Holy Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  It took many trips back and forth from the King’s Road to find the fallen. Some they couldn’t locate. Nona had seen Ketti drop, the wound mortal. She remembered roughly where it had happened, but even so, despite lifting and rolling a hundred bodies, she couldn’t find her friend.

  “Could she have crawled away to die?” Clera asked, white-faced, wiping at her eyes, claiming that the smoke stung them.

  “I don’t see how she could have.” Nona blinked and tried to keep the waver out of her voice. “I can’t . . .” She snarled, lifted a large stone from a collapsed wall, throwing it several yards. Nothing lay beneath.

  In the end they had to let it go.

  In the east the sky paled to grey and dawn threatened, as if this had been a night just as any other and the sun would rise to bear witness on a new day.

  They laid Apple and Iron and Tallow and Rock and Chrysanthemum close to Abbess Wheel. Kettle lay across Apple heaving with sobs yet making no sound. Ruli wept, Ara was pale, Jula ran outside to be sick. Nona called on her serenity and wore it as armour, unwilling to face her feelings. Wheel would have told her that sorrow was a luxury she could keep for later, when the work was done.

  However, even the armour of Nona’s serenity proved ineffective when they set to carrying the novices through to lie with their sisters. Two girls from Red Class had somehow joined the abbess’s war-party, though Wheel had said only seniors were to come. How their presence had been missed Nona couldn’t say. They were children, and she cried as she set them down beneath the great marble dome of the high priest’s mausoleum.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE SUN HAD risen and a cold wind had stripped away the smoke before the remaining sisters and novices of Sweet Mercy set off for the convent. Kettle was not with them for none of them had the heart to pull her from Apple’s side.

  Nona had retrieved the shipheart from the fire-gutted mansion she had left it in, kicking away hot ashes to uncover it. She placed it in a leather sack and had it dragged behind them. The wounded rode in carts commandeered for the purpose by the high priest. The five miles to the Rock of Faith had never seemed so long.

  “Sister Rose will tend to them as well as any in the city can, and she will have more time for them.” High Priest Nevis stood on the steps to see them off, looking as if he had gone without sleep for days. He had called Sister Oak over as the oldest surviving nun, but he called Nona with her and addressed his words to them both. “As sister superior it will fall to Sister Rose to occupy the abbess’s house for now. She is a good woman and will be the first to say she lacks the fire necessary for the office. I will appoint a suitable replacement by and by when we have made an accounting of the dead and seen which sisters among the Red and Grey return to the Rock of Faith. Until such time Abbess Rose will need the counsel of her sisters.” He waved them off. “May the Ancestor stand with you all.”

  A messenger in Crucical’s green and gold passed their convoy of carts as they pulled away from the cathedral. By the grandeur of his uniform and bearing Nona judged him to be a personal emissary rather than a mere deliverer of scrolls sealed with the emperor’s stamp. He hurried past, then retraced his steps, drawing up before Nona at the head of the group. He stood a touch taller than her and met her gaze with a narrow stare.

  “The emperor has commanded me to bring the novice Nona Grey before him. She has cursed black eyes and casts no shadow. Have you seen any such?”

  “Not recently.” Nona seldom had use for mirrors. “I am Sister Cage.”

  The messenger gave a curt nod. “If you see her, tell her that her immediate presence is commanded before the throne.” He hurried off towards the cathedral.

  “The emperor wants you, Nona!” Ara managed a smile. “You’re in demand!”

  “Why didn’t you go?” Jula asked.

  “I will,” Nona said. “But not now. We’ve got more important duties first.” She paused. “What confuses me is how he didn’t recognise me by my eyes . . .”

  “You don’t know yet?” Ruli blinked. “I thought I said something . . . But, no . . . Maybe we were too busy.”

  “Know what?” Nona raised her hands to her eyes, confused.

  “They changed when Zole healed us,” Ara said. “She must have repaired the damage that that novice-made black cure did to you. I thought you knew . . .”

  “What confuses me,” Clera said, leaning forward, “is how he didn’t notice that you don’t ha—Nona! You have a shadow!”

