Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘My memories.’ Hessa leaned forward, steadying herself against the cart’s swaying with one hand and touching Nona’s arm with the other. ‘You’re remembering my memories.’

A shadow passed over them and Nona looked up to see a tall brick tower with a great bell hanging above it, open to the elements. She’d seen it before. But with different eyes. By the time they drew near to the Academy Nona could have instructed the driver where to turn left and where to turn right.

They drove around the great hall where Hessa and the others had been tested, past a range of other school buildings, and across a great paved courtyard. A squad of soldiers passed in front of them, twenty men in chain armour, spears across their shoulders, their tunics gold and green, the device across their chests a great tree, black against a red sun rising.

‘The emperor’s troops,’ said Sister Pan. ‘And those, novices, are the walls of the emperor’s palace.’ Sister Pan gestured with her stump to the broad curtain wall stretching in both directions off into the distance. A round keep rose just behind the wall, as sturdy a fortress as Nona could imagine, looking as if it belonged to a different age where giants had built it out of vast blocks of bedrock. Seeming small in the shadow of the wall, but still every bit as large as the Caltess, and far grander, lay another hall. ‘And that, poking above the emperor’s wall, is the Ark-Keep. And the building we’re aimed at is Academy Hall. All these buildings are the Academy, but that hall’s the heart of it.’

‘Why is it up against the emperor’s wall, like that?’ Nona asked. It looked strange, as if the emperor and Academy had been arguing over some disputed boundary.

‘To be as close to the Ark as possible.’ Sister Pan waved her hand in the air as if trying to collect something from the empty space before her. ‘Can you feel it?’

Nona could, though the sensation had crept up on her so slowly that it had passed beneath her notice. The same fullness, the same sense of sleeping power laced the air here as laced the air towards the back of the Dome of the Ancestor. It pulsed with a slow rhythm. ‘It’s the same … like in the convent.’

Sister Pan gave her a sharp look then glanced to the others. ‘Hessa? Arabella? Can you feel it?’

Both shook their heads, looking puzzled.

‘Very few can,’ Sister Pan said. ‘Even among the quantal.’ She turned her pale eyes back on Nona. ‘It’s the same aura that the shipheart has, only stronger, and richer.’

‘But …’ It was Nona’s turn to frown. ‘The shipheart is beneath Heart Hall and—’

Sister Pan held her hand up, silencing Nona. ‘The shipheart is beneath Heart Hall. Yes. And Academy Hall is positioned as close to the Ark as possible, allowing the Academics to work greater magics here than anywhere else within the empire.

‘Without our shipheart Sweet Mercy would be like any other convent. Its presence makes it a hundred times easier to train Mystic Sisters or to let those with a touch of marjal learn shadow-work. The shipheart doesn’t just keep us warm. It’s the heart of our community. A gift from the Ancestor.’ She pointed to the palace walls rising above the Academy’s roofs. ‘The Ark is the same, but different. Stronger still. In fact you would have to follow the Corridor for many thousands of miles to find an equal to the magics worked here – to one of the other two Arks still said to stand free of the ice.’

‘How many are beneath the ice?’ Hessa asked.

Sister Pan pursed her lips. ‘Who knows for sure? Lost is lost. The old books differ in their opinions. Palimpest holds the highest figure and claims one thousand and twenty-four.’

Nona’s eyes widened at that. Nations fought for control of the Ark. Emperors murdered their fathers and their sons. A thousand and twenty-four was a vast number.

‘Consider, though,’ Sister Pan continued. ‘Spread evenly across the ice-free face of Abeth that would still put five hundred miles between any one of them and the next. However many there are, they are rare. Rarer even than shiphearts.’

‘Shiphearts? I thought there was only one!’

Sister Pan smiled. ‘Each ship that bore the tribes to Abeth had a shipheart at the core of its engines. Our forebears did not come here in a single ship. Even if each of the races came in a single ship that would be four shiphearts. I believe Sister Rule has seen texts in Orison that suggest there were a host of ships.’

‘A host!’ Nona tried to imagine them sailing the blackness between the stars.

‘A host.’ Sister Pan nodded. ‘Though I know of fewer than half a dozen shiphearts in all of the empire, and that number would not double even if you were to scour Durn and Scithrowl too.’

The cart drew to a halt before the wide and many-pillared portico of Academy Hall. The emperor’s own soldiers stood to attention on the steps behind the pillars, and behind them great doors of dark bronze, each set with a dozen polished bosses the size of shields.

Sister Pan told the driver to wait and escorted Nona, Ara, and Hessa up the marble steps. At the great doors Sister Pan steered them towards a smaller single door set into the leftmost of the pair. A rap of her hand saw the smaller door swing open and Sister Pan led through into a foyer every piece as grand as that of the Ancestor’s dome up on the Rock of Faith.

Nona let her gaze wander up the height of the surrounding columns and winced. The nausea that had plagued her periodically since her return from the Caltess twisted in her gut once more, not so sharp as before, but a warning echo.

‘I know what Yisht is after,’ Nona hissed the words to Ara as a tall, black-clad Academic led Sister Pan and the novices deeper into the building. ‘She’s trying to steal the shipheart!’

‘But you said she was digging under the dome!’ Ara hissed back. ‘And the shipheart is under Heart Hall.’

‘It’s under the dome!’ Nona insisted. She’d felt it, but not known what it was. The story about Heart Hall must be a deliberate misdirection in case anyone came hoping to steal it.

‘What?’ Ara stopped in the corridor. The doors all along it opened onto Academics’ offices.

‘She’s right,’ said Hessa, altering course to walk around the pair of them.

‘What?’ Nona and Ara together.

‘How do you know?’ Nona demanded. ‘You said you couldn’t feel it!’

‘I don’t have to.’ Hessa rounded them and carried on after Sister Pan. ‘You just follow the hot pipes back to where they came from. And it’s not Heart Hall!’

35

The Academic brought them at last to a large chamber cutting up through all four layers of the Hall to a many-windowed dome in the main roof. Galleries surrounded the perimeter at every level and scores of Academics or Academy staff stood watching, some leaning on the stone balustrades, others speaking together in small groups. Some more elderly individuals had had high-backed chairs brought out of their offices and positioned for a good view.

Nona found herself sweating, clutching her belly with one hand. It seemed as if whatever poison Raymel had got into her had merely gone into hiding and for some reason now chose to seep back into her blood.

The chamber itself held no furniture other than a long oak table at the back with a dozen chairs behind it, and eight plain wooden stools against the opposite wall. Four Academics and a priest of the Ancestor sat behind the table in robes of various colours, each a single shade. Sister Pan went to take her place behind the table and the black-robed Academic left the way he had led them.