Grey Sister Read online

  Nona looked up, meeting the green slits of Joeli’s stare, and spoke with all the sincerity she could muster. “I love you as a sister, and when we die we will be together in the Ancestor, our bloods mixed.” A warmth spread across her back as Keot sank into her flesh. A moment later he had wrapped himself around her tongue. “But I must warn you, sister, that a sickness runs in me, and if you fashion yourself my enemy I will make a ruin of your life, for I am born of war.”

  Joeli stared at Nona, eyes widening as if recognizing a promise rather than a threat. Then laughter burst from her in a clean, controlled peal, confidence pushing aside sensible fear. “What dramatics! ‘I am born of war.’” Joeli mimicked Keot’s words accented heavily towards the peasants’ dialect. “You were born of a mud hut in the wilds.” She glanced at her friends. “What a strange creature this novice is. I can see why Sister Hearth was keen to get her out of her class.” She turned away.

  Nona resisted the urge as Keot tried to make her arm rise to seize the girl’s neck. Instead she turned towards an empty bed with a snarl, angry at the lapse of concentration that had let Keot speak for her.

  “I will make a ruin of your life,” Keot?

  You should let me. That bitch means trouble for you.

  Nona sat on the bed she had chosen, one of a pair too neat to belong to anyone. She pushed her small bag of possessions under the desk, spare clothes mainly. Joeli was already in animated conversation with three novices across the room, laughter and glances in her direction punctuating their conversation. A fourth girl returned from the stairwell with the sheets Nona had thrown.

  If you kill one of them the others will respect you.

  Shut up.

  The door opened again and Zole walked in, arms folded across the bag she had brought from the Grey dormitory. When Nona had left the classroom where Sister Hearth had examined her merit certificates Zole had been waiting outside the door. They had both nodded acknowledgement but it wasn’t in the ice-triber’s nature to volunteer information.

  “Another one?” Joeli raised her voice in complaint.

  Zole’s face registered no expression as she scanned the room, eyes dark above broad cheekbones. She wore her face like a mask. Nona could count on one hand the times she had seen her smile or scowl.

  “I—” Joeli seemed about to expand upon her displeasure but for once her supposedly forgotten aristocracy fell short, eclipsed by Zole’s celebrity. Novices rose on all sides along with an excited babble of voices as they moved to welcome the Argatha. Nona decided against shielding her, though she was sure Zole would rather see the novices knocked down than endure their attentions.

  Zole made slow but sure progress towards the bed beside Nona, answering questions and flattery with curt nods. On the few occasions she did reply she offered only single words. Most of them “no.” Outside the convent it was far worse. Her secret had been uncovered just months after they had returned from the ranging. Some said Sherzal herself had spread the news, but whatever the truth all of Verity soon whispered that Zole was the four-blood spoken of in the Argatha prophecy, the Chosen One come to drive back the ice and bring salvation! And the rest of the empire knew within another month. Pilgrims came to sit in vigil beyond the pillars even on days when the abbess stationed a sister at the base of the Vinery Stair to tell them there was no chance of an audience with Novice Zole.

  Zole reached the bed and drove the last couple of novices away with a glower. The Argatha prophecy had been a constant in Sister Wheel’s Spirit classes for almost three years now, and she had managed to infect a fair proportion of the convent with her zeal, including most of the novices. At least the ones who didn’t know Zole.

  “You’re making friends almost as quickly as I am.” Nona stood and stripped off her habit.

  Zole shrugged. “None of them are bleeding.”

  Nona knelt to dig in her bag for her nightdress. Keot could sink from view for a few moments and knew enough not to be seen. Nona had explained to him that the nuns would seek to burn him out before throwing her from the convent—over a cliff if she were unlucky. Nobody tainted by a devil could stay in service to the Ancestor, even after the taint had been driven from them with hot irons. Sister Wheel’s lessons had left no room for doubt on that account.

  “Welcome to Mystic, shrimp.” Darla came to the foot of Nona’s bed, somewhat comical in her tent of a nightdress, her arms, thick with muscle, straining out of short frilly sleeves. “Nice entrance.”

