Red Sister Page 32

  “How are you?” Ruli leaned in worried, reaching a tentative hand for Nona’s arm. “You look awful.”

  “She’s fine!” Clera said. “She took down the damn wall. Showed that bitch Zole.”

  Nona eased herself into a sitting position, manufactured a smile, and let the conversation flow about her. It just took a “yes” here, a “why” there to keep it running on and she found comfort in the familiar rhythm of their gossip.

  Ara, apparently, would be in to see her later. She wanted to come on her own, feeling very guilty about the whole whipping-girl thing. “And so she should!” Clera cut across Ruli. “They all do it. The Sis spit on us all the time. Even if they don’t mean to. They just think of us as things to be used.”

  Zole had remained when Sherzal left, and was taken into Grey Class, where she kept a watchful silence, not rising to taunts or threats. Clera was glad to report that the tribe-girl had fallen off the blade-path within five yards of starting and showed no particular aptitude for Academia. Of particular note and worthy of a mimed impression was her introduction to the Poisoner, one that saw her fleeing the cave just minutes into the class, a hand clutching both main orifices.

  Sister Tallow, according to Ruli, had spent the whole of their last lesson aiming a brooding stare at the cratered wall and letting the older novices beat the younger ones black and blue.

  “She did promise to teach us to counter that Torca move Zole used on you though,” Clera said. She smiled at that then veered into a new topic. “And my father’s still in the debtors’ jail, but they let Mother and my sisters visit him.” No novice ignored the convent’s disapproval of discussing family quite so impressively as Clera. She scowled. “He should have been released by now: the only debts left to clear are ones that everyone knows are fake.”

  “Jula’s father is working at the palace now!” Ruli chipped in with a bright smile.

  Jula, rule-follower to her core, just made a quick and agitated shake of her head then looked down.

  The chatter bubbled along taking Nona’s mind from her discomfort until Bray spoke, the bell’s deep voice resonating across the convent, and the three visitors jumped up to go.

  “Spirit next! You’re better off here!” Clera called over her shoulder.

  “Hurry up and get better!” Ruli followed her.

  “I’ll pray for your recovery.” Jula laid her hand on Nona’s then ran to catch the others.

  • • •

  HOURS LATER AND the light slanted crimson into the room, the sun’s edge burning above the rooftop. Nona thought it would drop away and the day would end before Ara came to see her, but the door opened and there she was.

  “I’m sorry!”

  “What in the world for? And, that was my line.” Ara hurried across to sit in the chair beside Nona’s bed.

  “I didn’t beat her,” Nona said.

  “You can’t beat everyone! And besides, you were already hurt.” Ara studied Nona with concern, her gaze flitting here and there, looking for evidence of injuries. “How are you now?”

  Nona shrugged, and wished she hadn’t. “Sister Rose will let me go soon.”

  “At least you got through the blood-war at the same time as you got beaten. That’s not fun either.”

  “Blood-war?” Nona frowned. She felt pretty sure that whatever it was it was a blessing compared to twenty strokes of a wire-willow cane.

  “When I started to be able to get close to the Path—when my quantal blood started to assert itself—I felt awful. I thought I was dying. Well, not dying, but I felt sick for a week. Sister Pan says it’s called the blood-war. But you got pushed through the transition so quickly you missed it!”

  “—” Nona shut her mouth. It might be a small blessing but she supposed it was a blessing.

  “Zole is very fast.” Ara looked at her hands, resting in her lap, fingers knotted. “I should have let Sister Tallow end the fight.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “She was taking so long and Zole was hurting you . . .”

  Nona pursed her lips and watched Ara’s downturned eyes. Her friend’s hair hung about her face, as long and golden as it had been on the day she arrived. “You were in a serenity trance, Ara. You could have watched her kill me without losing control of yourself. You were getting ready even before the fight started. I saw you.” Doubt struck, cold and hard. “You didn’t think I had a chance, did you?”

  Ara looked up sharply. “It wasn’t that at all! It was Sherzal. I wanted her to be afraid of me!”