  “I know.” Nona allowed herself a faint smile and raised her hand to track her shadow across the street. “It was drawn into the Sweet Mercy shipheart when I sent it after Yisht.” She wiggled her fingers and watched her shadow dance, anchoring her in the world. “I took it back.”

  * * *

  • • •

  BY NOON THEY arrived at the convent. Nona had feared to find it in ruins, but it seemed that after their master’s death Lano Tacsis’s men had had little interest in earning themselves more trouble with the Church and the Ancestor.

  Sister Rose was in the sanatorium treating half a dozen injured junior novices. Three others had died. When they told her she was to be abbess, Rose shook her head and returned to changing dressings, tears rolling over her cheeks. “I haven’t time for that nonsense. Not at all. Too much to do here.” With infinite care she helped a novice who was struggling to turn and indicated to her assistant, a tiny child that Nona couldn’t imagine old enough for the habit, to take water to another girl.

  In the end Ara brought one of the spare croziers out to the sanatorium and hung it above the door since Rose wouldn’t move to the big house.

  * * *

  • • •

  MUCH LATER NONA found herself alone by the stairs down to the Shade classroom. Apple would never climb them again. It hurt Nona’s heart to know it, a hurt that would stay with her, part of who she was now, like the wound Abbess Glass’s death left upon her and that she would wear through all her days. Some lessons must be written in scars, Sister Tallow had said. Nona would miss her too.

  On the last day that Abbess Glass had spent with them she had told Nona many things. Secrets about the future and about the past. At last she had fallen quiet, half smiling, half sad. All leaves must fall in time, she had said. The lives we lived fall away from us, but something remains, something that is part of the tree.

  Glass had been sick when she laid her plans months before her death. She had met in secret with Nona and Zole on their separate returns and even then she had said that she did not expect to see the seeds she was planting come to flower.

  “To sow knowing that you will not reap is an old kind of love, and love has always been the best key for unlocking the future.” The abbess had set her hands upon theirs. “You, my dears, are both the Chosen One, but it’s only me who has chosen you. Each of you is a die cast against the odds. Zole dear, remember to hold on to what makes us love you. If you reach your journey’s end without that, you will have gone nowhere. And Nona, my fierce little Nona, remember mercy. Mercy for others in victory. Mercy for yourself too. You deserve happiness, child. Never forget it.”

  Nona had a bar of the Shade gate in each hand and her forehead to the metal when a hand settled on her shoulder.

  “Ara . . .”

  Her friend joined her at the gate and for a time they stood in each other’s silence. Ara’s left hand holding the same bar as Nona’s right, almost touching.

  “It’s hard to believe she’s gone,” Ara whispered.

  “She’s not gone.” Each of them could be speaking of so many shes, but Nona was thinking of Apple and how these stairs, this gate, would always lead to her.

  “Abbess Glass spent her thoughts on might-bes,” Ara said. “I find myself thinking too often about might-have-beens.” She turned her head to look at Nona. “It’s strange to see your eyes. As if you’ve been hiding from me
all these years.”

  Nona opened her mouth to speak but another, darker shadow fell across her, one she could only feel and not see. “Kettle is coming back.” Nona took her hands from the bars. “I have to go to her.”

  The sun was falling as Nona reached the Seren Way and began to descend from the convent’s heights. Nona felt Kettle’s approach stop and the muted echoes of her grief became a tolling along their thread-bond, like the lament of a great and hollow bell. She carried on down, searching for her friend, and found her lying crumpled at the base of the Rock as if she had fallen from the windows of the Shade classroom. Kettle had dropped only from her feet, though, and rose like a broken doll when Nona pulled her into an embrace.

  “She was my life, Nona.”

  Nona held her tight. “You have sisters. You’re not alone.” They wept then, the river of Kettle’s sorrow washing through Nona until at last they could breathe again and Nona led her sister up the winding steepness of the Seren Way to Sweet Mercy.

