Nona threw her knife with her off hand as Yisht closed on her. The ice-triber stepped aside, letting the blade cut her hair as it passed.
“I can see what you will do before you do it. You must know this by now.”
Yisht thrust as soon as she came in range. Nona turned the blade from her body, almost losing hold of her own. The sword felt dead in her hand, her frozen fingers barely able to tell they gripped a hilt. She tried a swing, a clumsy effort that Yisht knocked aside with contempt.
“Hunskas . . . so proud of their quickness, so simple to undo.”
Nona attacked again with little hope other than to stop Yisht from launching attacks of her own. With the cold in her fingers Nona felt as if someone else were wielding her sword. Once, twice, three times Yisht blocked swings so clumsy that Sister Tallow would weep to see them.
“Time to end this nonsense.” Yisht pressed forward.
Nona took a step back. Her footing was so unsure she hardly dared move, a fact that by itself removed any advantage of her speed.
Yisht feinted left then cut in towards Nona’s sword arm. Nona blocked the blow just barely but lost her grip on her weapon. As the sword tumbled from her fingers an icy gale howled in from the right, building swiftly past hurricane towards something altogether worse. The vent blast lifted both of them from their feet, and it came edged with more than ice. Glittering amid the blast in the shipheart’s light came a dozen and more of the throwing stars, some torn from the ice that Nona had jammed them into, others vomited up from the depths to which they had fallen.
Nona slowed the world to a crawl. Keot had told her that Yisht knew every move she made against her ahead of time, but Nona had dumped the throwing stars too far ahead of this moment for Yisht’s precognition to reach. The act that now propelled them was not of Nona’s making. Yisht might be able to explore the next few seconds of any human’s future but when it came to the dropping of an apple from a tree, or the roll of dice, she had no more warning than any other person.
As the throwing stars hurtled forward Nona twisted her body to avoid them, ducking her head beneath the flight of one star, pulling her hand from the path of another. She couldn’t avoid them all. One of the projectiles sliced her side as she lacked the traction to move away. Yisht, however, hung as if frozen, held in the jaws of fate. One star hammered into her chest, another into her left wrist, and a third hit her forehead, just above her right eyebrow.
The blast slammed both of them against the far wall of the gallery. Yisht slid to the floor. Nona dropped too.
A wheezing laugh echoed behind Nona as she lay stretched out across the ice, all of her hurting.
“You cannot kill me.”
Nona glanced back at Yisht, sitting propped against the gallery wall, almost lost in the darkness. A knife in one hand. The ice-triber, seemingly dazed by the impact, tugged at the star embedded in her forehead. The steel point came clear of the bone with a squeaking noise and blood trickled into Yisht’s eye. “I cannot die.” She tossed the weapon aside. She sounded like Raymel had at the last. Nona had run him through, stabbed him a dozen times, and yet the devils inside him refused to let him fall. It had been Yisht’s own sigil of negation that had finally broken their hold . . . and been destroyed in the process.
“Yes.” Nona’s fingers found the hilt of Yisht’s tular, lying where the wind had dropped it, a yard to her right. She drew her remaining knife and stabbed it into the ice, gaining purchase to spin around. “Yes, you can.”
Blood had blinded Yisht on the side the blow came in from. She raised her hand even so, but the knife slipped from her fingers. Nona didn’t know if Yisht was too dazed to properly mine the future, or if the circumstances simply gave no chance to evade the blow. All she knew was the rush of relief as the tular sheared first through Yisht’s hand and then her neck. Her severed head followed the sword’s arc and bounced away into the darkness.
15
HOLY CLASS
Present Day
ARA AND RULI were waiting at the agreed spot by the statue of General Isen in Grampain Square.
“Thank the Ancestor!” Ara threw herself at Nona. For a long moment Nona held her, breathing the gold of her hair, grateful for the security of her arms.
Ruli hugged Jula wordlessly, leaving Markus standing somewhat bemused, surrounded by embracing novices.
