Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘You, Nona, will find your serenity, and in its armour be safe from all such attacks.’

‘Even the infection thing?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s all there is? Serenity beats shadows?’

Sister Pan chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment. ‘A render can use their own shadow to attack. It can tear flesh and there’s no physical defence. Clever thread-work can defeat such malice. Or you can just put a hole through the shadow-worker. But rending is a rare skill and in the unlikely event that young Luta possesses such power she will even now be getting told by Academic Untust not to employ it against you, just as I am telling you not to punch the poor girl.’

Nona thought of the audience waiting for her out there. All those stern-faced and serious Academics, their minds filled with the intricacies of marjal enchantment. She felt nervous enough here under the painted stares of the audience on the wall …

‘I don’t think I can … I’m bad at serenity even back in the convent, with friends. Here … with all those strangers …’

‘It’s a performance, Nona.’ Sister Pan smiled. ‘You’re a warrior. You might have the Path running in your veins but we both know at heart you’re a fighter. And what is a fight if not a performance?’ She paused and raised her hand, theatrical. ‘Every star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look. Every great deed needs to be witnessed. Go out there and do something great.’

‘So …’ Nona glanced around at the painted disapproval all across the walls. ‘Serene …’ She started to run the words of the moon-song through her head.

She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

The moon, the m—

Sister Pan returned to the door. ‘She’s going to work fast. So find your serenity faster.’

‘You’re not helping!’

‘The world seldom does, girl.’

36

Nona stepped out into the hall. Luta emerged from the door opposite a moment later, pale behind the pale fall of her hair, her stare intense.

She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

Soon, soon,

Luta looked around. The hall was well lit by the windows in the dome high above them but shadows lay about the base of the east wall, shallow but there. Darker shadows lay beneath the Academics’ table to which Sister Pan was retreating.

The ice will come, the ice will close,

No moon, no moon,

Luta walked to the east wall and where she walked along it the shadows grew thinner, gathering instead about her like a gown of grey mist. Nona ground her teeth as the pain and sickness rose together. She glanced at the blue-robed Academic. Was it him? Toying with her somehow on Raymel’s orders?

We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down,

Soon, too soon.

Nona didn’t feel serene. She felt like vomiting. She felt like rolling on the floor, writhing to find some relief. She felt like rushing across and felling the girl with a blow to the neck.

Luta passed by the judges’ table, muttering her own enchantments. Where once her shadow upon the floor had been slim and comprehensible it had now become a many-angled thing, dark corners moving here, there the legs or back of a chair reaching out like the spindly feelers of some great black insect. The agony flared in Nona’s bones but somehow failed to sink its teeth into her.

She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

Soon, soon.

Nona envisioned serenity as a thick white coat, the fur of the white bear, soft, enfolding, deadening the harshness of the world, taking the sting from any barb. She drew the coat about her shoulders. Her pain became a distant thing that belonged to someone else. An object of curiosity, little more. She didn’t allow herself to think about how long it would stay remote.

The shadows around Luta swirled, shapes glimpsed within, ambiguous, allowing every disturbing projection Nona could imagine. Her nightmares lay there, feeding on what she gave them. It was a darkness in which Raymel Tacsis hulked in the background while to the fore a broken Four-Foot fell, tried to rise, and fell again.

Luta raised her arms and the shadows streamed forth, spiralling around Nona, touching her skin with cold, feathery caresses. The fear rose from within her, not from without. The terror she had known on the track through the Rellam Forest, with darkness nipping at her heels and the trees whispering on every side. The fear of drowning in the Glasswater, and of dead girls’ bones fathoms deep in the black mud below. The fear of failing. The fear of her truths, of being revealed as a monster; and the end of friendships.

Perhaps without the enfolding serenity to blunt the attack Nona might have run or fallen to the floor, curled foetal around her terror. Perhaps. But Nona didn’t think so, not beneath the dome, under the gaze of so many strangers. On a moon-dark night in some lonely quarter … very likely.

The shadows wrapped her close, an irregular tiling of her flesh in shades of grey. She felt it like cold and dirty water, trying to sink beneath her skin, but just like water it ran off.

‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Nona spoke past gritted teeth, her pain still huge but distant.

Luta slumped with just her own shadow pooled about her feet. She opened her mouth to speak but in that moment Nona’s pain returned to her and in the same instant a spasm took command of Luta’s face, a contortion that turned resignation into animal fury. She thrust her arms before her, shoulders forward, fingers spread at uncomfortable angles and her shadow flowed forward as if the sun were sinking behind her, growing from its puddle and fanning out wraith-like, clawed hands reaching.

In the space of a heartbeat Luta went from defeat to blind rage. In the same broken second her shadow surged across the floor. Nona slowed the world but she couldn’t stop the shadow climbing her, and where it touched her flesh skin parted as if beneath the edge of a keen knife. Nona had little doubt that once it reached her neck and face the cuts would be deeper: Luta’s expression held no room for mercy.

Across the room the Academics at their table had barely even registered Luta’s change of mind: in the time it would take them to act it would all be over. Nona started to dive back and to the side but a shadow can move as quickly as the light and she knew evasion would not suffice. In desperation she summoned her blades and hacked at the leading hand as the shadow climbed, knowing she couldn’t cut herself. The effect was instant. As invisible blades met shadow they sliced, and every trace of shadow above the slice vanished. And in the same instant Nona’s world exploded into bright fragments of agony, so dazzling that she neither saw the floor reach up to take her, nor felt it when it struck.

Nona heard voices, and the voices drew her from the depths that had held her.

‘… with her?’ A man.

‘How did she even fight it off? That was a rending!’ A woman, younger than the man.

‘Yes.’ Sister Pan’s voice. ‘Yes it was. How could you put such an unstable student up against my novice? There will be repercussions.’ She shuffled closer to Nona. ‘Many will be strongly of the opinion that this was no random attack. How far into the Academy does Thuran Tacsis’s golden hand reach, they will ask?’

Nona realized that she no longer hurt. She couldn’t even feel pain where the rending shadow had sliced her legs.