Red Sister Read online

  They lay without speaking for a while and the room quietened around them. Eventually another question floated to the surface of Nona’s sleepiness. She yawned hugely then asked it. “Why don’t the emperor’s sisters have titles? Shouldn’t they be Princess Sherzal and Princess Velera?”

  “You’ve listened to too many bards’ tales.” Ara yawned her own yawn. “We haven’t had kings and queens, princes and princesses, for hundreds of years. Maybe they still have them somewhere if you follow the Corridor long enough.”

  “But they’re his sisters and he’s the emperor . . .”

  “Crucical doesn’t trust either of them further than he could spit them.” Ara snuggled beneath her blanket, only her hair showing. “Titles would just encourage them. The lack of them reminds everyone where the emperor’s favour lies, and where it doesn’t. It’s like that in high families.”

  Nona closed her eyes. Treachery and deceit weren’t confined to high families. Blood bonds were neither chosen nor hard to break, whatever the Ancestor might have to say on the subject. She lay still, ignoring her pain, knowing sleep would be hard to find. She thought of her fight with Darla, not that it had been a fight from her side, but Darla at least showed some anger, some brutality. That to Nona was a fight. The arts that Mistress Blade taught, while deadly, were without passion. The contests felt to Nona more like dances. Dances that would end in pain and blood if you missed a step, but dances even so, devoid of rage or hatred. Sister Pan told them the serenity trance would help their blade-fist and their blade-path too. It married well to the science of combat that Sister Tallow instructed them in. Nona saw the logic of it. But there was a piece missing.

  Back in the village the children had always chased Nona for being dark where they were light, for being silent and watchful, outside the circle. They seldom caught her, but sometimes the bigs would come upon her unawares. Those were fights. Snarling, desperate, savage, and full of rage.

  Control. How many times had Mistress Blade used that word in the class today?

  In the Caltess Nona had been caught only once, by Denam, the red-haired gerant who ruled the attic, at least when Regol, swift and dark, wasn’t there to keep him in order. She had been in the narrow corridor leading to the exit that looked out over the rear of the stables block. Denam had come up behind her while she gazed at the two stallions being exercised. He had taken her forearms, one in each meaty fist. “What’ve we got here?”

  Nona had kicked back hard and twisted for all she was worth. The contact hurt her foot more than it seemed to hurt the boy. He stood shy of six foot but his strength was iron: she couldn’t slip his grasp any more than she could lift the building. Snarling, she bent to bite his hand, managing to draw blood before he stretched out her arms painfully, putting his fists beyond reach.

  “You’ll pay for that.” Denam had seemed on the point of saying more but a dull thud interrupted him. The vise-like grip on Nona’s arms relaxed and in a moment she’d torn free. She had turned to see Denam clutching his lower back with both hands, and behind him another figure, a touch shorter.

  “Go.”

  The newcomer hadn’t raised his voice but Denam ran for it, still clutching his back, pushing past Nona and out into the yard beyond. Nona kicked him in the back of the knee as he passed, but he hadn’t seemed to notice.

  “Kidney punch. Be pissing blood for a week.” The man had had the flat eyes and facial scars of one of the ice-tribes, two lines slanting down across each cheek. He had worn a leather jerkin, sealskin trousers, an iron chain loose about his neck, and at his side the flat sword known as a tular. Nona had seen one amid the huge variety in the Caltess weapon store: the blade was all straight lines, wider at the end than at the hilt, requiring a scabbard open all along its length. In the village they told worse tales about the ice-tribes than they did about the Pelarthi. Nobody knew what they ate up there on the sheet. The consensus being that it was each other. “You’re very small. Smallest Partnis has?”

  The man was bald, not overly tall, but solid, and he had spoken slowly and with so deep a voice that each word had been like the rolling out of a heavy stone, both measured and considered. Nona had got the feeling that he might never rush a sentence, whether his firstborn lay dead in his arms or he had woken to find his house ablaze all around him.

  She had rubbed her forearms where Denam had gripped her. “You’re a ring-fighter?” She hadn’t seen him before, she would have known if she had. His eyes were the faint cloudy blue of an ice-lake, his skin a dark red.

