Grey Sister Read online

  Ace Books by Mark Lawrence

  The Broken Empire

  PRINCE OF THORNS

  KING OF THORNS

  EMPEROR OF THORNS

  The Red Queen’s War

  PRINCE OF FOOLS

  THE LIAR’S KEY

  THE WHEEL OF OSHEIM

  The Book of the Ancestor

  RED SISTER

  GREY SISTER

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Bobalinga Ltd.

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lawrence, Mark, 1966– author.

  Title: Grey sister / Mark Lawrence.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Ace, 2018. | Series: Book of the ancestor ; book 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017039618 | ISBN 9781101988886 (hardback) | ISBN 9781101988893 (ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | FICTION / Fantasy / General. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3612.A9484 G74 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017039618

  First Edition: April 2018

  Cover illustration © Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Ace Books by Mark Lawrence

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  The Story So Far

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  For my grandmother, Beatrice “BG” Georgina,

  who knew with absolute certainty that I would be a ship’s captain

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’m enormously grateful to Agnes Meszaros, without whose beta reading Nona’s story would have been very different and far less fun to write. She worked tirelessly and refused to let me get away with anything but my best effort.

  I should also thank, as always, Jessica Wade at Ace for steering this ship, and all her team including Alexis Nixon and Miranda Hill for efforts on my behalf. And of course my agent, Ian Drury, and the team at Sheil Land.

  THE STORY SO FAR

  FOR THOSE OF you who have had to wait a while for this book I provide brief catch-up notes to Book One, so that your memories may be refreshed and I can avoid the awkwardness of having to have characters tell each other things they already know for your benefit.

  Here I carry forward only what is of importance to the tale that follows.

  You may find yourself wondering about Keot when he is mentioned. You’re supposed to wonder. You will find out. He’s not mentioned in Book One.

  Abeth is a planet orbiting a dying red sun. It is sheathed in ice and the vast majority of its people live in a fifty-mile-wide ice-walled corridor around the equator.

  An artificial moon, a great orbiting mirror, keeps the Corridor free of ice by focusing the sun’s rays into it each night.

  When, thousands of years ago, the four original tribes of men came to Abeth from the stars they found the ruins of a vanished people they call the Missing.

  The empire is bounded by the lands of the Scithrowl to the east and by the Sea of Marn to the west. Across the sea the Durns rule. At the end of Book One Durnish invaders were raiding inland from the coast.

  As the sun weakens, the ice continues a slow advance despite the warmth of the moon’s nightly focus. As the Corridor is squeezed nations look to their neighbours for new territory.

  The empire’s nobility are the Sis. The suffix is attached to the name of ennobled families e.g. Tacsis, Jotsis etc.

  The four original tribes that came to Abeth were the gerant, hunska, marjal, and quantal. Their blood sometimes shows in the current population, conferring unique powers. The gerant grow very large, the hunska are fantastically swift, the marjal can manifest all manner of minor to medium magics, including shadow weaving, sigil writing, and mastery of elements. The quantal can access the raw power of the Path and manipulate the threads that are woven to create reality.

  The ships that brought the tribes from the stars were said to have been powered by shiphearts. A small number of these orbs exist within the empire and are highly valued, as they enhance the magical abilities of quantals and marjals.

  The Missing left behind structures called Arks. Three exist within the Corridor. The emperor’s palace is built around one. There are no reliable records of anyone being able to open the Ark, but a faked prophecy predicts the coming of a Chosen One who will be able to.

  Nona Grey is a peasant child from a nameless village. She was given to the child-taker Giljohn who sold her to the Caltess, where ring-fighters are trained and pitted against each other.

  Nona ended up at the Convent of Sweet Mercy, where novices are trained in service to the Ancestor. Novices take orders as one of four classes of nun. Holy Sister (entirely religious duties), Grey Sister/Sister of Discretion (trained in assassination and stealth), Red Sister/Martial Sister (trained in combat), Holy Witch/Mystic Sister (trained to walk the Path).

  Nona has proven to be a triple-blood. An incredibly rare occurrence. She has hunska, marjal, and quantal skills. Nona has wholly black eyes, a side-effect from taking a dangerous antidote. She has no shadow, having cut it free whilst fighting Yisht.

  Yisht is a woman of the ice-tribes and is in the employ of the emperor’s sister Sherzal. Yisht stole the Sweet Mercy shipheart and killed Nona’s friend Hessa.

  Nona is hated by Lord Thuran Tacsis as she first wounded and later killed his son Raymel, a gerant ring-fighter. She is also hated by Thuran’s surviving son, Lano. The Tacsis sent assassins, known as Noi-Guin, after No
na. Once hired, the Noi-Guin rarely cease their efforts until the target is dead, even if it requires years of patience.