  * * *

  • • •

  EVENING FOUND NONA and the handful of seniors gathered around one of the refectory tables, a cold meal before them, rustled up from stores. Most of the nuns were in the Dome of the Ancestor, praying for the lost. Sisters Oak and Rule had helped Kettle across the convent to the Dome to join the prayer, though Abbess Rose had insisted she stay in bed.

  Nona sat, chewing on a heel of bread. Sister Elm had baked it. She would never bake another. At her side Ara sipped water from a clay cup and watched the light of the setting sun finger through the shutters.

  “The Durns are still coming.” Clera banged the end of her knife on the table. “Are you going to light up a few of their barges and hope that they run away too? Because sooner or later you’re going to be standing before the throne and the emperor himself is going to order you to burn their cities to cinders.”

  “Have you ever been on the ice in a focus moon, Clera?” Nona asked.

  “No.” Clera scowled. “I didn’t last long enough at the convent to go ice-ranging. And why would I want to? It’s just Church stupidity, sending children up there.”

  “I used to think that,” Nona said. “But I’ve been up there and I’ve waited through the focus, miles from the Corridor. You know what happens? The ice melts. An inch of ice melts. Then it freezes solid again. There’s nowhere for it to run. All that heat wasted. All the moon’s energy spent melting the same inch of ice night after night.”

  Ruli looked up from contemplation of her tortured hand. “But now you’ve got the moon! You can have it do anything!”

  Jula shook her head. “The Ark told you that if you narrowed the focus from what it is, it would kill plants and animals. That’s why it wouldn’t let you . . . until Zole said it should.”

  “We’ve seen it kill . . .” Ruli gazed into space as if imagining the black circle of char that was all the moon had left of the battle-queen.

  Nona shook her head. “The focus stopped narrowing a long time ago. Anything that couldn’t live with what we experience every night has died out. What has survived has toughened. We can narrow the focus and see how things go. Or we can narrow it to a torch and run it along the edge of the ice, the whole focus burning along a strip a mile wide. We could burn channels to take the meltwater to the sea . . . the possibilities are endless . . . but the point is that we have control. We can try. We can change.

  “And even if we choose not to use it, the moon is a weapon beyond all others. We can institute a peace. And with peace comes progress. We lost our knowledge through the course of a thousand wars. We fail to rediscover it only because our minds are always turned to survival, the ice is always pressing, and war is the result. Constantly. The moon can deliver peace. No army will march, no fleet set sail, if they know the moon itself will sear them from the world.

  “Peace, progress, hope. We can buy centuries and in those years discover new answers. The old tales tell us that the Missing learned to burn the ice itself! I think we have enough of that to keep us warm forever!”

  Ara had stood and begun to pace while Nona set her ideas before them. Now she stopped. “And if the emperor won’t listen? If he wants to burn the Scithrowl and the Durn from the Corridor? What if he doesn’t want to stop even there?”

  “It would still be a peace,” Nona said. “But the moon listens to me, not him, and unless Zole comes back that is not going to change. If Crucical wants murder then I will tell him that I answer to the high priest and not to the emperor.”

  “The same high priest who ordered you to be left alone to guard the convent?” Ara snorted. “Nevis has sold himself to the emperor and the Sis before. His price might be higher than his predecessor’s, but he still has one.”

  Nona shook her head. “It was Abbess Glass who set the high priest’s staff in Nevis’s hand. If you know anything about that woman you’ll know that that was no accident. She could have engineered for Archon Anasta to take the staff, or either of the other two. But she chose Nevis. He has his price, but the abbess knew his heart and thought him worthy. Nevis is a merchant. Merchants love peace. They love prosperity. Merchants will sell themselves when they have no other bargain to make, but when I place myself and the moon in Nevis’s hands he will understand that the power lies with him and the bargains he makes then will be very different ones.”

  Nona stood. She knew now how Darla must have felt, towering above the other novices. “Abbess Wheel was right to believe in the Chosen One. The Argatha came to the Ark and the moon is ours. Zole chose me . . . so I guess that makes me the Chosen One now.

  “We’re going to build a new future, sisters. So have a little faith. Because that’s what the future is always built on.”

