Grey Sister Read online

  “Come then, girl,” he said. “Lie to me.”

  12

  NONE OF THE novices could tell Nona why the Inquisition had installed itself at Sweet Mercy. Inquisitor Pelter had four watchers with him and placed them in all the classes that he did not personally observe.

  “Sherzal sent them because of Zole.” Ruli spoke with the total conviction she reserved for all guesswork.

  “Sherzal doesn’t own the Inquisition, Ruli.” Jula continued to sew the tear in her habit.

  “She’s prime instigator.” Ara stretched out catlike across her bed. She patted for Nona to sit on the edge. “That means a lot. When Jacob sold her the role on his way to getting the high priesthood it was mostly an honorary position, but her archivists dug into the scrolls and found all manner of associated rights and duties the Church seemed to have forgotten about.”

  Nona crossed from the doorway and sat on the end of Ara’s bed. She missed moments like this, lying boneless beside Ara after the heat of the baths, complaining together as they wrote essays for Academia or Spirit class, just spending time. She already felt like an interloper in the Grey dormitory. Wincing, she lowered herself slowly: she still had an ache or three from the beating Joeli’s friends had dished out. “If Sherzal’s so hungry for power why doesn’t she set the Inquisition on her brother? Or can’t emperors sin?”

  Ara grinned. “Emperors are famed for their sinning, but be careful where you say it! However, the only place the Inquisition can hold the Lansis to account is in their palaces. All the most highly placed people have rights about where they can and can’t be put on trial.”

  “So Sherzal should send the Inquisition into Crucical’s throne room?”

  “That’s where the emperors got clever. Their line is the only one that can refuse admission to the Inquisition. So unless Crucical invites them in, the Inquisition can’t touch him,” Ara said. “That’s what keeps Sherzal’s sister, Velera, safe too.”

  “The emperor should just disband the Inquisition. I’ve heard how they get their confessions.” Nona shuddered.

  “The Inquisition keeps us pure,” Jula said. “Someone has to see that the faith doesn’t slip away from its foundations.”

  “Who keeps them pure?” Nona asked.

  “Anyway this isn’t about Zole,” Ara said, returning to Ruli’s assertion. “This is about the whole thing. The Grey and the Red. The emperor wants control. He wants to send the sisters against his enemies, not have to beg High Priest Nevis. That’s what my father says. The emperor will be doing the same with the monasteries. They’ll have inquisitors up at Narrow Path too, trying to find fault with the abbot. Crucical will want the Red Brothers and the Grey too.”

  Nona watched Jula sew, fingers quick, stitches neat and accurate. The tear in her habit had outlasted her memory of what had caused it.

  “Why would Sherzal do anything to help her brother?” Ruli asked, reluctant to let go of her theory. “Wouldn’t she take the Red Sisters for herself?”

  “The emperor wouldn’t stand for that. His legions would be at her door within the week.” Ara shook her head. “There’s been bargaining. A trade. Sherzal will get something she wants—but not Sweet Mercy. Not all of it anyway.”

  “We should go back to the caves.” Nona reached over to set her fingers to a second tear in Jula’s habit. “Who knows how many more chances we’ll get if they set watchers on us?”

  Only Ara acknowledged Nona had spoken. “I don’t want to.”

  The rest carried on as if no words had passed her lips.

  Much of Nona shared Ara’s desire to avoid the caves from now until the moon finally fell from the sky, but other more stubborn parts refused to agree. Sherzal had sent the Inquisition into Sweet Mercy and yet her hands were stained with Hessa’s blood, whatever Safira might claim. Yisht was Sherzal’s weapon, she was responsible for what that weapon cut. Nona owed it to Hessa to undertake her own inquisition. To see if her friend had left her any clue or message in the place where she died. Added to this was the fact that Nona had been driven from those caves, fleeing in terror, her friends’ minds altered. It was not in her to let such a challenge go unanswered. The Ancestor didn’t value pride but Nona had never quite managed to let hers go, and it drew her back to the scene of that disgrace, more strongly with each passing day. And if vengeance and pride were not enough, Yisht had stolen the shipheart, striking at the abbess’s reputation, robbing Sweet Mercy of its most valued treasure, walling its inhabitants away from their magics. It had to be recovered, and where better to start than at the beginning?

  Nona held silent, watching the others. It seemed that time was only hardening their denial into fact. Patience would not solve the problem, and in any event time was running out.

  Fix them yourself.

  How?

  Experiment.

  And if something goes wrong?

  Peh. Keot managed to convey an air of complete indifference. Are you not here to learn? Mistakes are how you learn.

  “How did this tear?” Nona asked, lifting the sleeve towards Jula.

  “I caught it on something.” The stitching continued, a little faster, a lot less neat.

  I need help, Keot. It needs two people.

  I’ll help—

  Thank you.

  But you would have to let me use your body to kill someone.

  No! And who?

  Anyone, I don’t care. Joeli if you like.

  No!

  You weren’t so squeamish about Raymel Tacsis. You enjoyed it. That’s why I’m in you. Keot sank down her back, burning as he went. Think about it. Otherwise you’ll need two minds for both the silly trances you think you need. Perhaps Joeli will help you. He settled into a sullen silence.

