Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

It took longer than anticipated. Relying on the wind to clear the dangerous fumes meant frequent hurried moves as the direction shifted.

‘An ice-wind’s coming,’ Ara said.

‘They might send us on the ranging if it lasts.’ Nona tipped another silver drop of liquid metal into the black and stinking black mess simmering in the pan.

‘Maybe.’ Ara shuddered and hugged herself. The rangings almost always started during an ice-wind. Novices had gone missing on the journey before and been found days later frozen to the ground. Or not at all.

In the end all three of them missed the evening meal and returned to the convent in the dark, their habits reeking of blackroot, the ruined cooking pot abandoned over the cliff, the coals still glowing behind them, hidden in their hollow. Nona held the black cure in a tiny perfume vial that Ara had brought to the convent when she first arrived. When boiled down to a sludge and strained through a cloth, taking care not to let the liquid touch skin, there had been precious little to collect.

‘You won’t really take it? You know they call it the kill or cure, don’t you?’ Hessa asked, working to keep up with Nona and Ara. ‘Even if I got the proportions right it’s a terrible risk. Just tell the abbess what you did. She might be angry but she won’t throw you out.’

‘I’ll think about it. I don’t feel so bad today.’ The pain, the sickness, all of it had gone overnight, but Nona hadn’t the heart to tell the others after the risks they had taken for her. Besides, with an enemy who resorted to poison it never hurt to be prepared in advance. She had little doubt that Sister Apple and others among the Sisters of Discretion carried their own collections of small vials just in case – the black cure among them.

With stomachs rumbling they crept into the dormitory and changed their habits, Nona having to borrow an old one from Ara. The three tainted habits they wrapped in Nona’s mud-smeared one from the previous night and took to the laundry. If any nun recognized the smell of blackroot and took a close look at the bundle they would find the entire litany of the girls’ crimes written there. Fortunately blackroot was not a common ingredient and Sister Apple seemed never to be on laundry duty.

Nona walked behind Ara to the washroom, her sleeves flapping around her hands, but not as dwarfed by the Chosen One’s clothes as she once would have been. It took the best part of an hour to pound the soiled garments clean in the wooden tubs and wring them through the mangle until they were dry enough to hang.

They worked in the dark, elbow-deep in cold water, backs aching despite all of Sister Tallow’s training. A light might draw unwanted attention.

‘I saw Yisht.’ Nona spoke into the dark, her voice barely audible above the splashing.

‘I did too, with Zole in Spirit class,’ Ara replied. Sister Wheel allowed Yisht into the class, saying that everyone could do with more instruction in holy matters.

‘I saw her in the caves.’

‘What?’ Ara’s splashing stopped.

‘I took a wrong turn and found her digging.’

‘Digging?’ Ara asked. ‘Why? Where?’

‘I think she’s cutting a path to something under the dome – there’s something hidden there, something powerful.’

‘Blood and teeth, Nona! And you waited all day to tell me this … why?’

‘Because if I’d said it when Clera was here half the convent would probably know by now.’

‘Clera keeps secrets,’ Ara said. ‘Ones she wants to keep.’

‘She …’ Nona’s denial petered out, the image of that strange throwing star flashed before her. She hadn’t ever asked about it again, and Clera hadn’t ever asked her about the true story of how she had ended up in Giljohn’s cage. It seemed a fair exchange. ‘She knows how to keep her own. Other people’s she’s not so good with.’

Ara snorted. ‘So why didn’t you tell us when we were out there brewing? That should have been private enough for you!’

‘Hessa would have made me tell the abbess.’

‘Damn Hessa! I’m making you tell the abbess!’

‘Tell her that I broke into the undercaves planning to steal expensive convent-owned ingredients because I attacked the man she burned herself to protect me from after I attacked him the first time? For all we know Abbess Glass might have asked Yisht to dig her an access tunnel or given her permission to go prospecting in the caves. She might have opened that gate with a key.’

‘She didn’t though.’

‘No. In fact I saw a new shaft leading up and I’m sure it’s under the guest quarters. Yisht must have dug down from her room and set to exploring.’

‘Well that’s it then,’ Ara said. ‘She’s as guilty as sin.’

‘But the abbess would probably let her off. Whatever hold Sherzal has over her, it’s a strong one!’ Nona heaved a waterlogged habit out into the rinsing tub. ‘We need to do something about her ourselves.’

‘How? She’d kill us all in a fight!’ Ara wrung out her habit on the twisting loom, her face just a handful of glimmers where light from the distant scriptorium filtered from the laundry windows.

‘That one I’m still thinking about.’ And Nona bent to her rinsing.

They emerged, with sore hands and wrinkled fingers, just in time to meet the rest of the junior novices coming from the cloisters for lights out at the dormitory.

Nona was at the rear of the group by the time they reached the building, slowed by the sickness that had been returning all day. She climbed the steps to the door one at a time. Three things happened together. A fragment of ice sliced past her face, the beginning of a sharp cry rang out, and Ara’s foot hammered into Nona’s side. The impact was enough to send both girls flying in opposite directions. Before either novice hit the ground a chunk of rotten ice bigger than Nona’s head struck the spot in which she’d been standing. The explosion of shards peppered them both.

‘Ancestor!’ Ara gasped. ‘That was close!’

Nona lay on her back lacking the breath to reply, her gaze on the icicle-fringed edge of roof far above. Had there been a shadow there? Just for an instant? Or perhaps tired eyes and strained imagination put it there.

Nona and Ara picked themselves up, got under the door arch, and brushed each other down.

‘What a day.’ Ara led the way in.

Nona went to her bed, wrapped in thought. Had Yisht just tried to kill her? Did the woman suspect she’d been spied on in the caves? If so, it must be only suspicion or surely she would have taken more direct action …

She flopped down, exhausted and hungry, pushing Yisht from her mind. A whole day gone and not a moment of practice for the Academy visit. Except for Hessa of course, who hardly needed it. Nona could see the Academy school as she’d seen it in Hessa’s memories, all grandeur and gravitas set in stone, with the emperor’s Academics lined up, waiting to be impressed. And she saw herself before them, one small novice in a habit still damp and smelling faintly of blackroot who could, if she worked herself up into a frothing rage, shatter a few of their expensive flagstones.

34

On six-day the ice-wind blew again in earnest, for the first time since Zole’s arrival. In the fire-scorched practice pit where they had brewed the black cure Nona crouched, trying to find the rage she needed to reach the Path. It proved hard to find the heat she required, held there in the wind’s frozen teeth. Before her, away across the plateau, the convent huddled under a bleak sky like a beast marked for the slaughterhouse. At last, she abandoned her attempt and raced off towards the Academia Tower, hoping not to be late for the class.