  He nodded. “I fight in the ring—I fight outside it. They call me Tarkax.” He watched her.

  Nona had found the man’s scrutiny uncomfortable. He had something of the wolf about him, but Nona knew wolves.

  “Had trouble before.” The man set his hand to the side of his face, indicating the bruising from where Nona had let Giljohn slap her on the day he sold her. “Got first blood today though. That’s good.” He had looked past her to the yard beyond. “They going to be teaching you soon enough. Like that.” Outside the horses still cantered around the grooms on their training ropes. “Partnis’s fight-masters will tell you it’s a science, this business of fists and knives. They’ll tell you, keep a cool head, detached, control.” The man had given a quick shrug of his shoulders and spat. “He’ll tell you the professional calculates, watches, plans.”

  “Don’t they?” Nona had turned back towards him.

  “Nature shaped us, little girl. Shaped the animals. Predators. Prey. Millions of years. Fighting, making children, dying. A cycle that hones each to its purpose. And what have we in common, wolf, eagle, man, under-killers, bears, all of us?” His eyebrows had shaped the question.

  Nona had waited for him to answer, wondering what exactly under-killers were.

  “Rage. We’ve got hate and anger and red fury, child. Saw it in you too. Got your teeth into that idiot boy. Didn’t care that he might snap your arms off.” The man had gone down on one knee, face close to hers. “Here in the Corridor they teach you to put that anger aside. They got their reasons. Keep a calm head and you’ll see more. But on the ice we know better than to let go of the weapons so many hard years have forged for us.” He had jabbed a blunt finger at Nona’s chest. “Keep that fire. Use it. We’re wild things us men, and when we remember it we’re at our most dangerous.”

  Nona hadn’t seen the man after that, but his words had struck her like hammers to a bell, and she rang with them, even now in the quiet dark, and she held on to her anger.

  • • •

  “GET UP! THEY’RE coming!”

  Nona opened eyes she felt sure had just that minute closed, and saw only night.

  “Quickly!”

  She groaned, stiff in every limb, and rolled in time to see a tall figure retreating from the doorway, lantern in hand. All around her novices were spilling from their beds, some grumbling, some anxious.

  “Sherzal wasn’t supposed to be here until noon!”

  “Royals do what they want.” Clera, still a lump in her bed.

  “Everyone up! Everyone dressed.” Mally, Grey Class’s head-girl, turned up the wick in her night-lantern.

  Nona groaned again, shrugged off her blanket and started to wriggle into her skirts. Fingers busied themselves with laces and ties, not needing instruction from her sleep-fuddled mind. She hadn’t lied about being too sore to share a bed with Clera. Sleep had only stiffened her; she hoped Darla’s finger and toes hurt as much as the bruises she gave in exchange.

  The novices stumbled out into a freezing pre-dawn, the sun a red promise to the east. The scattered ice melted by the focus moon had frozen into a continuous film, treacherous and hard to see. Clera skated out across the courtyard with a dancer’s grace, disdaining the threat of a sudden fall, just as she did on the blade-path.

  “Novice Clera! Get in line!” Sister Flint rounded the corner, a thin dark line that the
sun could not yet muster the courage to unwrap. “We’re required at the abbess’s house. Quickly, quietly, and with decorum.”

  • • •

  THE SLOW, COLD passing of an hour found both novices and nuns numb-fingered, shivering in their lines before Abbess Glass’s steps, watching the pillars for any sign of the royal party’s approach. Hessa saw them first. Nona, following the line of Hessa’s finger, had to squint for several moments before she too saw the flicker of motion between the pillars.

  The soldiers came into view first: five ranks of five, all in scarlet and silver. The sight of them gave her a sense of unease, something tugging at her memory . . . The troop wasn’t matched in height as the high priest’s church-guards had been, but cut from many cloths with varying degrees of generosity. As the soldiers drew closer Nona could see that they all shared two things: none were young and none looked as though crossing them would be a good idea.

