Grey Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “Better get on with it,” Darla said. “This is insane, though. I did mention that?”

  “You did.” And Nona led off after Zole.

  They went directly to the novice cloisters, the icy gusts swirling around them as the Corridor wind struggled to reassert itself. Mystic Class would be arrayed within the cloister now, ready to challenge Nona the moment she set foot inside. Darla followed Nona into the laundry wing, ignoring the main archway into the cloister. They went through the washroom, past Sister Mop and Sister Spear, one scrubbing, the other at work with the mangle.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Sister Spear looked up as Nona started to climb the wooden stairs to the second storey.

  Nona paused and met the woman’s sharp stare. “I’m on Shade Trial, sister.”

  “And the big girl?” Sister Spear had recently joined from Gerran’s Crag in the west and struggled with names.

  She’s old. Beat her and leave her bleeding.

  “She’s my prisoner,” Nona said.

  “Prisoner?” Sister Spear frowned.

  Nona nodded. “Mistress Shade has instructed us at length on the value of hostages. I can’t afford to let her out of my sight.”

  Sister Spear waved them away, shook her head and returned to her mangle work. “Novices . . .”

  The floor above had been given over to the storage of linens, salt for the wash, and unspecified crates of the type that looked too important to throw away but too boring to open. Nona ignored it all and went to one of the outer windows. The shutters protested with a squeal of rusty hinges.

  “I don’t like this bit.” Darla peered out at the drop.

  “I won’t let you down.” Nona patted the rope at her hip then slipped out onto the window ledge. A quick jump and scramble saw her onto the roof, one flaw-blade skewering a roof tile to gain purchase. Crouching low, Nona hurried towards the chimney above the boiling room. She kept below the roof ridge and looped her rope around the narrow smokestack. Returning to the roof’s edge, she dangled the rope for Darla.

  “Come on.” She sneezed and swore.

  Darla made a meal of the climb, sending more than a few tiles crashing to the flagstones below. If the Mystic Class guards had truly believed Nona stood even a small chance of success they would have recruited eyes among the other classes and stationed them outside. But Nona had chosen the least overlooked side of the building and the ice-wind kept novices from lingering outside; and neither Joeli nor her friends seemed to consider her a threat.

  Darla came to lie beside Nona, peering around the chimney and over the roof ridge into the cloister yard.

  “How in creation . . .” Darla’s mouth hung open. “The tree . . .”

  The centre oak stood decked in green, the thick multitude of its leaves tossed this way and that by the blustery wind. The evening before it had been a stark cluster of sticks, every leaf wrapped tight against the cold.

  “It’s called horticulture,” Nona said. “A smelly business.”

  “So. When do we do it?”

  “Wait.”

  They held at the roof ridge, waiting.

  “How long for?”

  “Not long. Look.” Nona nodded across to the less-used west entrance.

  A novice came running through, hair covered by a nun’s headdress, face down, weaving past the first girl in her way.

  “Challenge!” Mally gave chase. The novice kept running. “Challenge!”

  Crocey surged into the girl’s path and seized her shoulders, shaking her. “She said ‘challenge’ you stupid—” The headdress fell away revealing Jula, nervous and flushed.

  “Incorrect challenge. They all miss a meal,” Nona said.

  A second novice came in at a run, through the main entrance this time, steering all eyes from Nona’s side of the cloister. Darla started to rise. “Shouldn’t we?”

  “Wait.” Nona pulled her down.

  Down below Joeli’s shriek cut the air. “It’s a trick!” She raced towards the new intruder. “Check her eyes! Check the eyes!”

  The new girl wore a headdress and a scarf bound around her face. She moved like lightning.

  “It’s her! It’s her!” Meesha cried as the girl dodged past.

  “Challenge! Challenge!” Joeli reached them. “Got you!”

  Her triumph proved short-lived. Ruli pulled her scarf aside, grinning beneath eyes that showed no white.

  “How?” Darla whispered.

  “Blackwort drops. It lasts a day or two,” Nona said. “They all lose another meal.”

