Red Sister Read online

  Nona clutched her towel to her and found she was biting her lip too hard to explain that her mother wove baskets. She shook her head.

  “I don’t much care for farm-girls,” the new nun sniffed, her smile removing any sting.

  “This is Sister Kettle,” Sister Apple explained, shooing the other woman away. “And,” raising her voice as Sister Kettle vanished into the steams, “she loves country girls.” She returned to the benched area. “Come on. Get dressed.”

  Nona followed her and reached for the habit. Sister Apple brushed her hand away with a tut. “Smallclothes first.” She held out a confusing piece of white linen. Nona took it, frowning. Sister Apple watched her a moment then shook her head. “Farm-girls . . .”

  It took a couple of minutes and significant amounts of advice before Nona finally stepped out of the bathhouse in the full attire of a novice of the Sweet Mercy Convent of the Ancestor. The wind was shockingly cold on her face but the rest of her seemed surprisingly well protected. She stood in her double-sleeved robe, tied at the middle with a woollen belt, two underskirts rustling beneath, her feet feeling most strange in leather shoes drawn tight around them with laces. The only difference between her habit and Sister Apple’s appeared to be the lack of a headdress, the nun having restored the garments she’d shed inside.

  “The novices will be at breakfast in the refectory.” Sister Apple turned her head sharply and waved to someone across the wide yard. “Suleri!”

  The figure stopped, turned, and hurried towards them, a tall girl with long dark hair. “Yes, Sister?”

  “This is Nona: she’s to join Red Class for lessons. Take her to their meal table.” Sister Apple seemed suddenly more stern, someone to be reckoned with.

  “Yes, sister!” The older girl, perhaps fifteen, glanced down at Nona. “Come on.” And she walked away at a brisk pace, forcing Nona to run to keep up.

  They crossed a courtyard and turned a corner into a passageway, the bake-house on one side, the kitchens on the other. Suleri stopped and rounded on Nona, blocking her path.

  “You’re not her!” She seemed both furious and unconvinced. “The Chosen One wouldn’t be a skinny little hunska.”

  5

  WHEN HUNGER HAS been your lifelong companion the smell of food is a physical thing, an assault, a seduction, a deep-sunk hook that will reel you in. Nona forgot about Suleri’s anger. The convent’s wonders slipped from her mind. The flood of warmth on passing through the tall oak doors, the rapid, high-pitch babble of many voices that became almost a roar . . . none of it mattered. The aroma of fresh bread held her, the captivating scent of bacon sizzling, buttery eggs, scrambled and sprinkled with black pepper.

  “This way!” Suleri’s voice carried the edge added when someone has had to repeat themselves.

  She led Nona through a crowd of older novices chatting animatedly by the entrance. Nona’s head barely rose above belt-height on many of them.

  Four long tables ran across the width of the hall, each surrounded by high-backed chairs and with large bowls set along the centre. A dozen or more girls sat around each table save the nearest one where only a couple of novices had yet taken their place, both looking like grown women to Nona.

  “Is that her?” A voice from behind.

  The conversation around the doorway died to nothing and, glancing back, Nona found the novices staring down at her.

  “Red Class at the back, Grey Class next, Mystic . . .” Suleri slapped the table immediately before them. “And Holy!” She waved Nona away. “Go!”

  Nona advanced into the room under the scrutiny of the girls by the doors, arms straight at her sides, hands in fists. Despite the crowd she had never felt more alone. She bit her bottom lip hard enough to taste blood. Easing her jaw, she pressed her lips together in a thin, defiant line.

  The conversation failed at each table as she passed; by the time she reached the fourth the girls there were turning their chairs to watch.

  Nona stopped at the last table. The girls there ranged across a few years in age, though none looked quite as small or young as her. The hunger that had wrapped her stomach in its iron fist slipped away under the stares of half a hundred novices. She looked for a chair but all of them were occupied.

