Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘Let us contemplate serenity, novices.’ Sister Pan settled herself on the great chest.

Clera covered her mouth and made an exaggerated yawn for Nona’s benefit. Nona pressed her lips together in a thin line and willed herself not to slump. If they had desks in Path she would have been tempted to bang her forehead on hers. Two years and she hadn’t come close to touching the Path, let alone walking it. Not only that, she hadn’t seen anyone else do it either. Infuriatingly, Sister Pan took Hessa, and later Ara, down the stairs when she judged it time to attempt the Path. The other novices of course abandoned their meditation and ran to the windows, peering through the small, coloured panes, to see where Sister Pan went. But she never emerged. One such time, Ketti returning from the sanatorium after treatment for a wrenched shoulder, reported the portrait hall below to be empty and to have met no one on the spiral stair. The conclusion then was that Sister Pan must take the girls to a secret room in the tower’s mid-section. But after endless ascents and descents of that stair Nona had no clue where any hidden door might lie.

With a sigh Nona let go of as much tension as she could without falling boneless to the floor and began her hunt for serenity. She’s falling down, she’s falling down / The moon—

For the first moment she thought the Bitel’s voice some figment of imagination, but the ringing continued and the steel bell cut swiftly through the layers of calm Nona had gathered to her. By the second tolling she was on her feet with the rest of the class.

‘Ancestor’s blood!’ Clera was at her side, scattering chairs.

‘We will proceed to the abbess’s house in an orderly manner!’ Sister Pan raised her voice.

Bitel had held its tongue since High Priest Jacob had brought the archons to judgement. Nona took her place in the queue of novices hurrying down the stairs behind Sister Pan.

‘Let it be a fire. Let it be a fire.’ Ketti, two places behind.

Nona half-wanted her to be right. Some natural disasters were preferable to the sorts that people could wreak upon each other.

The wind had turned overnight and blew from the north in unsteady, cold gusts, stuttering as if even now it might change its mind and let the Corridor wind chase around the girdle of the world. Soon though, if the change held, the winds would howl, ice-laden, blowing in from the endless white, and all of the empire would shiver. Nona wrapped her habit tight and reined in the desire to run, matching her pace instead to Sister Pan’s.

Abbess Glass waited on her steps, Sisters Wheel and Rose a step below, and a step below them Sisters Tallow and Rule. Sister Apple came hastening through the growing crowd as Nona’s class approached.

Out among the pillars a horseman could be glimpsed from time to time, riding away, a silver and scarlet banner snapping behind him in the wind.

‘That’s a royal herald,’ Ara said, coming up on Nona’s right.

‘Well yes.’ Clera elbowed in on Nona’s left. ‘It doesn’t take a Sis to recognize that.’

Nona stared at the retreating figure. It might not take a Tacsis or a Jotsis to recognize such a standard but it took more than a peasant girl from the Grey. The fluttering of the banner as it vanished for the last time tugged at her memory, the line of it trying to draw her back. ‘Is the emperor coming?’ The idea sounded silly even before she’d finished saying it.

‘The emperor went with the Rexxus army to counter raids by Durnish pirates,’ Ara said.

‘How do you know that?’ Ruli pushed up from behind. She liked to say her family were smugglers, or sometimes fisherfolk, but in truth her father owned several large fishing boats, a good deal more merchantmen, and had people to sail them for him.

Ara shrugged as if everyone knew it.

‘A whole army? And the emperor himself? For pirates?’ Nona asked.

‘When pirates strike shore the hand of the Durnish proctor is always at the helm,’ Ruli said. ‘It’s how they probe for weakness. The emperor is stamping down hard. Showing them strength.’

‘Mistress Academia would approve of your analysis, Ruli.’ Clera, half-mocking.

‘That only leaves the sisters,’ Hessa’s voice from behind the group.

‘Velera then, up from the coast,’ Clera said.

‘Run from pirates? While her brother marches along the shore?’ Ara snorted. ‘You don’t know sweet Velera! She’ll be turning the surf crimson.’

Abbess Glass struck the heel of her crozier against the steps. ‘Sisters, novices, we are to have an unexpected visit tomorrow. Sherzal, sister to the emperor, is approaching from the east and has requested a tour of this convent. High Priest Nevis will be meeting the royal procession at the city gates and accompanying our honoured guest on her visit.’

‘Sherzal?’ Nona looked around at Ara. ‘Wasn’t it her soldiers that tried to steal you from your father when he was summoned to court? And now she’s come in person to take you?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Clera hissed. ‘The emperor himself couldn’t take Arabella from Sweet Mercy. That’s why the Jotsis sent her here.’

The wind swirled cold about them, lifting habits and streaming hair. Abbess Glass bent into it, continuing her address. ‘… classes are suspended until our visitors’ departure. Sisters are encouraged to recruit novices to the necessary tasks of preparation. Girls that Sister Rule requires for choir duty are excused other labour. I’m sure that Sister Chrysanthemum will be happy to find work for any novices at a loose end: there’s always some part of the convent that needs scrubbing.

‘It goes without saying that we seek to present our best face tomorrow … but I will say it in any event. High Priest Nevis’s last visit was somewhat traumatic, so let us do our utmost to replace that memory with happier ones. And Sherzal of course honours us with her presence. Let us strive to deserve it.’

Abbess Glass waved to set the assembly free. Nona’s eyes tracked the abbess’s hand, still curled around the scar tissue from where the candle had burned her. Any visit that Bitel announced held the potential to prove more deadly than Noi-Guin arriving unheralded in the night.

‘Ancestor!’ Ruli glanced around. ‘Let’s run before Sister Mop has us cleaning out the Necessary!’

‘Run, peasants!’ Clera grinned. ‘I shall sing for my supper.’ And with that she started off towards Sister Rule who stood by the dome, yardstick waving above her head to summon the choir.

Nona tried to smile back, but behind her eyes she saw the scream on Abbess Glass’s face as she held her hand above that steady flame. Without warning the ice-wind howled, returning Nona to the present. It spoke again, its voice frost-laden, abrading flesh – as if in place of ice it carried a million tiny throwing stars – and everyone ran for shelter.

24

Nona staggered into the Grey Class dormitory brushing ice from the thick shock of her hair, hair that only minutes before had been steaming as she towelled it dry in the bathhouse. She had thought that Blade class exercised every muscle she owned but three hours of sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing under Sister Mop’s beady eye had helped her discover new ones. And they hurt.

‘I think I strained my voice.’ Clera lay on a bed close to the door, flat on her back staring at the ceiling, outer habit pooled on the floor, long legs stretched. Her silver penny gleamed on an open palm.