  A third girl burst from a window in the east range, headdress in place, scarf across her face.

  “Wait! Wait!” Joeli screamed. “Let her get in the sun.”

  Mystic Class novices closed from all sides. “Watch for a shadow!”

  As the new girl broke from the shade of the gallery half a dozen challenges went up as one. “No shadow!” “Challenge!” The girl skidded to a halt. Elani snatched the headdress from her. Golden hair spilled out.

  “Lose a meal,” Nona whispered.

  “How?” Darla sounded exasperated even though it wasn’t her meals being cut.

  “Ara’s great at shadow-work,” Nona said. “She just sucked it up into her eyes making them like mine.” Nona rolled to the side and started to retreat down the slope of the roof. “Get ready.”

  Screams went up. It would be the four Red Class novices Nona had recruited. With heads and faces covered they were to rush in after Ara was caught, one from the west entrance, one from the main entrance, one from Ara’s window and the last ten yards behind the first, all of them screaming like banshees and weaving to avoid capture. In the chaos the defenders might not notice how short the decoys were.

  Darla stood up and bent over with her back to the chimney and hands cupped almost a yard above the tiles. “This is still insane. You’ll die.”

  “In service to the Ancestor, death is but a kiss.” Nona quoted Sister Wheel with a grin, and from the edge of the roof she began to run at Darla with all the speed she could muster.

  Nona let the world slow around her even as she accelerated up the slope. The high screaming of the little novices tumbled down the registers. She leapt for Darla, lead foot aimed at her cupped hands. Shoe met fingers and Darla heaved upwards as they’d practised, lifting with all the power of her back, shoulders and arms. Nona bit down on the terrified yell that so badly wanted to escape her and flew through the air, arms pinwheeling.

  Below her, struggling through the moment, the novices from Red Class tried to evade the Mystic guards. Perhaps more challenges rang out in the chaos, Nona couldn’t tell. Sister Apple would know. Nobody had seen Apple but they knew she was there, watching.

  With their attention on the running novices at the far side of the cloister none of those in the square looked up to see Nona’s flight. The green wall of the centre-oak’s foliage rushed up to greet her, along with a hundred opportunities for being impaled. “I’ve missed! I’ve missed!” Nona could see nothing but leaves. “Ancestor protect me!” She had no time to say the words but they ran behind her lips.

  In the next moment Nona was crashing through twigs and greenery. Perhaps she added her screaming to the mix in the cloister. She was too scared to know. The net took her by surprise even though she had been trying to aim for it the whole time. Her arms shot through the holes. The ropes lashed her face. The branches to which she had secured the corners the night before now creaked and groaned in protest, swaying all around her.

  For what seemed an age Nona lay entangled in the net’s embrace, panting out the panic that had filled her during the plunge. Gradually she became aware of the shouts and screams in the surrounding cloister, dying away now. Somewhere close at hand Joeli was cursing.

  “. . . the bitch. Four wasted challenges.”

  “Watch everything! She’ll try again.”

  “She’ll be in the next wave!”

  “This is cheating!” Joeli again. “She’s supposed to be disguis
ed as other people, not have other people disguised as her!”

  Nona lay high in the arms of the great oak, cocooned in green.

  This is a stupid game.

  Shut up, Keot.

  Well it is.

  Very slowly, Nona began to untangle herself. The puzzle-box lay where Sister Apple had placed it that morning, low down in a fork of major branches. The leaves that close to the ground were not thick enough to hide her. It sat there, taunting her. A cubic box maybe six inches on a side, a thing of black and white, perhaps a bone body inlaid with ebony, a handful of small locks and catches on each side.

  Even if you could get it unnoticed they would see it gone before you had time to open it and then they would just challenge the tree.

  I thought you weren’t interested in my silly game?

  Keot didn’t reply. But clearly he hadn’t been paying as close attention to Nona’s doings this week as she had imagined. She wondered what else he had to occupy his time.

