Sister Pan just smiled a small smile. “Novice Arabella. Approach the Path in serenity. Take a single step and return, owning what you have been given.”
29
NONA LEFT THE hidden room after Hessa and Arabella. The rest of Grey Class was long gone. In the windowless chamber it was easy to miss Bray’s call. Sister Pan had held her back, instructing that she set her hands to the sigil-crowded walls and allow any stray trace of Path-energy to leave her body.
She hurried down the spiral stair, still bubbling with exhilaration. Her contact with the Path had been fleeting but glorious. The Path had filled her and in doing so had woken her to the understanding that for all her life she had been hollow. It turned her flesh to gold, her mind to crystal. She wanted more. Even as the power of it terrified her and she felt her body shaking beyond her control, she wanted more.
East door slammed behind her, closed by the wind. Nona paused at the tower base, staring at the greyness of the day in wonder, knowing that behind it all, through it all, ran the Path.
Someone took Nona’s wrist from behind in an iron-fingered grip, jolting her from her musings. A hand to her elbow immobilized the limb, and a moment later Nona was bent forward, crying out in pain, her arm raised out straight behind her. Her attacker steered her back against the tower wall.
“You, child, will stay away from Zole.”
“Yisht!” Nona snarled, recognizing the accent of the ice-tribes.
“Tell me that you understand and will obey.”
Nona gritted her teeth against the agony in her shoulder. With her face pressed to the cold stones and her arm locked there seemed no possible means of escape. “You’re going to break my arm?” She snatched a breath. “How many novices can you break before the abbess throws you out?” Nona hadn’t thought about challenging Zole again but she was damned if she would be bullied.
“I could break more than your arm, child.” The pressure increased. “I could break every joint of every finger.” Yisht spoke without relish but something in her tone left no room for doubt. She would do these things. “I could tear the eyes from your head—”
Nona lurched away from the wall, shouting against the pain. If she’d left by any other door she might be seen from the other convent buildings.
“A true fighter, I see.” Yisht steered her back against the stonework. “Too brave for threats. But I have watched you. You care for the cripple. Cross me, in any way, and perhaps she will limp off a cliff one windy night.”
She released Nona with a shove that sent her stumbling forwards as if in demonstration of what might happen to Hessa. A dip in the rock caught Nona’s foot and she fell, face first, feeling something tear in her lacerated back. By the time she righted herself Yisht had gone.
• • •
“HOW DID IT go with the Holy Witches?” Clera wanted to know when Nona entered the dormitory. “I missed you at Blade, and at the bathhouse, and at dinner! Jula said something must have come up with Sister Pan and she kept you for special lessons, but I said—”
“She said you were dead,” Jula called over from her bed. “She said, ‘Nona wouldn’t miss a meal unless she was dead.’”
“I ate at the sanatorium while Sister Rose changed my dressings and took out some stitches.”
“So . . .” Clera rolled over and rested her chin in her hands. “What’s the secret? Where does Sister Pan take you witches to play? It’s something to do with the tenth step, isn’t it? I always said it was.”
“Yes. The tenth step. Tap it right and it opens a hidden passage.” Nona climbed into her bed with care.
“Oh you liar!” Clera swung her knees under her. “Tell!”
“Sister Pan said she’d make an example of—”
“Don’t be such a coward. You’re Pan’s favourite now. She won’t hurt you.”
“—of anyone I told,” Nona finished.
“Oh.” Clera slumped, then brightened. “Tell Jula! She can tell me after.”
Nona snorted and lay down on her side, taking care not to stretch her lacerations. Sister Pan had cautioned her to secrecy but secrecy had been in her nature long before she reached the convent. Sister Apple had told her to strip on that first morning, and she hadn’t wanted to, but she’d done it because it was true, she had needed a bath. Giving up secrets though, that left her more exposed than any degree of nakedness. She would rather walk nude through the convent than reveal her true nature. They had seen it at the village. Her own mother had seen it. And she had left there in a cage with curses and clods of earth thrown at her back. The words had been heavier and had hurt the more.