  Nona sat back. She needed a friend, and who was there who wasn’t sitting before her? Only Amondo, and that had been the foolishness of a lonely child. Zole could help but Nona had no clue where her loyalties lay.

  Jula had returned to her stitching. Nona watched her, letting her eyes defocus and reaching for her serenity. The lines of the old song ran through her: She’s falling down, she’s falling down, the moon, the moon. She reached for her clarity. Mistress Path had never spoken of entering more than one trance at a time, as if it made no more sense than riding more than one horse at a time, but to Nona it seemed akin to juggling. The slow and certain motion of Amondo’s hands filled her mind. She had watched them with a child’s eyes so many years ago that it seemed little more than a dream, and yet those days and the moments of them were written into her and no part of them had ever left. To reach clarity Nona watched a flame then turned to the shadow and watched the memory of the flame’s dance. Lacking a flame she drew only on memory. And now she ran the song and the dance together without one tainting the other.

  The ice will come, the ice will close,

  (the memory of flame dancing on the darkness to a music all its own)

  No moon, no moon,

  (two hands making their own pattern, catch and throw, exchanging speed and potential)

  We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down,

  (a single petal of flame dancing on a dark ocean)

  Soon, too soon.

  The song, the dance, the sure hands of a juggler keeping it all in the air.

  Nona saw the world with new eyes and through each part of it the Path ran, burning and binding. She looked away as Sister Pan had taught her, to the halo, the pale nimbus of threads about each of her friends.

  “We should go back to the caves.” Her voice sounded impossibly distant, as if she spoke from the bottom of a deep well. But they heard her. She saw it in the aura of threads shrouding each girl. “Something chased us out. We don’t run. Not here.”

  Nona saw how her words pulled on the vast web that connected them all, each to the other, and to everything else too, saw the vibrations spread, transmit, cross the space between them . . . and die. She focused her clarity on the place where her words failed to reach Jula. “We should
go back.” A tremor. Something knotted . . . Nona raised her hands, struggling to see the minute detail where the harm had been done. She pulled on a darker thread. “To the caves, Jula.” She pulled again and the knot unravelled, momentarily too bright to look upon.

  Nona understood the holothour’s work now. It had tied a knot in each girl’s threads, linking the caves to the very worst and oldest of their fears so that their minds would step around the memory of the holothour and everything associated with it, denying it space in their thoughts. “We should go back,” she repeated.

  “We should!” Jula looked up, her face eager. “What in the Ancestor’s name was that thing? We should take knives. Swords if we can.”

  Jula seemed perhaps a little too enthusiastic: Nona worried she might have erased rather too much of the fear, or imposed her own desires on her friend. She resolved to use a lighter touch on the others. “Ara? We should go back to the caves. Don’t you think so?” Nona struggled to maintain her twin-trance, feeling the edges of her serenity slip away as a sense of triumph pushed in.

  “We’ll have to be careful.” Ara was easier to free, the knot more obvious and less tight.

  “Ruli? Don’t you think?” Now Nona’s clarity was escaping her: the threads fuzzed before her eyes. A headache knifed its way in past her forehead, trying to make a reality of the splitting of her brain in two. Even so, she found the damage done to Ruli’s threads and unwound it, not needing such sharp focus now that she had effected the repair twice before.

  “I don’t know.” Ruli hugged herself and shivered. “That thing that chased us! I nearly wet myself when Darla got stuck in front of me at the exit.”

  “Well think about it.” Nona pressed a hand to her brow and staggered towards the doorway, teeth gritted. The pain made her want to throw up.

  “Are you all right, Nona?” Ara made to follow her.

  “Fine.” Nona stumbled out into the hall. “Tired.”

  By the time she reached the top of the stairs she was crawling. She managed to get to her feet again for the passage across Mystic dorm to her bed. She glimpsed Joeli at her bed, knee splinted and bandaged, a walking stick across her lap, then collapsed into her own.

  Darla looked up from her desk, quill in hand, fingers inky. She said something but Nona had fallen too far into the black agony of her headache to separate the words. She buried her face into her pillow and vowed never to try thread-work again.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE WAKING BELL brought Nona from the confusion of a dream, something to do with spiders and with webs. The first thing she realized as she rolled from beneath her blankets was that her head no longer hurt. The second thing she realized was that the morning would be spent in Spirit class with Sister Wheel, and immediately a twinge of the previous night’s ache returned.

  “You’re all the colours of the rainbow,” Darla observed as her head re-emerged from the habit she’d pulled over it.

  Nona craned her neck to look down over her shoulder and side. The bruising was still deep purple in some places, yellowish green over her hip, faded mauve on her thigh. Across the dormitory Joeli leaned on her stick, swinging her stiff leg to advance on her desk where against convent rules she kept a mirror. She spent several minutes each morning brushing her hair in it and Nona always felt less jealous of how good the girl looked when she remembered the effort Joeli had to put in.

  “We’re going below tomorrow. You in?” Nona looked away from Joeli, now busy with her brush.