  Nona fished from her habit the box Ruli had fashioned for her. “Damnation.” The impact with the net had splintered one side, breaking away some of the fire-blackened washers that Ruli had used in place of locks. The body was bleached boxwood, the black design painted on with a tarry mix. It bore only a passing resemblance to the puzzle-box below, but if Sister Apple had taught them anything about disguise it was that people saw what they expected to see.

  Nona looped her string around the hook at the corner of her fake box then clambered through the branches, keeping high. It took a while and she was thankful for the wind, for without it her passage through the branches would have been betrayed by the localized motion of the leaves.

  At last she reached a position five yards above the box where the foliage was still thick enough to conceal her. Anchored by one hand, she used the other to dangle her second string. This one ended in a noose, with a lead fishing weight hung just above the loop; something from the endless mystery of Ruli’s pockets, suggested to stop the string fluttering to the wind’s tune.

  Without the unrelenting grapple-tossing on their caving expedition Nona would have lost heart, believing that if you didn’t manage to snag something on the tenth attempt you weren’t ever going to do it. It took an age before the loop encompassed the box and didn’t slip away when she pulled.

  Go on!

  If it slides out and falls it’s all over.

  Do it!

  Before she could raise the string Nona felt a familiar tickle at the back of her nose. No! She screwed her eyes tight, bit down hard, concentrated the formidable power of her will so hard on not sneezing that her face hurt with the twisting of it. Still the tickle grew. No! Damnation! Keot! Do something!

  What will you give me? He burned along the veins of her neck, stretching out across her cheek.

  Anything, just stop the sneeze!

  Anything? You’ll kill for me?

  What? No!

  Keot retreated. The sneeze rose, unstoppable, coming to summon a barrage of challenges.

  All right! I’ll kill. But I choose who!

  Keot hesitated then burned into her nose and down her throat. It hurt, but when he surfaced the sneeze had gone.

  You should kill the one called Jula.

  Yisht. I’ll kill Yisht.

  Keot made no reply but she could feel his disapproval. Even so as he retreated across her shoulders the devil felt more deeply bedded in her flesh, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

  Nona pursed her lips then returned her attention to the box, still lassoed despite how much her hand had trembled when she fought the sneeze. She pulled gently, then with more force. The box shifted, twisted, lifted. “Yes!”

  As it rose the box began to spin, the kind of motion that would draw the eye. Ara had been waiting for this moment, Ruli too. Ruli, lounging inside the cloister, stood and ran across the main entrance. Ara, waiting outside, charged in once more, head covered.

  “Just stop her!” Joeli yelled. They weren’t supposed to lay a finger on anyone, only to challenge. The person on trial had to stop when challenged. They would all lose another meal over it, probably, to be added to the two hungry days they had yet to find out about, earned when Nona reached the tree.

  Nona lifted the box. “Three more days, not two, Joeli.” And began to lower the substitute.

  By the time the novices had wrested Ara’s headscarf from her in a struggle that put several of them on the ground, Nona had lowered the fake box into place and slipped the doubled string free of the hook. It looked deeply unconvincing to her and she turned her attention to the real item, certain that she would have only moments before a challenge rang out, aimed at the tree.

  “Keep hold of her!” Jolie was presumably tired of catching the same imposters over again. “And the other one—Rula is she?”

  The box was surprisingly heavy. It didn’t rattle, and didn’t even seem to have hinges. Each of the six faces bore three locks. Nona clambered to a more secure position where she could sit with both hands free, secured by her legs. She called on her clarity and defocused her vision to bring her thread-sight to the fore. A billion green threads laced the tree itself, every branch and twig joined to every other, every leaf, every part of every leaf, interlocked in a web of life, joined with slow, sure, vegetable certainty.

  Nona focused on the first lock, a keyhole set into a disk of black iron not that dissimilar to Ruli’s charred washers. “Locks I can do.” Novices were introduced to locks in Shade during their Mystic Class years, though younger novices often acquired sets of picks and practised around the convent. Nona had never had the money for picks or the inclination to spend time on the fiddly business, but she knew a few thread tricks.

