“Nona! Sister Tallow didn’t cut your head off!” Ruli jumped to her feet as Nona approached.
“It was Sister Iron, our new Mistress Blade.” Nona wasn’t supposed to speak about the test but she felt she could share this much.
“New what?”
“But Sister Tallow—”
“Did you pass?” Ara cut across the others.
“Yes, I passed.” Nona raised a hand to forestall Ara’s next question. “And I got a sword.”
“We’re not to call you Nona Pink then?” Jula grinned.
“No.” Nona sat down with Ruli. “If they let me take my orders I’ll be a proper Red.”
“So how did—”
“We’re not here to talk about my Blade-test,” Nona said. “We’re here to talk about Jula’s book.”
“Hey, it’s not my book,” Jula protested.
“A pity. If it was your book we wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble to steal it.” Ketti frowned, then brightened as if finding new resolve.
“We’ve been talking through it again, Nona. We’re agreed. We need two things to pull this off, and we’re going to have to steal both of them, and I’ve no idea how.” Ara held up two fingers to count them off.
“We have to steal before we can steal,” Ruli interrupted, showing no sign of remorse at the proposed criminality. “And we’re meeting underground with one candle. It’s like we’re Noi-Guin!”
Ara scowled at Ruli’s enthusiasm. “One, we need the Book of Lost Cities from Sister Pan’s secret stash. That’s got to be in the Third Room. Unless we have a forbidden book to take back we’re not going to have a reason to be anywhere near the high priest’s vault.” She pulled her second finger back. “Two, we need the abbess’s seal of office. Without her seal on our message they’ll never let us in.”
Nona raised one of her fingers. “We also need the eye-drops the Poisoner was working on.”
Jula looked shocked. “She stashed those away for good reason, Nona. They’re dangerous. She said you could go blind using them.”
“They’re the only way I’ll get in there unrecognised,” Nona said.
“Plus they make you look good,” Ketti added.
“It doesn’t have to be you, Nona,” Ara said. “Any of us could do it.”
“It has to be me. And it doesn’t matter about looking good, Ketti.” Nona shot her a narrow glance. Though it was true that she had loved those few days when her eyes had looked like any other person’s. Regol had said he liked her the way she was normally. Unique. But whatever he said he had spent a long time looking into her newly cleared eyes and part of her wanted that again. “Four!” Nona said before Ara and Jula could object. “We need a brilliant marjal empath or this just won’t work.”
“So, four impossible things then.” Ara swirled darkness around the candle flame, making shadow birds take flight.
“No.” Nona shook her head. “Just two. Like you said.”
“But—”
“I found us an empath at the fight rings last night. The strongest I’ve ever met.” Four mouths opened. Nona spoke first. “And I have this.” She drew from her habit a disc of amber, carved in deep relief on one side, its edge guarded by a hoop of gold, the whole thing making slow revolutions on its golden chain.
“The abbess’s seal . . .” Jula stared at it, wide-eyed. “How . . . ?”
“I stole it from her when she embraced me after the Blade-test.”
6
HOLY CLASS
Present Day
KETTLE MOVED THROUGH the town wrapped in a cocoon of shadow. In an hour the great red eye of the sun would see the carnage for itself but no other witness remained to watch it roll back the night. The fires had burned out, the smoke stripped away by the wind, but the stink of burning remained. The stink and the dead and the ruins of their homes.
The Scithrowl had spared none. They left the corpses of their own scattered infrequently here and there among the bodies of farmers, weavers, shepherds, and of children who might one day have taken up those trades. A small blond girl lay broken in the doorway to an unburned hut, her hair straw and mud. A woman nearby curled around the wound that had killed her. The mud showed how far she had dragged herself to reach her daughter, but she had died three yards short of touching her child that last time.
