Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘Well.’ Nona thought back to her mother and felt the muscles of her jaw bunching. ‘It should be.’

‘My mother’s not a strong woman,’ Clera said. ‘You’d think she would be. But she really isn’t.’

‘Oh.’ Nona wasn’t sure how long this conversation had been going on without her.

‘There was a time when she was my world. When I was a little girl I used to lie in bed crying because I thought she might die and I didn’t know how I would exist without her. It sounds stupid, but I did.’

‘Have …’ Nona put her spoon down unused. ‘Has something happened to your father?’

‘They’re going to let him go,’ Clera said. She walked her penny across the back of her knuckles. ‘All debts written off.’

‘Well … That’s brilliant!’ Nona said. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ Clera smiled but only her mouth made the effort. She walked the penny back again.

‘That—’ Nona saw that it wasn’t a penny, not Clera’s old copper penny nor the silver crown that replaced it. ‘That’s gold!’

‘Yes.’ Clera vanished the sovereign into her habit. ‘I took a penny and I bred it into a multitude.’

‘Well …’ Nona met Clera’s gaze. ‘That’s great news!’

‘Yes.’ Clera looked away and picked up her spoon. ‘I wonder how far Yisht has got to go before she reaches the coast.’

After lunch Nona returned to Blade Hall and the site of her most repeated failure. She joined the others practising and carried on failing.

Later in the afternoon Sister Kettle came to watch them. She stood at the bottom and worked the timing lever for them, watching twenty novices fall in a row before Sessa from Holy Class came and completed a run on her first try.

‘A hundred and eighty,’ Sister Kettle read from the dial.

Nona tried next and fell off after a count of thirty. She’d barely made it to the spiral before a counter-weight swung and the pipe lifted beneath her. ‘Sixty-nine!’ she gasped as she dropped from the net to land beside Sister Kettle. ‘How did you do it?’

Sister Kettle shrugged and grinned. ‘I ran.’

‘Not helpful!’ Nona scowled. ‘And Sister Owl … twenty-six … that must be a lie?’

‘Or she ran faster …’

Nona trudged up the stairs. Other novices came and went but towards evening the press began to slacken off. An hour later only Ruli and Nona were left. The others, perhaps driven off by the foulness of her temper, had gone to the bathhouse before bed to soak off their efforts on the blade-path.

Nona stood scowling at the twisted pipe. ‘It’s ridiculous. It’s just metal and wires. Why do we spend so long at this stupid game? It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Isn’t that what games are for? Wasting time?’ Ruli shrugged. ‘Besides, Sister Kettle says it’s more than a game. So does Sister Pan. Perhaps if you think of it as a game that’s why you’re not winning?’

‘You think I should make it life and death?’ Nona asked. ‘Stop it being a game? I could cut the net down …’ That would make it matter. Fall and die. There hadn’t been a safety net when she had gone up against Yisht in the tunnels or Raymel in his chambers. ‘I should cut the net.’

‘Ha! Ha!’ Ruli laughed without humour. ‘We should go.’

‘You should go,’ Nona replied.

‘Come with me?’ Ruli looked worried.

‘I’ll be fine.’ Fast, furious, and without reservation. That was how battle was. That was how the most crucial struggles of Nona’s life had been. ‘Let me try a few more times on my own.’

Ruli glanced at the door, ducked her head, and started towards it.

‘Wait,’ Nona said before Ruli left the platform. ‘Give me that grease of yours …’

Ruli frowned but reached into her habit and handed over the small earthenware tub. ‘Don’t do anything stupid.’

Nona waited for Ruli’s footsteps on the stairs to fade away. ‘Fast.’ She stared at the tarry soles of her feet. ‘Without reservation.’ That was how she had arrived at the Path, swift with anger, and she always tried to slow, and always fell. But perhaps she didn’t fit the convent’s measure. Perhaps she couldn’t bend to fit their mould.

She began to pick the tar and resin from the sole of her left foot. When she came to the blade-path wrapped in serenity she fell serenely. She put more care in, went slower, fell. Sister Kettle had completed the blade-path in sixty-nine counts. She must have run. Sister Owl in twenty-six, the legend said. She must have flown. Nona started to clean her other foot.

Ten minutes later she set the pendulum swinging and stood at the edge of the platform, staring at the pipe an inch before her toes.

‘No.’ She backed away, backed some more, backed another step and her shoulders met the door. ‘No.’ She opened the door and retreated down the steps. ‘Fast. Without reservation.’

Nona came up the steps at speed, toes curled for grip. She came through the doorway, accelerating into a sprint. She leapt and hit the pipe with both greased insteps. She slid, gravity seizing her, accelerating her with terrifying swiftness. And now, at last, she dived into the moment, letting the pendulum crawl between its ticks.

Nona shot towards the corkscrew turns. There are some things that must be done quickly or not at all. If someone asks you if you love them you cannot hesitate. There are some paths that must be taken at speed.

Nona began to rise with the curve, her feet running before her, and for the first time, although it felt very far from safe … it felt right!

Bray’s lingering chime chased Nona from the arch of Blade Hall out across the courtyard. She raced along the dark alley alongside the laundry and came slipping and sliding around the corner just as Suleri was reaching to close the dormitory’s main door. The door wouldn’t be locked but anyone arriving after Suleri – now the convent’s senior novice – closed it, was counted as late to bed, their crime recorded on the records delivered to Abbess Glass each seven-day. Suleri, new to her power, wasn’t inclined to leniency.

‘Wait!’ Nona leapt up the steps and ducked under the novice’s arm, skidding so fast along the corridor she almost passed the door to Grey dormitory.

Suleri banged the door shut. ‘You’re not wearing shoes, Nona!’

Nona didn’t deign to reply. It wasn’t something she’d failed to notice. She banged through into the Grey dorm hall. ‘Guess what!’

‘We’re going on the ranging tomorrow at first light.’ Ara turned from the conversation she’d been having with Mally by the door.

‘Uh. We are?’ Nona looked around the room. All the novices had ranging-coats either laid out on their beds or wrapped around them.

‘Your coat’s on your bed. Sister Flint brought them round. There’s an oilskin too.’

Nona hurried to her bed, excitement at the prospect of actually getting out of the convent for once driving her own news from her thoughts. Sister Tallow had taught them the basics of making a shelter the previous year, though the lessons now seemed a very long time ago and the details frighteningly vague. ‘Do you remember anything about navigation?’