Holy Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  Abbess Wheel raised her crozier and led the sisters into a field, the cattle absent long enough for the dung they had left behind to have crusted over. She clambered onto a stile to address the nuns and novices before her.

  “We won’t go through the city to join the defence. The North Gates will be jammed and the streets behind them choked. I aim to take us around the walls and enter closer to the palace.”

  The collective intake of breath was audible. Nona had reconciled herself to standing before the Ark but she had imagined that they would at least have the city walls between themselves and the foe. Surely Crucical wouldn’t have his troops out in the open. If he could stop Adoma’s forces in the field he would have done it two hundred miles east of his front door.

  The abbess continued, unmoved by the shocked faces before her. “Mistress Shade will select three Sisters of Discretion to scout ahead of us. We will act on their reports. If need be the defenders on the wall will bring us over with ropes.”

  “How many Grey Sisters do we even have with us?” Ruli hissed.

  “Two,” Nona said. “If you don’t count Sister Apple.”

  A hand fell on her shoulder. “Sister Cage.” Apple turned Nona to face her. “I’m appointing you to the Grey temporarily. Get out there with Kettle and Cauldron and try not to die. Also, anything you can do to keep Wheel from marching us into ten thousand Scithrowl while singing at the tops of our voices will be much appreciated.”

  Nona gave a curt nod. She let Ruli and Jula hug her, bracing herself against their combined impact. Over her friends’ heads she met the eyes of Ketti, Ghena, Alata, Leeni, and others of her former classmates. They all looked frightened. A weight of responsibility settled on her as her friends released their hold.

  Kettle went by grim-faced but as she passed Apple her fingers trailed across the other woman’s hand, and Apple, turning bright-eyed to watch her go, whispered something after her.

  Kettle joined Cauldron, who was already changing into clothing taken from the dead Scithrowl on the Vinery Stair. It was more convincing than what they’d brought with them from the Shade stores, less than a uniform but more than random garb: the soldiers had worn similar tabards that had once sported bright designs, and their garments had elements of design that set them apart from what was common in the empire.

  “Take the bloodiest stuff, Nona. You’ll be the injured one if we’re challenged.” Kettle tossed a rough shirt her way, stained with crimson at the breast. “No mail for you. We’ll be bringing you back to be bandaged up. It’ll also hide the fact you can’t speak Scithrowl.”

  “And you can?” Ghena asked from the ranks of watching novices.

  “Yar, irh ken hem gutya.” Kettle didn’t look up from fastening the buckles of her chain-mail shirt.

  * * *

  • • •

  WITHIN A FEW minutes they were ready to leave.

  “Watch. Take your chances. We left Sweet Mercy behind us, show none to the enemy.” Apple handed Nona the standard Grey Sister field kit: a bandolier holding all the poisons, antidotes, wires, picks, and tricks of the order.

  “I will, Mistress Shade.” Nona fixed the belt beneath the heavy shirt. Kettle and Cauldron were already moving off.

  Nona glanced once more at Jula and Ruli, then back at the convent, almost invisible in the distance on the edge of the Rock. A deep breath and she took off running, hard on Kettle’s heels.

  Kettle led the way into the next field where the corn grew to chest height, the husks withering. Bhenta veered across to join Nona, cornstalks whispering their complaints behind her. Cauldron! Nona hadn’t grown used to Bhenta’s bride name. She made a mental note to get it right when they spoke, then settled into her running and her clarity trance, letting the countryside ahead open itself to her and shout out its secrets.

  To their right the walls of Verity curved away. Here and there the ancient blocks of the original wall were replaced by sandstone quarried from the plateau and the wall dipped to as low as fifty feet in height, but in the main the structure was the one that had stood for centuries, an even seventy-foot barrier broad enough to support a walkway along the top with a guard wall to protect those who patrolled it.

