Grey Sister Read online

  The abbess glanced at Zole who had stood so impassive and immobile that it took an effort to remember she was there at all. “Sherzal told us that Zole was the only survivor from the town of Ytis on the empire’s border with Scithrowl. Why would she be in any particular danger on the ice?”

  The judge narrowed his eyes. “She spent her early years on the ice and unfortunately spent considerable time in the company of the criminal, Yisht, who stole the Sweet Mercy shipheart. It is possible she might wish to return to her parents’ tribe on the ice or to seek Yisht’s tribe out of some misplaced affection for the fugitive.” He turned in his chair to face Zole. “I’m sure you’d like to swap your habit for something a bit more fashionable and join Sherzal at her palace, wouldn’t you? There’s a grand party coming up. She has exciting plans and wants you to be part of them!”

  Zole regarded the judge without expression. “There are many things here I have yet to learn.”

  “But Sherzal has teachers for you, child! Safira is waiting to resume your weapons training, and Sherzal can call upon instructors from the Academy itself!”

  “I will ask the abbess for guidance,” Zole said.

  “And I will give it.” Glass hid her surprise and placed both hands flat upon the table. “Now, have you any more business to discuss, Irvone?”

  The judge shook his head in resignation. “This is a poor decision, abbess.”

  “Even so.”

  And with that push Abbess Glass set a new game in play, one domino falling into the next. So many pieces to fall, so many chances to fail. No one but her understood the game yet, but that didn’t mean she would win it. A thrill of fear ran through her. But the ice pressed in on both sides and somewhere high above them the moon continued its fall. It was time to move.

  6

  NONA LAY AWAKE her second night in the Mystic dormitory thinking she would never sleep. Joeli had retired to her cluster of friends and then to bed with nothing but hard looks thrown in Nona’s direction. Even so when the lamps were extinguished Nona curled beneath her blankets wondering if there and then in the darkness the girl was picking at the jumble of her thoughts, seeking loose threads on which to pull.

  However long Nona tossed and turned before her dreams took her it was not long enough to see Zole return. In the morning the ice-triber rose early and was leaving the room as Nona threw back her covers.

  Nona finally trapped her at breakfast, taking her seat next to Zole who sat, head lowered, eating with her usual dedication as if it were a chore to be accomplished as swiftly as possible. Nona picked up her fork, glancing at the heaped and steaming bowls lined along the middle of the table. “You didn’t see me.” She kept her voice low, leaning towards Zole. “In blade-path you didn’t see what happened.”

  “No.”

  “But you told the convent table that you did . . .”

  “No.”

  “But you said—”

  “I told them you didn’t strangle the girl.”

  “But you didn’t see . . .”

  “Are you given to lying?” Zole looked up from her porridge.

  “No . . .”

  “The abbess says words are steps along a path—the important thing is to get where you’re going.” Zole shrugged and returned to her porridge.

  Nona hesitated then spoke. “Is this because I saved your life when Raymel . . .”

  Zole swallowed. “My life was only in danger because of your actions.”

  “What? I saved—”

  “If you had killed Raymel Tacsis at your first attempt I would not have been lying poisoned in a cave. You should have cut his head off.”

  Nona sat back. Zole hadn’t spoken so many words in a row to her for years, perhaps ever. Over on the Grey table Ara and Ruli were laughing at Jula who seemed to be demonstrating knife moves with a spoon. Nona grinned. It would be good when they joined her in Mystic. She’d feel safer sleeping in the same room as Joeli Namsis with Ara in the next bed.

  “You should hide him better.” Zole pushed her bowl back.

  “Sorry?” Nona turned from watching her friends.

  “You are careless. You lack control. I have seen him at your wrists when we fight, and at your neck when you are screeching.”

  “I don’t screech!”

  “Like a haunt-owl.”

  “I—” Nona suddenly realized that whether she screeched or not wasn’t the important thing here. She lowered her voice, staring at Zole’s dark eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You’ve seen nothing!”