  “She’s not the one.” Suleri’s voice cut across the room. “She’s the dirty peasant we saw earlier. Look at her!” Ignoring her own command, the novice turned her attention to the plate before her, heaping it with bacon and bread.

  Nona’s treacherous stomach chose that moment to rumble more loudly than she had thought possible. The laughter that followed made her cheeks blaze and she stood, furious, staring at the floor, willing it to crack and burn. Instead, it was the laughter that cracked and fell into silence.

  Tall men in the furs of the red bear, and armoured beneath in bronze scales, came through the doors, novices scattering from their path. The warriors carried themselves imperiously, as though they might just walk over any too slow to get out of their way. Each wore a helm coiffed with chainmail and visored to mimic the sternest of faces without hint of mercy.

  Tacsis men! Come with their own rope to set right the mistake at Harriton, or perhaps to administer crueller justice of their own. Nona snatched the knife from the nearest girl’s plate and holding it before her, level with her eyes, she started to back towards the service door in the rear wall.

  The men ignored her. They stepped to either side, clearing the main entrance, and raised their visors to reveal faces that admitted no more compassion than had been engraved upon the metal. The abbess came through the open doors behind them, one hand gripping her crozier, its golden curl rising above her head, the other resting on the shoulder of a blonde girl perhaps a year older than Nona.

  “Novices, this is Arabella Jotsis. She will be joining our order.”

  “As was foretold!” Sister Wheel stepped out from behind the abbess, Sister Tallow to the other side. “As was foretold!” She cast about rapidly, her watery stare challenging anyone to disagree.

  Abbess Glass frowned. “We can be sure she is Arabella and that she is Jotsis. Anything else is open to interpretation.” She struck the heel of her staff to the floor, the sharp retort cutting off the novices’ mutterings. “We can also be sure that Arabella will study hard and be treated no differently from any other novice.”

  Sister Wheel seemed on the point of saying something but at a glance from the abbess closed her mouth with a snap.

  “Additionally, we may be certain that Novice Nona understands that it is impolite to point a knife at guests,” the abbess added, tilting her head in Nona’s direction.

  Nona set the blade back on the table with a guilty hand as laughter rose about her.

  “Gentlemen.” Abbess Glass looked left then right. “Your duty is dispatched. Arabella is now the charge of the convent and her care rests in my hands.”

  The four men inclined their heads and turned, marching out of the building without a word to either the abbess or the girl they had delivered.

  Arabella herself didn’t appear to notice their departure. She looked, to Nona, like a different kind of creature, set apart from the dull and dirty humans who scurried about the world. Her hair seemed to glow golden in the light that reached through the still-open doors. Her travelling clothes were a wonder of brushed suede and fur-edged leather, with a magnificent dark red cape across her shoulders secured by a gold chain. Where others might be described by their collection of flaws Arabella Jotsis’s only identifying feature seemed to be that she was without blemish. Perhaps the Ancestor looked like this, but people didn’t.

  “Your table is at the end, Arabella. I’m sure Red Class will welcome you into their ranks. Nona too.” The abbess nodded towards the end of the room and took her guiding hand from the girl’s shoulder.

  “Best behaviour!” Sister Tallow added, running a hard stare across the room. And with that, Abbess
Glass led the nuns from the refectory.

  Arabella Jotsis surveyed her new classmates with a sort of serene confidence and stepped forward as if not only had she lived here all her life, but also as if she owned the place and paid the wages of everyone around her. As she drew near the table an older girl from table three hurried up behind her with a spare chair.

  The girl whose knife Nona had snatched stood up the moment the doors closed behind the departing nuns. Tall, slim and pale, her hair a black and wild tangle of curls, she seemed less impressed with the golden newcomer than the rest of the novices. “You’ll find that the Ancestor doesn’t order any special treatment for royalty here, Arabella. Minor or otherwise. Your father’s title might let him crush honest men down in Verity, but up here fights are one on one and it’s skill that counts, not rank.”