  “Afraid?” The emperor’s sister hadn’t looked like a woman who knew how to be afraid.

  “She would have stolen me from my family—she did steal me from my family, only to the convent rather than into her clutches. And now she’s trying to reach in here to get at me. So I wanted to show her that the very reason she wants me is the reason she should fear me. I wanted her to know that if she tried to hold me in her palace I’d bring the walls down around her ears . . . Only now she’s seen that you’re what she wants too—and you haven’t got family connections for her to worry about like I have . . .”

  “Is that how you feel? Stolen? You want to be back with your family and your servants? Leave us all behind?” The word “us” stumbled out at the last moment in place of “me.”

  “I’d like to feel safe to visit them. To see my mother and father. I miss my little sister too. Even Sonella, a little bit . . . perhaps she’s not so much of a cow now.”

  Nona smirked. Ara had a hundred stories about her older sister, none of them flattering, some that made you laugh hard enough to wet yourself. “Well—maybe we both scared her off, or perhaps we both put ourselves on her wanted list. Either way, we’re in it together, which is as it should be, the Chosen One and her Shield.”

  “You know that stuff’s nonsense, don’t you?” Ara looked serious for a moment. “Sherzal doesn’t want us because the prophecy’s real—she wants us because people believe the prophecy.”

  Nona nodded. “Even if I believed in prophecies then Sister Wheel wanting this one to be true so badly would be enough to stop me believing it.”

  28

  “WHO’S THAT?” NONA asked.

  A short woman was approaching Path Tower, a black coat flapping about her legs, her dark hair drawn up behind her head in a severe bun, her skin sharing the same reddish hint as Zole’s. She carried a sword at each hip.

  “Yisht,” Ara said. They had been the first to arrive, coming directly from the sanatorium. Sister Rose had told Nona the night before that she could return to the dormitory the next day and resume all her lessons excepting Blade—which given that Blade was the only class Nona really cared about had been a disappointment.

  “Yisht?” Nona frowned. “That’s a real name?”

  “As real as Zole,” Darla said, glowering at the approaching woman. Jula and Darla had joined them at the eastern door, waiting for Sister Pan to unlock it.

  As Darla said her name Nona spotted Zole, walking in Yisht’s shadow.

  “She’s Zole’s bodyguard, if you can believe that,” Ara said. “Sherzal wanted to station sixteen of her guards to watch over her precious heir. The abbess argued her down to one. She knew they’d be doing more than just watching over Zole.”

  Jula nodded. “I think the high priest has Abbess Glass under orders not to interfere with her, though. Alata came running around the corner and Yisht slammed her into a wall, nearly broke her arm. Said it looked as if she were rushing at Zole . . . as if Zole can’t defend herself!”

  “What did the abbess do?”

  “That’s just it. The abbess didn’t do anything. Sister Rose must have told her because she called Yisht a whole bunch of names that I would have sworn she didn’t know. And Sister Rose never gets angry!”

  “Anyway.” Ara took the lead back. “Sister Pan won’t let her in the tower. She
has to stand guard out here.” She shot a dirty look at Zole and her protector as they closed the last few yards. “I hope the ice-wind picks up again.”

  “Yisht is from the ice, like me,” Zole said, coming to stand beside Jula. “On the ice the wind roars. Here, you hear a whisper and think you know cold.” She shook her head, amused.

  Ara carried on as if the girl hadn’t spoken. “Sherzal wanted Safira to lead the sixteen! Safira! An expelled novice who’s betrayed the convent and the church, teaching blade-lore outside these walls for money.”

  Nona remembered Ara mentioning Zole’s teacher on the day the emperor’s sister visited. “She stabbed someone here? Another novice?”

  “She stabbed Sister Kettle. She was lucky they didn’t drown her. They should have.”