  Zole shrugged. “On the ice we know the klaulathu. We do not run from them screaming ‘devils’ like you people huddling in the Corridor.”

  Nona restrained herself from pointing out that Zole had been huddling with them for at least the past five years. “Klaulathu? Do you know how to get rid of them?”

  Keot rose along her spine. I can only leave when you die.

  Zole stood. “It is possible but hard. Better to live with him. They are of the Missing, you understand this? Pieces of the Missing that they abandoned before they crossed the Path.” She walked off, leaving Nona openmouthed.

  “Looked as though you got more than three words out of the Argatha!” Darla sat down heavily beside Nona and started to heap her plate.

  “Well, I am her Shield!” Nona reached for the food too. She made it a point of honour to always eat more than Darla managed, and Darla had an appetite most bears would envy.

  “Path first today,” Darla grumbled. She took three smoked kippers.

  “Not too bad.” Nona took four.

  “For you maybe. For me it’s a choice between meditation until my brain runs out of my ears, or begging off to see if I can get past four steps on blade-path.”

  Nona shovelled eggs and kept a diplomatic silence. Darla had the worst sense of balance of any novice at the convent. Path lessons for those with quantal blood at least consisted of more than hunting for serenity, clarity, and patience. Nona had a much more interesting time under Sister Pan’s close guidance, but every attempt to reach the Path was a reminder of the day Hessa died. With the shipheart gone, reaching the Path, which had always been a trial, became a feat of near-impossible difficulty. On the day Nona had fought Raymel somehow the depth of her anger, or being thread-bound to Hessa who was so close to the shipheart, had let her run the Path. In the years since, Nona had touched the Path on just a dozen occasions. Only in recent months had Nona regained the same level of competence without the shipheart’s presence as she had when it was kept at the convent.

  “Practise the patience trance,” Nona advised. “It’ll make the lesson more bearable.” She crammed an overfull fork into her mouth.

  Darla grimaced. “I don’t have the patience to learn the patience trance. It’s a vicious circle.” She filled her mouth too and they chomped at each other a while. Despite the gerant girl welcoming Nona to their first class together with a beating, they’d become firm friends, not that an outside observer would know it from the number of insults Darla threw Nona’s way.

  * * *

  • • •

  ZOLE, JOELI AND Nona entered Path Tower by three different doors. Nona had found the east held a sense of rightness about it that the others lacked. Joeli came through the west in opposition. Zole came through the north, perhaps remembering her origins out on the ice.

  In the classroom at the top of the tower they found themselves seats amid the play of light from the stained glass windows. The classroom was freezing as usual and the novices’ breath misted before them. The tower had been built without fireplaces, relying on the shipheart warming the oil pipes that ran the length of the structure. Sigils on the pipes closest to the shipheart had converted its power into heat. Many of the convent’s buildings had been adapted since the loss and the wind now stripped the smoke from a score of chimneys, but Sister Pan had resisted change.

  “Welcome Mystic Class girls, welcome.” The ancient woman sat on her treasure chest, wrapped in a fox-fur ro
be for which the abbess had sought special dispensation from the high priest on account of Sister Pan being close on a hundred with nobody left alive who could say whether each year was now taking her closer to that century mark or further past it. “Zole and Nona have joined us! It’s a rare class that boasts three quantals.”

  Two days earlier Joeli had been the only quantal in the class and the sole recipient of Sister Pan’s attentions. Joeli scowled and wrapped the illegal shawl tighter around the faked bruising on her neck. She didn’t look well pleased at having to share.

  “Clarity today, girls.” Sister Pan rubbed her hand over her stump and huddled deeper into her furs. “I’ve put the etching of the Holothian labyrinth against the wall.” She nodded for Darla to uncover it. “There is a second path from door to tomb. First find your clarity, then find that route. Eyes only.” She glanced at Darla as she sat down: the gerant had been known to leave her chair and try tracing paths with her finger. “Zole, Nona, and Joeli will accompany me.”