  EPILOGUE

  “MISTRESS BLADE! MISTRESS Blade!”

  Nona raised her hand and Red Class came to a halt. The thrown novices picked themselves up and brushed sand from their habits. Their partners, standing to attention, watched Nona.

  “Come.” Nona waved in the novice at the doorway, Adela from Mystic Class, she thought. Or Abela.

  “Abbess Rule needs you at the big house.”

  Nona sighed. “Novices, repeat that throw. I want to see at least one of you get it right by the time I get back.”

  She followed Adela, or Abela, from Blade Hall. The Corridor wind was in the east, streaming their habits before them. Mistress Spirit rounded the curve of the Ancestor’s Dome with a string of Grey Class novices at her back. There had been some consternation when Jula was appointed to the post at such a young age, but Abbess Rule had threatened to raise her to sister superior if that would make it more fitting, and the objections subsided. Abbess Rule also pointed out that the high priest couldn’t find a nun across the whole of the empire who knew the Book of the Ancestor better than Sister Page . . . and nobody could dispute that.

  A novice ran ahead of them lugging a crate of wine jars, a hulking girl who put Nona in mind of Darla. She beat them to the abbess’s steps. Nona had always thought Ruli would end up running the convent winery, but she’d ended up running her father’s fleet of trade-ships, quadrupling the tonnage and landing enough Sweet Mercy red on the Durn shores to drown the barbarians.

  A novice with golden hair hurried from the door as they approached. A new recruit. Sister Rule had scouts out looking for suitable girls. She’d even contracted Giljohn to join the effort; the old man had a rare eye for early signs of the bloods. Terms and conditions of the acquisitions were rather different these days, though. The novices returned to their families twice a year.

  The girl rushed by with a “sorry!” She had Ara’s hair. She’d be a beauty too. Nona had heard that all the lords’ boys for two hundred miles had lined up ready to woo Arabella Jotsis when she returned to the ruins of her uncle’s castle. Her home might have been a charred heap of rubble, but the Jotsis lands remained and as the closest surviving heir Ara had to accept the lordsh
ip. Apparently she had rejected all her suitors so far. Perhaps someone else still had hold of her heart.

  “You’re in so much trouble!” Clera sat in the abbess’s hall, her jacket a subtle symphony in shades of black, moleskin, and suede, the diamonds in her earlobes the only open admission of wealth. They called her the Farmer in Verity. Merchants whispered that she could plant a copper and pick gold from the tree that sprang up. Quite why she had so many business interests to discuss with the abbess Nona hadn’t yet fathomed. She suspected that Clera just liked visiting.

  Nona sent her escort back to her off-class duties and knocked on the abbess’s door.

  “Come.”

  Abbess Rule sat at her desk. Regol stood with his hands bound behind his back, Kettle behind him wearing a wicked grin. “I caught him trying to sneak in. Again.” She flashed Nona a look. “He’s fast but not very bright or good at hiding.” Sister Cauldron stood at the abbess’s shoulder, watching Kettle as Nona had seen her do so often, waiting for that day when Kettle might see past Apple’s ghost and find her waiting there.

  Abbess Rule reached for her crozier, which she employed in much the same way she had her yardstick when she had been Mistress Academia. “This is getting silly, Sister Cage. I can’t have this young man climbing cliffs and creeping through the undercaves. I simply won’t tolerate it! It’s extremely dangerous. If Verity’s most renowned ring-fighter were to be killed on convent property there would be all hell to pay!” She rose from her seat and glanced up at Abbess Glass’s portrait. “She of the Moon” they called Glass these days. Rule’s eyes flitted to Abbess Wheel’s portrait, “She of the Battle.” She sighed. When the abbess spoke again it was with the voice she had used in class laying down the law, not of the Church but of the world itself. Harsh and immutable. “Sister Cage, you must consider your options. We all have to find our own path and walk it as long as we may. You are young and the places your road may lead you are many, some beyond imagining. Take some time. Think hard. Return to me with your answer. Whatever it is, whether it leads you from this convent or not, you will have the Ancestor’s blessing. And mine.”