  The defenders weren’t exactly thickly clustered. Nona imagined that most had been called upon to join the battle to the east where the city wall came closest to the emperor’s palace and the Ark within. Even so, the helmed heads of guards studded the wall top at regular intervals and no doubt reserves waited to rush in reinforcements where called for. Sister Rule had taught them that Verity had never suffered the attack of another nation but had held against sieges during several insurrections. The most recent of those had been over a hundred and twenty years ago, however. Plenty of time for the lessons taught in blood to have been forgotten.

  * * *

  • • •

  NONA HAD TRAINED under Apple’s supervision in fields not far from the ones they now moved through, but watching Kettle’s advance taught her that she still had much to learn. Kettle had been the length of the empire, to both fronts of the war, and had gambled her life against her stealth more times than she could remember. She took them around small bands of Scithrowl scouting for weaknesses along the walls, and past watchers concealed deep within crop, copse, or cottage. Some of these were skilled out-runners for the Scithrowl force, marjal shadow-workers among them, but none had been pushed into shadow like Kettle had and their weaving of the darkness sent out ripples that she could read as no other save the Noi-Guin. Nona knew she would be reporting their positions to Sister Apple along their shadow-link.

  “We could get a clear view from Malden’s Mount,” Bhenta said.

  Kettle shook her head. “It’ll be covered with Scithrowl. There’s a lone pine by Eld Stables. We’ll take a look from there.”

  She brought them the quarter of a mile to the pine, crossing fields, ducking along lanes, skirting burning farmsteads. Nona had never seen a taller tree.

  “You’re up, Sister Cage.” Kettle lifted her chain mail to show she had no intention of climbing in armour. “The shadow-worker hiding in the branches is all yours. We’ll take the ground troop.”

  Nona had seen the Scithrowl irregulars concealed around the empty stables block. The shadow-worker had escaped her notice. “How far up?”

  “Right at the top. Must be a little one to climb so high. Give us a minute, then go.”

  Kettle lifted both hands and the shadows rose around her like a mist. Cauldron reached out to snare some of the shadows, wrapping them around herself. The pair wove themselves in, not simply clothed in darkness but robbed of colour and distinction so that the eye wanted to slide across them without pause. Moments later they were both on the move, a smooth advance towards the stables.

  Nona made a silent count. She didn’t expect any screams. When she reached her target number she ran for the tree. A flat sprint without any attempt at concealment. The watcher hadn’t chosen so high a position to then stare at the ground around the trunk.

  A leap brought the lowest bough into reach and Nona swung herself up, climbing rapidly through the branches. As she rose the branches became narrower and closer together and she had to force a passage through thickly packed needles. Smaller branches snapped around her, scratching at exposed skin and leaving her sticky with their sap. The only chance she had at remaining undetected was if the general sway of the pine and the seething of its limbs in the strengthening wind was hiding the racket she was making.

  Higher still and the density of branch and needle thinned a little, though now she needed to think about where she chose to step as many of the tree’s limbs would be unequal to her weight. Nona paused some twenty feet shy of the top.

  Have the Scithrowl put a child up here?

  Very little space remained where the watcher could be concealed and if she got much higher she would be open to any missile they might throw her
way. Nona strained her senses, her clarity biting so hard it made her whole body tingle. She felt every tiny cut on her skin, the light sliced across her eyes, the clamour of wind and creak of wood assaulted her ears. She knew each ridge of the bark beneath her fingers. And she saw the slow upwards flow of shadow all around her.

  Nona grabbed the trunk, now so narrow that she could encircle it in a double-handed grip. Sister Apple had said that they had left mercy behind them when Wheel led them from the convent. Whoever lurked above her doubtless had an array of knives and needles coated in the very worst venoms, and climbing vertically to attack a well-prepared enemy was never a healthy strategy.

  She locked her legs around the trunk, drew back an arm, summoned her blades, and swung. The entire top section of the tree fell. The watcher made a brief wail, quickly lost in the tearing of branches and ended by a dull thud. Nona was left at the pine’s new vertex with a clear view across the hordes arrayed to the east.