  The three novices fell in behind Mistress Path. At least the practice rooms were warmer, lacking windows. And if they were lucky Sister Pan would let them use any Path-energy they managed to channel to heat the room first before trying anything more complex.

  Nona allowed her vision to defocus and summoned the Path’s image out of the blurred confusion. She let the flickers of light from Pan’s lantern fuse into a single burning line and followed it, her feet somehow losing contact with the reality of stone steps.

  “Follow close.” Sister Pan’s voice, disembodied in a space both vast beyond measure and small beyond imagining. “A different room today.”

  Nona stumbled out of the void into a narrow curving chamber very similar to the one in which she had practised her Path-work for the years since her gift showed. It stood between the spiral of the central stair and the circle of the tower’s outer wall, occupying another third of the space. The only difference lay in the nature of the sigils inlaid in silver upon the ceiling, floor, and every wall. These ones were smaller, more complex, less tightly bound. In places loops and trails from one overwrote the next, and no two looked the same.

  “The thread-room.” She hadn’t meant to speak. Hessa had told her about the chamber.

  “It’s time you and Zole got to grips with thread-work,” Sister Pan said. “Walking the Path arms a Mystic Sister with forces that are very hard to use for anything but destruction. Here we focus on the more subtle Path-arts, but although they are gentle one must never underestimate them. I believe our own dear abbess has some hint of quantal blood and a rare unconscious talent for the most ephemeral thread-work. Done right, a gentle pull here, a touch there, a breath just sufficient to set a thread vibrating . . . and kings may be toppled, wars turned, the weak raised up.” She gave the lantern to Joeli who moved to light three others. “Thread-work is a delicate art, which is why you two have never been any good at it. It rewards patience, observation, and empathy. There is no violence to it, though that does not preclude its use for malice. Hate can be a cold thing.” She pushed Nona aside and stood between her and Zole. Nona heard the creak of Pan’s bones as she moved. When the nun stood hunched at her side Nona realized with sudden surprise that she was taller than the old woman, and more solid. A single blow would shatter Sister Pan. A sense of unease came over Nona. It felt wrong somehow that so much knowledge and experience could be so fragile.

  “I will show you.” Sister Pan raised her hand and stared into the space beyond it.

  Nona waited, watching. When Nona had arrived at the convent Sister Pan had loomed over her as all the other nuns did. There were still more secrets locked in her head than Nona could ever learn, the keys to powers untold . . . and yet she looked so small, so frail, waiting to cross the Path, so close that the devils must be licking their lips.

  She is old, but I would not dare her.

  Nona looked again. Keot was never one to miss a chance to boast. It gave her comfort to know he feared Mistress Path.

  “Watch!” The air before Sister Pan filled with the bright complexity of the Path, a moving, living thing, twisting through more dimensions than the eye could fathom. “When wool is spun on the wheel a single length of yarn is wound around the spindle. But all around that strand of yarn there is a halo of loose pieces, fibres of wool not quite twisted in, wandering out from the main body.”

  As Sister Pan spoke the Path dimmed and in the air all around it threads appeared, like stars when the sun has fled the sky. “The threads are not the Path but they are of the Path. And because the Path goes everywhere and runs through all things, so do the threads.”

  Nona wondered if Sister Pan had chosen to speak of yarn to explain the matter because she knew Nona was a peasant and might not understand a different analogy so well. She was still wondering about it when she became aware that her mouth was open. She closed her jaw with a snap and wiped her lips. The image Sister Pan had made was mesmerizing. With an effort she tore her gaze from it.

  “It’s fascinating is it not?” Sister Pan’s smile was a narrow white crescent in the darkness of her face. “I could watch it forever.”

  The slow motion of the threads reflected in Zole’s and Joeli’s eyes.

  “There’s a danger there,” Sister Pan said. “The Path will throw you, sooner or later, but the threads will hold you. If you lack the will to free yourself they will keep you until your years have run from you and all that remains is to cross the Path into darkness.” She waved at the pattern and it faded, releasing the others.

