Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

“Sister Spire didn’t know anything about it.” Sister Spire raised an eyebrow and turned her gaze on Sister Rail.

“The girl came to me in confidence.” Sister Rail made a sour pucker of her mouth. Rail’s family were a very minor branch of the Namsis tree and she had petitioned the abbess before on Novice Joeli’s behalf.

The abbess frowned, wondering what “almost maiming” the novice had entailed. “And what do you propose we do?” She could see her breath before her. White hands pulled her robes tighter. The cold never left the hall; the heating pipes lay freezing since the shipheart had been taken. “Do you have a punishment in mind, sister?”

“Reduce the girl to convent helper,” Sister Rail replied without hesitation. “That’s what she deserves. At the very least she must be returned to Grey Class and whipped before the Ancestor’s dome.”

“I vote she be whipped and then reduced to helper.” Sister Wheel leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Or banished.”

“Perhaps we could hear some evidence first, sister? Before moving to sentencing.” The abbess raised her hand to forestall Wheel’s reply. “Did someone think to summon the girls?” She drank from the cup beside her, wishing the water were wine.

“I saw them waiting in the corridor.” Sister Apple had arrived late and sat at the far end of the table.

Abbess Glass gestured towards the door. The ice had been surging for three years straight, all the nations of the Corridor squeezed tight against their borders, bursting for war, and here she sat arbitrating the disputes of children.

Sister Apple’s footsteps echoed in the bare hall. She spoke a word to the junior nun outside and moments later Joeli Namsis limped in, one hand at her throat, blonde hair in disarray. Nona Grey stalked in behind her. She looked twice the size of the painfully thin stray the abbess had brought from Verity more than five years earlier. Her unnerving all-black eyes seemed to challenge each nun in turn. She stood as tall as several at the table now, still slim, but Abbess Glass knew the body beneath that habit was corded with muscle. The abbess frowned at the state of Nona’s hair, a short and spiky shock as consumingly black as her eyes. Efforts to tame it over the years had singularly failed.

Abbess Glass nodded to Sister Spire.

“If you could outline your grievance, Novice Joeli?”

Joeli looked as if nothing but determination kept her upright, sagging around her unspecified injuries. She dragged her bad leg a step closer to the table and spoke in a cracked whisper, holding her neck. “I was watching the class at blade-path. The new girl fell and seemed to think it was my fault. She beat me to the ground and tried to kill me.”

“Novice Nona?” Sister Spire gave her an inquiring look.

“I did knock her down. If I had tried to kill her she would be dead.”

Sister Spire frowned. She had blunt features, not unkindly arranged, marred by a burn that ran across her forehead and down the side of her face. “Novice Joeli, how did Novice Nona try to kill you?”

“She . . .” Joeli stifled a sob. “She strangled me. She said she would kill me. She said it before she even chose her bed! And . . . and then she wrapped her hands around my throat and . . .” Another sob. “They had to pull her off me.”

“Is this true, Novice Nona?” Sister Spire asked.

“It was one hand. And for a few seconds. But yes.” Nona furrowed her brow, looking furiously at the ground.

“And how long would you say you were throttled for, Novice Joeli?”

“I . . . it could be minutes. I blacked out after a while.”

Sister Wheel banged her fist to the table and the shadows danced. “Any period of time one novice spends strangling another is too long. What are we even discussing? Take her habit. She’ll never be fit for her vows. Novice Arabella can take the Ordeal of the Shield and serve the Argatha in her place.”

High above them the shutters rattled as the ice-wind picked up strength. It always seemed to be an ice-wind these days.

Abbess Glass stared at the two novices. She knew Joeli to be manipulative and spiteful, unable to forget her family’s privilege. On the other hand she was a quantal prime with rare skill at thread-work and was an accomplished poisoner to boot. Nona of course was too precious to be lost to the Church, a three-blood, fast as a devil and with a temper to match. The abbess would not lose sight of the girl—but Nona might just have made keeping her in the order impossible. If she had deliberately injured another novice Nona had done about the only thing that could get Sister Rose to agree with Sister Wheel on something. Sister Rose spent too much time repairing bodies to forgive deliberate and unwarranted harm caused in anger. She wouldn’t let a training blade be put in any hand that might seek the life of another novice. Together both sister superiors could overrule the abbess.

Sister Spire frowned. “Have you anything to say in your defence, Novice Nona?”

“I didn’t try to kill her. I barely squeezed her neck.”

Joeli straightened, lowering the hand from beneath her chin and pulling down the collar of her habit. Along both sides of her throat livid bruises told the story of fingers pressed deep, the black imprints surrounded by a halo of yellowing flesh. Sister Wheel drew in a sharp breath. Sister Rail thumped the table in outrage. “This! This is the work of someone who has no place within our order.”

Abbess Glass felt the tide turn. She presided over a convent where a score of novices could do the miraculous, some moving faster than thought, some weaving shadows, or fire, and some few walking the Ancestor’s Path, returning from it echoing with the power of the divine. And yet given a choice she would never once consider exchanging for any of that the gift the Ancestor had given to her. People were a magic and a mystery, no matter whether they were low-born or high, no matter whether it was soil or spells they turned their hands to, whether they were geniuses or fools. There were few who saw past faces, past status, past what people said to what they meant. Abbess Glass knew she didn’t see far into the puzzle, but she saw further than most, and it gave her an edge. An edge so sharp that most of those she cut didn’t even know it until it was far too late. Right now though, all her gift told her was that the room had shifted and Nona stood on the brink.

Across the table from Sister Wheel, Sister Rose lowered her head, lips pressed tight, brow furrowed.

“Are there no witnesses?” Sister Kettle asked, looking up from her recording. Surprise registered on several faces. Sister Kettle never spoke up at convent table—it wasn’t her place to—less than ten years into her vows. She came to record, not to speak, but so soon returned from a long and arduous mission she might be forgiven her lapse.

“There are many witnesses!” Sister Rail brightened, showing narrow teeth in a narrow smile. “Let me—”

“Joeli is a very popular novice.” Abbess Glass spoke over Mistress Academic. “Many of the girls may be swayed by personal loyalties, turning suspicion into fact.”

“Would you summon the accused’s friends instead?” Sister Rail demanded.

“We need a witness who would satisfy all of us as impartial and true.” The abbess studied the grain of the table between her spread hands as if such a hope were impossible.