“There were a hundred soldiers at least!” Ara broke away, glancing at the streets joining the square. “We couldn’t stop them. They ran straight at the cathedral doors.”
“Well, they didn’t get us,” Nona said.
“And we got the book!” Jula stepped back from Ruli and dug in her habit. Her face fell. “I had it! I know I had it.”
“Jula!” Nona’s stomach made a cold fist.
“Kidding.” Jula produced the book with a flourish.
“Jula!” Ruli shoved her.
“We’d better get back.” Ara’s face grew suddenly serious. “Whoever got those soldiers to raid the archives isn’t going to stop there . . .”
“They’ll be waiting for us at the convent! We’re all going to be banished!” Ruli grabbed hold of Jula again, as if she might somehow save her. Her mood had oscillated between carefree and hysterical ever since leaving the convent that evening, as if the gravity of their situation kept returning despite her best efforts to drive all thoughts of it away.
“We’ve done nothing.” Nona frowned, concentrating. “At worst we’ve been out after hours. If we get back up top unseen we’ve just been out by the sinkhole moon-bathing.”
“Until they find the abbess’s seal on you!” Jula said. “I can’t believe that she hasn’t missed it yet. Just wait until she has to confirm a new nun and finds it missing . . .”
“Confirmations happen on high holy days. We’ve got weeks.” Nona managed a confidence she didn’t feel. The opportunities to get close to Abbess Wheel were few and far between.
“Fine. Well, what about this?” Jula waved Aquinas’s Book of the Moon at her. “One look at it and we’re all done for.”
“So we make sure they don’t get a look. We hide it before we get back. Perhaps you can find what we need and memorize it.”
“I liked the whole Argatha prophecy better when it was supposed to be a four-blood who saved us.” Jula frowned at the tome in her hand. “Not four shiphearts, the Ark, and some poor idiot who has to memorize a whole damn book. Just one four-blood. Nice and simple.”
“I miss Zole.” Ruli let go of Jula’s habit and stared at the ground. “Even if she wasn’t the Chosen One . . .”
Nobody had anything to say to that and for a moment only the wind spoke.
“I have to get back,” Markus said. “Lovely to meet you all, novices.” He brushed some of the mud from his robe.
“Brother Markus.” Ara inclined her head.
Markus bowed his head in return, then looked at Nona. “I did you a great injustice at the Academy. I hope that account is now settled.”
“It is,” Nona said.
“I’m not sure any of us will survive the next month.” Markus raised a hand to forestall any patriotic objection, though none appeared to be forthcoming. “But if we do survive, then whether it’s under Durnish overlords, the battle-queen’s dominion, or our own glorious emperor, long may he reign, I would like to meet you again, Nona Grey.”
Nona felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Ruli and Jula stared from her to Markus and back, openmouthed. Nona opened her own, calling on the Ancestor, or the Hope, or any small god who might be listening to put some words there, any words at all as long as they were cool, witty, and sophisticated. A moment’s silence stretched to the point at which any coherent sound would be acceptable as long as it vaguely resembled a response . . .
* * *
• • •
“ANCESTOR’S BLESSINGS, BROTHER?” Ruli asked, probably for the tenth time.
“Ancestor’s blessings?” Eleven.
“It was all I could think to say.” Nona picked up the pace again. Verity’s lights lay three miles behind them, the twinkling of the convent two miles ahead.
“But Ancestor’s blessings?” Jula panted.
“I was stressed, all right?” Nona saw Markus’s eyebrow go up again. She couldn’t stop seeing it.
“Leave Nona alone.” Ara came up alongside her, running tirelessly. “Brother Markus is clearly a very holy man. It’s only natural that Nona should want to share blessings with him. Rather than, you know, respond to what he said.”
Ruli and Jula snorted and fell back, gasping for breath.
Nona ran on towards the Rock of Faith. A kind of hysteria had infected her friends. The type that demanded you cry or you laugh. In the east distant fires peppered the countryside, too many and too bright. And on the road, despite the hour, they had already passed a dozen ragged bands limping towards the city, many with everything they owned heaped upon handcarts.