  Arabella hardly deigned to glance at the girl. “Your father put himself in prison, Clera Ghomal. He made a poor merchant.” She sat, like a princess, in the offered chair. “And a worse thief.” Her accent was new to Nona, rich and precise, words clipped, the emphasis on odd syllables.

  Clera balled her hands into fists. “Be careful what you say—”

  “Oh please. You come from a family of money-grubbers who have lost their money . . . which makes them just . . . grubbers. Let it lie. From what I understand we will all have plenty of opportunity for hitting each other later. So do be quiet and let me eat.” Arabella took a roll of crusty bread and broke it onto her plate.

  “Thank you for making it so clear.” Clera sneered. “How terrible for you to have to endure the company of people who don’t own their bodyweight in jewellery. How can you stand to mix with us?” She reached out and took Nona’s hand. “I suppose you hate Nona here most of all. Imagine, a peasant girl dining at the same table as a daughter of the Jotsis!”

  Arabella spread butter onto the halves of her roll. “I’m not in the least interested in you or your skinny hunska peasant, Ghomal. Now do sit down, you both look ridiculous.”

  Clera dropped Nona’s hand and took a step towards Arabella. “I—”

  “Clera!” Suleri’s voice cut across her from the far end of the room. “Sit down. Shut up. Save it for Sister Tallow’s class or you’ll find yourself working in the laundry for a month.”

  Clera sat down, mouth set in a vicious line. A heartbeat later she grinned, leaned back and pulled across a chair just vacated by a novice leaving the next table. “Nona. Take a seat. You look hungry.”

  6

  ON HIS WAGON Giljohn had fed Nona far better than her mother had ever been able to. At the Caltess the food had been better still and Nona’s bones had begun to sink from sight like a city child’s. The refectory at Sweet Mercy Convent put the Caltess meals to shame. Nona ate meat in whole pieces for the first time she could remember, not just a shred here or there but thick slices of bacon still hot from the pan. She wrapped them in crusty bread and chewed with dedication, scattering crumbs everywhere, while Clera chatted easily at her side.

  The merchant’s daughter made no further mention of Arabella, not even glancing down the table in her direction. Instead she rattled on cheerfully about what could be expected from the day, requiring little from Nona in return save the occasional grunt or “yes” in the brief gaps when her mouth wasn’t full.

  “Ghena’s the youngest in the class, she’s still nine. Me and Ruli are eleven. We’ll probably move into Grey soon—that’s Class Two. Class One is Red. Sister Oak is our mistress but we don’t see a lot of her.” Clera paused to watch Nona eat. “You really were hungry!”

  “Mgmmmm.”

  “Our first class is Academia with Sister Rule—that’s everything from numbers and reading to history and geometry. Right now we’re doing geography.”

  A full mouth saved Nona from having to admit that she didn’t know what geometry or geography were.

  “We have Blade this afternoon—we’re doing unarmed, but later we learn knives and stars, the older ones learn swords, and tactics and strategy too. In Red Class everyone studies everything. Later on the Holy Sisters do more Academia and Spirit classes. Martial Sisters do mostly Blade. Sisters of Discretion concentrate on Shade. Mystic Sisters spend their time learning Path. Everyone calls the Martial Sisters the Red Sisters, and the Mystic Sisters are Holy Witches—but don’t let a nun hear you call them witches!”

  Nona kept eating, letting the confusion of names wash over her. It would sink in given time. She finished the bacon, struggled through the scrambled egg, but the bread bowl defeated her, sitting before her with three crusty rolls still nestled at the bottom. She had never stopped eating while food remained before her: to do so seemed desperately wrong.

  “Come on!” Clera put a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll be really late.”

  Looking up, Nona saw that they were the last two at the table. She glanced behind her and saw that only three other novices remained in the hall.

  Clera hurried towards the main doors. “Come on!”

  Nona followed, hands folded over her aching belly, so full it hurt to walk, let alone run. Clera led the way back past the dormitory building and across a quadrangle, cloisters to one side, a rectangular pool and fountain in the middle. Above the range forming the western end the sails of a windmill could just be seen passing through the top of their cycle. Clera hurried Nona out through a corridor penetrating the north range.