  Nona had been expecting the emperor’s sister to arrive in a sedan chair larger and more grand than the high priest’s, but both came mounted, despite the ice-wind. Sherzal cut an impressive figure in the furs of a white bear, astride a huge white horse. High Priest Nevis, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable and ill at ease, huddled in a hooded robe on the back of a grey mare.

  Behind the two riders straggled a long train of priests, attendants, and baggage porters, many bent against the wind like ridge-top trees.

  The choir started up with the first high notes of Concordiance as the soldiers began to form lines before the steps. Poor Sister Rule had only a moment of song to glory in though before the ice-wind raised its own voice and drowned the novices out, scouring the plateau with shards straight from the northern sheets. Decorum blew away too as Abbess Glass led the charge for the Dome of the Ancestor.

  Within minutes the visitors and the whole population of the convent stood packed together in a chaotic and ice-spattered mix, spilling out beyond the foyer’s pillared space into the main dome, an unearned privilege for any novices in Red Class who happened to be swept in amid the crush.

  Sherzal of course stood in her own space, at the centre of a tight ring of soldiers who had no qualms about knocking young girls or old nuns aside to make room. Nona slipped and twisted ahead of them to enter the echoing space beneath the dome for the first time. Being in Grey Class now she was entitled to stand beneath the dome, though it wouldn’t have been untypical of Sister Wheel to delay her introduction by weeks or even months just to keep her in her place. Nona looked up, dwarfed by great walls curving away towards a distant, golden vertex. The enclosed space swallowed the intruders, making them seem few and tiny, enfolding their conversation and complaint in its silence. Nona stood, rooted to the spot, the walls seeming to rotate around her as she gazed at the distant heights. Her habit steamed and fat drops of water fell from the hem.

  The underside of the dome lay black and seeded with stars in blood crystal. Here and there the stars took on a paler shade and near the highest point the Hope lay in sparkling white quartz. The skyscape held Nona’s gaze a while but the statue at the centre soon captured her attention: a human figure, perhaps twenty feet of gleaming gold. Even if it were gold leaf over stone the wealth it wore could purchase a lifetime’s luxury. The figure lacked detail. Was it a man? A woman? This was the Ancestor that Sister Wheel had described as a joining of everyone who had ever lived, an ideal in which the best parts of humanity fused into a joyous whole.

  As the voices stilled behind her Nona found that, although she was still staring towards the statue, she was not staring at it but past it. What drew her, and had pulled at her ever so faintly since her first night at the convent, sleeping in a nun’s cell, was the foyer at the far side, opposite the one she had entered by. Something there—something beyond the dark marble pillars—demanded her attention, just as it had that first night when Sister Apple led her along the corridor between the convent’s sleeping nuns. A fullness. An otherness. A something.

  “Hey!” Clera jabbed Nona’s ribs then pulled her arm to turn her round. “You’re missing it!”

  The soldiers stood in a larger perimeter centred on Sherzal, now joined by High Priest Nevis, the abbess, and a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen. The emperor’s sister had shed her bearskin to reveal a flowing crimson gown edged with silver. The girl, dark-haired and with the flat cheekbones of the ice-tribes, wore a close approximation of the blade-habit, though it too was crimson with silver worked about the collar and had a belt of silver links.

  “Who does she think she is?” Clera whispered. “A Red Sister?”

  On Clera’s far side Ghena snorted.

  “She’s whoever Sherzal says she is,” Ara hissed. “You don’t want to cross any Lansis, but Sherzal’s the worst of them. Three years ago she had Seema Bresis burned alive as a heretic because the woman made a joke about her hair at the Tacsis’s grand ball. They say she owns half the inquisition.”

  “. . . welcome the emperor’s sister, honourable Sherzal, to Sweet Mercy . . .” The high priest droned out his introduction. “. . . for Abbess Glass to say a few words.” He turned with apparent relief to the abbess.

  Abbess Glass made her speech well with ample thanks for the opportunity to show such a high personage around the convent temporarily in her humble charge. She spoke of the famed piety and generosity of the Lancis line and of how the empire had bloomed under Crucical’s reign. She spoke until the novices began to shuffle from one foot to the other, and even the nuns’ patient smiles grew fixed.

