Red Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “It’s a fire?” Jula elbowing through behind them.

  “I heard it was a collapse in the Shade caverns . . .” Ruli, her long hair in a bathhouse towel.

  “Ssshh!” Ghena pointed towards the abbess’s doors.

  Sister Tallow and Sister Apple preceded the abbess, Sister Tallow with her arm in a sling. Abbess Glass followed, crozier in hand, and halted on the steps from where she commanded a view over her gathered flock.

  “Sisters.” Abbess Glass smiled for them though it lacked joy. “Novices. Word has just arrived that High Priest Jacob and the four archons are approaching. They will be with us within the hour. This visit is a great honour for us and for Sweet Mercy. I expect you all to be on your best behaviour.

  “The high priest and his retinue will be accommodated in Heart Hall, which will be off limits until further notice. Novices will be expected to stay up to greet High Priest Jacob, after which they will retire to their dormitories. Sister Rule will lead the choir in Aethsan’s Hymn to the Ancestor, and Saint Jula’s Requiem.

  “The high priest will undoubtedly wish to lead a service in the dome, and all sisters will be expected to attend.” Abbess Glass clapped her hands. “We have an hour! Get the lanterns lit, food and wine prepared, the choir properly attired . . . Go! Go!”

  Nona looked around for a direction in which to go, only to find a broad, brown hand descending upon her shoulder.

  “Red Class,” Sister Oak called from her considerable elevation. “With me to the refectory. We will be carrying out tables and chairs to set before the Dome of the Ancestor for the welcoming ceremony.”

  Waving a fleshy arm, Sister Oak led off and the Red Class novices filed after her. Clera should have joined the choir but instead she stuck with the class, perhaps not ready to perform for such a high audience. Nona glanced back as they left. The abbess descended her steps, the golden curl of her crozier stealing the lanterns’ brightness. Her lips made a grim line in the gloom beneath.

  15

  LIGHTS BLINKING IN and out of view among the pillars gave the first visible sign of the high priest’s arrival. Nona imagined the churchmen dwarfed among the hugeness of the columns, their small patches of illumination in all that darkness, shadows swinging around them. She wondered how many had come and to what purpose. Raymel Tacsis’s brother, Lano, had said his father knew High Priest Jacob. How far did Thuran Tacsis’s influence reach? Abbess Glass must know the high priest too—surely that would count for more?

  “They’re here for you. You know that, right?”

  Nona turned to look up at Clera, standing behind her a little to her left in the second row of novices. Each class stood in two lines, the shortest to the fore.

  “It was all over town, Nona. You should have told me.” Clera kept her gaze on the approaching lights. To either side of her Ruli and Ketti turned to stare.

  “Told you what?” Jula asked, beside Nona.

  “Nona half-killed Raymel Tacsis, Thuran Tacsis’s son—the ring-fighter. And when Lano Tacsis came up here with a high court judge the other day—”

  “He didn’t!” Ghena from Nona’s right. “Did he?”

  “He did, and Nona nearly cut off two of his fingers. It took a marjal wizard from the Academy to save them. Raymel’s still under the care of four other Academy mages.”

  “Where did you get a knife?” Ghena hissed.

  Nona glanced along the line and saw Arabella staring at her with startling intensity.

  “Why did you attack him?” Jula whispered.

  Nona made no reply. She looked down into her empty hands and wondered why Clera hadn’t asked her questions back in the dormitory. She must have been angry at being misled by Nona’s story of Amondo in the forest. Though that story held more truth in it than the first one Nona had told her . . . Had she learned about Raymel last seven-day or just today? Clera had held her anger so well, kept it cold and close, then used it like a blade. Nona hadn’t understood that about her friend—but then she understood so little about people. She expected them all to be like her and found instead that each of them was a mystery, from Clera with her copper penny that became a silver crown, Ruli so easy in her skin, kindness without ambition, to Jula and her faith, Hessa and her magics, even Ghena’s anger, so close to her own, never yielded to explanation or prediction.

