Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

“Nothing.” The word tasted bitter. A faint hope can be nursed so long that when it dies the shock outweighs all reason. “Hessa would have found something in my place. She would have read something in the threads.”

Keot remained silent.

“Nona!” The others sounded increasingly desperate.

“Coming!”

She almost missed it. Something at the corner of her eye as she turned. Perhaps without Keot she would have seen nothing. “What?” She turned back, reaching. A single black thread, so thin she almost thought herself mistaken even as her fingers tried to close around it. A black thread, leading from the spot where Hessa died, up along the shaft Yisht cut.

“There are no black threads.” Nona reached to trap the thread between finger and thumb. Sister Pan said that using your hands was unnecessary, a childish affectation, like moving your lips when you read. Even so, it helped. Nona pinched the thread from the ground. “Ancestor!” Immediately a familiar energy trickled into her. Fingers first, then into her hand making it tingle. A fullness, a potential. It felt like . . . the shipheart?

That is not a thread from a corestone. Keot sounded interested though, moving entirely into her eyes, the pain so bad she had to grit her teeth against it.

What is it then? Nona pulled on the thread and immediately felt a peculiar sense of disquiet. Nana Even would have said, “Someone just walked over your grave.” Nona leaned around the corner of the shaft, trying to see where the thread led, and picked it out easily now that she held it. It vanished into the rock. “That’s where Yisht went!” The murderer had sealed the passage behind her as she went, her rock-working power amplified by the shipheart. Nona had hoped that her disembodied shadow had killed the woman—a hope that had survived only until she returned to the convent from the ranging with the other novices.

Are you so stupid? It’s your own shadow . . . That is why you found it where others could not.

It’s my shadow’s thread? Nona stared at it. Why does it feel like the shipheart, then?

For that Keot had no answer.

“Nona!” Anger mixed with anxiety in the distant voices now.

“I can’t just leave . . .” she whispered. “With the Inquisition here we might not get another chance for ages.”

Take it with you.

What?

It’s your thread. Take it with you.

So Nona did.

18

ABBESS GLASS

HEART HALL HAD always been a lie, more so now the convent no longer housed the shipheart that had been entrusted to its keeping. Abbess Glass placed her hand against the door and frowned. Entrusted to her keeping. Abbess Mace they called “She of the Miracle.” Glass knew what they would call her if her portrait ever joined the others. “She of the Lost Heart.”

The abbess pushed through into the long hall where her sisters sat around the convent table. Tonight they waited beneath the watchful eyes of Brother Pelter and two of his assistants. Three inquisitors to witness eight nuns at table.

“Abbess Glass.” Pelter inclined his head.

Glass took her chair. The seat beside it lay empty. Kettle’s place. Sister Rail would have to take the notes this time. She exhaled and the air clouded. Every breath contrived to remind her of the shipheart’s absence, of her failure.

“First item on the agenda?” Glass looked along the table. Rose, Wheel, Tallow, Rail, Apple, Rock, and Sister Pan huddled in her furs, dark eyes aglitter.

“I have delivered the Grey reports for the last five years into Brother Pelter’s keeping, as requested.” Sister Apple looked as if she would rather have poisoned the man.

“Thank you.” Glass smiled. “And the ciphers?”

“And the ciphers.”

The reports were fakes. Apple had for years been producing a copy of each report, altering, excising, and sanitizing. The encryption she used differed from that employed on the true reports and the ciphers had been designed to be devilishly time consuming to apply. Glass wished Pelter and his subordinates much joy of it.

“Next?” Abbess Glass glanced towards Sister Wheel; she always had something to raise.

“Heresy.” Brother Pelter stepped up behind the abbess’s chair.

“Heresy, brother?”

“This whole convent is treading dangerously close to heresy, abbess. Your buildings may stand upon the edge of a cliff but your faith teeters at the brink of a far deeper chasm!”

“Indeed?” Glass steeled herself neither to rise nor look around. “These are grave charges, inquisitor. Perhaps you could elaborate?”

Pelter began to circle the table, staring at the back of each nun’s head. “It is more a matter of attitude and atmosphere at the moment. Something rotten in the state of Mercy.”

“Hearsay and heresy, though they may sound similar, are very different things, Brother Pelter.” Glass set her elbows to the table and steepled her fingers before her. “A crime is built of specifics. Have you any of those?”

Pelter paused his stride. “The worst example so far has been in Spirit class.”

“Spirit class? You amaze me!” Glass didn’t have to pretend surprise. The idea that Sister Wheel might fall short in any measure of piety or protocol stretched her belief.

“There have been some questionable choices in the selection of saints to be studied.” Brother Pelter looked grave.

“The novices make their own choice of saint for the Spirit essay.” Sister Wheel looked outraged. “There are no works by or concerning heretics in my library. The Ancestor’s library that is.” She thumped the table. “I defy you to find even one.”

“One of your novices is even now writing about Devid,” Pelter said.

“Devid?” Sister Wheel opened her mouth but no further words emerged.

“Perhaps you could enlighten us, sister?” Abbess Glass asked. “I’m not familiar with the man.”

“I . . .” Wheel’s frown became a scowl. “I’m not . . .”

“Few people have heard of him,” Pelter said. “Raised to the sainthood in the Onian period.”

“I’ve nothing from the dark ages in the library!” Wheel shook her head.

“And yet there are books in Sweet Mercy that do not reside in your library,” Pelter said.

A knock at the door forestalled any reply Sister Wheel might have to that. Sister Pail’s head appeared.

“There’s a novice who says she has important information for the table and that it can’t wait.”

Unexpectedly Sister Pan turned in her chair. “Tell her that it can wait and will wait.”

Abbess Glass nodded. It paid to listen when the old woman spoke. “Tell—”

“She has Watcher Erras with her, abbess,” Pail interrupted. “He wants Brother Pelter to hear her.”

Abbess Glass sighed. “Send her in.” Pelter would demand it. Better to give it to him and not lose face.

Sister Pail opened the door and Watcher Erras, a short man whose pot-belly strained his tunic, strode in. Joeli Namsis followed, looking demure, her gaze on the floor.

“Joeli? You had something urgent to tell us?” Glass fixed the girl with a hard stare.