Red Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “What’s the most dangerous thing?” Nona asked.

  “Huh?” Sister Pan blinked as if the path of her own thoughts had slipped away from beneath her feet. She stood dark against the magnificence of the stained-glass windows.

  “You said that touching the Path was the second most dangerous thing a person could do,” Nona said. “What’s the most dangerous?”

  “Leaving the Path, of course,” Sister Pan replied, her focus back and razor-sharp. “And why is that, Novice Hessa?” She pointed at Hessa behind her without turning her gaze from Nona.

  “Because when you step from the Path you have to take great care to return to yourself and not to some other place,” Hessa said.

  “Some other place,” Sister Pan repeated. “Some terrible place from which you may never return. A dark place where demons whisper unseen. A hot place where your mind will burn. A place so cold that we who remain will see the hint of its frost in your vacant eyes. A silent place where time does not venture and from which no thing ever leaves . . . You must return to yourself. What else? What else makes it dangerous, Novice Arabella?” She pointed to Ara.

  “You must own what you hold,” Ara said.

  “Correct.” A nod. “Every step along the true Path of the Ancestor—a path that runs through all creation—is a gift and a burden. Every step taken is a gift of the raw power of creation, every step increases the potential within you. Sounds good, no?”

  Nona nodded. The stories spoke of Holy Witches filling their hands with magics that could blow the strongest door asunder, reduce rock to powder. They said Sister Cloud could throw lightning like a thunderstorm. Sister Owl could scatter men as if they were nine-pins with a wave of her hand.

  “Imagine a stream of your favourite drink. Girls like honey-wine, don’t they? Imagine that.”

  Nona had never tasted honey-wine, or wine, or honey, but she nodded again.

  “Now imagine it is being poured into your mouth. You like the taste, you swallow and swallow, it’s good. But the jug keeps pouring—it’s endless—it’s too fast—but all you can do is swallow it. Your belly is swelling, your stomach bursting. You can take no more. You break away.

  “The Path is like that. You return overflowing with the gift, burning with it, bursting with it. And you must own and shape what you’ve been given. Fail, and it will tear you apart—never the same way twice. It’s not a quick death either. The gift sustains. Even as it destroys you it will keep you there. Even as you burn, whatever pieces of you remain will know suffering sharp enough to make the emperor’s torturers weep with jealousy.” Sister Pan frowned as if she’d had more to say, then looked at Nona expectantly.

  “I’ll stick to swords and poison then,” Nona said.

  “Ha!” Sister Pan barked a laugh. “That’s all you’ll be good for, young Nona, unless you work on your serenity. Serenity is what will lead you through the fog of this world to the Path. Clarity will let you see it. I’ve no complaint with your clarity. Your serenity on the other hand . . .” She waggled her fingers.

  Nona ignored the laughter sprinkled across the room. Most of the class knew nothing about her beyond her showing in the ordeal of the Shield. That and the fact she’d broken Darla’s finger of course. And pulled a real knife on Arabella Jotsis this morning. And done the same on the first day she arrived. “I find serenity difficult, Mistress Path.”

  Sister Pan patted Nona’s shoulder and moved back to the head of the class, a kaleidoscope of colour sliding across her as she went.

  Clera winked at Nona. Both of them had scraped through their serenity test long after mastering clarity and then patience. The trances were hard to touch, harder to sink into, and remaining in them despite distraction was the hardest. Sister Pan offered exercises to help attain each state along with explanation of what to expect and why. In class she gave guidance towards shaping one’s character and daily being to better fit the requirements. But in the end it was words, words, more words.

  “I can show you where it lies,” she had said. “I can point at it. I can describe it. But I cannot make you see it. I cannot put it in your hand. The only person who can see it, take it, and own it, is you.”