  “I do my best.” Nona stepped out of her underskirts and pulled her own nightdress over her head as fast as possible. In Grey dorm they mocked her for being shy, but it was Keot who prompted the haste. Also she was shy.

  “She threatened to kill Joeli before she’d even reached her bed,” Darla said to Zole. “And she didn’t even have a crowd trying to get in her way.”

  Zole looked up from her bag, one hand wrapped around the carved tooth of some sea-monster. “Good. I do not like that Joeli.”

  “You don’t like anyone,” Nona said.

  Zole shrugged.

  “And besides, I didn’t threaten to kill her.”

  “‘I will make a ruin of your life,’” Darla quoted through a broad grin.

  “That’s maiming at best,” Nona said. “And I seem to remember my welcome to Grey wasn’t too warm either.”

  Darla kept her grin. “That was just a kicking. Joeli’s a whole lot more dangerous. A thread-worker can mess you up. And she doesn’t even need to do that. She has lots of friends. Too many novices in this class are thinking they might not take their vows, just go back to their families. And when you start to think like that you also start to think how helpful it is to have friends like the Namsis.”

  “A devil got my tongue,” Nona said. “I should have held it more tightly.”

  I spoke truth. The fortress of you is built of such moments, they are stones dropped into the well of your tomorrow.

  Shut up.

  Nona checked the bed for spiders and other welcome gifts then slipped under the blanket, yawning. Darla laughed. “Get your beauty sleep, Shield.” She slapped the bed. “Long day tomorrow. You’re with the big girls now.”

  All around the room novices were climbing beneath thick blankets, Alata sleeping alone until Leeni got her merit certificate in Spirit. Something Sister Wheel seemed to be taking particular pleasure in denying her. Joeli Namsis wore only her tawny skin to her bed, perhaps proud of her woman’s body. Nona looked away. She would miss Ara’s presence in the bed beside hers, close enough to reach out and touch. She yawned again and stared at the shadow-dance across the beams above her. At heart she was still a child of the Grey and no matter how warm a room might be she would never be at ease with nakedness, even in the bathhouse. Ruli had taught Nona the steam-weaving trick that she had first shown them at the sink-hole in the focus moon, and when possible Nona wore a robe of steam around the bath-pool. Keot hid across the sole of her left foot at such times.

  Shadows are nothing. Talk to me instead.

  Shut up.

  You should thank me. Your enemies make you what you are. Your foes shape your life more than friends ever could. This Joeli is good practice.

  Nona ignored Keot and watched the shadows. Most novices with marjal blood could make them dance to their own tune, but such tricks were put beyond her reach the day she cut her own shadow loose. The day she launched it at Yisht to try to save Hessa. She had failed. She had lost both her friend and her shadow, and Yisht had escaped with the shipheart. Sleep came slowly as it always did, fighting to overcome the anger. She finally fell asleep wondering where her shadow might be now, and dreamed of being lost in dark places.

  3

  “IN MYSTIC WE use edged steel.” Sister Tallow spoke to Zole and Nona above the clash of swordplay as the other novices sparred in widely spaced pairs across the sand of Blade Hall. She held two naked blades, forge-iron rather than the Ark-steel of a Red Sister’s weapon, but visibly sharp. Each had the same curve as a sister-
blade and each was the same length, about as long as a man’s arm from shoulder to fingertips. “There are some lessons that must be written in scars.”

  Sister Tallow offered the hilts. Nona took hers, clumsy in her new gauntlets. Like her new blade-habit the gloves were reinforced with strips of iron sewn into the padding. They wouldn’t stop every hit but they would lessen the chances of blood being spilled.

  “It’s a good sword.” Zole swung hers then circled the point in front of her.

  Nona lifted her own, finding it heavier than the blunted Grey Class blades. She felt awkward in her blade-habit, as if she were wading in the bath-pool. Red Sisters wore black-skin but that had been scavenged from the hulls of the ships that carried the four tribes to Abeth and was worth more than its weight in gold. Far more. An experienced Red Sister had to die or become a Holy before a new one could get her armour.

