons into Grey Class where I will put weapons in your hands and teach you what it is to be a Red Sister. In Grey Class I will teach you how to make the fuckers bleed.

‘Arabella, Nona, Jula, Ghena, to the front.’

Nona followed the others to the spot Sister Tallow indicated.

‘You two over there—’ Sister Tallow waved Arabella and Jula off to the side. ‘Both of our new arrivals come with reports of great potential. Let’s see how far potential gets them. Jula and Arabella first. Don’t hurt her, Jula.’ She stepped back and clapped once more. ‘Fight.’

Jula snapped into a fighting stance, body turned sideways to Arabella, fists raised at chest height, one a few inches behind the other, legs wide and braced. Arabella ignored her, looking instead at Sister Tallow. ‘Fight, Mistress Blade? How should—’

‘Fight!’ Sister Tallow spread her hands. ‘Kick her, punch her, bite her if you must. Put her down.’

‘But …’

Sister Tallow nodded to Jula. She exploded forward into a flying kick that hit Arabella on the shoulder and sent her sprawling to the floor.

‘The leg is stronger than the arm. The foot less delicate than the hand. Though to strike with them sacrifices balance.’ Sister Tallow motioned upward with fingers. ‘Get up, girl.’

The attack surprised Nona. Jula looked so bookish … she found herself smiling at the contrast, then noticed Arabella scowling at her from the ground.

Arabella rubbed her shoulder and got slowly to her feet.

‘Fight!’ Another clap.

Jula repeated the kick. Arabella stepped to the side, her speed remarkable. Jula kicked again, missed again. The two girls squared up, fists raised. Arabella threw the first punch, a swing, blindingly fast. Somehow Jula stepped into it and caught the blonde girl’s wrist, twisting her own body under Arabella’s to throw her over her shoulder. Arabella landed heavily on her back and, along with all the air in her lungs, spat out a word that Nona wouldn’t have thought ever got used in the emperor’s court.

Nona looked up at Sister Tallow for her reaction to the display and found her, together with the whole class, staring at Arabella, wide-eyed. The nun’s surprise was mixed with some emotion that Nona couldn’t identify but it was strong enough to make the lines of old scars stand out against her paling skin.

Jula said it first, even as she stood there in her victory. ‘She moves like a hunska.’

As a child in the ignorance of her village Nona had barely known about the four tribes of men or how their blood might show, but her months with Giljohn and then at the Caltess had taught her how deep one simple truth ran. Hunska-born were dark of eye and hair. She knew then why Arabella might be so special that the Church of the Ancestor would have negotiated to take her from a noble house. She knew it even before the first of the novices whispered ‘mixed’. Two-bloods were rare as a sheet-thaw. There hadn’t been a three-blood in the three centuries since Aran the Founder who carved out the realm from the chaos of wildmen and petty kingdoms. At least that’s what they said at the Caltess. If Arabella Jotsis showed the signs of the gerant line too she would be stepping into history. If she showed up quantal or marjal she could be stepping into legend.

‘Enough.’ Another of those claps that hurt the ears. ‘Nona, our ring-fighter from the Caltess …’ The novices laughed at the joke. ‘It’s your turn. Ghena? Are you ready?’

Nona turned to face Ghena and found her already in the fighting stance, eyes narrow with concentration, no smile, no snarl. The girl was perhaps an inch taller than her, making them the two smallest in the class. Her dark limbs were nearly as lean as Nona’s, every part of them muscle and bone.

The common sense behind the blade-stance was obvious: it presented a smaller area for attack while keeping a wide, stable base. Nona stood as she always stood though. She would learn and use the blade methods but it felt foolish to ape the stance immediately and face her first fight in a position she wasn’t used to.

‘Ready?’ Ghena asked. She hadn’t taken the advantage of surprise like Jula had, but looking at her Nona knew pride lay behind the restraint, not kindness. Ghena wanted to own her victory whole.

Nona gave a slight nod and Ghena snapped a punch at her, a straight jab, not Arabella’s clumsy swing announced by her whole body before she even started. This came sudden and direct. Nona blocked the fist with both hands, palms crossed before her face. The smack of flesh on flesh echoed in the space of the hall and the impact hurt far more than Nona had imagined.

She lowered her hands to see a look of surprise on Ghena’s face.

‘You’re fast.’ Ghena tilted her neck left, then right, stretching.

Without warning the novice launched a flurry of punches, advancing a step with each, a furious attack with no quarter granted. Nona let the world slow around her, the split seconds crystallizing into that clarity she had always been able to call upon. She stepped back, swaying out of the path of one punch, knocking the next aside so it passed within a hair’s breadth of her cheek. Ghena was quick. Very quick. Hunska-fast. Nona pushed aside another punch, another, sidestepped a third. Ghena’s mask cracked and her fury showed. Anger made her blows more wild but only seemed to increase her speed. Nona found herself having to work harder, saving herself only by the narrowest of margins. She gritted her teeth and dug deeper into the moment until her brain buzzed inside her skull like a trapped bee and even Ghena’s whip-crack blows became lazy things that she could step around.

