Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘… and then Velera came in. She’s the younger sister but that never stopped her complaining that her brother sits on the throne while she slums it in her palace on the coast. Anyway, she had Lord Jotsis on her arm, the young one, and the Gersis heir on the other side. And her dress! She looked like she’d been poured into it. My father said she spilled some …’

Hessa came that evening on her own, stumping in on her crutch.

‘I see Sister Rose gave you my bed.’ She lowered herself carefully to sit on the end.

They spoke of the ordeal. ‘I didn’t see anything,’ Hessa said. ‘Just the guards and Sister Wheel getting ready to throw, and in the same moment something hitting the wall beside me. I jumped so hard I nearly fell over. I did fall over when you did. I had to wave my arms and tell them I hadn’t been hit!’

Jula came the next day with Clera. ‘We can only come in twos. Sister Rose says we’ll tire you out. Sister Kettle wanted to send you your slate and some lettering but Rosy wouldn’t let her.’ Clera sat down breathlessly. ‘Imagine that, wounded and having to do letters!’

Jula came to Nona more cautiously, hugging her as if she might break, her short hair bristly against Nona’s cheek. As they parted her lower lip trembled. ‘Thank the Ancestor you’re all right! I thought—’ Her voice broke and Nona was amazed to see that she was crying.

It wasn’t until the morning of the third day that Nona told Sister Rose her fear. The hole that the arrow put in her, and the damage to hands and wrists she knew would heal – but her body had let her down, had failed her when she most needed it.

‘The abbess thinks I’m fast.’ Nona said it between gulps of a sour brew that Sister Rose kept tipping to her lips, though she could hold it by herself. ‘But I’m not. I tried to be fast with the arrow – I thought I could – but I just couldn’t. I got so tired.’

‘Tired?’ Sister Rose laughed, her face mounding and crinkling. ‘That’s the hunska burn. Everyone gets it. Leastways all of you with lightning in your veins. I can’t move that quickly but I can lumber on for hours.’ Sister Rose took the cup away and squinted into it, checking that Nona had had the nasty gritty bits at the bottom. ‘You’re using up your resources when you do those things.’ She pinched Nona’s arm. ‘And you’re all bones anyhow – what have you got to burn? I’m amazed you managed what you did. Most hunska are ready to fall over after just a few seconds of fighting at speed. Drinking sugar-water after helps. But there’s only so much your body can give. Take too much and something will break. With hunska it’s normally the heart. Not that you last long one way or the other …’

‘We don’t?’ Nona sat up, her shoulder an ache now rather than a pain.

‘Mistress Academia hasn’t— Of course not.’ The humour left her. ‘I forget how little time you’ve been with us, Nona.’ Sister Rose set the cup aside and drew her chair as close to the bed as her legs would allow. ‘The four tribes that came to Abeth found it a harsh world, even before the ice. It was mixing their blood that bred a people who could live here. The hunska and the gerant live short lives, one too fast for their hearts in this land, the other too large. Sister Tallow is the oldest hunska I’ve known, and she isn’t as old as she looks. Not by a long margin … The quantal and marjal draw on the power of place, tapping into the magics that lie beneath and above and through all the things of this world. But this is not the land that bred them and its magics are sharp, quick to burn the unwary, or warp them …’

‘I—’ A knock at the door cut Nona off.

Sister Rose patted her hands. ‘Those that burn short burn bright. The shortest lives can cast the longest shadows.’

Nona thought of Saida, cold in the ground, and the shadow she cast. The knocking came again.

‘Come.’ Sister Rose struggled to her feet.

The door to the foyer opened and Arabella Jotsis stuck her head around, her scalp now covered with short blonde hair making something boyish of her. ‘Sister Pan has asked to see Nona and me.’

‘Well you can tell Sister Pan that Nona isn’t leaving this—’

‘It’s for the naming.’

‘Oh.’ Sister Rose looked at Nona, back at Arabella, back at Nona. ‘How do you feel, Nona? Could you manage a walk to the Path Tower do you think? I could get some sisters to carry you …’

‘No, I can walk.’ Nona swung her legs off the bed and got up before Sister Rose could insist she be lifted like a baby. Her shoulder hurt worse than she had thought it would, but she gritted her teeth against it and walked to the door with more care.

Outside the cold made her gasp: an ice-wind had come, blowing off the southern sheet, and three days in the sanatorium’s warmth had left her open to it.

‘Filthy weather.’ Arabella hugged her habit around her but didn’t hurry: Nona could see the restraint in her steps and tried to walk more quickly, her shoulder flooding with hot, wet pain at each jolt.

‘What’s “the naming”?’ Nona thought those might be the first three words she had spoken to Arabella. It seemed odd to be walking with her, as if everything were normal, as if Arabella had never tried to stab her in her bed, as if they hadn’t been enemies from the first moment. But if that fake prophecy got its teeth into them Arabella Jotsis might be forced to play the role of Chosen One and Nona her reluctant Shield.

‘The naming? Do you think Sister Kettle was called Kettle by her mother?’ Arabella watched her with a sideways look and an amused smile.

‘But … but the older novices, they still have their names! Suleri is in Holy Class and she’s still Suleri …’ Nona scowled, wondering whether Suleri was the name of a thing like glass or apple, but just one that peasants didn’t know.

‘Yes, but they all have their holy names. They just have to keep them secret until they take their orders and become nuns. If they get that far. Every novice gets to choose their name in front of Mistress Path when she calls them. She calls most of them during their first year.’

Nona relaxed. She hadn’t wanted to give up her name. ‘We’ll still be Arabella and Nona then.’

‘Ara.’

‘What?’

‘Ara. Everyone calls me Ara. You should too.’

Path Tower loomed above them, dark against the morning, the four open approaches framed in stone.

‘I take the east door,’ Ara said.

‘Why?’

‘That’s where the Path leads me.’ Ara paused, tilting her head to study the smaller girl. ‘Try it. Close your eyes and see.’ She laughed. ‘That’s what Sister Pan says.’

Nona closed her eyes. She saw only what she always saw, orange and grey, afterimages pulsing and fading, the last traces shaped into ideas and suggestions – the edges of dreams.

‘Do you see it?’ Ara, almost at her ear.

‘No.’

‘Look harder.’ A hand touched Nona’s shoulder and in that moment what she saw became an edged brilliance and a hot darkness, one cutting through the other like a fracture – though she couldn’t say which cut the other – and both driven through her head, hammer-hard, splintering against the back of her skull.