  • • •

  THE CHURCHMEN CAME into view, picked out in the guttering light of the bonfire the nuns had set burning in the fire-pit before the convent. Under Sister Rule’s direction the choir gave voice to Aethsan’s Hymn, the younger novices first, piercing the night with high, sweet notes, singular and wind-torn, hanging a moment before the sisters underwrote it with more strength, the words flowing together into melody. Sister Mop stood to the fore, dumpy, her face plain and careworn, but her voice a marvel, sending chills along the backs of Nona’s arms.

  First came a dozen church-guards in polished steel breastplates, the visors of their helms smooth, reflecting the world. Four drummers behind their armoured ranks started up a grim beat that drowned out the voices of nun and novice, the beat at odds with the metre of the hymn. Behind the drummers, eight priests holding aloft the standards of the four archons and of the four states of the empire. Each standard fluttered beneath a short crossbar on the bearer’s long pole, a boss of silver and brass gleaming at the very top.

  The archons came on horseback, their stallions similar enough to be brothers from the same sire and mare. Two clerics attended each archon, riding smaller ponies. Even these attendants wore silver chains of office and plush robes, trimmed with the fur of ice lynx. A dozen men bore the high priest’s sedan chair between them on two poles.

  The drummers ceased their beat only when the high priest’s bearers set down the sedan chair. The choir had fallen silent and nobody spoke as a lone bearer hurried from his position to open the door to the closed sedan.

  A young man, blond and handsome in black velvets, ducked out through the open door, a leather-bound book clutched to his chest. Nona wondered at priests and judges: did they also carry a book to the Necessary with them to tell them what to do?

  High Priest Jacob followed after a dignified pause, a small man almost swallowed by the robe of his office, a thing of deep purple folds, embroidered with enough golden thread to weight him down should a gust try to make him take flight. Short grey hair escaped beneath a black headpiece rising in scrolls. He stood thirty yards from Nona, lit by flickers, but even so there was something familiar about the man. Something that made her lip curl.

  The high priest looked around, sharp-eyed, ignoring the hand his bearer offered to help him down. His assistant reached into the sedan and brought out a long straight staff, a couple of feet taller than him and made of wood so dark it might be black, the end of it stamped in gold with the interlocked alpha and omega of the Ancestor. The high priest took the staff and cast a disapproving eye over the welcoming committee.

  Sister Knife approached with a bow. With eyes lowered, she gestured towards the steps where the abbess waited. The abbess stood flanked not by Sisters Apple and Tallow as so often before but by Sister Wheel and by Sister Rose from the sanatorium, their funnelled headdresses now seeming to indicate some kind of church seniority.

  Taking his cue, the high priest approached the abbess. He walked with a pronounced limp, leaning on his staff. Behind him the four archons dismounted and the bearers began to remove luggage from the sedan.

  “High Priest Jacob! Welcome to Sweet Mercy.” Abbess Glass nodded towards the choir to begin the requiem.

  The high priest raised his hand to forestall them. “This is not a visit that I am happy to be making. If you would join me, abbess . . .” He beckoned her to his side.

  “I know him . . .” Nona hadn’t meant to say the words but they emerged as a whisper.

  “You do not!” Ghena hissed to her right. “That’s High Priest Jacob, primate
of the faith. Not some wandering preacher a peasant might have seen.”

  “Abbess?” The high priest beckoned again.

  Abbess Glass pursed her lips, eyeing the two bearers approaching from the sedan, carrying an iron-cornered box between them on rope handles. With a sigh she descended between Wheel and Rose to join the high priest out before the fire-pit.

  “The girl too.” High Priest Jacob scanned the Red Class line, the fire glinting in his eyes. The light and shadow made something skull-like of his face. Nona knew him then. The man from Hessa’s memories. The man who had beaten Four-Foot to death.

  The abbess looked puzzled. “What g—”

  “Do not,” the high priest said.

  “Nona!” Abbess Glass waved her over, and without thinking of escape Nona came. She shot a narrow look up at the high priest, meeting his pale eyes and registering the surprise there. For a moment she imagined leaping for his throat. The image pleased her.

  “This is the novice?” he asked as she drew near.