Nona saw, even in the fractions their fight occupied, awareness start to enter Ghena’s eyes, a widening, a dilation of pupils. She knew the look – she had seen it before in the eyes of her first friend when he had tossed her a fourth ball and she added it to her juggling thinking to please him … She let Ghena’s fist catch her on the left shoulder, and spun with the impact, allowing it to carry her to the floor. A great spray of sand marked her arrival and she stayed there, panting.

A long moment passed and Nona let the world run at its own pace again, feeling the sand grains between her lips, the ache in her shoulder, the sting still in her palms. At last Mistress Blade’s clap broke the silence. Nona sat up, climbed slowly to her feet, and went to rejoin the line. The novices nodded their approval. Clera and Ruli looked impressed, Arabella sour. Of all of them only Ghena’s gaze held a measure of confusion, and in Sister Tallow’s there was a quiet speculation.

8

Nona liked the dormitories better than the nun’s cell of the night before. The building had three storeys, Red and Grey classes dividing the ground floor between them in two long, low rooms, Mystic and Holy each having their own floor, with study rooms for the Holies at the top. The beds were larger and more comfortable too, being raised on legs, each with a mattress of folded blankets over boards. Nona lay on hers while the class moved about her, chatting and getting ready for sleep. In the bed to Nona’s left Ghena had already crawled beneath her covers and lay dead to the world.

Nona stretched, yawning. The exercises in Blade, one punch and one throw repeated over and over, never quite to Sister Tallow’s satisfaction, had left her sore and sweat-soaked. The bathhouse afterwards took away the ache and stink of exercise and left in its place a warm and bone-deep weariness. If Clera hadn’t reached down a hand to help her out of the pool Nona suspected that she might still be there, floating helpless amid the steam.

Ruli came to sit at the end of Nona’s bed, her long hair pushed up into a nightcap bulging comically atop her head. ‘I’m surprised you can keep your eyes open after that.’ She nodded towards Ghena’s bed.

‘Did I do all right?’ Nona asked.

‘You were great! You’re fast, Nona! Ghena doesn’t have a lot of technique because she’s only been here three months, but she’s really, really quick, a prime for sure. Only Clera’s quicker than Ghena and some say—’

‘They say I’m the fastest the convent has seen in years.’ Clera sat on the next bed along and favoured Nona with a dangerous smile. ‘Hunska full-blood.’

‘Are there other convents?’ Nona remained flat on her back, the blanket pulled to her neck, gaze returning to the dance of shadows on the ceiling.

‘Six.’ Ruli began to count them off on her fingers. ‘Silent Patience, Chaste Devotion, Gerran’s Crag—’

‘Sweet Mercy is the only one to teach Blade, Path, or Shade. The rest just train Holy Sisters.’

‘Just?’ Jula from a nearby bed, still sounding sour about her lost hair.

‘Holy Sisters are as important to the Ancestor as any other sister,’ Ruli chipped in with a conciliatory tone. ‘The abbess is a Holy Sister and she’s in charge of us all.’

Nona let them talk and watched the shadows play. She didn’t want to see Arabella, strangely alien now with her pink scalp and patchy blonde stubble. She didn’t want to catch the girl’s eye and start another round of accusations. Jula had taken her shaving with poor grace but her reaction was as nothing compared to Arabella’s outburst. Nona had wondered for a moment if Sister Tallow would have to hold her down …

Abbess Glass had said Nona was free to leave at any time, but when Arabella had demanded to go home in the tone of someone used to being obeyed, Sister Tallow had said no.

‘I’m not letting a novice hack at me with a razor because some wild-land peasant stole my belt!’ And with that Arabella had started to stride towards the main doors.

What followed had been ugly to watch, but no matter how Arabella raged or how dire her threats the nun had shown no hint of backing down, and eventually a tearful Arabella Jotsis sat in the chair provided while Jula removed her golden hair with a long razor and a trembling hand.

By the time it was Arabella’s turn to shave Jula’s head she did so with a steady grip on the blade, her eyes red-rimmed and full of cold accusation aimed in Nona’s direction.

Nona opened her eyes with a start. Sleep had nearly taken her. She rolled her head to the left. Clera sat on the edge of the bed in her long white nightgown, the copper penny she so often played with in her hand. The other girls were settling into their beds. ‘We’re friends then?’ she asked without preamble, watching Nona’s eyes.

‘“Friend” can be a dangerous word,’ Nona said.

Clera laughed. ‘Friend? Really?’

‘It is if you mean it.’ Nona didn’t smile. She thought of Amondo and of Saida. ‘Friend’ was a bond. Much of what people did, how they acted, confused Nona. But ‘friend’ she understood. A friend you would die for. Or kill for.

‘Well I mean it.’ Clera let her own smile slip.

‘Then we are.’

It seemed enough for Clera. She rose from Nona’s bed and went to her own, flipping the penny once and humming some tune, low and sweet.

Nona let exhaustion close her eyes. The dormitories were heated by the same pipes that ran in the bathhouse and cells. She hadn’t imagined that commoners ever wholly escaped the cold, perhaps the emperor before his ever-blazing fires, but not girls like her, not like this. One of the high windows was even a quarter open to stop it being too muggy, as if heat were something that could be given to the wind rather than something precious to be hoarded.