“Yawn!” Clera tugged her habit over her underskirts. “I hope Pan lets us pathless go play again.”
Nona slid from her covers and started to dress. She reached beneath her pillow, to touch the knife one more time to reassure herself it hadn’t been a dream. Still there, warm from her body now, a hard, sharp, and undeniable truth. She wanted to take it with her, strapped to her body, the blade wrapped in a strip of linen, but she lacked both time and privacy. She would have to leave the weapon in her bed and hope that Arabella had no chance to reclaim it.
• • •
NONA FOUND HERSELF one of the last out of the dormitory, hurrying with Clera to the refectory for breakfast. The pair of them clattered down the front steps, finding an unusually still day, a cloudless sky, and a rare warmth on offer.
By the dormitory wall a plump, red-faced sister attacked an area of the flagstones with a stiff brush, pausing to slosh down more water from her bucket. She glanced up at the girls. “Hurry!” And returned to her task, scrubbing furiously at a dark stain. “Away with you.”
Clera stuck her tongue out at the woman’s back and ran off towards the refectory, giggling. “That’s Sister Mop. She thinks novices only have two aims in life: to get stuff dirty and to get in her way.”
“She called herself Mop?” Nona running behind.
“No, but everyone else calls her that. She chose some flower name, Crysanthe-something, but nobody can pronounce it or remember it.”
A hundred yards on they passed Sister Tallow, coming from the abbess’s house. She looked away towards the eastern sky as they ran by but not before Nona saw the abrasion across the left side of her face and the bruise darkening around it.
Nona waited until they were out of earshot around the corner of the refectory. “What happened?”
“Don’t know. Can’t imagine anyone getting the best of old Blade,” Clera panted. “Maybe the abbess slapped her!” She laughed, then more serious, “Did you see she had her arm hidden inside her habit?”
Nona hadn’t and once through the doors the sight of food bowls, full and steaming, pushed any questions from her mind. Breakfast was a hasty affair but Nona still made a valiant attempt at leaving nothing edible behind by the time she left the table.
“Come on!” Clera turned and beckoned as Nona jogged to keep up, one arm over her over-full stomach. Fortunately the Path cloisters came into view soon enough, past the beehives lined in the lee of the abbess’s house. Four arms of the building reached towards the compass points from a round central tower. Each arm was a framework of ornately worked stone, open to the elements, with delicate corner pillars and trellised masonry reaching between them to complete the structure. The central tower stood dark against the sky, defying the years with the arrogance of stone, seeming in one moment foreboding and in the next beautiful. Four doors gave onto the ground floor, one for each arm of the surrounding structure.
Ahead of Nona and Clera a novice laboured towards the tower in limping steps, a crutch under her left armpit.
“Someone must have got kicked a bit hard in Blade yesterday!” Nona slowed her pace as they caught the girl up. No one had been limping in the dormitory, and yet there was something familiar about the novice.
“Ha!” Clera shouted, “That’s just Stumpy!” She raced past, jostling the girl enough to make her stagger.
Nona came to a halt, almost level with the novice, reaching to catch her, then pulling back her hands as she saw it wasn’t needed. The girl was hardly taller than her, hair the colour of straw set about her head in a hundred tight curls. “Nona,” she said, without turning.
Nona knew the voice. “Hessa?”
Hessa pivoted on her crutch. The length of the habit hid her withered leg, but only the tip of her shoe touched the ground on that side. “We’ve come a long way from Giljohn’s cage.”
Nona had her arms about her before she had time to blink. “They killed Saida.”
“I’m sorry for it.” Hessa lifted a hand uncertainly to pat Nona between the shoulders.
“How are you here? Why haven’t I seen you?” Nona released her and stepped back.
“I’ve been in the sanatorium. Sister Rose wanted to keep me in until I got rid of this cough.” Hessa thumped a fist against her narrow chest. “I’ve been here for weeks. Giljohn tried to sell me at the Academy but I failed their tests. They said I was the wrong sort, quantal maybe, but definitely not marjal. He tried to sell me to three different mages. Their houses are so big, Nona! I thought we were going into the emperor’s palace—”
“NooooOOOooona!” Clera hollering from the north door. “We’ll be late!”