  The abbess nodded. “She’s a small thing to bring the high priest and all four archons up such a steep and winding path, is she not?”

  “This was not well done, Shella.” The high priest frowned. Behind him the bearers opened the box and began to remove something heavy and clanking.

  “Is this necessary, Jacob?” Abbess Glass glanced at the box with distaste.

  “Do you truly not understand who Thuran Tacsis is?” High Priest Jacob shook his head. “I thought you were clever, Shella, devious even. This makes . . . no sense.” He waved and the bearers stepped forward, heavy iron yokes in their arms, trailing lengths of chain. “Abbess Glass, Novice Nona, you are both to be placed under church arrest pending trial at sunrise.”

  The larger of the two men opened the iron yoke in his hands and stepped forward to place it over the abbess’s head. Nona heard gasps and cries from behind her. The other man stepped towards her and she backed away.

  “Let him do it, Nona dear.” Abbess Glass smiled, then winced as the weight of her yoke settled on her shoulders. “The high priest has spoken. The Ancestor will watch over us.”

  Nona willed herself to stop. She didn’t much care if the Ancestor watched or not, but she knew the abbess stood before her humbled and in chains because she had taken her from the very shadow of the gallows, moments before they tried to set the rope about her neck. Nona didn’t understand why the abbess had done that but she understood the debt upon her.

  “I would kill him again.” Nona stood straight as the yoke descended upon her. “I would kill his brother too, and his father if they think this is right.”

  “She condemns herself.” The high priest spread his hands. “Do we even need a trial?”

  “She’s a child, Jacob.” The abbess stumbled as she stepped towards him, her features strained.

  As the weight settled on Nona her legs gave way and she fell to her knees on the rock. One bearer supported her while the other man tried to lock the yoke in place, encompassing her neck and both wrists. It took the use of a spanner to tighten the yoke sufficiently that her hands wouldn’t simply slip out.

  “Give her up now and there may still be a place in the church for you, Shella. It isn’t like you to get sentimental over a child. And why this child?”

  “My name is Glass. We will have a trial and see what that name is worth.”

  The high priest sighed. He removed his hat, smoothed his hair into place and resettled it before the wind could undo his work. “Take them to the recluse.”

  And so with the convent watching on and the welcome meal cooling on the long tables, Abbess Glass and Nona were led off to wait upon their trial. Nona looked towards her classmates as she staggered by, partly supported by one of the church-guards. Some looked away or at their feet, Clera among them. Others stared in horror. Even Arabella Jotsis looked stricken, though Nona couldn’t imagine why.

  Sister Apple had to lead the high priest’s men to the recluse—every convent had one but the location varied from site to site. Sweet Mercy’s recluse was a cavern at the end of the tunnel that led past the Shade classroom. Sister Apple took them more than a hundred yards further into the bedrock of the plateau, holding her lantern high. In the depths the darkness moved aside before the nun’s intrusions only with reluctance. She navigated past half a dozen junctions where the tunnel forked into smaller or larger ways and eventually the corridor ended in a small cave where the walls had been smoothed by waters that had long since found a swifter course, leaving an almost spherical chamber. Iron bars blocked the corridor and the smaller entry path of the vanished stream. Sister Apple unlocked a gate in the bars and the abbess walked through with as much dignity as she could manage. Nona’s guardsmen helped her in. Sister Apple locked the gate.

  “I shall pray for you both.” She offered a narrow smile and walked away, leading the four guardsmen. She left nothing but an echo of her lantern light, soon consumed by a night so ancient that it never truly left such places.

  “She didn’t seem very upset.” Nona’s voice surprised her. She hadn’t meant to speak but darkness gives the tongue licence—like a mask, or a judge’s crown.

  “Apple is a Grey Sister,” the abbess said. Nona heard her sit down. “She wears many guises, and she herself would tell you to trust none of them. Only remember that she is your sister, as true to you as you are to the Ancestor.”

  “What will they do with us?” Nona asked. The ground was damp, uneven, and hard and the place held a lingering scent of the sewer, perhaps remembering the last nun or novice sent down here to reflect upon their sins.