  “Ancestor! I hate Spirit class.” Darla shook her head. “Couldn’t we just spend the morning working in the laundry instead? Shovelling manure at the vineyard stables would be better.”

  The holothour’s mark is still on her. Keot rested across her collarbones.

  Nona pursed her lips. She wasn’t in any hurry to try to untangle the mess Keot’s monster had made of Darla’s threads. A twinge of the previous night’s headache echoed behind Nona’s eyes and in that moment she decided that she would rather face the caves without Darla than undo the holothour’s knot and suffer like that again.

  * * *

  • • •

  SISTER WHEEL HELD that novices of Mystic Class should be awarded the honour of having their Spirit lessons before the statue of the Ancestor. In practice this meant standing in the cold and draughty space beneath the dome rather than sitting in the snug classroom off the foyer. Sister Wheel got to ease the ache in her legs by striding around as she read scripture from her scrolls. The novices had to remain still, their attention on the Ancestor’s golden face.

  Today’s lesson was different only in two regards. Firstly, Joeli managed to get herself a chair, claiming that Sister Rose had forbidden her from standing until her knee had healed. Secondly, Inquisitor Pelter came to watch, standing at the base of the Ancestor statue as still as the stone behind him and showing no more expression. Only his eyes moved, studying one novice then the next.

  “The bonds of family are holy.” Sister Wheel stalked before them. “The links that bind you to your father and mother are repeated time and again, back through the years. These links form the chains that meet in the Ancestor. Each part of that unbroken chain is forged from the divine. A direct connection between you and the origin of all humanity. As the Path joins all things, the bonds of family join all people.”

  The novices stood in four rows of three so all but two were on the perimeter, any inattention apt to cause an ear to be twisted as Mistress Spirit passed by.

  “Why?” The nun paused at Nona’s shoulder. “Why does Sweet Mercy admit penniless strays from child-takers? Why does Abbess Glass reach into the Church’s own coffers to pay the confirmation fees for peasants?” She moved on. “Because it is a sin that any parent should sell their child. Some might hold that this same sin taints the child themselves, but Abbess Glass points to the convent’s own name and shows these children mercy.”

  “Also,” Inquisitor Pelter spoke into the pause, “a sold child belongs to the Church in a way that a wanted child cannot.”

  Sister Wheel scowled, pressing her lips into a bitter line. She kept her eyes on the novices and resumed her circuit around their perimeter, a sheep-hound hemming in her flock. “The false precedence of the Church’s claim on children in its care over that of their parents’ is one of the pillars upon which the foul edifice of the Scithrowl heresy stands. It is clearly stated in the Book of the Ancestor that a parent’s wishes are prime. The bonds of family, holy as they are, allow any parent to withdraw their child from service at convent or monastery, even if the high priest himself should object. In Scithrowl the Church claims a divine right to any child in their care. This is why they must burn—to purify them of their sin.”

  “And,” Inquisitor Pelter slid his narrow voice into another gap, “it is why Abbess Glass buys girls. She would rather not lose control of trained novices should a father or mother demand their return. She avoids rather than defies the law.”

  Nona furrowed her brow, keeping her gaze on the face of the Ancestor, the golden features so simplified they could belong to anyone. Abbess Glass had always told her she was free to leave, that the convent was a home not a prison. It seemed that the Church might disagree with that assessment. She glanced across at Zole. Of all the Mystic Class novices Zole was perhaps the only other sold child. She hadn’t been sold to Abbess Glass, though. Sherzal had acquired the girl from the ice. Zole had never seen fit to share the details of that transaction.

  The lesson continued, Sister Wheel making her predatory circles and droning on relentlessly about the minor differences in the interpretation of scripture that made the Scithrowl Church of the Ancestor an unholy evil, worse than the Durns with their pantheon of battle gods, or the raiders off the grey ice who were said to eat babies and wreak untold horrors on their prisoners.

  Nona occupied herself by studying Joeli. Slipping into the clarity trance, she could see how the fractured bone in Joeli’s knee was thread-bound to several areas of the g
irl’s head. Nona lacked the expertise to identify the areas individually, except for the pain centre, which was obvious. However, she had little doubt that one of the other areas the injury connected to was memory and another specialized in revenge. For her part, Joeli returned the inspection, watching Nona with an annoying half-smile.

  At last Bray rang out and Sister Wheel released the class. The novices hurried from the dome, trying to rub the chill from their arms.

  “Bleed me, that was dull, even for Wheel.” Darla stamped alongside Nona, trying to get some life back into her legs.

  “She’s showing the inquisitor that we’re well educated in the ways of heresy here,” Nona said.

  “It is surprising,” said Zole behind them. “That surrounded by unbelievers on all sides, and even among your own peasantry, so much effort is spent on hunting down and torturing those who agree with your faith almost entirely.”

  Darla turned round, blinking. “She speaks!”

  “Our faith,” Nona said. “Not ‘your’ faith.”

  Darla glanced back at the inquisitor, now following in their wake. “The shrimp’s right. Not a good day to be expressing doubts.” She frowned. “Who do you pray to on the ice then?”