“Coming!”
“We’d better hurry.” Hessa shifted her weight and set her crutch forward.
A bony hand closed on both their shoulders. “The heathens have found each other, I see!” Sister Wheel pushed between them. “The peasant and the cripple, plotting together. We’ll soon clear out those muddy little minds. Scrub away heresy and falsehood so the Ancestor may find you worthy. Even simple clay can be moulded and fired into something of worth.”
Nona opened her mouth to say something sharp. “I—”
“Yes, Sister Wheel! I’m looking forward to our Spirit class.” Hessa smiled up at the nun so sweetly that Nona almost believed she meant it. “But we’d best go now or Mistress Path will be cross with us.”
Sister Wheel made a sound of disgust and released both of them, wiping her hands on her habit. “Quickly then!”
Hessa showed a fair turn of pace with her crutch, her withered leg swinging beneath her skirts. Nona matched her speed, glancing back at Sister Wheel, now making for the dome. “I don’t like that old woman!”
“Hah, Wheel’s all right once you know her ways.” Stump, swing, stump, swing. “Just wait till you meet the Poisoner. Now she is scary!”
• • •
NONA ENTERED THE Tower of the Path with Hessa, using the east door. Novices were supposed to be drawn to a particular door but none of them called to her. All four doors led into the same room—an echoingly empty one with a stone spiral stair at the centre, and around the walls the strangest pictures Nona had ever seen, though in truth until she entered the ring-fighters’ rooms at the Caltess she had never seen paintings. While Hessa laboured up the stairs Nona took a moment to glance around at the two dozen or so portraits, nuns all of them, but with their hair uncovered and the most peculiar flights of fancy added. One lacked half a face, with tatters extending across the gap out over a night-black background. Another in place of one eye had a red star, its rays reaching in all directions. Another still had no mouth and in her hair flowers of a kind Nona had never seen, the deep blue of evening sky.
“Nona!”
She sped up the stairs after Hessa. The stairway seemed long enough to reach the tower top but offered no doors into any rooms along the way before emerging into the middle of a classroom. At least Nona assumed it to be a classroom—it looked more like a church. Apart from the chairs on which Red Class sat, and a large iron-bound chest at the front, the room was completely bare. Even so, it had a beauty to it. Four tall and narrow windows broke the light into many colours. Scores of stained-glass panels made each window into a glowing, abstract picture that threw reds and greens and blues across the walls and floor. For a moment all Nona could do was gape at the alien wonder of the place.
The nun standing before the chest was the oldest Nona had seen. Quite possibly the oldest woman she had ever seen. Nana Even’s older sister, Ora, had died a year back. Nona’s mother claimed the woman had seen eighty years come and go. Yet lying there on the pyre in the square before Grey Stephen’s stone-built home old Ora had looked young compared to Mistress Path.
“Take a seat, Hessa.” The ancient nun had a surprisingly young voice. “You too, novice . . . ?”
“Nona.” Nona took a chair, little more than a stool
really, the back a single narrow plank.
“Knower?” Mistress Path came a step closer, leaning in.
“Nona!” Clera all but shouted it.
“Ah, Nona.” The nun clapped her hand to Nona’s shoulder. “Like the merchant-queen?”
Nona wasn’t alone in offering this last question a blank look, though she caught Clera nodding.
“No matter—no matter.” Mistress Path moved off, shaking her head. “It was long ago and her sons are all gone to dust.
“We’re all gathered now?” Mistress Path looked around the room, her eyes so pale as to be without colour, the whites creamy with age. “Two new girls, yes?”
“Yes, Mistress Path.” A loud chorus.
“I’ll do my introductions then. I am Sister Pan. Within these walls, Mistress Path is my name.” She paced towards the front of the class and, with an exaggerated sigh, settled herself upon the great chest. Nona noticed that the woman’s right hand, that she had thought lost in the sleeve of her habit, was more lost than that, the arm ending at the wrist in an ugly mess of scar tissue.