The fears that surrounded the novices were the kind that were too big to hold inside all the time. War in the east. War in the west. Both converging on the capital with horrifying speed. And now the distinct possibility that the full authority of the Church itself would be turned upon them, the novices branded as thieves of a forbidden book, a crime for which Nona had no doubt that some antique law would demand a gruesome and almost certainly fatal punishment. She vowed it wouldn’t come to that, but even if the others agreed to fight their way free . . . any future that awaited them looked very bleak.
* * *
• • •
CLOSE TO THE plateau’s base Nona called a halt. She and Ara waited while Ruli and Jula caught them up. Ara patrolled the area, her shadow-work unravelling the night for inspection while Jula got her breath back.
“I’ll go up first,” Nona said. “Ara will check the Seren Way, shadow-wrapped, and get you two into the undercaves.” The cave entrance lay close to the start of the track. “Ruli will lead Jula through to the novice cloisters, and somewhere on the way you can find a place to hide the book. Somewhere Jula will be able to visit alone when she needs to study it.”
“What if they’re guarding the track?” Jula asked. “We could all go around to the Styx Valley and come up from the west . . .”
“Too far.” Nona shook her head. Gaining the plateau from the west was easy and the Styx Valley was generally unwatched but it would take a detour of several miles. “Ara will have to make a distraction so you can get into the caves, then find her own way up so she can scout the cloister exit for you.” Nona stared up at the cliffs. Here and there the moonlight caught a hint of the Seren Way zigzagging its path towards the heights. “Ara can take the Vinery Stair. I’ll climb.”
“By myself?” Ara threw up her hands in mock horror.
“We all know the story if we’re caught. I’ll reach the convent first and check that nobody is waiting for the rest of you at the dorms.”
“You’ll check the coast is clear using . . . your legendary shadow-weaving skill?” Ruli said. “Ara should be the first in!”
“Ara will wait for you at the laundry well.” Nona didn’t care that Ruli had a point. If anyone was waiting for their return it would be Nona that they caught, not Ara, not Ruli or Jula.
“I have to go through the caves blind?” Jula asked. “And rely on Ruli to find the way?”
“Yes. And don’t drop the book,” Nona said.
“I said we should have brought a lantern!” Jula pouted.
“You did not.”
“Well . . . I thought it!”
Ruli rolled her eyes and set off towards the base of the cliffs. “See you in the dormitory, Nona. Or trying to swim in the Glasswater with iron yokes on. One or the other.”
Nona had no answer to that. It was an end she had come perilously close to before, and with Wheel now in charge it seemed that the oldest and cruellest of the Church’s punishments were more likely to be applied than they had been for many years.
“Get Jula back safe. Don’t tell anyone where you put the book. Not even me or Ara!” Nona called after her. She turned to Ara. “Make sure you get them in safe, and watch out for Joeli.”
Ara gave a curt nod and set off after Ruli, pulling Jula with her, all of them grave-faced. The good humour that had sustained them after Nona’s parting words to Markus had died somewhere along the road home. Perhaps as they passed the first of the refugees, or when they first caught the smell of smoke on the wind, or maybe at the point when they saw the convent lights blazing, every window in the abbess’s house aglow, the comfort of routine cast aside on a night where sleep would be a stranger.
* * *
• • •
NONA SCALED THE cliffs, choosing a spot that steered well clear of the windows to the Shade classroom. She came up behind the convent where the peninsula narrowed, and hung with just her head above the edge, waiting for the moon’s focus to blind any watchers.
The moonlight had been building as Nona climbed, the warmth rising with her. The convent buildings began to shine, crimson in the focused light of the dying sun. And Nona marvelled, as she had so many times before, that the moon reflecting that light had been put there by men and women like her, people who now stood within the Ancestor and whose blood ran in her veins.
