Red Sister Read online

  “I heard Sherzal tried to take her from the Jotsis estate,” Ruli said.

  Even in the village the names of Emperor Crucical’s two sisters were known. Sherzal was said to be the worst of them, a plotter that the emperor had had to banish almost to the Scithrowl border before he felt safe behind his walls.

  Clera interrupted Nona’s questions by hurrying out of the office, a grin on her face, a large iron key swinging from her hand. Behind her the bulky form of Sister Rose waddled to the door, her cone-like headdress just like Sister Wheel’s. “Careful on the line, novices. I mean it, Ketti! Make sure the new girls don’t end up on my doorstep this afternoon . . .”

  • • •

  CLERA LED THE race back to Blade Hall and hurried them on across the training floor, along the corridor beneath the stands and straight on to the door at the end.

  “Shouldn’t we change?” Ruli, turning left towards the changing room.

  “We need balance sticks . . .” Kariss, panting as she caught them up and turning right towards the stores.

  “Pah. Sticks are for babies, and hunska balance better in their common habits.” Clera flapped her sleeves like wings. She pushed on through into a corridor too dark to yield any detail.

  Nona, Ketti, and Ghena followed, Nona at the rear, stumbling blind up a tight wooden stairway. Somewhere far above a door opened and light reached down towards her. She kept climbing.

  “Careful up here,” Ketti warned. “There’s not much space on the platform.”

  Nona edged out through the door behind the older girl, her initial questions immediately replaced by new ones. They stood on a platform just below the ceiling of a huge room lit by many small square windows in the furthest wall. Apart from great nets strung between posts in each corner and suspended a couple of yards above a sand-covered floor the room was almost completely empty. A great pendulum hung on the wall to the left, thirty yards long, nearly the height of the room, a heavy brass bob on the end of a long thin iron rod. Above it a round dial, as wide across as Nona could stretch her arms and marked around the edge with evenly spaced graduations. Running in a convoluted path from the platform where the girls stood to a door at ground level on the opposite side was a pipe of the sort that carried the hot oil through the nuns’ cells and bathhouse. It rose, fell, twisted, turned, and at one point made a corkscrew with three turns.

  “What is it?” Nona found herself the only one still standing. The others sat on the edge of the platform, removing their shoes, their valuables in linen bags against the back wall. Ketti had hers off already, legs dangling over the drop.

  “The line,” Clera said. “Blade-path.” She pulled a small earthenware tub from her habit and started to dab the dark substance in it onto the soles of her feet. “This is—”

  “Pine resin.” Nona could smell it.

  “I use tar,” Ketti said. “Better grip.”

  “Pine resin’s cheaper.” Clera applied it with a miser’s care.

  “The blade-path?” Nona asked.

  “It’s the closest a hunska can get to the Path. Closest anyone who’s not a quantal can get. They say it helps the body teach the mind—but really it’s just to give us humble mortals something to do, and so we appreciate how hard it is for the poor witches sitting back there in Path with legs crossed and eyes closed.”

  “You walk down it,” Ghena said in a rare helpful moment. “The pendulum counts how long you take.” She pointed to a lever in the wall behind her. “That starts it and there’s one down there by the door that stops it.”

  “I’ll show you,” Clera said.

  But Ketti had already shuffled to the start, careful not to make the platform sticky, and stood just before the start of the narrow pipe. “Too slow!” And she stepped out with infinite care, arms spread.

  To Nona’s horror she saw that the cables reaching down from the roof to eye-rings on the pipe weren’t there to help steady the structure—they were its only support and the moment Ketti settled her weight on it the whole edifice began to sway, even rotating about joints at half a dozen spots along its length.

  Ghena pulled the lever on the wall to release the great pendulum. It swung, swift and silent, taking perhaps ten beats of Nona’s heart to reach the limit of its range and start to return. During that first swing the wheel above turned through five of the small divisions on its rim.

