Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

The knock came a minute later, evidence of Spire’s urgency.

“Come.”

The mistress of Mystic Class hurried in, her blunt face flushed, headdress tugged down across her forehead almost hiding the puckered burn there. Glass had discovered that the young nun had earned her scars carrying children clear of a house fire. The information had arrived the previous week in Archon Kratton’s report on the mission to the Meelar territory. Spire had spoken of the blaze when asked, but made no mention of returning for children.

“Ancestor’s blessings, abbess.”

“And to you, sister.”

“Novice Zole is missing!” Spire blurted out the words as if it were her failing.

“I see.” Glass folded her hands, elbows on the desk. “Do we know where she might have gone?”

Spire shook her head. “She’s taken her ranging equipment. Nobody saw her leave. One of the watchers asked me where she was this morning.”

“Well, if the Inquisition didn’t manage to watch her I doubt there was much you could have done, sister.”

Spire pursed her lips. “You don’t seem very surprised, abbess.”

“I’m surprised that she stayed this long.”

“You . . . expected this? You think she’s safe then?”

“Safe? I doubt that very much. But she’s a dangerous young woman. I’m sure she’ll make a good account of herself when trouble gets in her way.”

“Well I’m surprised. Zole was making such fine progress with all the mistresses. Even Sister Wheel! And she seemed very happy to have your permission for the ice-trial. Well, happy for Zole. She even smiled when I told her!”

“That I would like to have seen!” Glass picked up the papers before her, then looked up. “Is there anything else, sister?”

Spire looked surprised. “Well. Aren’t we going to do something? We could send someone after her. Bhetna, I mean Sister Needle, has just taken the Grey. She could . . .” Spire hugged her arms across her chest. “I just hate to think of her out there all alone. I know they say she’s the Chosen One, but she’s still just a girl.”

“There are many girls out there all alone, Spire. The empire is awash with children, lost, abandoned, orphaned. We will tell Brother Pelter. I’m sure he’ll know soon enough either way. Doubtless he’ll be keen to send agents of the Inquisition after Novice Zole.”

Spire nodded, turned to go, paused and opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it and left.

* * *

• • •

NIGHT FELL BEFORE they came. Sister Tallow preceded them, bursting into the abbess’s office without knocking. “Pelter’s at the door, he has his guards with him!”

“You’re to allow him to go about his business, Tallow.”

Tallow’s eyes darkened at that. “They can only take you if you let them.” She looked old, too thin, her habit loose around her, iron in the black of her hair now, but Glass knew what she was capable of. “Just speak the word.”

“To set any nun in this convent against the Church, in my own defence, would confirm the worst suspicions whispered into the emperor’s ear. If I were to use the Red and the Grey as my personal army it would only encourage Crucical to take them for his own.”

Glass remained in her seat, watching the door. She knew how the Inquisition worked. Once it had been hers. Old Devis, the man who had recruited her as a watcher, had been ten years a watcher himself. Then fifteen as an inquisitor. After Shella Yammal came to work for him Devis’s star rose swiftly. He rode her shoulders to the deputy’s chair before she jumped him to become high inquisitor with Devis as her second. Had Able not died she would still be there, watching the world from the highest room in the Tower of Inquiry. But the loss of a child tears something from any parent. Often what is ripped from a mother’s chest leaves her broken, a husk waiting to be gathered to the Ancestor. Always it will change her. But sometimes the person who sets aside their mourning blacks is a better one.

Three knocks at the door. Sharp, precise.

“Come.” Glass knew a moment of fear. She had seen the horrors of the Inquisition up close. Nothing is as cruel as a righteous man. She had been righteous in her time.

Brother Pelter strode in, two Inquisition guards clattering at his shoulders, three more behind them, all gleaming in their armour, polished steel plates overlapping from neck to elbow.

“Brother Pelter, how may I help you today?” Glass returned her quill to its holder and stoppered her ink.

“Abbess Glass, I’m placing you under Church-arrest on the charge of heresy. You’re to be taken to the Tower of Inquiry for interrogation.”

“Heresy?” Glass pursed her lips. “Am I allowed a little more detail?”

“I’ve told you the charge.” Pelter waved his guards on and they advanced around him.

“I would like to hear more.” Sister Tallow stepped into their path. At her hip she wore her sword, a cruel strip of Ark-steel.

Pelter’s guards stopped. They might be hard-bitten and well-used to violence—the woman on the right had a gerant touch and stood well over six foot, broad-shouldered with it—but all of them had heard of Mistress Blade at Sweet Mercy.

“There are questions to be asked and answered, Sister Tallow. Asked and answered in the Tower of Inquiry, a place that admits no lies.” Brother Pelter stepped back to open the door. “A novice under sentence of death ran from the convent within minutes of that decision being reached at the convent table.”

“That’s hardly heresy!” Tallow spat.

“Holding any law above that of the Ancestor is heretical. And the novice had been encouraged to write in praise of past heretics whose histories have no place in any convent library.” Pelter waved the matter away. “More importantly Abbess Glass placed her authority over that of the parent. Zole Lansis was to be sent to the ice against her parent’s express instruction—expressed, I may say, through a judge of Verity’s highest court.” He turned his gaze from Tallow towards Glass. “And now the child has gone missing, an absence I suspect you to have arranged in order to keep your heretical control over someone you consider politically important at this time of heightened tension. The bonds of family form the branches of the Ancestor’s tree. No cleric can take to themselves the authority to overrule a parent. Such practice is an abomination before the Ancestor, a crime worthy of the Scithrowl.”

“Step aside, Tallow.” The abbess stood. “You’re to let Brother Pelter carry out his duty and arrest me.” She raised her wrists.

The guards stepped forward, the oldest of them taking a symbolic silver chain from his belt and using it to bind the abbess’s wrists.

“Abbess Glass.” Pelter stepped forward now with his warrant scroll. “You are a prisoner of the Inquisition. Come with me.”

“Let the sisters know, Tallow.” Glass came around her desk, dwarfed by the guards around her. “And of course the Martial Sisters and Sisters of Discretion will need to take action if I am questioned in the Tower of Inquiry.”

Sister Tallow frowned. “But you just said—”

“Ignore that, sister,” Pelter cut across her. “Clerics of the rank of abbess, abbot, or above are entitled to refuse questioning in Inquisition outposts and indeed in most other locations, but the Tower of Inquiry is sanctified and sanctioned to put any cleric to question, even the high priest himself. Abbess Glass needs to improve her research.”