• • •
SLEEP CAME HARD that night, surrounded by the soft sounds of dreaming. Images of Ara and Hessa working with the Path’s energies played across the darkness again and again. Bright and crackling light filling hands to be thrown at the sigil-covered walls, or drawn back into the flesh to imbue an awful shuddering strength.
Visions of the Path finally faded and still Nona couldn’t escape into dreaming. Yisht’s iron grip held her from sleep, the bruises on Nona’s arm anchoring her with a dull ache. She hadn’t told the others. It would scare Hessa and gain nothing. All Nona had to do was not pursue any vengeance upon Zole. But, beyond that, it was shame that kept her silent. Shame at how easily the woman had overmastered her, and shame at the fear she had felt. She lay, staring at the darkness. Not until the blaze of the focus moon had come and gone would Nona’s mind release her to oblivion.
• • •
THE BEST PART of three weeks passed before Nona’s back felt fully healed. She returned to Blade classes with a passion, pitting her knife-work against the older and more experienced novices, though keeping clear of Zole. She would of course have to face the girl if Sister Tallow instructed a match, but the nun kept both Ara and Nona away from her.
Nona made sure to get to the blade-path chamber at least three days in every seven now that she never escaped a Path lesson. No matter how slowly she took the course though, and no matter how much resin she applied to her soles, she still managed to get no further than halfway, and usually less than that. The articulated pipes always seemed to end in a different combination of positions at the end of the previous attempt, making the course unpredictable, with sections swinging or rotating in unexpected ways and at unexpected times. Her only consolation was that Zole had yet to cross a third of the way without falling.
One sour note was that Jula no longer practised with them. Clera and Jula had some sudden and one-sided falling out after a seven-day on which both of them were allowed family visits in Verity. Clera wouldn’t speak about it but missed no opportunity to apply the sharp edge of her tongue to Jula, who simply looked miserable and confused.
“Why are you such a bitch to everyone, Clera?” Ara asked after one fierce exchange that sent Jula running off in tears.
“Everyone?”
Nona blinked. “Everyone?” She had been watching Jula turn the corner past the scriptorium at the far end of the courtyard and wondering how after two years of training to accept the fiercest of blows and strike back, mere words got past their defences so easily.
“Everyone.” Ara nodded, eyes narrowed at Clera.
Nona frowned. Perhaps it was true. If you weren’t Clera’s friend you weren’t anything to her.
Clera shrugged and flipped her silver crown, catching the coin to examine the emperor’s head on the upward side. “I don’t want anyone to be sad when I die.”
• • •
RULI JOINED GREY Class on the day Sister Tallow introduced Nona and at least a third of the newer novices to the throwing star. Nona had held one only once before, and briefly, when it was thrown at her by Sister Wheel and punched a hole in her palm. She still had a white seam of scar there.
Throwing the things proved easier than catching them, but to hit a target with any accuracy proved harde
r than she had anticipated. Even so Nona did rather well with only Zole and, unexpectedly, Ruli doing better than her out of the girls new to the weapon. And both Clera and Ara were strongly of the opinion that Zole had previous experience. Clera proved to be something of a liability, Sister Tallow expressing doubt at one point as to whether she could even reliably hit the floor with a throwing star.
When Bray finally sounded, everyone’s arms ached from the throwing action—Sister Tallow insisting that they learn with both left and right hand—and none of the new girls had a finger without at least some minor cuts.
“Novices.” Sister Tallow called the class to her. This was no surprise: Blade was not a class you could run from at the bell. “It is perhaps timely, given the difficulties presented to this class by Novice Zole’s use of combat styles unknown to you, that we are fast approaching the annual Caltess forging. We will be travelling into Verity each day for three days, starting after next seven-day. I expect Grey Class to acquit itself well against the Caltess apprentices. Two among Leeni, Darla, Alata, Sheelar and Croy will be entered into the sword ring; three among those not selected for sword will be entering the unarmed contest.”
