Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

Nona ran back, knife in hand, the one Ara had sunk into her pillow on her first night. Back before they were … almost … friends. The knife had stood between them for two years now, between the Chosen and her Shield, never spoken of, never mentioned, and all the sharper for it. She ran as fast as her injuries allowed, chased down the dark corridor by the ghosts of that distant night, footsteps at her heels.

The others were lined up and ready, Sister Tallow watching the tunnel as Nona ran from it and came to a halt with a wince.

‘I repeat this lesson for every novice to join Grey Class. Before you leave you will have heard it a dozen times and still it will not have been enough.’ Sister Tallow motioned for Nona to take her place at the rear of the group.

‘Yes, Mistress Blade.’ Nona joined in the chorus.

‘This.’ Sister Tallow raised her own knife. ‘Is a great leveller. With your bare hands it is hard to disable an opponent – harder still to kill them. Despite all that I have taught you, unarmed you could be defeated by an opponent of considerably less skill if that opponent happens to weigh twice what you weigh, if they happen to be slabbed over with muscle, four times your strength. I am talking here of your average city guardsman. Do not overestimate how much your training will count for in an unequal contest. In such circumstances it may be only your willingness to move swiftly to the most savage of tactics that preserves you. The eyes, the groin, the throat.’

Sister Wheel moved from the doorway, making a slow gangling advance along the far wall, staring at the novices, glancing to the windows and the doors. Sister Tallow continued as if she were not there. ‘The sharp edge, however, removes a great deal of an opponent’s advantages in strength and size. No muscle, however hard or thick, will stop a sword thrust. A sharp edge applied to the neck will end any contest, and swiftly. A sharp edge applied to an arm or leg will open it to the bone with grievous and crippling injury. Be in no doubt that even a light slash can destroy a limb. Skin, muscle, blood vessels, nerves, all yield to steel with frightening ease.

‘Nona – you will find time to visit Sister Rock in the kitchens and accompany her when she next slaughters a pig. The time after that you will make the cut and apply your blade further to the warm carcass to see how easily flesh opens before a honed knife and what lies within.’

Sister Flint appeared from the shadows of the corridor beneath the seating, looking around the hall as if searching for something, though what might be hiding among the rafters Nona couldn’t guess. The other novices had noticed Sisters Flint and Wheel, and exchanged glances.

‘Pair up. Colour your blades and spar – alpha through delta cuts only.’

Clera and Ara both stepped towards Nona but Sister Tallow saved her from having to choose between them. ‘Nona, you’ll be with me.’

‘Yes, sister.’ It was for the best, she had no idea what an alpha cut was, and still less how to pair with Clera without upsetting Ara. Life had been easier in that respect since Clera joined Grey Class six months earlier.

The novices crowded around the stain-stand, each hurriedly wiping their knife against the bundled rags, taking the lamp-black onto the blunt edges and rounded point. Any contact would leave a line or dot on the pale leathers of the blade-habit.

Ara pulled her blade back from the rags, dark as ink, and grinned at Nona, making an exaggerated slow-motion thrust towards her. Nona found she couldn’t echo the smile, remembering that the knife in her hand had once been a death threat. Even so, she lifted the knife in response to Ara’s thrust. In that instant something exploded from the base of the wall where nothing had been but shadows. A figure, moving with breathtaking swiftness, devouring the scant yards between them before Nona fully turned her head to see. The ground leapt up and Nona found her bruised body pinned to it, her attacker on top of her, securing her by both wrists. She tried to speak but the impact had hammered the breath out of her lungs.

‘Nona?’ The blurred figure astride her leaned in closer.

Nona managed to pull a breath back in past bruised ribs. She blinked, clearing her sight. ‘Kettle?’

‘Sister Kettle?’ Sister Tallow appeared over Sister Kettle’s shoulder, reaching down for her.

Kettle allowed Sister Tallow to bring her to her feet, pulling Nona up with her and keeping tight hold of Nona’s knife hand.

‘What are you doing, sister?’ Sister Tallow asked. Sister Flint loomed over all of them now, with Sister Wheel deploying sharp elbows to find a path through the crowding novices.

Kettle said nothing, only held up Nona’s hand with the knife clutched tight.

‘An interesting weapon you have there, novice.’ Sister Tallow raised a single brow in that manner of hers which Nona had been trying and failing to imitate for two years.

‘The assassin!’ hissed Sister Wheel. ‘This girl is in league with them?’

‘Don’t be foolish, Wheel.’ Sister Tallow waved the idea away. ‘Arabella and Nona shared a dorm room for over a year, and will start doing so again tonight.’

‘The threads led us here!’ Sister Wheel looked up at Tallow, indignant, hands on her hips. ‘Not just me. Flint and Kettle too!’

Sister Tallow motioned for Kettle to step back, her eyes on Nona’s. ‘Where did you get this interesting knife, novice?’

‘I …’ In the rush and with her mind on Darla, or at least the various hurts the girl had left her with, Nona had been too distracted to notice that the blade in her hand bore little resemblance to those the other novices held, being smaller and razor-edged, the point needle-sharp.

‘Show me the hilt.’

Nona opened her hand, revealing a slim hilt wound with a narrow strip of leather and ending in an iron ball.

The novices about them remained dead silent for fear of being noticed and sent away. Sister Wheel noticed them even so. ‘Class dismissed! Go and pray. Pray you don’t find yourself in this much trouble! Go!’

‘Practise your blade-path. Return your practice knives to stores first,’ Sister Tallow overruled. And with reluctance the girls began to retreat to the tunnel. ‘Novice Arabella, remain.’

Ara came running back. Sister Tallow motioned for her to stand off to the side.

‘That’s a throwing knife.’ Sister Tallow returned her attention to the weapon. She held out her hand and Nona gave it over. The old nun held it to the light. ‘The Noi-Guin take their blades from those they kill. So there is no tell-tale make or style to identify their work.’ She returned the knife, her fingers leaving clean steel where they rubbed the lamp-black from its blade. ‘But I have seen the twin to this knife before. And its triplet. In the belt of a woman I pulled from the wall of your dormitory on the second night you spent in this convent.’

‘A Noi-Guin!’ Nona looked at the knife in her hand. She’d had little opportunity to inspect it between retrieving it from her bed and hiding it in the stores the next day. That had been more than two years ago. She wasn’t sure why she had hidden it beneath the storage shelf – it had meaning to her, and having it mixed with the other knives and lost had seemed wrong. So she had stabbed it into the shelf support beneath the lowest shelf. That way she obeyed the abbess by returning it, but kept it hers. ‘What did a Noi-Guin want here?’