  “Kettle?” Nona’s mind raced. She’d spent a year having Sister Kettle teach her to read and write, the young nun always full of chatter and gossip, but being stabbed had never come up. Now Nona thought about Kettle’s slight limp, and how no one at the convent had come close to her blade-path time and yet she’d never walked it in the two years since Nona arrived. “You said Safira stabbed a novice . . .”

  “She and Safira were novices together.” Ara leaned in to whisper, her hair falling forward over Nona’s shoulder, breath tickling her ear. “They bedded together in Holy Class, but then Sister Apple joined the convent and . . . well, you know. Safira was jealous, there were arguments, and Kettle got stabbed while walking away from the last one.”

  The door rattled, Sister Pan unlocking it from within. Ara jerked back as if caught doing something she shouldn’t, and Darla pushed on through.

  While Sister Pan moved to unlock the next door Nona, Ara, and Jula hurried in behind Darla and up the staircase, sparing no glances for the portraits. Zole was the last up the stairs, behind the rest of Grey Class, following Sister Pan up the steps asking a question in a low voice.

  “She’s always sucking up to Mistress Path,” Clera said, sitting at Nona’s left. “Probably making notes on everything for when she goes back to Sherzal.”

  “And when will that be?” Nona kept to a whisper, convinced Sister Pan’s alleged deafness was just the old woman’s ruse so she could keep up to date with novice gossip.

  Clera shrugged. “She says she’s here to be a nun.”

  • • •

  THE FIRST TWO-THIRDS of the lesson proceeded as usual with meditation and instruction in the vexed business of attaining clarity, serenity, and patience. Clera used to joke that they should all work on patience first because they were surely going to need it to survive the class. But the joke had been old before she was born and now she usually spent the lessons trying to sleep with her eyes open, or badgering Sister Pan to let the class practise blade-path up at the hall while she concentrated on her star pupils.

  Nona had never had much greater success with patience than she did with serenity. In fact they seemed almost the same thing to her, though Sister Pan insisted otherwise.

  “Patience belongs to the predator. It waits before the strike. Patience is invaluable to Sisters of Discretion. Those that can weave shadows use patience to settle themselves into the darkness with sufficient depth that they can gather it to them.”

  “You’re saying that if I get this I can do what Sister Kettle did in Blade Hall?” The image of Kettle rising from nowhere returned to Nona. She saw it again and again—Kettle, trailing shadow, leaping up and carrying her to the sand. “I can be invisible like a Noi-Guin?”

  “Noi-Guin aren’t invisible, child.” Sister Pan’s mouth twisted with displeasure. “Their shadow-workers are so good because they focus on nothing else. So narrow an education is of limited use. In any event, the answer to your question is no. Only those with at least a touch of marjal have the potential for dark-work and even some of them never manage it. But whether they have the talent or not they will need to attain the patience-trance to make best contact.”

  “But what can the quantals do with their Path-walking apart from break stuff?”

  Sister Pan raised her voice, drawing the attention of those in the class not already listening in. “The marjals are conjurers. They touch the world’s power in many separate places, far from the Path. Which parts of the secret world they touch, and how deeply, depends on their individual nature and how thick the marjal runs in their veins.

  “The Path is different. It divides the living from the unliving. Some marjals touch only the living side of the world, others the unliving, a few touch both. Most marjals work with magics that lie far from the Path. The greatest marjals touch areas that lie close. But none touch or walk the Path itself. Their magics are many and usually minor, though often very helpful.

  “But the Path is about power. It is the source of power and the nature of it. Most quantals will only ever gather this power and release it in short, violent bursts. The energy of the Path is dangerous to hold on to. For the rare quantal, however, with sufficient skill, the right training, and years of practice, the energy gathered from the Path may be held and shaped and set to purpose without end. The Path is a line, but it is not straight. It touches and separates all things. The Path gives meaning to identity, to one thing being different and separate from the next. Its power can unravel the world . . . and create it anew.”

  Sister Pan looked around the class. “Now, if Clera will oblige me by not breaking any of the furniture in her haste to leave, those novices who want to may practise blade-path until the bell.” She set her stump to Nona’s shoulder as the chairs clattered and girls started for the stairs in a flutter and flap of habits. “You, Nona, will be staying.”

