Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘They can’t fit any more down there,’ Nona said. ‘You should do whatever it is you’re going to do.’

‘Wait.’

‘What for?’

‘The leaders. And the Noi-Guin.’

‘How will you know when they’re here?’ Nona squinted at the helmed heads far below.

‘Once they start climbing, that will be the Noi-Guin. To see the officers watch where the troops face.’

‘There!’ Nona pointed to where one soldier, looking no different to the others, started to scale the unclimbable rock-face. ‘And there.’ Two more had started up a little further along.

‘We are never more vulnerable than when giving chase,’ Zole said.

‘Is that what they say on the ice?’ Nona snorted. ‘The wisdom of the tribes?’ There might be half a thousand soldiers on the mountain and they looked far from vulnerable.

‘Abbess Glass said it.’ Zole shrugged off her pack. She took the shipheart out, holding it in one hand. It looked too big for her to grip securely. ‘Hold on.’ She voiced Nona’s thought.

Zole brought her hand round in an overhead swing and smacked the shipheart into the top of the rock-face just below her. The impact was a strange one, no fragments of stone flew off, there was no great crash, just a deep pulse that seemed to spread out through the mountain. Nona felt it through her back where it pressed against the stone. All three climbers froze. A moment passed. Another. Then a lurch that sent Nona flying towards the drop. It seemed the whole mountain twitched. Only hunska reflexes combined with stone-piercing flaw-blades saved her from falling.

Everything below the two novices, except for the top dozen feet of the cliff, broke away and began to fall, a descending curtain of rock, fracturing as it slid over the deeper parts of the mountain that remained fixed. The scene below them vanished beneath a rising cloud of dust.

Zole stood and returned the shipheart to her pack. ‘Follow me.’ She began to walk away along the ledge.

‘If we keep climbing we could lose the survivors,’ Nona said, still staring at the dust in horrified fascination.

‘We do not want them to lose us,’ Zole called back, not looking around. ‘Just that they not catch us.’

Nona hesitated for one more moment, then hurried after the ice-triber before the wind-driven dust could take her from view. She didn’t feel like a shield, or anything else useful. Spare baggage at best. Her head felt fuzzy from the shipheart’s constant pressure, her thoughts unorganized and slow.

Zole led them back to the north for a way then began to climb on a south-leading ridge. She called a halt where a spire of rock offered some shelter from the wind, and marvellously produced both food and water.

‘How …?’ Nona accepted a strip of dried meat and a near-full waterskin.

‘I prepared for my journey.’ Zole crammed a strip of the blackened trail-beef into her mouth and began to chew methodically.

‘You came after me,’ Nona said. After so long surviving on cell slops the leathery meat seemed to explode with flavour, her mouth flooding.

‘I followed Sister Kettle.’ Zole spoke around the rhythm of her jaws.

‘But you knew she was looking for me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why did you come?’ Nona wanted to hear it from Zole’s lips.

‘You are the Shield. I need your protection.’ If the ice-triber was mocking her she let no sign of it show.

‘You don’t believe that stuff. It’s all made up.’ Nona forced herself not to drink too deeply from the skin.

‘Everything ever said was made up. The Ancestor, the Hope, all the small green gods of the Corridor who will die when the ice closes.’

Nona wiped her mouth. ‘And on the ice. Don’t you make gods of the wind?’

Zole shrugged. ‘Some do.’

‘And you tell stories about the future.’

‘Perhaps we have a prophecy about a black-eyed goddess who will save us all, and the four-blood child of the ice whose job it is to lead her home.’ The smallest smile quirked the corner of Zole’s mouth. She stood and shouldered her pack. ‘Time to go.’

‘Up?’ Nona’s heart fell.

‘Up.’ Zole nodded. ‘They will try to get ahead of us. The Noi-Guin will try to come at us from several different directions at once.’

‘Can’t you just drop rocks on their heads?’

‘It is … tiring.’ Zole rubbed at her wrist, where Nona had seen the devil. ‘It would be better if we do not find out whether I can or not.’

It was true. For the first time ever Nona saw lines of exhaustion in Zole’s face. The shock of it surprised her. Before she started to work wonders Zole had never seemed quite human.

5

Holy Class

Present Day

Nona rose with the bell, rolled from her bed, and hurried into her habit oblivious to the room around her. The rest of the novices were still dressing when she left, Ruli only just poking her head from beneath the blankets at Jula’s urging, hair in a tangle of amazing proportions.

‘Good luck today!’ Alata, flashing a grin as she plaited Leeni’s hair into a single red rope.

Nona paused only to check the doorway for malicious threads, then took the stairs four at a time. She was first into the refectory and was reaching for the bread as she slid her legs beneath Holy Class’s table. By the time Ketti joined her Nona had heaped her plate for the second time and was attacking a pile of bacon with purpose.

‘I wouldn’t be able to eat. Not with the Blade final in front of me.’ Ketti started to help herself to eggs.

Nona grunted around a mouthful. Meals at Sweet Mercy were not as large or varied as they had been when she had arrived as a starveling child. The Durns held much of the Marn coast and the Scithrowl had crossed the Grampains. With both advances slow but seemingly as inexorable as the ice, good and plentiful food wasn’t something that could be depended on, even within sight of the capital’s wall. ‘Eat while you can.’ Nona reached for her water. It was a point of regret to her that she’d proved unable to pack on any reserves. She would be the first to go in any famine, where someone like Sister Rose could lose half her body weight and still survive. Even so, she didn’t plan to give up on trying.

‘Good luck today!’ Jula sat herself opposite, eyes tracking across the various steaming bowls lined along the centre of the table. She always spent five minutes in careful consideration of her options. Then chose porridge.

‘Here.’ Ketti leaned forward and pushed the porridge bowl towards Jula.

‘I thought I might try something different today.’ Jula frowned at the mushrooms.

Ketti and Nona exchanged a quick ‘no, you won’t’ glance.

Joeli seated herself at the far end of the table, hair gleaming as if the sun had found a way through the clouds just for her. Somehow her habit looked as if it had been tailored to her personal requirements, as flattering as any ballgown. ‘Blade final! Why, Nona, you’re quite pink with excitement.’ She smiled brightly. ‘Pray Ancestor it will be a good one.’

They all ignored her. Joeli had been relentlessly nice since her return, as if they were all best of friends. Nona could almost imagine that Lord Namsis’s Academy man had rearranged Joeli’s opinions where she was concerned in addition to her memories regarding the events at Sherzal’s palace. The thread-traps scattered around the convent gave the lie to all those pretty smiles though.