  During the theft of the shipheart Nona was betrayed by her friend and fellow novice Clera Ghomal. Among Nona’s remaining friends are novices Ara, Darla, Ruli, and Jula. Arabella Jotsis is from a powerful family and a rare two-blood, having both hunska and quantal skills. Darla is the daughter of an important officer in the emperor’s armies and has gerant blood. Ruli has minor marjal skills. Jula is very studious and hopes to become a Holy Sister.

  Zole is a significant novice. She is from the ice-tribes and came to the convent at Sherzal’s insistence, used as an unwitting distraction to help in the theft of the shipheart. She is the only known four-blood with access to all the skills of the original tribes. Many consider her to be the Chosen One from prophecy. Under the prophecy Zole is the Argatha, and Nona is her Shield.

  The Convent of Sweet Mercy is led by Abbess Glass, a woman whose connections in the Church and beyond reach further than expected.

  Most senior among the nuns are the sister superiors, Wheel and Rose. Sister Wheel teaches Spirit classes. Sister Rose runs the sanatorium. Other important figures are Sister Tallow, who teaches Blade; Sister Pan, who teaches Path; and Sister Apple, who teaches Shade. Sister Kettle is a Grey Sister based at the convent. She and Apple are lovers.

  There are four classes/stages that novices move through as they train to take holy orders as nuns. Red Class, Grey Class, Mystic Class, and Holy Class. Book One ended with Nona in Grey Class, aged around eleven or twelve.

  Novices take new names when they become nuns. Nona will become Sister Cage. Ara will be Sister Thorn.

  Book One ended with Nona having just killed Raymel Tacsis in the wilds. Sisters Kettle and Apple were secretly watching over the novices but Kettle was poisoned by a Noi-Guin assassin tracking Nona, and Apple has gone to her aid.

  PROLOGUE

  THE DISSOLUTION OF any monastery or convent is not something to be lightly undertaken. Even the might of House Tacsis, whose line was born of emperors, may not suffice.

  Lano Tacsis came to the Rock of Faith garbed for war, his armour Ark-steel made bloody by the light of a thousand crimson stars. Before him the serried ranks of his personal guard, the iron core of the Tacsis army, forged by his father. Soldiers tempered in battles upon the empire’s eastern borders and in the west upon the beaches of the Marn.

  But Lano’s confidence rested on more than the spears of his army. Noi-Guin walked with him, brought from the shadowed halls of the Tetragode.

  When a child is given to the Noi-Guin it is sacrificed to the dark. Some few may survive the training but the adult who then descends the fortress walls on a moonless stretch of night a decade and more later will be a different person. They will have been cut free of any allegiance to parent or sibling, pruned from the Ancestor’s tree. They will be Noi-Guin—instruments of death, beyond morality, beneath religion, dedicated only to the task they have been given. The richest among the Sis may purchase their services but few missions require more than one child of the Tetragode. None living remember more than three acting together. Even the oldest stories never speak of more than five. Eight walked with Lano Tacsis the day he came to the convent that stood upon the Rock of Faith.

  “Nona Grey? You’re sure?” Lano raised his visor to squint at the dark figure standing alone in the path of his army, tiny before the great band of pillars. “Sister Cage . . . returned to Sweet Mercy.” Fist smacked palm, gauntlets clashing. “Oh this is perfect! I feared she had gone despite my instructions.” A glance to his left. “It’s her, you’re sure?”

  Clera Ghomal lifted her dark eyes to him. “Of course. Which other would let me go?”

  * * *

  • • •

  SISTER CAGE WAITED, shadowless among the shadows of the pillars. The old nuns and young novices watched from within the stone forest behind her. When the Tacsis came and the blood began to flow Sister Rose would still be fighting her own battle somewhere back there, striving to save Sister Thorn from her injuries. Clera had left Thorn bleeding. She could have killed her in a moment. But she didn’t. At least there was that.

  The sword Cage held offered its sharpness to the world, and the Corridor wind, divided by its edge, hissed in pain. Cage’s sister had waited for her battle, hunting her centre, seeking silence and stillness while the Pelarthi advanced. Few Red Sisters had ever left the Convent of Sweet Mercy better able than Sister Thorn to practise what the mistresses of Blade and Path had taught them.

  Sister Cage walked to a different beat.

  The holy disdain anger, for what faith is not, at its core, about acceptance of things you cannot change? The wise call wrath unwise for few truths are to be found there. Those who rule us stamp upon rage for they see it clearly, knowing it for the fire that it is, and who invites such hungry flames among that which they possess?