  As much as Nona would have liked to chase after the others the stiffness of her scars and the pain when she flexed them were sufficient to keep her seated even without the weight of Sister Pan’s attention upon her. Less than a minute later only Nona, Ara, Hessa, and Darla still occupied their seats, along with Zole and Alata’s pale, red-haired friend, Leeni.

  “Ara and Hessa will accompany me. You too, Nona. Darla, Zole, and Leeni continue your patience work.”

  Sister Pan crossed to the great chest and closed the lid before starting off down the spiral staircase. Hessa followed, awkward on her crutch. She glanced back at Nona, stay close!

  Nona tucked in behind Hessa, Ara at her back, and the three of them tracked Sister Pan down the tight spirals of the staircase.

  “Picture the Path, Nona. Don’t close your eyes, but see it. Don’t touch it but let it lead you.” Sister Pan’s voice echoed as if a vast hall held them rather than the narrowness of the steps. “Follow me. Not the stairs beneath your feet. Just follow me.”

  For a moment Nona saw the bright line of the Path across the dark wool of Hessa’s habit. The Path drew her—a burning crack, one line and many, straight as a spear and yet also twisting, its convolutions and loops filling the space between Hessa’s shoulders, reaching in and through as if she weren’t even there . . .

  “Here we are.” Sister Pan’s voice returned to its usual surprisingly youthful tone.

  Nona blinked. They were neither in the stairwell nor in the vast hall that she had sensed about her. The chamber curved as if it lived between the tower wall and the staircase, occupying a third of the full circle. It had no windows, only a series of small flames burning in alcoves for light. Six black-wood chairs stood in disorder at the middle of the room and every wall, even the floor and ceiling, lay crowded with sigils written in silver, bedded into the stone.

  “Sit.” Sister Pan waved at the chairs.

  Nona sat, staring up at the ceiling, heavy with gleaming silver. The sigils made writing—which had once looked fiendishly complex to her—seem foolishly simple. Each palm-sized symbol was a work of art, a single line folded into a complexity that burned into the backs of her eyes and began to fold her mind about it. They almost looked like fragments of the Path frozen into an instant.


  “Don’t stare, Nona. Generally it’s rude. Where sigils are concerned it can be dangerous.” Sister Pan set her fingers to the nearest wall. “These are the work of a marjal void-scribe, a master of the art, now long dead. They ensure that any accidents you have while attempting to walk the Path are confined to this room. I love this tower, just as Sister Tallow loves her hall, and I’d rather not have a reckless novice knock it down.

  “Only the other day . . . well, before you were born perhaps . . . Novice Segga touched the Path unexpectedly early upstairs. I’d just shown her the first serenity exercise . . . Anyway, she screamed so loud it blew the windows out. All my lovely stained glass. We found pieces of it embedded in the Dome of the Ancestor! It was a while before I could hear anything after that . . .” Sister Pan turned to Ara. “Novice Arabella, who has already heard me express my disappointment in her over the actions that saw Nona beaten, will begin.” She motioned for Hessa and Nona to join her at the far end of the room, close to the point where the wall’s curvature would hide them from sight.

  Nona came to stand beside the nun. She had the peculiar smell that old people get, no matter how clean they might be, not musty or sour or stale . . . just old.

  “Now that we know you are of the blood, Nona, you should understand that what we quantal do here in this convent is easier and more effective because of the shipheart. Where it beats, the space between the pieces of the world is narrowed. It is easier to touch the Path here, easier to walk it, easier to shape its energies.”

  “Really?” Nona had wanted to use a sharper word, one that might even be new to Clera’s foul-mouth, or the sailors who taught Ruli to swear . . . but she swallowed it. She stared up at Sister Pan. “Really? Because ‘easy’ isn’t a word I’d use for any of those things.” Mistress Blade had beaten her half to death before she could even make glancing contact with the Path.