  Nona hadn’t imagined that Scithrowl held so many people, let alone that their queen could march them over the Grampains and across hundreds of miles to the emperor’s doorstep. True fear gripped her for the first time that day. Skill couldn’t prevail against such numbers. A Red Sister might cut down fifty of the foe only to find five hundred more throwing themselves at her. Gazing at the ocean of humanity stretching out to the east, Nona at last understood the enormity of the threat. This tide would wash across Verity and not stop until it reached the Marn Sea. Her friends, every novice, every nun, would die. They stood no chance. None.

  The line of attack lay to the east. Rows of war machines hurled their missiles, siege towers rumbled forward, and ground forces surged towards the walls, carrying long ladders and grapple chains, borne by gerants huge enough to throw them over the ramparts.

  The great majority of Adoma’s force held back, though, marshalled in ordered ranks before acres given over to their accommodation and enclosed within rough stockade walls. A second city had sprung up, this one of tents, an endless patchwork of canvas and hide, speckled with flags of many colours. Nona saw the signs of industry, smoke from iron chimneys where weapons and armour were being repaired, horses reshod, swords sharpened. Siege machines not yet committed to the battle hulked like giant beasts recumbent amid the ant swarm of foot soldiers. Elsewhere horses in greater numbers than she had ever seen before milled in their pens, herds of them even though the main strength of the Scithrowl came to battle on their own legs.

  The wind carried their stench to her, more ripe even than Verity’s, the sewage of men and animals in their tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand and more, the stink of a thousand cook fires and a thousand latrines.

  Here and there grand pavilions stood among the massed troops, the brilliant colours of their fabric an assault on the senses. Above them pennants cracked in the wind.

  Most of the pavilions were too far away for a good view but one stood just a mile off and barely beyond the range of Verity’s bolt-lobbers, close enough for Nona to note its exceptional quality and remarkable size. A line of six large catapults stood fifty yards ahead of it, their missiles earthenware jars of highly flammable liquid. With low and throaty twangs they lobbed their burning cargo over Verity’s walls into the city beyond, where the destruction could only be guessed at and smoke spewed skywards.

  Nona looked back towards Wheel and her band, now lost in the distance. The small gate through which Abbess Glass had once led her from the city stood free of attack thus far and as close to the battlefront as you could get without finding yourself part of it. Around fifty of the city guard held the ground before the gate and defenders clustered on the wall high above. It was the last eastward entry point where the city could be entered without enduring an arrow storm and it would reduce by a considerable margin the distance that had to be traversed inside the walls to reach the palace. Nona took one more glance around at the unreal panorama, a landscape she knew well made alien by war, and began her rapid descent.

  * * *

  • • •

  “THAT’S THE LAST way in for them. Otherwise they’re just going to get swarmed and cut down at the foot of the walls.” Nona pointed at the spot.

  Kettle nodded. “What’s that gate called?”

  Nona shrugged. “I don’t know . . .”

  “It’s called ‘the Small Gate,’” Bhenta said.

  “There you go.” Nona scanned the fields for any sign of approaching enemy, then looked at Kettle. “Can you make Apple understand?”

  Kettle nodded again, her brow furrowed in concentration. Her shadow-bond with Apple was an exceptionally strong one and this close to her it allowed for basic information to be communicated. “Done.”

  “We should join them.” Bhenta met Nona’s gaze with those alarming blue eyes of hers. Apple had once taught them to brew a particularly unpleasant poison that was exactly that colour, a “fake blue” Nona called it.

  “Or . . .” Nona raised an open hand towards the east.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Kettle said.