  Finding her balance, Ketti began to advance, being careful not to let the slope of the pipe accelerate her. She moved with a certain grace, her long thin body making a dozen subtle shifts each moment, swaying in counterpoint to the path beneath her, each new step changing the rhythm.

  Coming to the first rise, Ketti slowed still further, and waited for the whole structure to adjust to her weight that now levered it in a new direction. The drop beneath the platform seemed huge to Nona. More than enough to kill. Tall as a tree. How much would it hurt to hit those nets at such speed? Would they hold?

  “Ah!” Ketti found herself in trouble, arms wheeling at full extent.

  The three girls on the platform watched, transfixed. A moment later Ketti had control again and advanced twenty feet along a steeply descending curve.

  “Now it gets difficult,” Clera said.

  Ketti stepped towards the rise where the pipe began its spiral of three complete turns, so tall that she could fit within them. With agonizing slowness she began the transfer from the inner to the outer surface, relying on the traction from her tarred feet to anchor her to the cold metal. Against Nona’s expectation she reached the top of the first spiral.

  Nona turned to see the dial, now almost through a complete circuit. “How long will it take h—” A wail of rage and despair cut her off. Far below them Ketti hit the net and bounced, screaming in frustration.

  “She does better than that normally,” Ghena said.

  “Your go, Nona!” Clera gestured towards the start point.

  Nona glanced at the resin pot in Clera’s hand but Clera looked away, leaning over to tease Ketti, who was now scrambling for the edge of the net by the door. Ghena pulled the lever, which trapped the pendulum at the end of its swing and set the dial to its original position. Turning back, she nodded to the dark patch on the platform just where the pipe started. “Stamp about there. You’ll get your soles sticky enough. Mistress Blade has the path cleaned every day—we think she must have a deal with the resin sellers. But she doesn’t tell us to clean the platform . . . so we don’t!”

  Nona slipped her shoes off. The tar and resin felt tacky under her toes. She tried to concentrate on the sensation rather than all the empty space between her and the ground. Clera’s hoarding of her resin pot hurt a little but Nona knew that need and generosity have their own cycles. In hungry times the village was wont to share food—but when the hunger built to a certain point everybody, even the kindest of them, closed in on themselves, sharing only with their closest family. Perhaps there even came a point when famine could stop mother feeding child. Nona understood better than most that even the most sacred bonds could be broken under enough stress. Clera wasn’t hungry—but she was once rich and now was not. Perhaps to someone raised in luxury that was like starvation . . .

  Nona tried to push thoughts of her mother aside and seal her anger away. Gritting her teeth, she stepped forward. The pipe shifted beneath her foot the moment she pressed down. Far below the net trembled.

  “The convent keeps records of the best times,” Clera said. “The best time in each class in each year, the best time in the whole year, the best time ever.” The lever made a deep clunk as Ghena set the pendulum going again.

  “I don’t— How can—” Nona found her other foot glued to the platform by more than a sticky patch of floor. No part of her wanted to commit herself to the path. She had never been a great climber of trees, fearing the helplessness of the fall almost as much as the pain of reunion with the ground.

&nbs
p; “Go on!” Clera urged.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs behind her pushed Nona out over the drop. Shame can exert as much pressure as anger. She put her arms out and slowed the turning of the world just a fraction. Balance relies on an understanding of the motion of things: of swing, of momentum, of the constraints that gravity’s laws place on all matter, be it flesh or stone. Slow the world too much and you lose that intuition, you break your connection to the interlinked web of moving pieces, and while you may fall by degrees, taking an age to realize you’ve passed the point of no return, you will still fall.

  The slope of the path pulled at Nona, her feet on the point of slipping at every moment. The pipe swayed treacherously. She came to the curve, her shallow breaths drawn in time to the motion of her body as she struggled to stay upright. Her arms ached already as if she were hanging by them, not merely balancing. Somehow she made it around the first long and descending curve!