  The old nun taught them poems, stories, fragments of song, even riddles and jests, all to help them view the world through altered eyes—to somehow see what she saw so easily. On occasion she would open the great iron-bound chest at the front of the class and take from it some pretty object to fascinate the eye with patterns. Pieces of ancient glass rainbowed through with colours, interlocking puzzles of black metal, pictures that deceived—at one glance an old man looking to the right, at the next a young boy staring left, or a hill that with a shift of perception became a pit. Endless variety with one thing held common: all of them led to the same place in different ways, a path to suit each person.

  Nona had come closest to serenity when running an old song through her mind. The one children sang in the village. She’s falling down, she’s falling down / The moon, the moon / She’s falling down, she’s falling down / Soon, soon. When she passed the words over her still tongue again and again until every one of them lost its meaning in a chain of unvoiced sound, when she remembered the shapes of the children dancing black against the focus of the moon, in those moments she reached that calm place where nothing outside could touch her, where every memory was robbed of its sharp edges. It wasn’t a state without care or purpose, but one with the serenity to rise beyond the reach of fear or even pain.

  Nona found it no use whatsoever on the blade-path though; it just meant she fell serenely and was less bothered by how small a portion of the journey she had completed in a non-vertical manner.

  “Let us contemplate serenity, novices.” Sister Pan settled herself on the great chest.

  Clera covered her mouth and made an exaggerated yawn for Nona’s benefit. Nona pressed her lips together in a thin line and willed herself not to slump. If they had desks in Path she would have been tempted to bang her forehead on hers. Two years and she hadn’t come close to touching the Path, let alone walking it. Not only that, she hadn’t seen anyone else do it either. Infuriatingly, Sister Pan took Hessa, and later Ara, down the stairs when she judged it time to attempt the Path. The other novices of course abandoned their meditation and ran to the windows, peering through the small coloured panes to see where Sister Pan went. But she never emerged. One such time Ketti, returning from the sanatorium after treatment for a wrenched shoulder, reported the portrait hall below to be empty and to have met no one on the spiral stair. The conclusion then was that Sister Pan must take the girls to a secret room in the tower’s mid-section. But after endless ascents and descents of that stair Nona had no clue where any hidden door might lie.

  With a sigh Nona let go of as much tension as she could without falling boneless to the floor and began her hunt for serenity. She’s falling down, she’s falling down / The moon—

  For the first moment she thought the Bitel’s voice some figment of imagination, but the ringing continued and the steel bell cut swiftly through the layers of calm Nona had gathered to her. By the second tolling she was on her feet with the rest of the class.

  “Ancestor’s blood!” Clera was at her side, scattering chairs.

  “We will proceed to the abbess’s house in an orderly manner!” Sister Pan raised her voice.

  Bitel had held its tongue since High Priest Jacob had brought the archons to judgement. Nona took her place in the queue of novices hurrying down the stairs behind Sister Pan.

  “Let it be a fire. Let it be a fire.” Ketti, two places behind.

  Nona half-wanted her to be right. Some natural disasters were preferable to the sorts that people could wreak upon each other.

  The wind had turned overnight and blew from the north in unsteady, cold gusts, stuttering as if even now it might change its mind and let the Corridor wind chase around the girdle of the world. Soon t
hough, if the change held, the winds would howl, ice-laden, blowing in from the endless white, and all of the empire would shiver. Nona wrapped her habit tight and reined in the desire to run, matching her pace instead to Sister Pan’s.

  Abbess Glass waited on her steps, Sisters Wheel and Rose a step below, and a step below them Sisters Tallow and Rule. Sister Apple came hastening through the growing crowd as Nona’s class approached.

  Out among the pillars a horseman could be glimpsed from time to time, riding away, a silver and scarlet banner snapping behind him in the wind.

  “That’s a royal herald,” Ara said, coming up on Nona’s right.

  “Well yes.” Clera elbowed in on Nona’s left. “It doesn’t take a Sis to recognize that.”