• • •
THE RACE TO the bathhouse after Blade had become a particular point of pride since Zole’s arrival, and even burning news like the sudden closeness of the Caltess forging had to wait until the sprint was over. Each novice gathered their day-habit to change into after bathing and collected by the main doors, ready to run. Darla, whose toes were still healing and whose build made her a poor runner in any event, shoved open the doors and the girls streamed out around her.
Nona’s size put her at a disadvantage but she’d caught up a few inches on her friends over two years of good eating at the convent. Zole, Ketti, and Clera opened up a lead on the first clear stretch past Heart Hall, with Ara just behind them, but Nona knew she’d close down on them in the tight turns past the laundry and around the long low winery building. Where Zole and the others slowed to make the sharp turn amid the laundry steams Nona ran directly at the opposite wall, leaping up at it to drive off at an angle into the narrow gap between the buildings. By the time the others exited the steam-cloud Nona had the lead.
“How the—” Clera’s gasp of outrage lost her a needed breath and several more strides.
Nona and Ketti spun past a bewildered Sister Rock and crashed through the bathhouse doors to victory, with Ara, Zole, and then Clera hard upon their heels.
• • •
“HOW WILL SHE choose?” The question bounced around the changing room as habits were stripped with indecent haste. “How?”
“I don’t care how, as long as she chooses me.” Clera kicked off her remaining shoe. “I don’t see how she can’t.” And with that she was running into the hot fog of the pool-room.
“Sometimes it’s contests. Sometimes she picks her favourites.” Alata stepped out of her underskirts. “Last year it was favourites.”
More opinions crossed back and forth, but Nona was pursuing Ara and they jumped into the pool’s enfolding warmth together. Nona surfaced and let herself hang in the water, boneless, drifting in the white blindness, letting the chatter mix with the sound of splashing and flow around her, detached from any meaning.
• • •
“WELL!” CLERA SWAM through the steaming water, dark hair fanned out across the surface behind her. “The Caltess. It’ll be like going home for you.” All around them the shapes of novices in the mist, idle and floating in the middle of the pool or in murmured conversation in small groups around the edges.
“What?” Nona came to herself, shaking off the drowsiness. She backed before Clera’s advance, swishing her hands before her, feet a yard above the bottom. She had no idea how much time had passed, though her fingers were wrinkly so it must have been a while. The pool’s walls reached around her as she arrived in one of the corners furthest from the changing room.
“The Caltess,” Clera repeated. “Familiar ground for you.”
“I was only there a couple of months.” She had known the forging was coming—nobody passed through Grey Class without experiencing it—but the date was never given far in advance, depending on the fight schedule at the Caltess and any other commitments Partnis Reeve might have.
“My father will bet on me,” Clera said, swimming closer, trapping Nona in the corner, the currents of her approach reaching Nona’s legs and belly. “And win enough to buy his release.”
“I thought the matches were private.” Nona remembered the baying of the crowd beneath the Caltess attic, something living, an animal, greater than its many parts. She wondered what it would be like to fight in the middle of such a thing.
“They are private, silly.” Clera ducked beneath the surface and emerged closer still, squirting water at Nona from pursed lips. “But that doesn’t mean people don’t bet on them, or that rich men don’t pay to spy on the novices from hidden galleries.”
“But the blade-fist is secret . . .” To be used if required, never to be displayed for mere show—that’s what Sister Tallow said.
Clera grinned and reached out to push a steam-damp lock from above Nona’s eye. “They’re more interested in us, silly.” She bobbed up out of the water and thrust her chest forward before twisting away with a splash.
Ara took her place, her blonde hair dark with water. “Are you worried about the Tacsis? You know Raymel doesn’t fight any more, yes?”
