Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

The door at the end of the hall opened and Ruli poked her head around. She’d scraped the colourless length of her hair into a tight bun and the change it made to her face made Nona laugh. Ruli stumbled in, pushed by Clera. Both rushed over to her, still damp from the bathhouse.

‘What’s this madness about going up against Yisht?’ Clera flung herself down on the end of the bed.

‘She’s after the shipheart,’ Hessa said. ‘Take that and you may as well close Path Tower for good.’

‘Excellent! I can’t stand all that dreary meditation.’ Clera curled her lip in distaste.

‘And there’d be no hot water,’ Nona said.

‘How’re we taking Yisht down?’ Clera’s eyes sparkled with righteous indignation.

‘I don’t see how it can be done,’ Ara said.

‘Of course it can be done.’ Clera snorted.

‘She can beat you all without drawing a sword,’ Hessa said. ‘The sisters would see you trying in any event and stop you. Then the abbess would take your habits. And even if you could beat her – unseen – what are you going to do with her? Lock her in a store cupboard and hope nobody hears her?’

‘Drop her in the Glasswater,’ Clera said darkly.

‘We’re not going to kill her!’ Ruli’s shock made her paler than ever.

‘I have a plan.’ Nona sat back. ‘For everything but the last part. And no, Clera, I don’t want to dump her in the sinkhole.’

‘So let’s hear it.’ Ara slipped off the bed and drew up a chair, as if she needed the distance to properly judge Nona’s proposal.

Nona frowned. She had a sense that they were all digging themselves deeper than ever before, a certainty that the things they decided now could not be undone and would steer their fates for many years to come – if indeed any of them had many years, or even a single year, to look forward to. ‘If you go to my dormitory bed and reach below you’ll find a bag tied to the underside of one of the boards.’ Nona glanced at Hessa. ‘I didn’t just take the ingredients for the black cure when I raided the Poisoner’s stores.’

A slow grin spread across Clera’s face.

‘You’ll find a bunch of dried catweed in there, and the—’

‘The ingredients for the boneless mix,’ Clera crowed. ‘We poison her and when she’s too weak to move …’

‘But everyone will see!’ Hessa protested.

‘Not if I do it in the tunnels,’ Nona said.

‘And then?’ Hessa asked.

‘That … I haven’t figured out,’ Nona admitted. Part of her wanted to tie Yisht up, drag her to the most remote shaft, and leave her hanging in it.

‘Barrels …’ Ruli looked up. ‘Barrels!’

‘What are you talking about?’ Ara asked.

‘We put her in a barrel,’ Ruli said.

‘Great. Then we’ve got a deadly warrior in a barrel.’ Ara spread her hands.

‘Easy to roll off a cliff though!’ Clera said.

‘A wine barrel,’ Ruli said. ‘There are lots of empties at the winery. We put her in, pad it with straw, and set it with the others for the wagon. It’s coming tomorrow.’

‘And when they open it?’ Nona asked.

‘Tomorrow’s wagon is bound for Marsport. I know because it’s the one that goes to my father. He ships some of the wine across the Marn to Durn. They mark the ones for the ship with his name rune. I can put that on Yisht’s barrel and they’ll ship her to Durn!’

‘Brilliant.’ Clera clapped her hands. She rubbed her forehead, perhaps remembering how Yisht had knocked her down in Blade. ‘Could they push her barrel overboard when they’re out at sea?’

‘This won’t work.’ Hessa banged her crutch against her chair. ‘A barrel of wine is worth a sovereign at the least. You don’t think they might count how many they’re supposed to take? There’s all manner of notes made on inventory scrolls and—’

‘I know,’ said Ruli. ‘I’ve been helping Sister Oak with that. She says I’m a natural merchant.’

‘But won’t Yisht just get out and come back?’ Ara asked. ‘I mean, fun as it all sounds, won’t we be risking getting murdered just to inconvenience her for a few days?’

‘You’re not seeing it.’ Nona shook her head. ‘That shaft I saw. It has to lead down from Yisht’s quarters. When Yisht doesn’t turn up to guard Zole the nuns will go to her room. They’ll see the tunnel down. We’ll make sure they do. They’ll investigate and the abbess will know that the shipheart was the target. By the time Yisht’s out of the barrel every sister at Sweet Mercy will have orders to stop her on sight and Sherzal will be in plenty of trouble too!’

Hessa and Nona sat together at the back of Spirit class. Sister Wheel claimed that the further away a novice sat from the chalkboard the more sinful she was apt to be. Nona took pride in setting her spine against the rear wall. Zole sat practically close enough to the board to get chalk dust on her nose. Yisht never sat in lessons, or at least she never sat in Spirit, which was the only class she was admitted to, but stood by the wall as near to Zole as possible.

On this occasion, although her eyes were aimed towards the ice-triber, Nona’s focus was actually on the porthole window above her head. Outside, the ice-wind cracked its cheeks, howling loud enough to drown out Sister Wheel’s litany. The constant passage of wind-blown sleet created the illusion that the dome was a great ship moving backwards through a sea of ice.

‘How does she expect to escape with it?’ Hessa hissed.

‘What?’ Nona glanced back, keeping her voice low.

‘The … thing … if Yisht gets it. How does she think she’ll get away with it?’

‘She got in,’ Nona said. ‘She knows she can get out. And she probably doesn’t know that Sister Pan and I can sense the ship— the thing.’

‘She knows about thread-work, though. Sherzal’s hardly going to have sent her here without knowing that. There could be a dozen nuns here who would know the moment it had been moved – maybe even a few minutes before! They were on that dagger of yours fast enough.’

‘But none of the nuns were even born when the shipheart was put there. How would they be bound to it? And do they even have access to it now? Perhaps it’s walled in on all sides. Or threads don’t stick to it … I don’t know.’ Nona’s eyes flickered back to the woman, dark against the wall, her attention on Sister Wheel, one hand on the hilt of her tular. It did seem strange that she thought she might just walk unnoticed out of the convent with the shipheart. Or did she really think she could cut her way through Red Sisters as if they were nothing?

‘Nona and Hessa – I hesitate to call them novices – will repeat the emperor’s prayer seven times before the Ancestor after class.’ Sister Wheel lifted her voice so it reached them above the wind’s howl. ‘Mistress Academia tells me that there was a time when a novice’s tongue could be split for idle chatter in Spirit class. So let that stand as an indication that not all progress is good progress.’