Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘Did I do all right?’ Nona asked.

‘You were great! You’re fast, Nona! Ghena doesn’t have a lot of technique because she’s only been here three months, but she’s really, really quick, a prime for sure. Only Clera’s quicker than Ghena and some say—’

‘They say I’m the fastest the convent has seen in years.’ Clera sat on the next bed along and favoured Nona with a dangerous smile. ‘Hunska full-blood.’

‘Are there other convents?’ Nona remained flat on her back, the blanket pulled to her neck, gaze returning to the dance of shadows on the ceiling.

‘Six.’ Ruli began to count them off on her fingers. ‘Silent Patience, Chaste Devotion, Gerran’s Crag—’

‘Sweet Mercy is the only one to teach Blade, Path, or Shade. The rest just train Holy Sisters.’

‘Just?’ Jula from a nearby bed, still sounding sour about her lost hair.

‘Holy Sisters are as important to the Ancestor as any other sister,’ Ruli chipped in with a conciliatory tone. ‘The abbess is a Holy Sister and she’s in charge of us all.’

Nona let them talk and watched the shadows play. She didn’t want to see Arabella, strangely alien now with her pink scalp and patchy blonde stubble. She didn’t want to catch the girl’s eye and start another round of accusations. Jula had taken her shaving with poor grace but her reaction was as nothing compared to Arabella’s outburst. Nona had wondered for a moment if Sister Tallow would have to hold her down …

Abbess Glass had said Nona was free to leave at any time, but when Arabella had demanded to go home in the tone of someone used to being obeyed, Sister Tallow had said no.

‘I’m not letting a novice hack at me with a razor because some wild-land peasant stole my belt!’ And with that Arabella had started to stride towards the main doors.

What followed had been ugly to watch, but no matter how Arabella raged or how dire her threats the nun had shown no hint of backing down, and eventually a tearful Arabella Jotsis sat in the chair provided while Jula removed her golden hair with a long razor and a trembling hand.

By the time it was Arabella’s turn to shave Jula’s head she did so with a steady grip on the blade, her eyes red-rimmed and full of cold accusation aimed in Nona’s direction.

Nona opened her eyes with a start. Sleep had nearly taken her. She rolled her head to the left. Clera sat on the edge of the bed in her long white nightgown, the copper penny she so often played with in her hand. The other girls were settling into their beds. ‘We’re friends then?’ she asked without preamble, watching Nona’s eyes.

‘“Friend” can be a dangerous word,’ Nona said.

Clera laughed. ‘Friend? Really?’

‘It is if you mean it.’ Nona didn’t smile. She thought of Amondo and of Saida. ‘Friend’ was a bond. Much of what people did, how they acted, confused Nona. But ‘friend’ she understood. A friend you would die for. Or kill for.

‘Well I mean it.’ Clera let her own smile slip.

‘Then we are.’

It seemed enough for Clera. She rose from Nona’s bed and went to her own, flipping the penny once and humming some tune, low and sweet.

Nona let exhaustion close her eyes. The dormitories were heated by the same pipes that ran in the bathhouse and cells. She hadn’t imagined that commoners ever wholly escaped the cold, perhaps the emperor before his ever-blazing fires, but not girls like her, not like this. One of the high windows was even a quarter open to stop it being too muggy, as if heat were something that could be given to the wind rather than something precious to be hoarded.

In the village mothers cut their children’s hair to a fuzz whenever the weather turned. When the ice-wind surrendered to the Corridor wind and the cold grew less bitter the knives came out. They did it to reduce lice, fleas, and nits to a manageable level, but Nona had always felt it marked the start of something new: new growth, new possibilities. Her last thoughts before dreams stole her were that if a shaved head were the worst thing to have happened to Arabella Jotsis so far then she had lived a charmed life. Also, Nona thought, annoyingly the loss of that golden mane had done nothing to mar the girl’s beauty. If anything she looked somehow more perfect.

Folded in the soft hubbub of voices and with the warmth of her bed drawing her down into sleep Nona let the contest with Ghena play across the back of her eyelids. The whole thing had lasted only moments, moments in which Ghena had thrown a dozen or more punches, a well-practised dance on her part, instinct and reflex on Nona’s. Memory of one fight slipped into memory of another, returning Nona to the sawdust and sweat of the Caltess, watching the apprentices spar. Partnis Reeve’s fight-masters taught discipline but left room for aggression.

A week or two after Nona’s arrival Raymel Tacsis had strolled into the great hall where the apprentices were training. Nona, Saida and two other attic children engaged in sweeping the floor paused their labours and leaned on their brooms to watch the fighter. Up close his size was intimidating. Nona realized that her head wouldn’t even reach the man’s hip and that with the strength of one arm he would be able to toss her, Saida, and the other two sweepers across the room, not separately but together.

‘I’ve a better lesson for these puppies.’ Raymel climbed over the ropes into the ring where two gerant apprentices had been wrestling, both of them enormous but lacking more than a foot on the older man. He stood huge, blond, and glorious between them, somehow wearing his wealth though all that covered him was a loincloth and a sheen of oil.

The fight-master stepped forward, an objection on his lips, but Raymel boomed across him, ‘And the rest of you.’ He beckoned another three apprentices from across the hall. Two hunskas holding nets and a gerant girl with a ponderous brow that looked as if it would break the fist of anyone foolish enough to punch her in the head.

As the girl clambered in behind the two swifter apprentices Raymel drove an elbow into the throat of the gerant behind him. ‘Don’t ever wait to attack.’ The apprentice fell, clutching his neck. The rest stood, too stunned or nervous to act. Raymel slapped the girl, his huge hand covering half her face and sending her back into the ropes, spitting blood. His grin was an ugly thing, corrupting the good looks he’d been born with.

Beside Nona, Saida covered her eyes, turning to reach for her broom.

‘Aren’t you going to watch?’ Nona couldn’t look away. The hunska apprentices had launched themselves at Raymel, two blurs of fists and feet.

‘I hate it.’ Saida resumed her sweeping. ‘It makes my stomach feel bad, seeing people hurt.’

‘But …’ Nona winced as Raymel trapped one hunska against the ropes and snatched him up by the leg. ‘Partnis bought you to fight. You’re going to have to.’

She sensed rather than saw Saida’s broad shoulders shrug. ‘I’d rather mend people than break them. Is that a thing in the city? Mending people?’

‘I don’t know.’ Nona watched Raymel swing the hunska apprentice against the ring post. Part of her wanted to be unleashed within the roped enclosure. Another part wanted Saida’s hope to be true, wanted there to be people who put as much passion into healing as Raymel did into hurting.