  The first lock surrendered quickly. Finding its thread took a little hunting and a lot of concentration but once pulled the satisfying click followed immediately. The second lock proved a nightmare. It had two threads, connected in some complex way Nona couldn’t fathom. Pulling one unlocked something, pulling the other unlocked a different thing and locked the first thing . . . Eventually she managed to pull both together in a way that sounded as if it did the job.

  “Only sixteen left to go.” Nona looked out into the leaves seething around her. Down below the cloister sounded almost deserted. How long did she have before Bray rang out for Shade class? She could only work on the box between breakfast and dinner, and outside class time. The prospect of another blind leap into the tree did not appeal, even if the distractions could be made to work again.

  You’ll have to leave the tree for class. They’ll spot you then anyway.

  Nona said nothing, only curled her lip, but the devil had it right. She hadn’t imagined she would get so far and her plans had extended no further than securing and replacing the box.

  Nona turned the box in her hands, seeking a lock that looked easier than the rest. Across the rooftops Bray sounded, calling out from the Academia Tower. “Blood!”

  Nona started to climb down. If the guards left the cloister before she did then the contest was over. More than over, her achievements so far might no longer count. She paused for a moment low among the branches, struggling with the box one last time. In the next moment rather than be caught trying to creep out, she stuffed the box into her habit and dropped from the tree, landing in a crouch some yards from the trunk.

  “Ancestor!” A handful of novices were still making their way out and the cordon of Mystic Class guards were beginning their retreat towards the exits. “It’s her!” The first girl to speak wasn’t even one of the guards.

  “You got me.” Nona straightened and stepped towards the little novice. “Elsie, isn’t it? Red Class?”

  “Challenge!” Joeli shrieked it, shoving Mally and Meesha aside as she stormed towards Nona.

  “Too late.” Nona turned to face her. “I’ve finished.”

  “Challenge!” Joeli looked ugly with her face twisted and red. She had both hands raised as if about to strike her enemy.

  “Finished?” Sister
Apple stepped out from behind the tree. Quite how she could have been there unseen Nona couldn’t fathom. True, her range-coat was bark-patterned, but you couldn’t hold a feather over your head and expect people to believe you were a hen.

  “She’s lying!” Joeli shrugged off Elani who sought to calm her. “She’s a lying peasant bitch!” Her arm, raised in accusation, swung to point at the puzzle-box nestled in the fork of the tree. Nona peered up at it. From down below it did look quite convincing.

  “That’s not the box,” Sister Apple said. “But to be finished you would have to have opened the real one, Nona. And that does sound unlikely.”

  Mystic Class crowded round now, Darla and Zole joining them.

  Nona drew the puzzle-box from her habit, holding it carefully. It sat across her cupped palms.

  “Still locked!” Joeli spat.

  “It’s a difficult box to open.” Sister Apple smiled. “It was a marvellous effort to retrieve it.”

  Nona flattened her palms out a fraction and the puzzle-box fell into four sections along the lines that her flaw-blades had cut through it. The thing was a solid block of bone with no space inside.

  “Is that open enough?”

  17

  THE LAST DAYS leading up to seven-day proved rather tense ones. No one in Mystic Class save Nona, Darla, and Zole got to eat. Mistress Shade totalled the failures of the Shade Trial guards at seven days without meals. The abbess decreed that seven-day be an exception, presumably concerned that an unbroken fast of such duration might do physical harm to some of the leanest novices. The class did not take their punishment with good humour.

  Sister Wheel devoted a lesson to the sin of pride. “We are none of us more than a twig in the great tree of the Ancestor. The gifts the Ancestor has given us are for the benefit of all, not the aggrandisement of the individual. Pride is a poison that corrupts.” She turned her watery eyes on Nona. Nona resisted asking if the Chosen One was just another twig.

  Sister Rail directed Academia lessons back towards algebra as if knowing how much Nona hated it. Of those without rumbling stomachs Zole was the only one able to cope with the scrawl of letters and symbols the nun covered her board in.