  “You two spar. I’ll watch.” Sister Tallow pointed to a clear patch of sand. “No showing off. We have serious and dangerous work ahead of us, and I would rather send you on to Holy Class with the same number of fingers and eyes you had when you arrived in Mystic.”

  Nona squared up to Zole. The ice-triber stood as tall as Sister Tallow now, her gerant blood perhaps starting to show. Nona remained a head shorter. She supposed she was around fifteen but when she came from the village she had scarcely realized there were dates and certainly hadn’t known on which one she had been born.

  “What are the rules?” Nona asked. Behind her thoughts Keot yammered for blood and made his opinions on rules quite clear.

  “No killing thrusts.” Sister Tallow stepped back.

  “That’s it?” Nona had no more time for inquiry. Zole pulled the mesh-mask over her face and moved to attack. Nona pulled her own down and lifted her sword.

  Zole came in fast as she always did, offering no quarter. Sister Tallow never had to lecture the girl on controlling her temper. Nona wasn’t sure Zole had one. Ara said if they cut the Chosen One open they’d find ice at her core.

  Nona’s world narrowed to the flickering of blades and the clash of iron. With her speed matched Nona had to rely on training, on the memory that Sister Tallow had imprinted on her muscles. Deeper than that even—on her bones. She mounted a desperate defence against the stronger girl, acutely aware that the edge she met with her own could open ruinous wounds, even slice a limb off, gone in the blink of an eye, beyond repair. Zole would hardly care if she took all four fingers from Nona’s sword hand at the knuckle.

  “Stop!” Sister Tallow raised an arm.

  Nona put up her blade, relieved.

  “Your fear is beating you.” Sister Tallow pinned Nona with narrow eyes. “Zole doesn’t even have to try.”

  “I’m not afraid!” A snarl. And a lie. Blade-work held a fear for Nona that was absent when she fought empty-handed. Perhaps it had started with Raymel Tacsis swinging his sword at her as exhaustion robbed her speed. Perhaps before. Against most novices blade-work was just a game, but facing hunska primes and full-bloods her control slipped away and slaughterhouse images crept in.

  “Find your centre, novice. Wear your serenity like a second skin.” Tallow motioned for them to continue.

  Nona scowled and raised her blade. Serenity had never helped her find the Path. It had been passion that led her there. Rage. On the blade-path, suspended high above the ground in the chamber behind the changing room, it had been the discovery that she needed to slide rather than stick that made her stop falling. Where the other novices stepped with ever greater caution Nona had raced in.

  Zole came at her again, efficient, relentless, cold. Their blades clashed and clashed again. Serenity would wrap up the fear that hampered her, but it would also keep away the anger that she needed. Nona had to have her heart in the battle or it wasn’t a battle at all, just some game. What she required was the right balance.

  Nona swung at Zole’s side. The ice-triber stepped inside the blow, trapping Nona’s wrist against her ribs and laying her own blade along the thick collar around Nona’s neck.

  “Break!” Tallow raised her hand. “Work through the standard thrust and parry routines. And think on my instruction, novice. They don’t call me Mistress Blade for nothing . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER THE LESSON there was time for half an hour at blade-path before hitting the bathhouse. Nona changed into the lightest of her combat habits and joined the other Mystic novices who had chosen to practise.

  She found that most of the class were there, half on the platform high above the net, half below staring up at the show. Even Darla, who Nona almost never saw in the chamber, had turned up. Joeli too, at the doorway down below, watching with her three closest cronies. The blonde girl, Mesha, stood at her side, and before them the hunska half-bloods Elani and Crocey, solid and sly, so similar they might be twins. A novice from Holy Class joined them. One Nona often saw walking with Joeli.

  Nona found a spot on the platform’s edge beside Zole and sat, dangling her legs over the drop. “Now you’re in Mystic you’ll get to go on the ice-ranging.”

  Zole grunted.

  “You notice how they put us up a class on the same day?” Nona watched Alata on the blade-path. She moved well and had covered half the distance.

  “That’s Wheel’s doing. She wants Argatha and Shield together. She has been sitting on my merit certificate until they were ready to let you up,” Zole said.

