Red Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “You can’t sleep—” But Hessa’s voice seemed to be coming from a long way off, becoming little more than muffled echoes in the cavern whose darkness swallowed . . . everything.

  • • •

  A SLAP BROUGHT the world back, the daylight streaming through the narrow windows, the low murmur of conversation, and beneath it the distant thunder of rain on the high roof.

  “Get up, girl!” Sister Wheel’s other bony hand, knotted in the remnants of Nona’s habit, hauled her to her feet.

  Behind the nun Devid stood ready, his tunic soaked and sticking to him, sculpting the muscles of his chest and shoulders. The bow before him was nearly as tall as he was, not a single arch like the hunters of the Grey used but a composite of different curvatures and woods. In the hands of a skilled archer such a bow truly could bring down the white eagles that rode the Corridor wind. Though no peasant would ever protect his herd with one—the price of such a weapon would exceed that of any shepherd’s flock, and his land to boot.

  The high priest stamped his way to the man’s side. “Get this done.”

  Half the seats lay empty now, nuns, novices, guards and bearers all crowding to either side of the line between Nona and Hessa against the hall’s north wall and the archer before the south wall. Even Abbess Glass had been allowed to approach, her guard close by. Nona glanced at the abbess’s right hand, fat with bandages, and at her own, the strip of fabric black with blood, the skin from fingertips to the heel of her palm red and sticky. Abbess Glass met her eyes and gave that same nod, sure and intense.

  “Ancestor witness this our trial of faith and swiftness.” Sister Wheel waved the onlookers back.

  Devid pulled a long arrow from the quiver over his shoulder, white fletched, perhaps with eagle feathers, the steel head long and narrow, designed to penetrate rather than slice. He nocked it to the bow and looked to the high priest who gave him an impatient wave.

  Nona watched, her hands before her chest as before, one atop the other, the back of the left against her sternum, the palm of the right facing Devid and his bow. The man had a raw-boned, brutal face, as if the clay from which he had been formed had been in the Ancestor’s hands for no more than a moment, just long enough for bold strokes.

  “She’s only a child.” The words rumbled out of him so deep and low that Nona had trouble picking them apart. “Both of them, little girls.” He looked at the high priest again, helpless.

  “You’ll shoot that arrow hard enough to put it through the damn wall, Devid.” The high priest thudded down his staff, though the sand deadened the impact. “The Ancestor will decide who is worthy of tomorrow. There will be no sin on your hands. Now do it!”

  Devid lifted one huge hand to rub an eye, shook his head, then returned the hand to the bowstring. He drew in a smooth motion, muscles bulging, veins standing proud along his forearm, the bow creaking with the strain. Held. Held. And with a cry of anger or shame, let fly.

  The arrow came fast, no matter how hard Nona clung to each passing fragment of the moment. It flexed back and forth like a decked fish, shuddering with the power of the bowstring’s push as it flew towards her. Its path from Devid’s height to Hessa’s heart would take it just over Nona’s left shoulder.

  She threw herself backward towards the ground and watched, helpless, hands outstretched and rising.

  To push against that thin shaft—to do so hard enough to deflect it from Hessa, and to give that push in the tiny span during which the shaft passed her by—would likely just break through it. And that would leave the arrowhead or the shaft behind it still travelling towards Hessa at lethal speed.

  Too quickly, allowing no time for thought, the arrow was before her. Hands, already in place, already closing, now clamped upon the arrow. Nona saw her skin exit the tight curl of her fingers, carried away on the first emerging inch of the arrow shaft, the next inch slid out bloody. She wouldn’t feel it until long after the arrow had found its final destination.

  The emerging, blood-slicked arrow moved more slowly than it had covered the yards between Nona and the archer, but it was not slow, and lubricated with her blood her grip would not reduce its speed below a lethal level before the arrow left her hands. Nona pulled down, hoping she could be gentle enough to draw the arrowhead down rather than snap off the rear portion.