Sister Pan lowered her head and tapped her fingers on the lid of the chest. She was quiet for so long that Nona wondered if she had dropped into a doze, but a moment later she looked up, eyes bright. “In these lessons we study the Path. For most of you this will be a journey to serenity, to states of mind that can help you with patience or with concentration. Or perhaps they may help quiet your fears, or put sorrow aside for a while until you have time for her visit. For those few of you who might have it in your blood to see the Path clearly rather than just sense it as an idea, these lessons are the first steps to discovering hidden worlds, the boundary between them, and the power that may be won by those who dare to venture in such places.”
Clera leaned across to Nona, speaking in a low voice. “If any of us do go there we’ll be doing it alone. They say the old girl hasn’t put a toe on the Path for thirty years.”
Nona pressed her lips together, gesturing with her eyes towards Mistress Path.
“She’s deaf as a post, silly.” Clera grinned and raised her tone a fraction. “Those that can, do—those that can’t, teach. At least in Path. The doers are too valuable to waste on us.”
Sister Pan paused and frowned at Clera, who dutifully faced front and centre. “Now, we have . . . Arabella.” The nun focused on the Jotsis girl, whose shaved head was spattered with coloured light. “A bold stare she has. Hmmm. But what can she see?” Sister Pan approached and leaned in close. “Don’t look away, dear. Keep your eyes on mine. In this place the world sings for us. Can you hear it?” She took Arabella’s wrist in the gnarled claw of her hand. The nun’s skin was the black of a dusty slate, darker than her habit: Arabella’s fingers looked white as bone in that grip. “A three-part song. Life.” She lifted their joined hands. “That which has never lived.” She moved her stump into a pool of deep red light and followed the shaft of it up towards the window. “And death.” A quick glance back towards the chest. “The notes of the song . . .” Sister Pan intoned three notes, pure but somehow sad, the start of a melody that Nona wanted to hear more of. The nun released Arabella’s wrist and started to pace before the seated novices. “There’s a boundary between what lives and what does not. It runs through all things, and around them. It’s a path that is hard to follow but each step taken is a holy one. When you walk the Path you approach the divine. The Path flows from the Ancestor and the Ancestor waits at the end of it. At the end of all things.
“We are mortal though. We are flawed. Poor vessels for divinity. Each step is harder than the last, the Path twists and turns, it is narrow and in motion, the power that it gives is . . . difficult to contain. Sooner rather than later everyone slips from the Path no matter what their heart desires, no matter how pure their faith.
“Our knowledge of the Path is the gift of the fourth tribe—the last to beach their ships on Abeth. Among the stars the quantal built their lives around the Path, generation upon generation, until it lived in their veins. That blood was mixed to meet the challenges of a new world—but in some few it shows, even now after so many years have passed.
“Have you seen the Path, child?” Sister Pan, at Arabella’s shoulder once again, took the girl’s chin, angling her eyes back to her own.
“I . . . Sometimes I see a bright line, like a crack running through my dreams . . .”
“Have you touched it?” Sister Pan asked.
“A-almost. One time. I reached out for it . . .” Arabella looked away, towards one of the glowing windows. “It felt as though I were running . . . my heart . . . and my head filled with angles. All sharp and wrong . . .”
“And then what happened?” Sister Pan released the girl’s chin.
“I fell out of bed and woke up with a headache.”
Laughter rippled, half amused, half nervous.
“And what about”—Sister Pan blinked and looked around until she found Nona, sitting on the far side of the class—“our other new girl?”
“She’s hunska, Mistress Path!” Clera called out, slapping Nona on the shoulder. “One of us reds!”
“Hmmm . . .” Sister Pan turned her gaze back to Arabella and started to ask more questions.
“She’ll leave you alone now,” Clera said in an undertone. “Only cares about the mystics.”
“The what?” Nona whispered.
