Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘I hate that woman,’ Clera said.

Morning came and Nona, first out of bed, had to be reminded by a sleepy Clera that there were no classes on seven-day.

‘The older novices are allowed to go down into the city on supervised excursions.’ Clera sat up, yawning and stretching. Her nightdress was thin and grey with a number of tears but better than nothing, which was all Nona had. ‘I’m going down to see my father. With Sister Flint, worse luck. She is no fun at all. The abbess gave me special permission even though I’m still in Red.’

Nona said nothing. She knew enough about prisons to say that she would not want her father in one. However, if being in a prison meant that her father was there to visit one day in seven rather than lost beneath the ice, she would step into Clera’s shoes.

Hessa poked her head from beneath her blankets, yawning hugely. ‘I had an awful dream.’ She sat up, shuddering. ‘About a wolf—’

‘—in a trap,’ Nona said.

‘Yes …’ Hessa frowned. ‘Did I talk in my sleep?’

Nona didn’t answer. A dream of a wolf with its leg in an iron trap had woken her in the night. She hadn’t remembered it on waking until Hessa spoke.

‘We’re going to swim in the sinkhole.’ Jula tugged her underskirts on and promptly tripped over her bed into an undignified fall, face first, bottom up. She rolled to the side, bucking to get the skirts up. ‘Coming, Nona?’

‘I have extra lessons with Sister Kettle.’ Also, Nona couldn’t swim.

‘Be careful she doesn’t poison you again.’ Clera grinned.

Nona met with Sister Kettle after breakfast in the Academia tower. The classroom seemed very large with just two of them there, their chairs side by side at the table where Sister Rule’s mysteries were normally on display. The slate and chalks that Sister Apple had taken charge of during Shade were set on the polished wood before them.

‘You poisoned me,’ Nona said.

‘I did.’

‘Don’t do it again.’

Sister Kettle sucked her lower lip, studying Nona. ‘I don’t believe I shall. That’s a very fierce stare for a little girl.’

‘I made both Tacsis brothers bleed, and they didn’t even try to poison me.’ Nona took out her quill.

‘They underestimated you, Nona. I’ve seen you on the blade-path. I wouldn’t underestimate you.’ Kettle took a flat case from her habit and opened it to reveal her own quill, the feather black and stiff, perhaps a raven’s. ‘I told Sister Tallow about your jumping between the tops of the spiral.’

Nona said nothing, but took out her scroll, watching Kettle’s dark eyes.

‘Sister Tallow said you took the warrior’s route. She said most take nothing with them on the path except the fear of that fall. Even when they no longer care about the height of the drop they fear the possibility of failure – just as the fear of death weighs so many down when they fight. The warrior, though, hates the fear: it’s an attack like any other and must be fought. She throws herself at it, all or nothing, she dares it and disdains it. Death claims us all in the end, but the warrior chooses the ground on which she meets it, and the manner, she makes death run to catch up.’ Kettle smoothed out her own scroll. ‘So there!’

‘How did Mistress Blade get hurt?’ Nona asked.

Sister Kettle dipped her quill and wrote a letter on her scroll. ‘This is the letter A. I brought the slate and chalks so you can practise copying it.’

Nona peered at the glistening letter. Hessa had told her the basics. A is for apple, and so on. The wet ink reminded her of blood in the dark. ‘A is for assassin,’ Nona said. ‘They say the emperor’s sisters Sherzal and Vel … Vel …’

‘Velera.’

‘Velera. They say they would rather see Arabella dead than in the emperor’s hands.’

‘Well, she’s neither is she?’ Kettle said.

‘I know stories about the Noi-Guin.’ In Giljohn’s cage Hessa had told about Noi-Guin, singular hunters of men, invisible in the night, insinuating themselves past any defence and taking lives with impunity. Markus had always asked for tales of the assassins, the bloodier the better. ‘Did Sister Tallow fight one of them?’

Sister Kettle gave Nona a measured stare. ‘It would take more than one Noi-Guin to injure Mistress Blade.’ She sniffed. ‘Now. B is for blade.’ Her quill flowed across the parchment leaving a glistening black trail.

‘It looks like a P,’ Nona said, squinting, trying to remember the shapes Hessa had drawn for her over and over. She drew one on her slate and turned it upside-down. ‘There.’

Sister Kettle grinned. ‘B is for blade, P is for path. It’s a little-known thing but blade and path are two sides of the same coin. The blade-path isn’t just a game to occupy the pathless: one really does help the other. Also, what you have there is a Q if it’s anything …’

‘You’re the best at blade-path,’ Nona said. ‘Does that mean you’re quantal too?’

Sister Kettle’s grin became a laugh. ‘Ancestor, no! But I am very good at the Path-drawn mindsets Sister Pan teaches. I can be as serene as all hell! And nobody does quiet like me! Except Appy of course. I mean Mistress Shade.’

Nona tried to imagine Sister Kettle serene … or even quiet. She failed. ‘I thought the Path-trances were clarity, serenity, and patience?’

Kettle shrugged. ‘Patience, quiet, another coin with two sides. And you need to know all the sides of a coin before you can earn it and spend it. Sister Pan will teach you that.’

‘The novices say that Sister Pan’s just an old woman who talks a lot. They say she hasn’t got any magic left.’ Actually, when she thought about it, Nona found it easier to picture Sister Pan working magic than Sister Kettle’s chat and humour replaced by quantal-serenity. Sister Pan at least looked the part: as ancient and haggard as any tree-witch in the stories whispered around the village fireside.

‘This is a C. I want you to write A, B, C. Over and over, until your hand remembers them.’ Sister Kettle gestured to Nona’s slate.

Nona drew the letters out, following the line of each in her mind.

‘Good. Do it again.’

Nona did it seven more times before filling the slate.

‘Good. And no, I don’t know if Sister Pan can touch the Path any more. She was old when the abbess was a novice. But what I can tell you is that she was once one of the great Holy Witches and she followed the Path that runs through all things. High priests came to see her. Emperor Xtal, the third of his name, and his son, the fourth, summoned her to court. And when the Durnish sailed against us more than fifty years ago, so many of them in their sick-wood barges that they almost made a bridge across the Corridor, it was Sister Pan and Sister Rain of Gerran’s Crag that met their storm-weavers and swept them from the sea … So don’t bury the old girl yet. And don’t call her “old girl”. Or tell her I told you that story … Let’s draw some Ds, shall we?’

The best part of the day passed before Nona escaped the horrors of the alphabet and hurried from the Academia tower too exhausted to go in search of her friends. Overhead a rook fluttered, black against the sky, descending towards the many-windowed spire of the convent rookery. They came and went together normally, a clamour of them raucous and wheeling. A single bird meant a message. Nona wondered what words those dark wings brought and from how far. She also wondered if they’d been as much of a pain to write as her endless letters.