  Nona stared at the retreating figure. It might not take a Tacsis or a Jotsis to recognize such a standard but it took more than a peasant girl from the Grey. The fluttering of the banner as it vanished for the last time tugged at her memory, the line of it trying to draw her back. “Is the emperor coming?” The idea sounded silly even before she’d finished saying it.

  “The emperor went with the Rexxus army to counter raids by Durnish pirates,” Ara said.

  “How do you know that?” Ruli pushed up from behind. She liked to say her family were smugglers, or sometimes fisherfolk, but in truth her father owned several large fishing boats, a good deal more merchantmen, and had people to sail them for him.

  Ara shrugged as if everyone knew it.

  “A whole army? And the emperor himself? For pirates?” Nona asked.

  “When pirates strike shore the hand of the Durnish proctor is always at the helm,” Ruli said. “It’s how they probe for weakness. The emperor is stamping down hard. Showing them strength.”

  “Mistress Academia would approve of your analysis, Ruli.” Clera, half-mocking.

  “That only leaves the sisters.” Hessa’s voice from behind the group.

  “Velera then, up from the coast,” Clera said.

  “Run from pirates? While her brother marches along the shore?” Ara snorted. “You don’t know sweet Velera! She’ll be turning the surf crimson.”

  Abbess Glass struck the heel of her crozier against the steps. “Sisters, novices, we are to have an unexpected visit tomorrow. Sherzal, sister to the emperor, is approaching from the east and has requested a tour of this convent. High Priest Nevis will be meeting the royal procession at the city gates and accompanying our honoured guest on her visit.”

  “Sherzal?” Nona looked around at Ara. “Wasn’t it her soldiers that tried to steal you from your father when he was summoned to court? And now she’s come in person to take you?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Clera hissed. “The emperor himself couldn’t take Arabella from Sweet Mercy. That’s why the Jotsis sent her here.”

  The wind swirled cold about them, lifting habits and streaming hair. Abbess Glass bent into it, continuing her address. “Classes are suspended until our visitors’ departure. Sisters are encouraged to recruit novices to the necessary tasks of preparation. Girls that Sister Rule requires for choir duty are excused other labour. I’m sure that Sister Chrysanthemum will be happy to find work for any novices at a loose end: there’s always some part of the convent that needs scrubbing.

  “It goes without saying that we seek to present our best face tomorrow . . . but I will say it in any event. High Priest Nevis’s last visit was somewhat traumatic, so let us do our utmost to replace that memory with happier ones. And Sherzal of course honours us with her presence. Let us strive to deserve it.”

  Abbess Glass waved to set the assembly free. Nona’s eyes tracked the abbess’s hand, still curled around the scar tissue from where the candle had burned her. Any visit that Bitel announced held the potential to prove more deadly than Noi-Guin arriving unheralded in the night.

  “Ancestor!” Ruli glanced around. “Let’s run before Sister Mop has us cleaning out the Necessary!”

  “Run, peasants!” Clera grinned. “I shall sing for my supper.” And with that she started off towards Sister Rule, who stood by the dome, yardstick waving above her head to summon the choir.

  Nona tried to smile back, but behind her eyes she saw the scream on Abbess Glass’s face as she held her hand above that steady flame. Without warning the ice-wind howled, returning Nona to the present. It spoke again, its voice frost-laden, abrading flesh—as if in place of ice it carried a million tiny throwing stars—and everyone ran for shelter.

  24

  NONA STAGGERED INTO the Grey Class dormitory brushing ice from the thick shock of her hair, hair that only minutes before had been steaming as she towelled it dry in the bathhouse. She had thought that Blade class exercised every muscle she owned but three hours of sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing under Sister Mop’s beady eye had helped her discover new ones. And they hurt.

  “I think I strained my voice.” Clera lay on a bed close to the door, flat on her back staring at the ceiling, outer habit pooled on the floor, long legs stretched. Her silver crown gleamed on an open palm.

  “I think I strained everything but my voice.” Nona looked around for an unused bed.