In the harbour a single boat still burned amid the blackened and half-sunken wrecks. From behind Kettle’s eyes Nona wondered what its cargo was that it should sustain a flame when all else had long since guttered into darkness. She knew that Kettle had drawn her sleeping mind along their thread-bond to show her something. Too often lately Nona had rolled yawning from her bed after first waking in the small hours to find herself inhabiting Kettle as the Grey Sister stalked her prey. Last time it had been a Scithrowl commander amid his army of five hundred soldiers. Kettle had ghosted among the lesser tents and cut her way into the grand pavilion in which the officer slept beneath hoola furs. Nona could make no sense of it: signposting their leaders with such luxury. The empire generals slept in tents identical to those of the common soldiers to foil just such assassination attempts.
Kettle turned from the dark lake and moved on through the town towards its margins. She had something to show Nona. She rarely spoke on these tutorials, needing all her focus to keep herself alive. Even here Scithrowl softmen might be lurking, ready to kill or capture scouts, or Noi-Guin assassins, loyal to neither side, only to the coin that paid their fee.
Ahead of them loomed a larger building, no detail hidden from Kettle’s darksight. A stone construction, the roof gone, presumably taken by flames, though the stink of burning hung less heavily here. Kettle closed the distance. Grave markers stood behind the building. Dozens of them. A church then. Kettle glanced skyward to where the Hope burned white amid the crimson-scattered heavens. A Hope church then, roofless by design so that the white light could reach in and wash away all sin.
And suddenly, as Kettle approached the shattered doors, Nona knew where she was. White Lake, not eighty miles from the walls of Verity. White Lake, where her mother lay beneath the ground and doubtless now Preacher Mickel lay sprawled upon it. Adoma had splinter armies pillaging just five days’ march from the capital. Swift horses could bring them to the foot of the Rock of Faith in less than half that time.
Something caught Kettle’s eye. Something Nona had missed. Kettle pressed herself to the church wall, pulling darkness to herself as if drawing a breath. The night entered her as ink soaks into blotting paper. There, out across the graveyard, a pale, questing tentacle, almost flat to the ground, insubstantial as mist. Another, yards long, snaking out between the graves. A pain spider, some creature of the softmen in service to the Scithrowl battle-queen Adoma. Rumour had it that they bred such monstrosities, releasing demons from the black ice into unholy alliance with flesh.
More tentacles insinuated themselves across the barren ground, one thin as leather and broad as a hand sliding noiselessly over the top of the church wall just yards from Kettle’s head. Even at that distance her skin sang with echoes of the agony its touch would bring.
Nona woke sweat-soaked and alone, her body hunched, arms tight around her. She lay in the darkness of the Holy Class dormitory trying to still a racing heart. Kettle had kicked her out, requiring her whole concentration.
Sleep did not return that night. They were coming to the sharp end of things. The peace of the convent, seemingly eternal, would not last. Idle days, bickering among friends, the rivalries of children, all of it was passing into memory. A black tide was coming from the east and all the empire hadn’t the strength to stand before it.
* * *
• • •
“WE DON’T EVEN know the book exists. It’s not as if the high priest posts a list of forbidden books on his door.” Ara stood with Jula and Nona in the lee of the Dome of the Ancestor, watching Path Tower, a dark fin
ger of stone.
“The Inquisition burned my History of Saint Devid,” Nona said.
“It wasn’t yours, and Kettle shouldn’t have allowed it in the scriptorium library,” Jula said primly. “And that was a banned book, not a forbidden one. Banned books are burned, forbidden ones are just . . . forbidden.”
“So how come Sister Pan has one, if it even exists?” Ara asked.
“We know it exists because there are references to it that they forgot to remove from other books by Aquinas. And we know that Sister Pan has a copy because she quotes from it when talking about the lost cities.”
“You haven’t read it! How do you know she’s quoting from it?” Ara rolled her eyes.
“Aquinas has a very distinctive prose style.” Jula folded her arms.
“That’s it? We’re breaking into Sister Pan’s secret room based on distinctive prose style?” Ara asked.
