Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

Keot reached above the collar of her habit, a hot flush rising. I know it too.

You liar. How would you?

The woman who held it came to see a dead man.

Why?

To understand the person who killed him, so that she might in turn kill them.

Nona asked the question though she knew the answer. Who did she come to see?

Raymel Tacsis. He was dead but the mages wouldn’t let him die. And I was the first to find my way beneath his skin.

And the woman?

Was a Noi-Guin. Tasked to kill you.

8

IN THE WEEK that followed Nona tried each day to broach the subject but none of her friends would do much more than admit, under pressure, that there might be caves beneath the Rock. It reached the point at which Nona saw Jula pretend not to notice her and turn a corner in order to avoid the chance of further questioning. She decided to drop the matter for a few days and see if the holothour’s mark would wear off and return her companions to her.

Mystic Class lessons continued to challenge. Nona improved with the sword, practising a handful of basic cut-and-thrust combinations until they started to feel natural. In Spirit Sister Wheel set them the task of writing an essay about a saint of their choice. Nona took herself to the convent library—the smaller one attached to the scriptorium rather than the larger store of holy texts held within the Dome of the Ancestor—to research. By the week’s end she had found three possible candidates from antiquity, all of whom had something in their story that would offend Mistress Spirit.

Sister Pan continued to immerse Nona, Zole and Joeli in thread-work, showing them new tricks. Sometimes she would demonstrate thread effects most easily achieved whilst in the serenity trance, at other times fine-work requiring the clarity trance. Changing a person’s mood was something that might be achieved in a serenity trance; changing a particular decision required clarity. Neither were quick or easy to achieve, and Sister Pan warned that some people were much harder to manipulate than others.

Nona applied these lessons to the problem of the mark the holothour had set upon her friends. She could see the damage in the halo of threads around each girl but the solution lay beyond her skill. In the serenity trance she could see connections that must be undone or loosened. And in the clarity trance she could see entanglements on the smallest scale that would need to be unravelled. But working on either problem would make the other worse. They needed to be worked on together. Which required two people. And the only thread-worker she trusted to help, Ara, whose skills were pretty basic, was also one of those who needed fixing.

Sister Pan might be able to solve the problem but she clearly didn’t bother herself with thread-work on novices or she would have noticed Zole’s peculiar lack long ago. Nona could draw Sister Pan’s attention to the area of damage but the old woman would ask questions, and as she said, “Everything’s connected.” Give Sister Pan one corner and she would soon pull out the whole story, and that would be the end of their adventuring.

* * *

• • •

SHADE LESSONS FOCUSED on disguise. A whole week passed without mention of poisons, save to note some that were useful in small doses for altering the hue of a person’s skin or the colour of their eyes. Sister Apple likened the business of disguise to an extended lie told with the body, with the tone of one’s voice, and with the clothes that wrapped you. In Mystic Class every novice took the first of the Grey Trials, which involved crossing Thaybur Square undetected by other class members. Good disguise skills were a must!

In Academia Sister Rail made a spirited attempt to bore the class to death with mathematics. Nona felt she had achieved under Sister Rule, at great personal cost, a tenuous grip on arithmetic. A triumph, considering there were few people in her village who could count past twelve with confidence. Sister Rail introduced her to algebra, and not gently. The only moment of interest came when Darla, despairing of letters that were numbers but not any particular number, demanded to know what use such things were.

“Our forebears used algebra to build the moon, novice!” Sister Rail drew herself to her full height, which wasn’t much more than Darla’s when seated. “The curve of its mirror is governed by equations like these.” A gesture to the chalk scrawls behind her. “It’s how they tightened the focus as the world grew colder. Other equations allow it to be steered as it was in the past, tilted to deal with the uneven advance of the ice.”

Nona frowned. Jula had mentioned something about changing the focus of the moon. Something she’d read about the Ark years ago: whoever owned the Ark could speak to the moon. “It could be a weapon.”

“What’s that, Nona? Your expertise extends past assaulting classmates and reaches the moon now?” Sister Rail tilted her head in enquiry.

Tittered laughter around Joeli.

“It could be a weapon. If the focus was narrowed further it could burn cities.”

“Nonsense. The moon is not a weapon of war. There’s no reason to believe the focus can be narrowed to that degree even if someone wanted to do it.” Sister Rail waved the suggestion away with a bony hand.

“If it can be tilted it could be steered from the Corridor entirely then returned,” Nona said, staring at the glistening white of the globe on Rail’s desk. “Whole nations could be denied the focus and the ice would swallow them. It could melt vast lakes on the ice then connect them to the Corridor, washing away armies and cities . . .”

“We were discussing the formula for a circle.” Sister Rail banged a heel to the floorboards and the lesson sank back into a confusion of letters and symbols.

Nona had let the nun’s words slide past her and sat gazing at the distorted sky offered through puddle-glass windows. Memory filled her vision. Yisht stumbling away chased by shadow, the shipheart in her hand. Four shiphearts to open the Ark? One Ark to control the moon. One moon to own the world?

* * *

• • •

BY THE SEVEN-DAY nothing had changed in the others’ reaction to talk of returning to the caves. Not ready to explore alone, Nona agreed to accompany Ara on a visit to Terra Mensis, a distant cousin of hers.

“It’ll be great to get you off the Rock for once!” Ara grinned, hugging her range-coat around her.

“I don’t think the abbess plans to let me out on my own even when I’ve got the Red.” Nona peered around the pillar, squinting against the ice-wind. The Mensis escort was late. They were sending a dozen of their house guard, enough to satisfy Abbess Glass that neither Ara nor Nona would be at risk from kidnap or assassination.

“There is no point to strength if it is never tested.” Zole stood in the open before the pillar forest, scowling at the world. Nona had been surprised when Ara extended the invitation to the ice-triber, more surprised when she accepted, and astounded when Abbess Glass permitted it. Nona supposed that Zole felt as trapped as she did on the Rock. Perhaps the abbess worried that if Zole felt too trapped she would simply run away.

Sister Kettle leaned against the pillar beside Nona and rolled her eyes, grinning. When Nona had heard the abbess was demanding an escort of her own in addition to the house troops she had worried they might get stuck with Sister Scar, Sister Rock or someone equally joyless. Perhaps even Sister Tallow. Nona respected Tallow but didn’t imagine she would be a particularly lenient chaperone in Verity. The arrival of Sister Kettle to watch over them had been a pleasant surprise. She still looked too young to be a nun. In the bathhouse with the black shock of her hair shaved to her scalp she could easily pass as a novice.