  To Sister Cage though, fury was a weapon. She opened herself to the anger she had held at bay. Her friend lay dying. Her friend. There is a purity in rage. It will burn out sorrow. For a time. It will burn out fear. Even cruelty and hatred will seek shelter, rage wants none of them, only to destroy. Rage is the gift our nature gives to us, shaped by untold years. Why discard it?

  Every law of church or state seeks to separate you from your anger. Every rule is there to tame you—to take from your hands that which you should own. Every stricture aims to place the vengeance that is yours in the grasp of courts, juries, justice and judges. Books of law look to replace what you know to be right with lines of ink. Prisons and executioners stand only to keep your hands from the blood of those who have wronged you. Every part of it exists to put time and distance between deed and consequence. To lift us from our animal nature, to cage and tame the beast.

  Sister Cage watched her enemy, bright in steel upon the Rock.

  Hers the anger of an ocean wave rolling over deep waters to spend its white fury against the shore, one and then the next, relentless, tearing down high cliffs, pounding rocks to pebbles, grinding pebbles to sand, and thus are mountains laid low. Hers the storm’s wrath, thunder-shaken, sharp with lightning, blown on a wind that rips the oldest trees from the hardness of the ground. Hers the defiance of stone, raised in outrage against cold skies. Hers the anger that sits like broken glass within a chest, the anger that will allow no sleep, no retreat, no compromise.

  * * *

  • • •

  NONA GREY RAISES her head and regards her foe through midnight eyes. Perhaps it is just the reflection of the torchlight but somewhere in their darkness a red flame seems to burn.

  “I am my own cage.” She lifts her sword. “And I have opened the door.”

  1

  THERE ARE MANY poisons that will induce madness but none perhaps quite so effective as love. Sister Apple carried a hundred antidotes but she had drunk that particular draught of her own free will, knowing there was no cure.

  Thorn and briar tore at her, the ice-wind howled, even the land opposed her with its steepness, with the long miles, the ground iron-hard. The Poisoner pressed on, worn, feeling each of her thirty years, her range-coat shredded in places, the tatters dancing to please the wind.

  When the deer-track broke from cover to cross a broad and rutted track Apple followed without hesitation, eyes on the ranks of trees resuming their march on the far side.

  “Stop!” A harsh cry close at hand.

  Apple ignored it. Kettle had summoned her. She knew the direction, the distance, and the pain. Kettle had called her. Kettle would never call her from her watch, not even if her life were in danger. But she had called.

  “Stop!” More voices raised, the dialect sharp-angled and hard to attach meaning to.

  The treeline stood ten yards away across a ditch. Once she reached the shadows beneath the branches she would be safe. An arrow zipped past her. Apple glanced along the road.

  Five Durnishmen spanned the width, their quilted armour salt-stained and mud-spattered, the
iron plates sewn on shoulders and forearms brown with rust. Apple could reach the trees before the men caught her—but not before the next arrow or spear did.

  Cursing, she reached both hands into her coat pockets. Some of the obscenities she uttered had probably never been spoken by a nun before. Even the Durnishmen seemed surprised.

  “Don’t kill me. I’m worth more to you alive.” Apple tried not to sound as if she were lecturing a class. She drew her hands out, a wax capsule of boneless in one, a wrap of grey mustard in the other, and a small white pill between finger and thumb. She popped the pill into her mouth, hoping it was bitterwill. She had all the antidotes ordered inside the many inner pockets of her habit, but reaching in to recover one would be asking to get shot, so she chanced to memory, feel, and luck, fishing in the outer pocket of her range-coat.

  “You . . . are nun?” The tallest of them took a pace forward, spear levelled. He was older than the other four. Weathered.

  “Yes. A Holy Sister.” She swallowed the pill, grimacing. It tasted like bitterwill. The four younger raiders, all with the same dark and shaggy hair, tightened their grip on their weapons, muttering to pagan gods. Perhaps one nun in a hundred was anything other than a Holy Sister but with the stories told in Durn they couldn’t be blamed for thinking every woman in a habit was a Red Sister, or a Holy Witch just itching to blast them to smoking ruin. “A nun. From the convent.”

  “Convent.” The leader rolled the word around his mouth. “Convent.” He spat it past frost-cracked lips.

  Apple nodded. She bit back on her desire to say, “With the big golden statue.” The men had to walk into the trap themselves. If they sensed her leading them she would be dead in moments.

  The leader glanced back at his men, gabbling out words that so nearly made sense. Durnish was like empire tongue put through a mincer and sprinkled with spice. She had the feeling that if they would just speak a little more slowly and change the emphasis it would all become comprehensible. Apple caught the two words that might keep her alive though. “Convent” and “gold.” She broke the capsule of boneless in her fist and rubbed her fingers over her palm to spread the syrupy contents before wiping the hand over the back of her other and her wrist.