  Nona narrowed her gaze and, as if her stare had become a weapon, Alata faltered, slipped, and fell with an oath.

  “It is your temper that held you where you were,” Zole continued, gazing into space.

  “I—” Nona bit off a sharp reply. It was true. Mostly true. Keot had returned with her from the Corridor ranging. She had lost a shadow, lost two friends, and gained a devil. Nona supposed she had never been the mildest of novices but with a devil beneath her skin she had turned wild. It had taken the best part of two years to get the upper hand, to slowly regain control and concentration, and even more slowly to regain the trust and respect of the sisters who taught her. “I wasn’t holding you back, if that’s what you think.”

  Zole shrugged. Everyone knew she’d been ready for Mystic Class for an age, but the abbess didn’t want her ice-ranging. Abbess Glass didn’t think Zole would come back. More importantly Sherzal didn’t want her to go. Her opinion counted in the matter. Despite very obviously being behind the theft of the convent’s shipheart the emperor’s sister remained free, unpunished, and a power in the land. If anything she had tightened her grip on the Inquisition since the theft.

  Another novice fell from the blade-path. Nona didn’t register which. “So why did they let you move up?”

  “I do not know.” Zole hardly seemed to care. If Nona hadn’t met Tarkax she would have imagined everyone from the tribes to be carved from ice.

  Zole stood to take her turn on the blade-path. Several of the novices raised a cheer as if they were pilgrims crowding on the Rock, hoping to see a miracle. They at least looked embarrassed when Zole turned to stare at them.

  Nona watched Zole’s progress without truly seeing. Zole was right that her temper had held her down. Keot might fan the flames but the fire had been there before the devil came to warm himself in its midst. Four devils had found Raymel Tacsis while he waited to cross the Path and enter death. They had made their home within his flesh. The focused will of Academics in Thuran Tacsis’s pay had kept Raymel from joining the Ancestor, and in time they had returned him to health, alive but changed. But not even the power of the Academy could drive a devil from a man’s flesh if it found enough sin to anchor it.

  Before the Tacsis giant died Nona had thrust her knife into his back a score of times. Perhaps more: it had been a frenzy. Three of the four devils had returned to the hollow places from where devils watch eternity, but the fourth, spilling out with Raymel’s blood, had slipped through some crack into Nona. At first he had seemed only a scarlet stain on Nona’s knife-hand,
one that refused to be washed away with the gore that had reached up past her elbows. But later, in the depths of the night, he had spoken to her. He called himself Keot and claimed it had been neither the blood nor the rage that had let him get under her skin. Rather it had been the pleasure Nona had taken in driving the knife home into her enemy. That had been the crack into which he had squeezed.

  “You’re up.” A novice tapped Nona’s shoulder.

  “What?” Nona shook away her thoughts and went to stand at the start of the blade-path. Another girl reset the pendulum.

  “Let’s see you do your trick then.” Joeli’s voice from below, sounding for all the world as if she were in her father’s halls and Nona was the entertainment, an acrobat hired to amuse.

  Nona ran onto the cold, swaying pipe. She never slid along it except late at night when she came to clear her mind. Greasing her feet left the blade-path slippery and brought howls of protest from everyone but the handful of novices who had taken up her approach. Even so, whenever she took the path she went quickly. On the twisting narrowness of the blade-path pipe she ran faster than a non-hunska could sprint. The quickness of it gave the path beneath her feet too little time to sway or shift. In eight counts she had run up the first twist of the spiral. When sliding Nona took the inner path, letting her speed hold her to the metal as she turned momentarily upside-down inside the spiral. Running, she took the outer path and jumped from the top of the first turn to the second, then to the third, breaking the rules. The leap from the last turn of the spiral to the next flattish section was a dangerous one, several yards, risking injury if she missed and struck the pipe in passing.

  “Cheat!” Joeli’s cry as Nona took off.

  Keot twisted beneath her skin, scalding hot. Both feet hit the bar, but neither met it perfectly and on the blade-path one tiny error is multiplied with every step. Over-correction built on over-correction and five paces later Nona fell. No sound escaped her. The bounce of the net brought her to her feet and a moment later she landed cat-footed among the watchers.