Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘There were pieces of pottery all over the floor. And he was hurting her.’ Saida had knocked something from its niche – she was always clumsy. Raymel had her arm in his fist, his hand swallowing it from wrist to elbow, and he’d lifted her from the ground. He just stood there turning his hand from one side to the other while Saida struggled and wriggled, trying to reduce the awful strain on elbow and shoulder, shrieking all the while.

‘I told him to put her down but he didn’t hear me.’ Nona had run to try to support her friend’s weight, but Saida weighed twice what she did. Raymel noticed her then and, laughing, shook Saida so that Nona flew free. Something cracked in Saida’s arm when he did it – loud enough to register over her screams.

‘So I stopped him. I cut his throat.’

The younger nun snorted behind her. ‘They say he’s nine foot tall.’

‘I climbed.’ Raymel wasn’t nine foot but he was over eight. He had gone down on one knee, still holding Saida off the ground by her broken arm, taunting Nona with an ugly grin on his handsome face.

Nona had sprinted forward. There was time for the surprise to register in Raymel’s eyes, but not for him to move. She had leapt onto his knee to gain the necessary height then slashed her hand across his throat.

‘How did you cut him?’ The older nun, from behind.

‘I …’ Nona pictured Raymel, golden hair curling across an unfurrowed brow, the smile opening into something else, blood sheeting crimson from the slices she’d set deep in the meat of his neck. ‘I pulled the dagger from his hip as I climbed.’

‘That,’ said the younger nun, ‘sounds unlikely.’

Abbess Glass replied before Nona could deliver her sharp reply. ‘Nevertheless, if you look more closely, Sister Apple, you will see that the girl’s tunic was once white rather than brown – a brown which, if the guards at Harriton are to be believed, is a combination of drying blood and prison grime. Moreover she and her friend were both to be hanged for the murder of Raymel Tacsis.’

‘Then why isn’t he dead?’ Nona asked. She wanted Raymel to be dead.

‘Because his father is very rich, Nona.’ The abbess led them from the road onto a narrower track aimed towards the towering walls of the escarpment. ‘Not just a little bit rich but rich enough to buy a different mansion to sleep in every night from now until age claims him.’

‘Money doesn’t matter when you’re bleeding.’ Nona frowned. Rich or poor, people looked the same on the inside.

‘Thuran Tacsis is rich enough that he owns Academy men.’ The abbess hitched up her habit to help her climb the slope. ‘I miss my crozier already. An old lady without her stick to lean on is a sad thing indeed.’

Nona said nothing, not understanding the abbess’s words.

‘Academy men … Wizards, Nona! Mages. Sorcerers. Witches and warlocks. Children with marjal blood. Educated and raised at the emperor’s expense and bound to the Ark and to his service, but free to earn a living outside the palace until such time as he requires their skills.’

‘They can raise a man from the dead?’ Suddenly she thought of her father, unable to remember anything of him but thick black hair and strong, safe arms.

‘No, but they can stop a live one becoming dead. There’s a boundary, a place where we cross over to join the Ancestor. Some among us can visit that boundary and hold a person there while their body heals from wounds that would otherwise make an end of them.’

‘So rich people never die?’ Nona wondered at it, buying off death with gold coins.

The abbess shook her head. ‘No warlock stays by the boundary for long.’ Her breath came shorter now as the way grew steeper. ‘Thuran has a dozen warlocks working in shifts to hold his son from crossing. And many of the things that kill us the body can’t repair, no matter how much time it is given. Cut flesh though, and lost blood … a healthy body can mend one and replace the other. The real risk is when they bring a person back to their body – there are … beings … that will try to follow in their wake and find a home in their minds. The longer the person is kept on the boundary, the harder it is to keep out such passengers.’

Nona thought of Raymel Tacsis lying in his father’s halls surrounded by Academy men sweating to keep him from death. Saida was dead – Nona had seen her feet poking beneath the sheet in the prison yard, their wrappings still stained with Raymel’s blood. She had no pity for him.

‘I hope he comes back full of devils and they eat his heart.’

4

‘You could send the child on her way here, abbess.’

They stood at the point where the track began its steep ascent up the tumbled cliffs of the plateau, cutting back and forth across the gradient in a dozen hairpin turns. The older nun turned to Nona and pointed across the woods and fields to the west. ‘Morltown is five miles that way. A girl could make herself useful there, find fieldwork.’

Sister Apple stood shoulder to shoulder with Sister Tallow. ‘The high priest will be on this in a heartbeat. The Tacsis won’t even have to ask.’

‘Pick your fights and pick your ground, abbess,’ Sister Tallow said. ‘Jacob would love to get his feet back under the convent table. This would be the perfect excuse.’

‘And you did just steal her from prison …’ Apple frowned, glancing back towards the distant city.

‘Mistress Blade tells me not to fight.’ A smile, then the abbess turned to begin the climb. ‘And Apple tells me not to steal …’ Nona started to follow her. ‘You’re nuns. Show a little faith.’

A last edge of the sun clung to the horizon as Abbess Glass led the way towards a peculiar forest of stone pillars, their shadows reaching across hundreds of yards of rock towards the travellers’ approach. Nona followed, flanked by the two nuns, neither of them winded by the long climb that had set the abbess wheezing. The old one, Sister Tallow, looked as if she could climb all day. The younger, Sister Apple, at least had the decency to appear flushed. Nona, toughened by endless laps at the Caltess, felt the climb in her legs, and the dampness of her shift where sweat stuck it to her back, but made no complaint.

The plateau, really one huge slab of rock, narrowed to a neck of land before widening into a promontory. The pillars stood across the neck, from cliff to cliff, dozens deep, scores across. Abbess Glass led the way through – finding her path seemingly at random. All about them the columns, taller than trees, stretched towards the darkening sky. The place held an odd silence, the wind finding nothing to sing its tune, only stirring the dust and grit among the towers of carved stone. Nona liked it.

The pillars bounded Sweet Mercy Convent one side, and on the other the edges of two cliffs marched towards a sharp convergence. The main dome rose black against the crimson sky, a dozen and more outbuildings visible to either side. Nona followed the nuns towards its arched entrance, the weight of the day on her shoulders now, fatigue wrapping her in its dull grip, making both her anger and her sorrow grow more distant, shaping them into things that might be set apart for a night of dreams.

‘You live in there?’ As they drew closer Nona began to realize how large the dome was. The whole of the Caltess would fit inside several times over, stacked on top of itself.