“How do you know she hasn’t memorized the quotes?” Nona demanded.
“She still calls you Nina sometimes.” Jula grinned.
“Fair point.” Nona nodded slowly. “So I just have to get into the Third Room . . .”
“Or I do,” Ara said.
“Do you know how?” Nona asked.
“No, but you don’t either.”
Nona started towards the tower. “We’ll both try, then.”
* * *
• • •
NONA NARROWED HER eyes at Path Tower, black against the wash of the sky. Sister Rule taught that it was the oldest building on the Rock of Faith, predating the convent by centuries. Given that all save the top and bottommost rooms lacked doors or windows, Nona supposed it had been built for a powerful Path-mage though no records remained to name the first occupant. She approached the east entrance, apprehension rising. It wasn’t as if they were about to attempt the impossible. Every novice with ambitions to be a Mystic Sister had to enter the Third Room unaided. It was part of the Path-test. Maybe all of it. Nona would choose the red habit, not the sky colours of the Mystics, but she wanted to pass the Path-test even so.
Ruli followed Nona in through the east door; Ara entered by the north. They met at the bottom of the stairs in the room of portraits. Two dozen or more Mystic Sisters regarded them from wooden frames. Each woman was pictured amid abstract representations of her magic, the variety remarkable. Nona’s favourite was a young redheaded Holy Witch whose hair became flames. When you looked closer at her you could see that in the darkness of each pupil a tiny star burned crimson.
“We know two things,” Nona said as Ara joined them.
“What?”
“Firstly it’s all about Path. Otherwise Joeli would have cracked it months ago.” Ara and Nona had been waiting an age for the individual training Sister Pan gave candidates for the Path-test. The old woman liked to instruct one novice at a time and whatever lessons she had been trying to teach hadn’t been getting through Joeli’s skull. “Joeli Namsis couldn’t take two steps on the Path if you threw her at it.”
“True . . .” Ara nodded.
“And secondly we know that it must be different for each person, otherwise Pan would just have trained the three of us together.”
Ara began to climb the stairs, Jula and Nona on her heels. They went up in silence, stopping just below the classroom.
“Should we really be doing this?” Jula asked for the tenth time that morning.
“No,” said Ara.
“We’re not doing this. At least you aren’t, Jula. And it was your idea! Forget whether we should be doing it. Will the book get us into the high priest’s library? Will the library have Aquinas’s Book of the Moon? And will the moon save the empire?” Nona watched the girl’s face, pale in the daylight that filtered down from the trapdoor to the classroom.
“The moon’s the only hope,” Jula said, her voice small.
Nona nodded. Jula had real faith in Aquinas and his book. Kettle had shown Nona the conflict’s horrors through their thread-bond. The empire was losing on both fronts. It would not be long before those horrors arrived at Verity’s walls, and if the emperor fell, then the empire was lost, the Ark taken. Kettle had said the end would come in months rather than years. The Grey Sister scouted for the emperor’s armies both east and west. Adoma’s hordes seemed to be endlessly replaced, ready to spend their lives for the battle-queen, and she ready to spend them. Sherzal had all but filled the Grand Pass with Scithrowl corpses and still they had flooded over the Grampains.
The ferocity of Sherzal’s defence and the cleverness of her stepped retreat had been what forced the emperor to overlook reports of her planned treason. Sherzal had organised and directed the ongoing attacks in the mountains to continually disrupt Adoma’s supply lines. That and a scorched-earth withdrawal had slowed Adoma’s advance from a charge that would have reached Verity in weeks to a crawl that had taken almost two years to get just over halfway, but like with thin ice, a slow creaking could become a sudden plunge into freezing death, and the empire’s defence had started to fracture weeks ago. Emperor Crucical needed his sister.
The Durns to the west were a different breed, not fanatics these, and given to quarrelling among themselves, but blood-hungry and backed by the magics of their priests. They had crossed the Marn Sea in their barges, coming in force once news of the Scithrowl victories reached them. Their holy men came to war wielding sickwood staves and wreaking havoc with both marjal fire-work and water-work. Nona had seen too many towns aflame, too many families strewn across the fields from which they tried to feed themselves.