  Joeli blinked and focused on Nona. “Mistress Path, you said that these two novices have no talent for thread-work because they’re so predisposed to violence. But do you think they might just be violent because they know they lack the talent for deeper work?” A small smile played on her lips, as if the humiliation at the convent table had never happened.

  Sister Pan waggled her hand. “We shall see. Path-work is closer to the brute force approach of the Red Sister, and thread-work more subtle, like the arts of the Grey Sister, all stealth and guile. Mystic Sisters shade either towards the Red or Grey.”

  “I would rather be open. Straightforward. Honest.” Nona wrinkled her nose. “Manipulating people, using them, feels wrong. It feels like . . . lies. People should be allowed free will . . .”

  Sister Pan barked a laugh. “We’re all puppets. Other people pull our strings every moment of every day. The only difference between us and Sayan-Ra dancing in the street show is that we can also pull our own strings and those of others. Threads aren’t something external to the world that only a privileged few can touch. Every time you speak to someone threads are pulled. Every glance exchanged. Every punch thrown. Every kindness shown. In thread-work we are just more direct about it. More focused.” She turned and fixed Nona with her dark eyes. “You need to know how to draw a thread or how will you prevent your own from being drawn?” She reached forward, plucking at the air with finger and thumb. “At first it will help you to visualize the task, see it before you, use your hands. It’s nonsense of course. Not needed. But the mind loves the familiar. There!” She pinched and pulled. “How do you feel, Nona?”

  “Hungry!” Nona clapped both hands across her stomach. “Starved!”

  “Basic needs, simple emotions, are the easiest to influence.” Sister Pan opened her fingers as if releasing what she held. “And now?”

  “Full of breakfast.” Nona laughed despite herself, then frowned. “But you couldn’t do that with just words.”

  “I couldn’t?” Sister Pan tilted her head. “If I described a roast chicken in exquisite detail, steaming on a plate of buttered potatoes, its skin golden and crisp, seasoned with salt and pepper . . . your mouth wouldn’t begin to water? Your stomach rumble?”

  Nona’s mouth had already filled with saliva. When it came to food her strings were remarkably easy to pull. “Hessa worked with threads when she tried to stop Yisht stealing the shipheart.” She shot an angry glance at Joeli then frowned at Zole, who st
ill, years later, felt tainted by that association. “And I saw it because we were thread-bound.”

  “Young Hessa was a remarkable talent. I’ve not seen another so gifted at such an age in all the years I’ve taught. She was a great loss.” Sister Pan settled her hand on Nona’s shoulder. “And perhaps you will have an aptitude for thread-binding, novice. It’s a rare skill and difficult to achieve but always greatly aided by strong and honest friendship between both parties. It only ever works between quantals though. You need to share the same blood.”

  Sister Pan stepped back and addressed them all. “Two things you should always remember. Firstly: you can never pull the same thread twice. Every action you take changes the thing you act upon and changes its connections to the world. Secondly: you can never pull just a single thread. Every thread is bound to every other, sometimes through many links, though always fewer than you might imagine. Pull one thread and others are pulled: the effect spreads like a ripple on a pond. You can play at thread-work and think that you are alone, but if you pull on a strand of a web hard enough and often enough . . . a spider will come. It is the same with the threads that bind the universe. Sooner or later you will be noticed. The “spiders” will, like as not, be humans, older, more powerful quantal thread-workers, marjal sorcerers with particular talents, intuitives such as Abbess Glass. But there are bigger spiders out there too. This world is not ours: it is older than us, the Missing were gone before our ships beached here. When the Corridor was a thousand miles wide and there was no moon in the sky they were gone. Echoes of them live among the threads, vibrations that will not fade. And there are others; their servants and things more ancient still. So tread softly, work sparingly, and hope.” She waved her stump at the walls. “In here, however, there is no need for hope. The sigils seal us from the world, and the few threads that penetrate even these walls are beyond your reach.”

  The morning’s exercises began with Nona and Zole paired, each seeking to visualize the threads that bound the other to the world.