Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘I—’ The voice of a bell spoke over her, deep and throbbing in the sinkhole’s void. ‘Bray! That’s for the lesson!’ Nona leapt to her feet, unconcerned that she stood on the very brink of a high fall.

The other girls were slower to get up, pushing themselves back from the sinkhole’s lip.

‘That’s horrible,’ Jula said, brushing the grit from the seat of her habit.

‘It’s incredible!’ Ruli said. ‘Weren’t you terrified when—’

‘Is it true?’ Clera frowned, weighing Nona with a speculative gaze.

‘We have to get to Blade.’ Nona was already hurrying towards the Academia tower. ‘I can’t be late twice!’ She hesitated and looked back. ‘Where’s the lesson?’

Clera laughed at that. ‘Come on. She’s right – Sister Tallow will have us running up and down the Seren Way, you know what she’s like!’

A moment later the three novices were walking briskly towards a building at the far edge of the plateau, with Nona jogging to catch up.

‘That’s the Blade Hall.’ Clera pointed to a tall building with high arched windows. Walls of huge limestone blocks supported a peaked roof with stone gargoyles roaring beneath the eaves. To the south a row of carved buttresses reinforced the wall that faced out over the plateau’s edge. ‘And that’s the Heart Hall.’ Clera nodded to the building on their left as they passed its many-pillared portico.

‘The Persus Hall.’ Jula finished tying her hair back with a black cord. ‘After Emperor Persus, third of his name, whose line ended when the current—’

‘Everyone calls it the Heart Hall because it was built for the shipheart.’ Clera led up the steps of Blade Hall, almost running but not quite.

‘What’s the ship—’

But Clera had already pushed open the heavy door and slipped inside. Ruli followed.

‘I still don’t understand who paid your confirmation fee.’ Jula came up behind Nona.

Nona didn’t understand either. She worried that perhaps it had been overlooked and this evening or maybe tomorrow a sister would come with ledger and quill and a demand for ten gold sovereigns. Talking about it with the others seemed like tempting fate.

‘Nona!’ Sister Tallow called her name the moment Nona stuck her head around the door. ‘Come here beside me.’

Nona, saved from answering Jula, hurried across. The old woman shot her a narrow look then returned her gaze to the rest of Red Class, the last few of them lining up in a second rank. Arabella, now in a habit, stood at Mistress Blade’s other side, golden and perfect, her hair looking as if a trio of handmaids had spent an hour combing and pinning it.

The hall extended about half the length of the building, ending in galleried seating around a short tunnel that led to the remaining chambers. The ceiling vaulted above them high enough for an oak tree to grow to maturity at the centre. Apart from a collection of a dozen or so man-height leather-wrapped wooden posts on stands in a far corner the hall lay echoingly empty, the floor an inch of sand over flagstones.

‘I need partners for these two.’ Sister Tallow had enough steel in her voice that even simple observations became life or death ultimatums. She cast a dark eye across the girls lined before her. ‘Novice Ghena, you will be with Nona. Novice Jula, with Arabella.’

Ghena fixed her gaze on Nona and allowed herself a thin smile. Jula looked surprised.

‘Time to change.’ Sister Tallow clapped her hands. ‘Anyone dawdling gets their head shaved.’ She directed her attention to Ghena who, now that Nona considered it, looked as if she might have suffered just such a fate only a few weeks ago. ‘Make sure the new girls get habits that fit.’ Another clap of the hands. ‘Go!’ And the dozen novices were off, running towards the tunnel beneath the tiered seating, sand spraying out beneath their heels.

Ghena moved swiftly and Nona had to sprint to catch up. The gloom of the tunnel stole Nona’s sight after the brightness of the hall. As she slowed to let her eyes adjust Ghena pulled away while others came pounding up behind. At the end of the passage most of the girls bundled to the left, but Jula led Arabella to the right, and Nona followed.

Ghena was waiting for them in a long and narrow storeroom. She pulled back the shutters and light from the window at the far end revealed both walls lined with shelves. Further back all manner of goods were stacked: earthenware jars, rolled mats, heavy leather balls, staves, sticks, canes, even the hilts of what might be daggers or swords. Closer at hand shelves boasted piles of neatly folded tunics and shoes of thick black cloth.

‘The smallest are by the door. Make sure you get one that fits well,’ Jula said. ‘Too tight and if someone wants to get a hold they’ll have to grab a handful of you as well. Too loose and you’ll be tripping up or have it pulled off.’

Nona and Arabella pulled out fighting tunics, each top paired with ankle-length trousers, holding them against themselves under the critical eye of their partner.

‘Too small, even for you,’ Ghena barked. Jula had already led Arabella off to the changing room, the new girl seemingly more anxious to keep her golden curls than worry overmuch about the fit of her tunic.

‘It looks about right …’ Nona hadn’t ever chosen clothes before, but it did look about right.

‘When someone grabs you.’ Ghena lunged forward and seized a fistful of the tunic. ‘Do you want them to have a handful of this or a handful of your skin?’

‘I don’t want them to grab me,’ Nona said. ‘A loose tunic makes it easier.’

Ghena snarled and ripped the tunic top from Nona’s hands. ‘You’re partnered with me, farm-girl. Every mistake you make makes me look bad. Mistress Blade will test you and if you fail I get punished. And if that happens I’ll take it out on you.’

Nona snatched the top back. ‘Winning is never a mistake.’ She met Ghena’s dark and furious eyes, feeling her own snarl begin to twist her face, remembering how she had screamed out her fury as she ran towards Raymel Tacsis. A second later the heat blew from her, as if a cold wind had rattled through the room. She saw the hangman’s sheet again, Saida just a shape beneath it. Anger hadn’t saved her. Winning hadn’t saved her. Nona took the tunic two places along from the one she’d tried last and held it up against her. ‘Good enough?’

‘Good enough.’

They reached the changing room to find the first novice already leaving. ‘You two will make a lovely couple with your shiny heads.’ Ketti ran her hands over her brow as she passed them, grinning, her own thick cascade of black hair tied back tightly with a white cord.

‘… pigs and cows.’ Arabella broke off, aiming a bright smile at the door as Nona and Ghena entered. All the novices laughed, a couple trying to hide it behind their hands.

Nona set her teeth, and finding a space on the long bench began to struggle out of her unfamiliar clothing, throwing it up on the pegs above as the other girls had. The room smelled of old sweat, of bodies packed close – you could smell it out in the main hall, faint but pervasive. It reminded her of the village.

‘Hurry up!’ Clera offered the advice apologetically as she left, ready in her fighting habit, belt tight about her waist, hair scraped back with not so much as a single curl escaping.