  “This is a day for dangerous. We’re going to face the Scithrowl one way or the other. Do we want it to be when they’ve breached the city wall? Us waiting at the emperor’s gates and a rank of pikemen advancing while the arrows rain in . . . ? Or do we want it to be as Sisters of Discretion, behind their lines, hitting at what they would rather keep safe? You don’t put up a pavilion like that for a minor general or some princeling. I saw you do it less than a month ago!” Nona had watched through her thread-bond with Kettle as the Grey Sister killed the commander of five hundred Scithrowl within the luxury of his tent, slitting his throat while he slept beneath the furs of a hoola. “They’re not afraid of us! They’re arrogant and stupid. We could do some real damage here. It might be Adoma herself! Even if we die we will have sold our lives for something of worth, more than we could achieve cutting down foot soldiers as they climb the walls.”

  “It’s still too—”

  “You didn’t see them, Kettle. Words can’t paint it. Numbers that big don’t have meaning. They’re an ocean, a wave. They will roll over the walls and grind us down and nothing we have will stop them. We need to cut off the head. Come at their leaders where they’re most vulnerable. This is what Apple trained us for!”

  Kettle shook her head and turned to go. Nona grabbed her arm. “Go up the tree, then tell me.”

  Kettle rolled her eyes. “Sister Cauldron, don’t let her do anything stupid while I’m up there.” And with that she was gone, fairly sprinting up the pine despite the weight of her chain mail.

  “You should learn to follow orders, sister.” Bhenta watched Nona through narrow eyes. “Sister Kettle has seen more war than any of us.”

  Kettle dropped back to the ground before it seemed that there had been time to reach the top. She joined them, white-faced.

  “Let’s do it.”

  20

  HOLY CLASS

  Present Day

  NONA COULDN’T UNDERSTAND any of what was said at the four layers of the Scithrowl perimeter but Kettle proved sufficiently convincing to get through. Kettle even managed to earn a slap on the back and a few laughs at the last checkpoint. Bhenta remained largely taciturn during these encounters but interjected a few comments unasked since silence provokes questions. Bhenta adopted the heavily accented empire tongue that predominated in the shadow of the Grampains on the Scithrowl side . . . though Nona supposed that both sides of the range were now the Scithrowl side.

  For her part Nona spoke the international language of pain—groaning and holding her side with bloody hands. She had been hurt enough times to know how to play it. Whatever she was asked she planned to stick to moaning. Her written Scithrowl was rudimental, her spoken Scithrowl worse.

  On receiving directions from some minor officer Kettle began to lead them briskly through the outskirts of the main Scithrowl force. Nona hobbled after her with one
arm over Bhenta’s shoulders for support, her head down so that the blackness of her eyes would not draw comment or attention.

  The smell of the place was overpowering. Smoke from the battle at the walls drifted back to mix with that of countless cook fires and communal blazes, along with the pervading stink of latrines, the aroma of unfamiliar stews bubbling in cauldrons, the odour of close-packed humanity, of draught horses, cavalry, penned cattle and pigs, stray dogs, and a shanty town of camp followers to the rear. It was as if a vast city had been turned out into the fields, given weapons, and dressed in armour.

  Although Kettle was discreet about it Nona could see that she was noting every detail, and the telltale furrow between her eyebrows meant that she was sending to Apple all the information their shadow-bond would allow. Nona could only imagine what Apple might be sending back. Demands for her return. Pleading? Threats, even? Or did Mistress Shade have the discipline not to distract a Grey Sister with her personal fears even when that Grey Sister was Kettle and the mission could very well be one that allowed no return?

  Turning sharply behind a latrine trench sheltered by a wall of woven sticks, Kettle snatched up an empty water barrel and thrust it at Nona. “You’re all better now. Hold this over your ‘wounds’ and walk with purpose. We need to get into that fancy tent and, if it seems worth the risk, kill whoever we find.”

  They came around the back of the latrine, still under the casual gaze of countless eyes, and Kettle turned their path a few degrees towards the distant pavilion. As they progressed both Kettle and Bhenta acquired burdens, a pile of blankets for Kettle, a heavy coil of rope for Bhenta. Apple always stressed the authority that a simple burden conveys upon the person carrying it.