  “I would just ask her what she wants,” Nona whispered.

  “Which is why you’ll be a warrior rather than an abbess,” Ara replied.

  “Why won’t she shut up?” Clera hugged her belly. “Breakfast will think I don’t love it any more.”

  Jula shushed everyone: Abbess Glass was coming to the bit where there was nothing left but for the person to say what they wanted.

  “. . . let us know how we can be of service to you, honourable Sherzal.”

  “Thank you, abbess.” Sherzal offered a broad smile, all red-painted lips and a bright line that looked too white to be teeth. “High Priest.” She nodded to Nevis, the mass of dark red curls bouncing slightly about her head. She looked to be in her thirties, perhaps of an age with Sister Apple, almost beautiful but with each feature slightly too exaggerated. An animated face, full of vicious good humour. “I don’t intend to remain long. I’ll say a prayer of course. It would be rude not to. After all my great-great-grand-uncle built the place, did he not? Or was it great-great-great? One of the Persuses, anyway.

  “You’ll take me around, won’t you, Nevis?” She slipped a bare white arm through the high priest’s. “I must confess first that I did have an ulterior motive for my visit . . . Not being blessed by the Ancestor with children I have taken young Zole here under my wing.” Sherzal indicated the girl in the red habit and leaned her head in towards the high priest’s. She lowered her voice but by accident of the dome’s acoustics or by her own design she remained audible. “The child was the only survivor from the town of Ytis after the Scithrowl incursion back in ’09. I’ve taken her on as my ward.” She rotated the high priest to face Abbess Glass and continued at more regal volume. “I’ve had Zole tutored and trained extensively by a wide range of experts, including Safira, who benefited from eight years of study at this very convent. I think though that the only place where she can truly finish her education to the highest of standards is right here. I’m told that Grey Class would be best suited to her current skills.”

  Abbess Glass’s smile twitched, just for a fraction of a moment, but Nona saw it. “I’m so sorry but that is of course quite imposs—”

  “Abbess.” High Priest Nevis tilted his head back towards the foyer. “I’m sure these are matters best discussed in your study, with perhaps a glass of Sweet Mercy’s finest vintage to fight the day’s chill. It has been a long and . . . bracing . . . journey up
from Verity.”

  Sherzal’s smile grew wider than Nona had thought possible, showing more teeth than it seemed likely a person could own. “We’ll leave Zole with her class, shall we? Your nuns can have a chance to assess her talents.”

  Abbess Glass frowned and opened her mouth, but the high priest spoke first. “Of course, an excellent idea.” He bowed slightly and gestured back towards the doors. “I think we can dare the short trip to the abbess’s house now.”

  The abbess’s mask showed no fractures this time. “Of course.” Just a hint of stiffness in her voice. “Novices, return to your classes. The emperor’s sister may stop by to view proceedings before she leaves.”

  Sherzal strode towards the main door, with High Priest Nevis—stout and a touch shorter than her—struggling to catch up. Abbess Glass stared after them as the soldiers followed in two files. A moment later she threw up her hands, motioned Sister Tallow towards Zole, and hastened after the emperor’s sister.

  25

  “IT SEEMS I will be having the pleasure of your company in Blade Hall this morning after all, Grey Class.” Sister Tallow’s hard stare killed the wave of chatter rising in the wake of the visitors departing the dome. “You still have time for breakfast—at least if you run and manage not to break your legs on the ice. Zole will go with you. Alata, you can watch over her. Go! Don’t be late.”

  Grey Class’s exit began a general rush for the refectory. Clera was first through the doors, skidding to a halt at the head of Grey table. Ara, Zole, and Ketti found their seats a heartbeat later, Nona coming up behind. Within moments the hall around them filled with novices scrambling for chairs, reaching for plates, and trying to push food into mouths faster than words came out of them. Nona sat with Ara on her right and Zole to her left, until Alata pushed their chairs apart and slid herself between Nona and the new girl.

  “Safira was expelled from the convent.”

  Ara didn’t raise her voice or look up from her plate but somehow everyone at the table heard her.