  She watched the arrow’s flights escape her hands. In the same instant the steel point, deflected slightly downward, touched her beneath the collarbone. By the time her hands caught up with the end of the arrow the arrowhead was buried three inches deep in her shoulder, slowed by the thickness of her flesh and turned further from its path by the rotation of her body as she fell backward. She grasped the wood again, willing some sharpness into her touch, hoping it would help to grip rather than reduce the shaft to sections.

  Still no hint of the pain had reached her. She knew by the length of arrow that had vanished into her that the arrowhead must have emerged high on her back, but she felt nothing. The sharpness in her fingers shaved pieces from the arrow like a carpenter’s plane on timber. The rear of it fell into tumbling inch-long sections. They bounced off her, peppering the area around the bloody hole beneath her collarbone as she fell.

  She knew her head would hit the sand hard. But the impact never came. She fell and there was no bottom to it, just whiteness, and then no colour at all.

  18

  NONA SPAT SAND from her mouth, finding more between her teeth and behind her lips than she could get rid of. Something cold and wet covered her face. She tried to push it away. The pain arrived in that instant, all at once, something too huge for her body, trying to explode out from beneath muscle and skin. She screamed, or tried to: it came out more as a whimper. The wet thing moved and through eyes screwed tight in agony she saw the blur of someone leaning over her, cloth in hand.

  “Stay still.” Sister Rose set a hand to Nona’s chest.

  “Hessa?” Nona tried to roll but the white fire in her shoulder stopped her more effectively than the nun.

  “Hessa’s fine.” A smile. “The arrow hit the ground a foot before her.” Sister Rose looked to the side. “We need to move her!” Called to someone else.

  Other voices reached into Nona’s awareness. She focused on the roof high above her, the sand beneath her heels. She was still in Blade Hall. People were talking to her right. A roll of her head brought them into view.

  Abbess Glass stood there, free of the yoke, head high, Sister Apple at her shoulder. The archons and the high priest faced her, all of them on the practice sand now. Looking the other way, she saw a host of nuns and novices, church-guards escorting them from the hall and everyone leaving as slowly as possible so as not to miss anything. Sisters Flint, Kettle and Mop were approaching, presumably to carry Nona to the sanatorium, though any one of them could lift her.

  “. . . irregular! In this day and age, to be thwarting the due process of the emperor’s law with archaic texts and talk of prophecy . . . You would do well to give the child over to the civil judges, abbess, however thick the hunska runs in her veins. It’s very disappointing. This matter could make all kinds of trouble for us—not the least of it in the emperor’s own court—”

  “What disappoints me, Jacob, is that you appear to have been purchased wholesale, along with your staff and office, for something as worthless as money.” Abbess Glass raised her voice, not shouting but lending it the power to reach the rafters. “The Church of the Ancestor is not for sale. You bring the archons here, racing from the four corners of empire, and then slap them in the face with a veto when their opinion is not the one Thuran Tacsis purchased? I say there should be a vote of no confidence. Here and now!”

  The high priest snarled: the same look he wore when he raised his staff to strike a blow across Four-Foot’s back. “It’s not your place to call any such—”

  “I call for a vote.” Archon Kratton rubbed at his scars, scowling. “Can�
�t say I’m impressed, high priest. Three days on horseback to reach Verity. From what the bird brought wrapped around its leg I thought to find the walls fallen, or the emperor proved a bastard, the Scithrowl heresy afoot in the streets . . . Instead a child has humbled a bully. And if we’re to believe she’s the Argatha’s Shield, then you’ve put a hole in her just because you wouldn’t trust the abbess’s word.”

  “I vote for vacation of office.” Archon Philo, looming over his fellow clerics, lean and languorous, in sharp contrast to Kratton’s compact strength and restless energy. “Anasta?”

  The eldest of them rolled the ball of her earring through long fingers then lowered the hand to fold into her other. “You have no idea how uncomfortable it is to spend five nights on the Bluewine when it’s in full spate. A riverboat’s no way to travel at the best of times. I get seasick looking at a cup of water. But,” she raised her hand, “it would not have concerned me had the summons been for a matter of import. It might even have been forgivable as a lone lapse of judgement . . . if our decision had been respected. But to bring us scurrying to Verity like lapdogs just to underwrite your own sentence on poor Glass here . . . I vote for vacation of office.” She turned to her left. “Archon Nevis?”