  “That’s the Academia.” She pointed ahead to an ornate tower close to the cliffs on the plateau’s north side. Together they half walked, half ran to the archway at its base. A rapid ascent by the stone steps of a spiral staircase brought them to an oak door, the steps continuing up. Clera stopped at the door and pushed on through to the room beyond.

  “There’s no one here.” Nona felt stupid the moment the words left her, a peasant girl stating the obvious. The classroom lay in shadow. A large, elderly cat watched from its grey curl in the far corner: Malkin, the abbess’s beast. Four rows of empty desks faced a polished table in front of a chalk-marked board. A confusion of maps and charts decorated the wall behind that, so many that pieced together they might show the whole world.

  “Damnation!” Clera ran to one of the windows and threw open the shutters. Diamonds of glass, leaded together into a continuous sheet, ensured that only the light came in while the cold stayed out. She pressed her face to the panes, turning one way then the other. “She’s taken them out somewhere—can’t see them . . .”

  Nona advanced towards the desk. It held all manner of fascinating objects, not least three leather-bound books and a large ledger beside a quill and inkpot. The objects that drew her though were a dog’s skull, a clear crystal nearly a foot long and too wide to close her hand about, and a glistening white ball in a brass stand. This last held her attention until she found herself beside it, knees bumping against the desk.

  “What is it?” Nona set a finger to the enamelled whiteness of the ball, finding it rough beneath her touch, tiny ridges catching the light. It was a little larger than her head and perfectly round. A stand held it top and bottom so that it could rotate. And around its middle, like a belt, a very thin strand of colour no thicker than a piece of string.

  “Don’t touch! Mistress Academia would have a fit!” Clera elbowed Nona out of the way and immediately ignored her own instruction by setting the thing spinning on its pivots. “It’s the world, silly.”

  “The world?” That made no sense at all.

  “Abeth.” Clera huffed her breath out as if Nona’s stupidity had hit her in the stomach. “A model of it.”

  Nona blinked. Her world had been the village, the forests, the fields, and in the distance the northern ice forming one wall of the Corridor. She hadn’t ever considered that it might have a shape and if she had she would not have guessed at a ball, white or otherwise.

  “It’s a globe.” Clera reached out to stop it spinning. “We live . . . here.” She put her finge
r on the line around the middle.

  “We do?” Nona leaned in to look more closely.

  “Want to see something special?” Clera grinned. Without waiting for an answer she set one hand to the top of the globe and the other to the bottom then, with a little effort, rotated each in opposite directions. Smoothly and without noise the lower part of the white surface began to retreat. Nona saw that it was not one piece as she had imagined but comprised many bladed parts that shuffled beneath each other like the feathers of a folding wing. In consequence the cord-thin strip of colour girdling the globe widened, first to a finger’s width, then wider and wider still until Nona’s whole hand couldn’t cover it. The pattern of jewel-enamelled blues and greens and browns fascinated her eye.

  “What—”

  “That’s the world fifty thousand years ago, long before the tribes even came.” Clera rotated the halves back slowly and the ice advanced. “All the people that lived across all these lands pushed back.” She returned the ice sheets to their original position. “Pushed into this tiny corridor as the sun got old and weak.”

  “How could they fit?” Nona imagined them running before the ice.

  Clera shrugged. “Mistress Blade says people need room. You can squash them in only so far, then the bleeding starts, and when it’s done . . . there’s just about enough room again.”

  “It’s good to see that some of your lessons stick, Novice Clera.”

  Both girls turned to see the doorway behind them now almost entirely full of Sister Rule, the convent’s Mistress Academia, a woman of considerable height and still more considerable girth, all wrapped in the dark grey of a nun’s habit. Sister Rule pushed on into the classroom, the rest of Red Class filing in behind her, diverging towards their allotted desks. Arabella already had three girls pressed around her and they took seats beside each other, all of them smirking behind their hands.