  Ara came in behind her, hair caked with ice at the front, still steaming at the back. “I saw Sister Wheel telling Mop to put you on cleaning the privies . . .”

  “Fortunately Moppy has novices she really doesn’t like,” Nona said. She knew the best way to earn the nun’s ire was to leave a mess in the refectory. The nun approved of anyone who left nothing on their plate, so Nona had become something of a favourite.

  “She likes you because you’re a peasant,” Clera said. “Mop likes girls who aren’t scared of hard work. Me she would have had washing the cliff below the Necessary while Sister Rule used it.”

  Ara pushed on into the room and with a short sprint launched herself over two girls lying on their blankets, belly-flopping onto an unoccupied bed. Nona frowned, still hunting a bed to claim as her own. At the far end of the room Darla hulked, her back to them, hunched over something in her lap.

  “Who sleeps there?” Nona pointed at an empty bed opposite Ara’s. It was quite neatly made but still perhaps a touch too untidy to be unclaimed.

  “Alata.” Clera nodded to the bed behind her.

  Nona blinked. Two feet protruded from the heap of blankets but it wasn’t the number of feet that drew her eye—just the fact that one was darkest brown, the other milky. At the top end she could see only a fan of red hair, spread across the pillow. They said in Red Class that some older novices kept the same beds but Nona had never seen it before.

  The shutters rattled as the ice-wind peppered them with hail. Clera patted the blanket beside her. “Going to be cold tonight. You can share if you like.” She said it lightly but the words carried a weight even so.

  Nona’s eyes strayed to the two bare feet again, one rubbing the other now. She felt her cheeks blaze and looked away confused.

  “This one’s free!” Ara waved, pointing at a bed a few further along from her.

  “I ache too much to share.” Nona clutched her side. “Darla knows how to kick.” She hobbled on down the aisle between the beds, not wanting to see if she’d put any hurt in Clera’s eyes.

  Nona eased herself into her new bed like an old woman, the bruises from her beating starting to stiffen. She hoped that Darla’s injuries hurt more than hers did. The big girl shot her a dirty look but held her tongue. With her right hand and left foot both bandaged she probably had no appetite for further trouble. Either way, Nona lacked the energy to care. She rolled her head towards Ara. “What are threads?” Sisters Flint, Wheel, and Kettle had been drawn to the assassin’s knife, all arriving at Blade Hall within minutes of each other. Quite how that happened had been nagging at Nona all the while she scrubbed and cleaned.

  “Threads are complicated,” Ara said, her head on her pillow.

  “I’m too tired for comp
licated,” Nona said.

  “They’re almost the Path, but not quite. Everything has its own threads and they tangle with each other. A trained quantal can weave one person’s threads with another’s, or with a thing. Or an untrained one can do it by accident—like Hessa did with you.

  “A Mystic Sister must have linked the threads from something left behind by the escaped assassin to some of our nuns. They probably used the twin to the dagger you got, which was why the link was so strong. And they did it so that they might be able to sense if she came back.”

  “Sister Pan did that?”

  Ara snorted. “Pan? She’s too old. She hasn’t touched the Path in years. No, it must have been a proper Mystic. A Holy Witch!”

  “So . . . why didn’t they find the knife ages ago?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Ara laughed. “Not really, no. But I know there are threads to draw you to a thing that is still, and threads that will pull on you when a thing is moving. I guess they chose and tied threads that would pull on the sisters if the assassin was moving close to the convent—and that included her possessions which they assumed she would be carrying. They had one of her other two knives to work with. And then when you moved the first knife . . . they came!”

  “Ouch.” Nona remembered Sister Kettle seemingly unwrapping herself from the shadows at the base of the wall and cannoning into her already beaten body. She frowned. “The nuns were there before I even touched the knife.”

  “They say a really strong bond can give a premonition. Some things bind better than others, but with time the threads always come loose.”