The emperor kept the Red and the Grey close, and the Mystics as a last reserve, but soon he would unleash them all. Whether that would turn the tide of war, push the Scithrowl back beyond the mountains, drown the Durns in a red sea, Nona didn’t know. She only knew that in the land left behind such a conflict, the dead would outnumber the living.
* * *
• • •
SISTER PAN ALWAYS led the way when she took novices to the sealed rooms. She had taken Nona and Ara to the first two rooms. The third they knew to exist only because the tower held space for it and because every novice knew that the Path-test required you to reach the Third Room unaided. Nona turned and walked down the spiral stair, squeezing past Ara and Jula. She defocused her vision as she always did when she followed Sister Pan to the sealed rooms. Normally that gaze would be fixed between the ancient’s shoulder blades. She focused her thoughts on the Third Room: the place where it should lie, the shape of it, the wall where a door would likely be set.
Nona was so deep in her search it was a shock to find someone on the stairs blocking her way as she followed the spiral down. “Abbess . . .” The abbess rarely came to Path Tower.
“Where’s Pan?” the abbess snapped, eyeing the girl before her with evident distaste.
“Mistress Path is in the scriptorium, abbess.” Nona met the hostility of the old woman’s stare.
“Hmmph.” The abbess turned away, evidently unable to find fault with Nona’s reply, her bad temper further inflamed by this failure. She glanced over her shoulder, new suspicion in her pale eyes. “What are you doing here, girl? Stealing?”
“No, abbess.” Nona had stolen from the abbess that morning, and she would be stealing from Path Tower this afternoon with any luck. But right now she wasn’t stealing.
“Praying, in the Dome, that’s where you should be.” Shaking her head, the abbess stamped off back down the stairs, thumping her crozier on every step.
Ara came into view behind Nona, smoothing her palms over the stonework. “Was that Abbess Wheel?”
“Yes.” Nona returned to her own search.
“Ancestor’s blood!” From behind Ara. As close as Jula got to an oath. “We really shouldn’t be doing this.”
Nona searched more quickly than her friends, leaving them behind her. About halfway down, her vision shook for a moment.
After that, nothing. Not even a tingle. She returned to the spot and studied it with thread-sight. Nothing. She visualised the Path and tried to see past it into the wall. Nothing. She placed both hands upon the stone and exerted her will, pressing as hard as she could. “Open, damn you!” At the same time she set one foot upon the glowing glory of Path, the river of power that joins and defines all things. Nona felt something give, a lurch within her as if she had fallen through thin ice. The cry of victory died on her lips, though. She was still standing on the stairs, her hands against the cold stone. Feeling foolish, she reached for her serenity and tried again. Nothing, not even a twinge. She wiped her palms on her habit and continued down the stairs, calling on her clarity trance to reveal any faint trace that might indicate a place to exert her magics.
One of the others stumbled behind her. “Keep it quiet,” Nona hissed without looking back. “Abbess Wheel might still be lurking downstairs.”
Nona reached the bottom step without finding any further hint of an entrance. The abbess seemed to have decided against waiting for Pan and to have taken her leave of the tower. Nona sighed and turned to climb the steps again. Something caught her eye. A new portrait hanging amid the others. Just to the right of the door that the abbess had left by. She walked across to the painting, marvelling that she had never seen it before. It seemed impossible that she had simply missed it in the past given that she had visited the tower almost every day for the best part of a decade. Perhaps Sister Pan had hung it recently. There was something familiar about the woman: her face pinched but friendly, high cheekbones, blue eyes. She had pale hair, curling close to her skull but with wisp after wisp trailing off into the air to create a faint haze of threads that filled the space all around her.
Nona cocked her head. The nun looked thirty at least. And yet . . .
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