Nona hauled herself over the clifftop with sufficient strength to land on her feet. Keeping low amid the fierce dazzle of the focus, she ran towards the convent, hiding in the mists vomiting from the Glasswater sinkhole. Like the mist she allowed herself to be drawn away on the uncertain wind, angling towards her target.
Nona made a quick circuit of the convent, watching for any sign of trouble that might be waiting for the others. Although too many lights burned in the windows, the spaces between the buildings seemed quiet. Unusually so. She spotted Sister Rock on patrol and a subtle bump on the conical roof of the rookery tower that was likely one of the Grey Sisters keeping watch for troubles of a different order than errant novices.
Nona watched until Ara came slinking in from the Vinery Stair, betrayed only by the shadow trailing thickly in her wake. They watched together from the cloister roof, wrapped in those same shadows, as Jula and Ruli emerged hesitantly from the laundry wing and hurried to the dormitories.
Before the girls made it to the door a band of mounted soldiers clattered in among the convent buildings, their lanterns held high as if seeking something.
“Hells, they’ll be spotted!” Ara hissed.
Already Sister Rock was hurrying towards the sound of hooves and the bump on the rookery roof had detached itself, now no doubt flowing invisibly to join the riders. If Jula and Ruli were hauled before the abbess’s desk their whole night’s work could unravel. Wheel wasn’t shy of using harsh methods to get to a truth that satisfied her, and if she had discovered the theft of her seal there was no telling what anger might drive her to.
“Go after them. Get them inside,” Nona hissed back. She grabbed a rooftile and with a crack of her arm sent it scything through the night to explode against the side of the bathhouse. The detonation drew all eyes. Ara was already gone.
Nona launched a second tile, this one aimed at the flagstones past the bathhouse, farther from the soldiers. Before it hit, Nona had slithered on her belly and dropped from the roof.
Kettle would be out there on the rooftops or prowling between the buildings. After the disaster in Sister Apple’s stores Nona was far from sure what sort of reception she would get from either of the nuns. She wasn’t keen to find out.
Nona had never been able to spot Sister Kettle. Her friend was one of the few who could put fear into her. There’s nothing like running in the dark and knowing that you are exposed, vulnerable to attack from any angle. Nona relied on her foot speed. She ran towards the rear of the dormitory, the flesh of her back crawling with the knowledge that at any
moment a venomed dart might come speeding from the shadows to bring her down.
Nona reached the rear wall of the dormitory and released a sigh of relief. To avoid the activity towards the front of the building, along with any of Joeli’s thread-traps, she climbed the wall and slipped the shutter catch to Ara’s study room, creeping from there to her bed. Part of her wanted to cross the room, haul Joeli from her bed, and pin her to the wall, with flaw-blades if she put up a fight. The truth would come out swiftly enough.
Nona bit back on her instincts and went to her bed instead. Ara already lay in the neighbouring bed feigning sleep and faintly illuminated by the hooded lantern on the wall. Nona slid beneath her covers, straining her ears for sounds of heavy feet on the staircase. Those soldiers had come for a reason. It couldn’t be long before they brought the abbess to the dormitory doors and began to ask questions about the theft from the high priest’s vault.
She lay staring at the dark with the need for violence twitching in her fingers, still wanting to haul Joeli from her bed before the soldiers arrived. Kettle had once advised that she count to ten in such circumstances, or perhaps a thousand. Nona found that Abbess Glass was more of a help than counting. Not something the abbess had said, just how she had lived. The abbess had taken on more powerful enemies than Nona had, and bested them by playing the long game, a game her opponents had thought they were winning right until the moment of their defeat. The abbess had never raised her hand in anger, but the blows she struck were more powerful than any taught by Sister Tallow.
Nobody came. No tramp of boots on the dormitory stairs. Perhaps the soldiers had arrived on other business . . . As sleep took hold Nona saw again the abbess lying pale on her deathbed, the flesh wasted from her, eyes fever-bright. On that last night she had summoned Nona to her side and found the strength that often comes before that final goodbye. She had spoken to Nona, rediscovering the lucidity that had been a stranger to her for many days.
Holy Sister Page 17