  The fat archon ran both hands over the grey curls of his hair, still thick at the sides, and at the top as bald and shiny as Anasta’s head was all over. “Vacation.”

  “Which leaves me,” Kratton said, stepping sharply across to the high priest until they stood face to face, eyes on a level. “And as the vote would have to be unanimous to remove you, I find myself mattering . . .”

  “Kratton, we should discuss this in private . . . There are issues that—”

  “I’ve never had a particularly good opinion of your term in office, Jacob. The staff does things to a man—most of them bad. Doesn’t do to have too many people around you whose position depends on their being agreeable. Even so, I would have voted to keep you . . . but for one thing. A high priest can be stupid, he can be greedy, he can be wrong; but what he can’t be is purchased. I voted to put you in the office and I’ll stand by that. I didn’t vote to put a Tacsis in the robe and hat though. You’ll have to go. I’m sorry. Vacation of office.”

  Someone had their hands on Nona, crouched over her, ready to lift, but nobody was going anywhere until this was done. The silence behind her let Nona know that the nuns had given up any pretence of leaving.

  “This . . . this is outrageous!” The high priest backed away from the archons and abbess, limping on the leg the roof-tiles had injured, his staff held defensively before him. “No high priest has ever—”

  “High Priest Albur was removed by his archons forty-three years ago during the last narrowing,” Abbess Glass offered.

  “And High Priestess Sartra a century before that. For . . . indelicate relations,” Archon Anasta added, nodding.

  “I won’t. This is . . . a conspiracy.” High Priest Jacob purpled. He stared in Nona’s direction. “A trick! Guards! Take these archons into custody. Yoke them!”

  A pair of church-guards moved to flank the high priest; the rest were at the fore of the hall to usher out the now-unwelcome audience. The first of those guards to move took one step before Sister Tallow’s foot found the back of his knee and he collapsed to the floor with a clatter. Another guard reached for her but Tallow caught the woman’s wrist and with a twist had her tumbling to the sand. The guard behind reached for his sword.

  “My title is Mistress Blade, young man. I have been a Red Sister since before you were born. Do not try me.”

  The guard—who didn’t look particularly young to Nona—stopped with just an inch of steel gleaming above his scabbard and looked across to the far end of the hall. The two church-guards beside High Priest Jacob had their hands on their sword hilts but showed no enthusiasm for arresting the archons.

  Archon Kratton raised his voice before the high priest could master his outrage. “Captain Rogan. Your loyalty to the high priest is not in question, but this man is no longer the high priest. You will have to put your faith in the judgement of four archons and a convent full of nuns when it comes to the legalities of the matter, but I can assure you that our proceedings have been every bit as correct here as they were in the court in which we served immediately prior to these events. Please tell your men to stand at ease.”

  The silent moment that followed seemed as long as any that Nona had clung to in the ordeal.

  “At ease, guards.”

  “This is treachery! Blasphemy! The emperor will hear of it and set your heads on stakes!” Jacob seemed half-crazed, clutching his staff as if it were his former rank and not some piece of gilded wood. “The emperor will hear . . .” A whisper now.

  “And you are welcome to tell him, Jacob,” Archon Nevis said, his face near as solemn as Archon Philo’s. “You are free to go. In time I hope you will agree to serve in one of my dioceses. Priest Martew of Gellim passed to the Ancestor last month and his flock would benefit from the wisdom of a church elder—”

  “Gellim? Are you mad? It’s a wild ice-swamp on the margins!” The former high priest started towards the main door, half-stamping, half-limping. “I’m going to the palace. Anyone who tries to stop me will hang!”

  The archons watched him go.

  “We should recover the staff . . .” Archon Philo said.

  “Let him keep it.” Abbess Glass smiled. “It’s just a stick. Besides, he’ll need it on the way down. The footing can be treacherous.”

  “We find ourselves in need of a new high priest.” Archon Philo flexed his long hands and interlaced his fingers before him.