  “Find us innocent, I hope.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Ah, well, then we will be subject to church justice, which sadly rests upon some very old and rather barbaric laws. I will have my tongue split and be scourged before being driven out of the convent. And you will be put to death.”

  “Oh.”

  “You did ask. And you were on the gallows steps when I found you . . .”

  “I thought you liked to lie.” Nona wriggled her hands in the yoke’s grip. It hurt.

  “I said lies can be very useful. Even children deserve honesty in the dark, though.”

  “How?”

  “How?”

  “How will I be put to death?”

  “Ah.” The abbess sucked in her breath. “Each convent has its own method. Silent Patience and Chaste Devotion burn, but in different ways; Gerran’s Crag opts for crushing with stones. We drown. Not in my time, but they say the bottom of the sinkhole is thick with bones . . .”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Nona might only be ten but she knew that adults were supposed to comfort children, even if all they had to offer was false comfort.

  “So that tomorrow you hold your tongue and let me do what needs to be done without your temper digging us deeper.”

  Nona bit her lip at that and drew her knees to her chest, resting part of the yoke’s weight against the cave wall. She kept silent for what felt like an age, remembering her classmates’ faces as they watched her being led away.

  Finally, “Why are you helping me?”

  Abbess Glass didn’t speak for the longest time, and when she did all she said was, “Perhaps because I really do know who Thuran Tacsis is.”

  16

  CHURCH-GUARDS BROUGHT NONA and the abbess blinking into the light of day and led them past the scriptorium and Blade Hall to Heart Hall. Nuns and novices lined the final fifty yards to the steps and pillars of Heart Hall’s grand entrance. The sisters and older novices muttered the Ancestor’s first prayer. Nona didn’t know the words by heart but had heard enough of it to recognize it when it was spoken.

  “Ancestor watch our journey. Ancestor guide us in the from and in the to. Ancestor help us to carry the weight of our years, and evening—”

  “Don’t they say
that at funerals?” Nona asked, stumbling as she tried to keep step with the abbess.

  “And at births, Nona. And at births.”

  Great doors of ironwood gave onto a foyer, more pillars rising to a vaulted ceiling, the floor tiled in black and white. Other doors, bronze and of smaller scale, opened into a domed chamber where the high priest sat upon a dais in a chair whose gilded back rose above him in scrolls. The four archons sat at the base of the dais, two to either side, each clad in their finery and on chairs scarcely less impressive than the high priest’s. Nona took them in for the first time, having seen only their grandeur and the symbols of their office on the night of their arrival. A fat and pallid man, gone to grey, his eyes deep-set, his lips wet. A stern old woman, dark as pitch, head shaven, wearing a single golden earring. A tall and narrow man, younger than the rest, dark-haired and with a look of great melancholy. A solid man with an air of restless energy about him, head square upon a thick neck, half his face laced with ridges of old scar as if some clawed hand had tried to tear it off. This last official shot a quick tight smile towards the end of the hall—gone so swiftly it might never have been there.

  Half a dozen assistants, some with leather-bound law tomes, attended the archons, the whole assembly before the dais apparently too deep in various muttered conversations to note the prisoners’ arrival. Sisters Wheel and Rose waited before an area close by the door cordoned within a short wooden wall that reached to Nona’s chest. Church-guards lined the chamber walls, five to each side.

  Abbess Glass led the way into the enclosure, Nona following. “Are you scared, child?” the abbess asked, turning her head and arms with difficulty to look down at Nona.

  “I don’t know.” Nona knew that she should be scared. She had been scared of the fall when she had stepped out onto the blade-path. Not of the ground below but the helpless drop before it. She had been scared of losing Saida when the cart took them to the prison. Here though, in irons and with the sinkhole waiting, skulls in the black water looking upward for her arrival, she had yet to find room for fear. This came from Raymel Tacsis, his actions, his evil. That man would die by her hand and if the church supported him, it too would be her enemy. The high priest, she had already decided, would pay more than a crown for Giljohn’s mule. “I’m angry, mostly.”