  The steep rise of the corkscrew seemed an impossible barrier, lifting above her head in the space of a few strides. Nona took it in tiny steps, hearing nothing but the rasp of her breath and the pounding of her heart. To her surprise she found herself at the top of the spiral’s first turn, staring down at the impossibly steep descent to the bottom of the next turn. She knew her feet would slip there with the path running away from her.

  “Go on!” Shouted from the platform, almost angry.

  Nona held for a moment, with the drop to every side screaming for her to fall, the tension in her legs unbearable. Then she jumped.

  Her lead foot caught the top of the next loop of the spiral and, swinging her trailing leg, thrusting up with both arms, she carried on to the top of the third and final loop. Where, with arms pinwheeling, she caught herself with one foot. She had in two leaps carried herself to a point a little over a quarter of the way along the blade-path.

  Nona brought her other foot onto the pipe and, with the exaggerated care of a drunkard, turned to the side. In that movement she saw the other novices crowded onto the platform staring at her, mouths open. It was a look she knew: the same shock had registered on Amondo’s face when she had learned too quickly to do his tricks. It was the start of a look that ended in hurt and anger.

  Nona’s heel slipped from the iron pipe. She let out a yelp and fell backwards. By the time she hit the net she was screaming.

  She bounced twice and rolled over, wheezing as she tried to draw the air back into her lungs. An awkward scramble brought her to the edge of the net and strong hands helped her down. She found herself looking up into the impish eyes of Sister Kettle, who had last appeared behind Sister Apple in the steams of the bathhouse.

  “Well that was . . . unorthodox.” Sister Kettle smiled. “Not strictly what I would call following the path, but an impressive piece of acrobatics even so!”

  “H-how long—” Nona heaved in a breath.

  “Did you take?” Sister Kettle looked up at the platform. “Ghena? How long before she fell?”

  “One and twenty!”

  “One cycle and twenty,” Sister Kettle repeated. “That’s eighty counts. Do you know what your class record is for completion, Nona?”

  “No.”

  “Guess.”

  Nona tried to imagine it. “Three hundred counts?”

  “Ketti?” Sister Kettle asked.

  “Nobody currently in Red has completed the blade-path. Suleri was the last to finish it while still in Red. Her count was two hundred and ninety.” Ketti was standing by the door. Her eyes flitted to the path above them. “I’ve almost made it to the end though. Almost.”

  “Suleri can do it faster now,” Sister Kettle said, turning for the door. “She’s the fastest novice still at the convent. Her record is one hundred and eighteen.”

  “What’s the fastest it was ever done?” Nona asked.

  Sister Kettle paused, the door half open. “Our records say that a little over two hundred years ago a certain Sister Owl—yes, the one in the stories, the Black Fort and all that—the ledgers record her setting a time in Holy Class of twenty-six counts. It does seem hard to credit though. Perhaps the timing mechanism has been adjusted over the years . . .”

  “Twenty-six!” Nona blinked. It didn’t sound even vaguely possible.

  “Something to aim for.” Sister Kettle went through the door with a slight limp, leaving Nona and Ketti to stare at each other. Way above them Ruli started out on the path.

  “Why was Sister Kettle here?” Nona asked, to break the silence more than anything.

  “To watch the new girl, of course,” Ketti said. “She’ll be reporting back to Sister Tallow. That’s what she does. Watches and reports. She’d be Mistress Shade if we didn’t already have the Poisoner! I expect—” She paused as Ruli plummeted down into the net with a shriek of frustration. “I expect she’d have come anyway to size up the competition. Kettle holds the convent record for the blade-path—the record for anyone still living here— sixty-nine counts.”

  Nona tried the path half a dozen more times, moving less quickly and falling, not to stay part of the group but because gravity seemed to have got its hooks into her. Quite how she had got so far before she couldn’t say, for now the path swayed beneath her like a foreign sea, its ways alien to her feet. Even so she got further along than Ruli, Ghena and poor Kariss, who barely made the first yard and never the third.