  “Well, we’re all here,” Kratton said. “We could retire to a room and talk in circles for hours, or just get done with it and go home. Damned if I want to spend any longer than I have to on this windswept lump of rock. No offence, Glass.”

  “None taken.”

  Archon Anasta swept the crowd with a dark gaze. “We could ask for no better witnesses.”

  “I vote Anasta,” Archon Philo said.

  “I vote Nevis.” Archon Anasta inclined her head. “He showed the greatest courage today and will make fewest ripples with the emperor.”

  Archon Nevis looked surprised. “I vote Nevis too.” He hugged his belly, smile spreading.

  “I suppose . . .” Kratton waved a hand as if the matter were trifling. “Nevis then.”

  The three of them turned to look up at Archon Philo. “Really, Anasta?”

  She nodded. “At my age what I want is a comfortable chair, not too far from the privy, not too close. And chamile tea. Lots of it.”

  “Nevis then.”

  “That’s done then.” Archon Kratton dusted off his hands. “Congratulations, High Priest Nevis. You can pay for your own staff. Now, if you don’t mind I have a church to consecrate, an outbreak of shellpox to deal with, and a prize mare that may already have given birth. Shall we go?”

  “You forget, Kratton.” Anasta raised a hand. “We’re short of one archon. I suggest the new high priest pick Abbess Glass.”

  Nevis frowned and bowed his head, chins doubling, then tripling. “That would be irregular, but—”

  At the far end of the hall the main door slammed shut behind the former incumbent.

  “Thank you.” Abbess Glass took a step towards High Priest Nevis. “But no, my place is here, I have my sisters to serve, novices to raise to nuns, and besides, politicking has never been my forte.”

  The high priest and all three archons spluttered with laughter at that, Nevis and Anasta laughing longest.

  “Abbess Glass.” Nevis wiped at his eyes. “Sometimes I think that if you ever gave up the great game the ice would close on us.” He looked at the sisters to either side of her. “Get this woman to the sanatorium, and the child—she probably bleeds faster than anyone should too.” He clapped his hands and Nona found herself
lifted easily in Sister Kettle’s arms. The pain bit once more, hard, making her cry out, and she buried her face against Kettle’s shoulder as the nun carried her from the hall.

  19

  SISTER ROSE HAD given Nona a bitter drink that looked like ditch water. Sleep had taken her almost immediately. Now she cracked open a bleary eye and tried to focus. She felt much like she imagined the sheets in the laundry must after being trampled in the tubs.

  “Abbess?” Nona finally made sense of the blurred shape beside her. Her voice escaped in a cracked whisper that seemed to go unnoticed. She brought up a hand to examine the hole beneath her collarbone, only to discover both it and her other hand were bound in strips of linen, stained across the palms with some kind of orange paste. She rolled with a groan and felt an echo of her earlier pain. Linen sheets limited her movement and she discovered herself naked beneath them, save for the broad strips of gauze wrapped around the injured shoulder, across her chest and beneath the right arm. “Abbess.” The word came louder this time.

  Abbess Glass leaned over from her bed and held a cup of water for Nona to sip from. She looked older, papery wrinkles around her eyes. “More. Drink it all if you can.”

  Nona found she could.

  “Now sleep.”

  And Nona found she could do that too.

  • • •

  WITHIN THE SANATORIUM Sister Rose’s opinion held ultimate authority. It didn’t matter who had just been offered an archon’s chair or who had just passed the ordeal of the Shield. The small ward boasted five beds, all in a line, opposite a large window overlooking the private herb garden. Abbess Glass lay in the bed furthest from the door, Nona in the one next to her.

  That first day Sister Rose allowed no visitors. By evening Nona lay propped up on pillows watching the sun set behind the rooftop across the garden. Abbess Glass sat reading from one of several scrolls piled on the table beside her bed. She had bandages on both wrists and her right hand was still heavily wrapped. Awkward with her left, she cursed like a woodsman the third time the scroll escaped her and rolled itself up, only to remember Nona’s presence and break off into a fake cough.