‘Nona.’ Nona took a chair, little more than a stool really, the back a single narrow plank.
‘Knower?’ Mistress Path came a step closer, leaning in.
‘Nona!’ Clera all but shouted it.
‘Ah, Nona.’ The nun clapped her hand to Nona’s shoulder. ‘Like the merchant-queen?’
Nona wasn’t alone in offering this last question a blank look, though she caught Clera nodding.
‘No matter – no matter.’ Mistress Path moved off, shaking her head. ‘It was long ago and her sons are all gone to dust.’
‘We’re all gathered now?’ Mistress Path looked around the room, her eyes so pale as to be without colour, the whites creamy with age. ‘Two new girls, yes?’
‘Yes, Mistress Path.’ A loud chorus.
‘I’ll do my introductions then. I am Sister Pan. Within these walls, Mistress Path is my name.’ She paced towards the front of the class and, with an exaggerated sigh, settled herself upon the great chest. Nona noticed that the woman’s right hand, that she had thought lost in the sleeve of her habit, was more lost than that, the arm ending at the wrist in an ugly mess of scar tissue.
Sister Pan lowered her head and tapped her fingers on the lid of the chest. She was quiet for so long that Nona wondered if she had dropped into a doze, but a moment later she looked up, eyes bright. ‘In these lessons we study the Path. For most of you this will be a journey to serenity, to states of mind that can help you with patience or with concentration. Or perhaps they may help quiet your fears, or put sorrow aside for a while until you have time for her visit. For those few of you who might have it in your blood to see the Path clearly rather just sense it as an idea these lessons are the first steps to discovering hidden worlds, the boundary between them, and the power that may be won by those who dare to venture in such places.’
Clera leaned across to Nona, speaking in a low voice. ‘If any of us do go there we’ll be doing it alone. They say the old girl hasn’t put a toe on the Path for thirty years.’
Nona pressed her lips together, gesturing with her eyes towards Mistress Path.
‘She’s deaf as a post, silly.’ Clera grinned and raised her tone a fraction. ‘Those that can, do – those that can’t, teach. At least in Path. The doers are too valuable to waste on us.’
Sister Pan paused and frowned at Clera, who dutifully faced front and centre. ‘Now, we have … Arabella.’ The nun focused on the Jotsis girl, whose shaved head was spattered with coloured light. ‘A bold stare she has. Hmmm. But what can she see?’ Sister Pan approached and leaned in close. ‘Don’t look away, dear. Keep your eyes on mine. In this place the world sings for us. Can you hear it?’ She took Arabella’s wrist in the gnarled claw of her hand. The nun’s skin was the black of a dusty slate, darker than her habit: Arabella’s fingers looked white as bone in that grip. ‘A three-part song. Life.’ She lifted their joined hands. ‘That which has never lived.’ She moved her stump into a pool of deep red light and followed the shaft of it up towards the window. ‘And death.’ A quick glance back towards the chest. ‘The notes of the song …’ Sister Pan intoned three notes, pure but somehow sad, the start of a melody that Nona wanted to hear more of. The nun released Arabella’s wrist and started to pace before the seated novices. ‘There’s a boundary between what lives and what does not. It runs through all things, and around them. It’s a path that is hard to follow but each step taken is a holy one. When you walk the Path you approach the divine. The Path flows from the Ancestor and the Ancestor waits at the end of it. At the end of all things.
‘We are mortal though. We are flawed. Poor vessels for divinity. Each step is harder than the last, the Path twists and turns, it is narrow and in motion, the power that it gives is … difficult to contain. Sooner rather than later everyone slips from the Path no matter what their heart desires, no matter how pure their faith.
‘Our knowledge of the Path is the gift of the fourth tribe – the last to beach their ships on Abeth. Among the stars the quantal built their lives around the Path, generation upon generation, until it lived in their veins. That blood was mixed to meet the challenges of a new world – but in some few it shows, even now after so many years have passed.
‘Have you seen the Path, child?’ Sister Pan, at Arabella’s shoulder once again, took the girl’s chin, angling her eyes back to her own.
‘I … Sometimes I see a bright line, like a crack running through my dreams …’
‘Have you touched it?’ Sister Pan asked.
‘A-almost. One time. I reached out for it …’ Arabella looked away, towards one of the glowing windows. ‘It felt as though I were running … my heart … and my head filled with angles. All sharp and wrong …’
‘And then what happened?’ Sister Pan released the girl’s chin.
‘I fell out of bed and woke up with a headache.’
Laughter rippled, half amused, half nervous.
‘And what about …’ Sister Pan blinked and looked around until she found Nona, sitting on the far side of the class. ‘… our other new girl?’
‘She’s hunska, Mistress Path!’ Clera called out, slapping Nona on the shoulder. ‘One of us reds!’
‘Hmmm …’ Sister Pan turned her gaze back to Arabella and started to ask more questions.
‘She’ll leave you alone now,’ Clera said in an undertone. ‘Only cares about the mystics.’
‘The what?’ Nona whispered.
‘Mystics. If Empress Arabella isn’t lying then she’ll be the second quantal in the class, the other being your friend hop-along. Only our bald friend is also hunska-fast which makes her oh-so-special, which is why all the nuns are wetting themselves over her – the Chosen One.’ Clera raised her hands in mock worship. ‘At the end of our studies, if we’re judged fit, we take holy orders and join the convent as nuns. Girls who follow the Path take their orders as Mystic Sisters – everyone calls them Holy Witches. I told you before. You and I, we’ll focus on Blade and take our orders as Martial Sisters, which everyone calls Red Sisters. Most who come here end up as Holy Sisters … and everyone calls them Holy Sisters … or if they’re being fancy, Brides of the Ancestor. That sounds creepy to me … And some take Shade in the last year. Those are Sisters of Discretion. Grey Sisters. There are lots of other names people use for those, none of them nice. But—’
‘Novice Clera!’ Deaf or not, Sister Pan had good enough eyesight to spot two novices with heads so bowed in conversation, they nearly touched.
‘I was telling Nona about the blade-Path, Mistress! Can I show her? Please!’
Sister Pan lifted her eyes to the heavens and signed her faith, laying her index finger over her heart, pointing upward. ‘The child has only been here a few moments!’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Today we will be meditating. Continuing to develop the serenity that helps to bring us to the Path. And, Nona, whilst it is true that for many of you girls no amount of quiet contemplation will bring the complexity and beauty of the Path into focus within your mind’s eye there are many other benefits, both spiritual and physical, to achieving the mental states we seek to unlock in this class. In a girl’s first year I endeavour to teach her, through meditation, mantras and the control of breathing, the three-fold mind. The necessary states of clarity, patience, and serenity. When you have the basics of the trio my seal will be on your scroll for advancement to Grey Class.’