Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

More blows, the count lost between them, one so sharp it threw her head back and her eyes open. The wall before her hands lay scored, dark lines against the pale stone, deep and shadow-filled slots in the limestone where the claws of her rage had cut in. Her secret released. Nona’s body jolted against the wall, and her fury reached a new incandescence, chasing away all trace of pain. The single path spun from the threads of a dozen and more blows suddenly snapped into a new configuration, a pattern that filled her sight, a single line chasing through hard angles, a corner, a corner, another corner, a surface filled with rectangles, a space filled with blocks, sketched in place with one bright line. A wall.

Another blow hit home and, howling, Nona reached for the Path. She set foot upon it … and was filled. In just one moment the Path poured through her. An awful, wondrous, potential ran in her veins, filled every void, pressed against the insides of her eyes, sang in every bone, bursting, consuming, bleeding from her pores. The fear of destruction didn’t scare Nona from the Path – she would have chased so marvellous a doom to the world’s end. Rather it was the Path that slipped from beneath her, live and coiling, twisting away even as she tried for her next step. In some complex space with a dozen ups and a hundred swinging downs, Nona lost her balance and stumbled back into the world.

The wire-willow hit her. She heard it crack. The crack ran through her, through her hands flat against the wall, deep amid the pattern of corners, rectangles, and blocks. For one heartbeat a new silence held the hall and in that silence the walls trembled. In the next heartbeat the stone before her began to fracture with a noise like the world ending and everything fell.

‘Up.’ A strong hand closed around Nona’s wrist drawing her up and to the side. Her other arm, still bound to the first, rose too. Pieces of broken limestone fell from her as she came upright. Her feet found the ground and she stumbled against Sister Tallow, hurting her instep on jagged rubble. The surface of the wall had shattered outward to a depth of four or five inches in an area some yards across. The iron ring dangled by the straps still binding Nona’s wrists, its pin lodged in a lump of broken stone no bigger than her hand.

Sisters Tallow and Rose wrapped Nona in a sheet. The novices looked on, pale with the dust now sifting down across the hall.

‘I’ll carry her.’ Sister Rose reached for Nona as she had when she lay arrow-struck that second week.

‘No.’ Nona spat blood onto the sand. Her back hurt as if a thousand scalding hooks were lodged in it, each on strings being pulled in different directions. ‘I’ll walk.’

She left the hall, head down and eyes on the sand, taking the steps that old women take, with Sister Rose following close behind. She stopped only once, just as she passed Zole in the line of novices. With head still down she turned her face to watch the girl from the one eye not yet swollen closed. She didn’t speak, only showed her teeth in a crimson grin, then moved on. Zole had a face on which it seemed nothing could be read but, however deep the girl’s faith in herself ran, when Nona smiled she had seen in those dark eyes a moment of doubt.

Nona made it through the main doors and turned from sight. The ice-wind caught her a second later and Sister Rose proved quicker than she looked, snatching her up before she hit the ground.

27

Whatever herbs Sister Rose ground up, whatever unsavoury pieces of unsavoury animals she extracted and refined, none seemed to numb the pain of Nona’s lacerations quite so well as distraction. It seemed a shame then that the sanatorium was perhaps the most uniformly dull part of the convent, offering nothing more by way of entertainment than a window onto its small garden.

Nona would have given a lot for some company. The other four beds remained empty and she soon reached the point where pushing someone down the stairs in order to fill one of them seemed quite a reasonable solution.

The first visitor Nona received turned out to be Sister Wheel and even this proved a welcome diversion from the business of lying on her side staring out the window until that side became too numb and Sister Rose rolled her to stare at the wall.

‘Don’t stay long, Wheel,’ Sister Rose said to Sister Wheel’s back as the smaller woman elbowed past her bulk. ‘And don’t upset her.’

Sister Wheel reached the side of Nona’s bed then turned to stare at Sister Rose until she coloured, looked away, and finally backed through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind her.

‘Couldn’t keep me out.’ Sister Wheel reached up to tap her headdress. ‘Only the abbess herself could – and even she can’t overrule both of us. That’s why it’s me and Rose. Chose us because we never agree on anything.’ She pulled a chair close to the bed, the scraping of its feet loud and unpleasant. ‘I suppose you feel pretty full of yourself, don’t you?’ She sat, hands clasped in her lap. ‘Because you’ve got a touch of quantal in you, you think you’re a two-blood.’

If Sister Wheel had a better example of a two-blood than someone with quantal and hunska flowing in their veins then Nona would have been interested to hear it. You needed more than a touch of quantal to reach the Path. But she swallowed any reply and kept her lips pressed in a tight line watching the wide and watery hostility of the nun’s eyes.

‘You’re thinking it might be you who’s the Argatha. Well, it’s not. Nothing good ever came out of the Grey: only broken things. Peasants and lies. The Argatha is sent to save us! Will she be a golden princess of the emperor’s own bloodline? Or an urchin taken from under the shadow of the noose? Which do you think? Really?’ Flecks of spittle marked the nun’s chin.

‘The abbess said that prophecy was just made up,’ Nona said.

Sister Wheel waved the idea away. ‘That’s what prophecy is! It’s something that’s made up and that we have faith is true.’

Nona returned her lips to their line. She wasn’t going to argue faith with Mistress Spirit, even if Mistress Spirit was about as sane as a naked stroll in the ice-wind.

‘In any event,’ Sister Wheel narrowed her eyes, ‘it’s not you. It’s possible that you’re the Shield. I’ll entertain that unlikely thought now. But don’t go getting ideas above your station.’ She stood to go, took three paces towards the door, stopped and knitted her bony fists in the material of her habit just above her hips. For a moment she paused, caught on the point of indecision, then looked back over her shoulder. ‘By rights you’re due two more strokes of the cane. That may not be necessary. Just take my words to heart. The Ancestor has a plan for you, girl.’

As Sister Wheel stalked out, Sister Rose bustled in, her hands full of linen strips. ‘I’ll change your dressings now, dear.’

Nona sighed and eased herself onto her front as Sister Rose fussed over her, tutting. ‘This wasn’t right. Not right at all.’ The nun peeled off the soiled wrappings with deft fingers. ‘It’s a cruel enough punishment even when you’re guilty …’

Nona didn’t want to hear Ara being criticized. ‘Why does she hate me?’

‘Who?’ Sister Rose’s innocence didn’t so much as approach the foothills of convincing. Nona said nothing more and a moment later the nun broke the silence. ‘She doesn’t hate you, Nona. Well … she’s … that’s just Wheel.’ She peeled back another linen strip, sticky with blood, and Nona winced. ‘She came from the Grey, you know?’