  The sixth impact with the net left her ears ringing.

  “Bray!” Clera shouted. “Oh hells!” She dropped off the platform, habit swirling about her head, long legs out before her.

  Nona hung on tight to the ropes. The only rule they’d told her was not to try the path while someone is still in the net, as you could bounce them out.

  Clera scrambled for the edge. “We’ll be late for Spirit!”

  Nona glanced up at the platform. Empty. She and Clera had been so deep in their competition they hadn’t seen the others leave.

  “Come on!” Clera tossed Nona her shoes and dropped to the floor. “Mistress Spirit is the worst!”

  “I thought you said the Poisoner was the worst!”

  “They’re all the worst when you’re late!” And Clera was running.

  9

  RACING AROUND THE Dome of the Ancestor Nona started to think that the place had no door; her breath came ragged and Clera’s longer legs were opening a lead. The pain of a stitch stabbed beneath her lungs and she slowed, grabbing her side. Fortunately a few more paces brought sight of the great doors that she had seen on her first night. The line of Red Class was already filing in through the narrow gap where a hand held the leftmost door ajar. Clera and Nona joined the end of the line, sweaty and breathless, just as Ketti and Ruli slipped through ahead of them. Ketti had to duck below the hand which turned out to be attached to Sister Wheel. Nona scowled, having yet to forgive the nun for turfing her from her bed with such holy zeal on her first morning at the convent.

  “Quickly! Quietly!” Sister Wheel ushered them on.

  At first the dim light yielded only an impression of great columns and a polished floor, with some brighter space beyond. Nona followed Clera’s back, blinking to help her eyes adjust. They were in a grand foyer that itself was bigger than all but the richest houses in Verity. Sister Wheel led them along the wall to the left towards a small door at the side of the foyer, as if allowing novices to venture any further in would sully so holy a place. From the view of the interior, glimpsed between sleek columns of black marble, Nona understood the space to be both singular and vast, lit by scores of long and narrow windows radiating from the dome’s apex, with a statue gleaming at the centre, tiny in such a space but far bigger than a man.

  The pull that Nona had felt that first night in the nuns’ cells was here too. Not so strong as it had been when she stood just yards from the black door that entered the rear of the dome . . . but there even so. The huge and echoing space, the s
unlight shafting in through many windows, the golden statue, they were grand things, impressive, perhaps even holy, but they were not the source. Something filled that dome, almost to bursting, but its centre lay deeper . . .

  “Nona!” Clera at the open side door, beckoning. “Stop dawdling!”

  Nona hurried on into a small classroom dimly lit by three of the high porthole windows that formed a ring perforating the wall of the great dome.

  “Late to class but never late to dinner!” Sister Wheel’s fingernails-on-slate voice reached a surprising volume as she pointed Nona and Clera out in the doorway.

  This seemed a harsh judgement to Nona, who had attended just one convent dinner so far.

  The sister stood at the far end of the classroom in one of the circles of light cast by the windows, the white funnel of her headdress all aglow and the wisps of grey hair that escaped it seeming to float about her face. “Come along! The road to damnation is paved with tardy steps!”

  Nona hurried to an empty desk near the door, head down, puzzling over how a road might be paved with steps. Clera took the next desk along, flashing a grin towards her. Fishing in her habit, she pulled out a tightly rolled scroll of parchment, a slate, a piece of chalk, a small and stoppered pot, and a quill. This latter gave the impression that the bird from which it was taken had died of some wasting disease, falling from its perch into a dirty puddle before being run over by several carts and finally thoroughly chewed by a hungry cat.

  The novices at the other desks already had their scrolls unrolled before them, some dipping their quills into inkpots. Arabella’s quill caught the light, becoming something ethereal. A perfect swan’s feather, pristine and glistening.