“I know.” Nona shrugged. Thuran Tacsis had forgotten her. His son was alive. He had more to worry about than a peasant girl who fled to a nunnery. There had been nothing in two long years, not since the Noi-Guin assassins and the high priest’s trial. But Abbess Glass still wouldn’t let her leave the convent on seven-day, though half the novices went to Verity with a handful of nuns to chaperone them.
• • •
IN THE DARKNESS of the dormitory that night Nona imagined herself once again amid the barrels, crates and coiled ropes of the Caltess attic, surrounded by scores of purchased children, uneasy in their dreams. She wondered about the Tacsis brothers and their father, whom she had never seen but who squandered a fortune to see her dead. Even if they still spared her a thought after two long years, a visit to the Caltess would hardly be a sensible time for them to take revenge. Nona would be surrounded by witnesses, not to mention Sister Tallow and several other Red Sisters.
Even so, she couldn’t sleep. Something tugged at her. Fingernails drawn across a chalkboard, unheard but still somehow setting that nauseating quiver in the marrow of her bones. Was it just worry?
She slipped from her blanket and walked on slow feet between the double row of beds. The nightgown sliding across her legs had been a gift from Ara. Nona had nothing that had not been a gift: even her presence at the convent was a gift, her confirmation fee renewed each year by an “anonymous” donor—though she was sure that was Abbess Glass’s doing.
Ignoring the night-lantern glowing beside Mally’s bed at the door, Nona slipped out into the communal hall and advanced to the main door. Her fingers found the handle cold. The wind’s threats came low and moaning through the door, the draught icy about her feet. Beneath the iron’s chill something else tingled at her senses, something darker than the night, colder than the wind, many-angled and strange. She opened the door, just a crack, and set her eye to the gap. The wind whistled in all around, as if mocking her attempts at stealth.
A figure stood so close before the door that the shock stole Nona’s breath. For a moment her heart held paralysed within her chest, but the figure’s raised hand didn’t reach for her, continuing instead to inscribe an invisible pattern upon the moving air between them. The eyes above the black scarf that wrapped the lower face were Yisht’s. Shark’s eyes, Ruli called them, flat and dead. The woman proved so intent on her work that Nona’s small movement of the door didn’t draw her attention from it. Nona watched as Yisht finishe
d the pattern, her finger seeming to leave a lingering disturbance in the air, seen as water is seen on glass. She stepped to the right and began again. Was she searching for something?
A white finger, so pale it looked as if the frost had bitten into it, traced a new convolution into empty space. The pattern of it sank into Nona’s eye, pressing against her brain, the feeling unpleasant and familiar. Sigils!
Without pausing for thought, Nona hauled the door open. They stood for a moment, Nona in the teeth of the wind, shockingly cold, her nightdress moulded about her and giving no protection, Yisht immobile, hand on the hilt of her sword, a gleaming inch revealed. Without a word Yisht lowered her outstretched arm, turned, and walked away, the night seeming to thicken about her so that in five steps she had gone entirely.
“Shut the damn door!” A shout from the Grey dormitory.
Nona closed it, shivering, and hurried back to bed. She fell asleep quickly, almost against her will, her mind twisting around the shapes Yisht had left hanging in the air.
• • •
CAGE.
Nona followed a single twisting thread of fire.
Cage.
The word scratched against her concentration. Nona tried to make the voice her own. I’m in a cage—the same cage that’s held me my whole life. I was in a cage before Giljohn took me and I’ve never left it. A cage made of my own bones.
The thread coiled into a spiral of three turns, just like the blade-path. It rose and fell in patterns part-familiar, part-new, flexing as she pursued it.
Cage. Wake up!
I’m not asleep.
The path before her writhed, a serpent in mortal pain, knotting in on itself, and still she followed it, down into the convolutions of the sigil—
CAGE!
Nona opened an eye.
“I was worried.” Ara was leaning over her, so close her hair fell all about Nona’s face, tickling her neck. She pulled back.
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