“Mystics. If Empress Arabella isn’t lying then she’ll be the second quantal in the class, the other being your friend hop-along. Only our bald friend is also hunska-fast which makes her oh-so-special, which is why all the nuns are wetting themselves over her—the Chosen One.” Clera raised her hands in mock worship. “At the end of our studies, if we’re judged fit, we take holy orders and join the convent as nuns. Girls who follow the Path take their orders as Mystic Sisters—everyone calls them Holy Witches. I told you before. You and I, we’ll focus on Blade and take our orders as Martial Sisters, which everyone calls Red Sisters. Most who come here end up as Holy Sisters . . . and everyone calls them Holy Sisters . . . or if they’re being fancy, Brides of the Ancestor. That sounds creepy to me . . . And some take Shade in the last year. Those are Sisters of Discretion. Grey Sisters. There are lots of other names people use for those, none of them nice. But—”
“Novice Clera!” Deaf or not, Sister Pan had good enough eyesight to spot two novices with heads so bowed in conversation, they nearly touched.
“I was telling Nona about the blade-path, Mistress! Can I show her? Please!”
Sister Pan lifted her eyes to the heavens and signed her faith, laying her index finger over her heart, pointing upward. “The child has only been here a few moments!” She drew a deep breath. “Today we will be meditating. Continuing to develop the serenity that helps to bring us to the Path. And, Nona, whilst it is true that for many of you girls no amount of quiet contemplation will bring the complexity and beauty of the Path into focus within your mind’s eye there are many other benefits, both spiritual and physical, to achieving the mental states we seek to unlock in this class. In a girl’s first year I endeavour to teach her, through meditation, mantras and the control of breathing, the three-fold mind. The necessary states of clarity, patience, and serenity. When you have the basics of the trio my seal will be on your scroll for advancement to Grey Class.”
Sister Pan left Arabella’s side and hobbled towards Nona and Clera. “Whilst it is essential that a Mystic Sister be the mistress of these techniques, all three are of benefit to any novice. The Holy Sister will find her communion with the Ancestor deepened by reaching clarity. The Sister of Discretion will carry out her duties with greater efficiency if she attains patience. And, ironically, the Martial Sister will be all the more deadly if before combat she has reached the peace of serenity. However, as this is Nona’s first day and I have a number of tests to go over with Arabella any novice who wishes to practise their blade-path may do so.�
��
The scraping of half a dozen chairs immediately followed this pronouncement as girls leapt to their feet all around the room and started to head for the stairwell at the centre.
“Clera!” Sister Pan called after them, her voice resonating down the stairs with surprising volume. “You can ask for the key to Blade Hall at the sanatorium!”
• • •
THE SIX GIRLS burst laughing from the base of the Tower of the Path and ran off towards the plateau’s narrowing point. The four hunska girls outdistanced Ruli and Kariss, but their natural speed counted for less in a race than it did in a fight: hunska blood gave whip-crack reflexes and a startling twitch that could move a hand from one place to another seemingly without the tedium of having to occupy any of the spaces in between, but it couldn’t, for example, move a full body-weight faster than a horse over four hundred yards.
The sanatorium sat at the compound’s outermost edge, built from limestone blocks hewn from the plateau itself, hunkered down against the wind, with a long and pillared gallery on the lee side. Clera ran on into the office while the other novices came to a halt by the door. “Why did we have to come here?” Ketti frowned, hunched over to make herself a height with the other girls.
“I saw Sister Tallow limping this morning,” Ghena said. “She must be hurt.”
“How?” Ruli asked.
Ghena shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Nona tried to imagine Sister Tallow slipping and coming to grief on a flight of stairs. She couldn’t do it. She had yet to see Mistress Blade fight but everything about the way the woman moved said she would not be taken unawares by the inanimate. Which left . . .
“Maybe someone sent assassins after Arabella,” Ketti said.
“Assassins? Why?” Nona had only heard of assassins in the old stories. The Noi-Guin, trained in secret, deployed to end wars, or start them, or to cut away any life that might constitute an offence to someone with enough money to pay fees that even old nobility found staggering.
Ghena grunted at Nona’s obvious stupidity. Ketti raised both eyebrows and did something with her lips that signalled supreme surprise at the depths of Nona’s ignorance. “She’s the Chosen One. The Ancestor’s gift. You think there aren’t people fighting over who owns her? Or, if it’s clear that the person who owns her isn’t going to be them, you think they’re not ready to kill her just to stop someone else gaining the benefit?”
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