Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

‘Go after them. Get them inside,’ Nona hissed back. She grabbed a roof tile and with a crack of her arm sent it scything through the night to explode against the side of the bathhouse. The detonation drew all eyes. Ara was already gone.

Nona launched a second tile, this one aimed at the flagstones past the bathhouse, further from the soldiers. Before it hit Nona had slithered on her belly and dropped from the roof.

Kettle would be out there on the rooftops or prowling between the buildings. After the disaster in Sister Apple’s stores Nona was far from sure what sort of reception she would get from either of the nuns. She wasn’t keen to find out.

Nona had never been able to spot Sister Kettle. Her friend was one of the few who could put fear into her. There’s nothing like running in the dark and knowing that you are exposed, vulnerable to attack from any angle. Nona relied on her foot speed. She ran towards the rear of the dormitories, the flesh of her back crawling with the knowledge that at any moment a venomed dart might come speeding from the shadows to bring her down.

Nona reached the rear wall of the dormitories and released a sigh of relief. To avoid the activity towards the front of the building, along with any of Joeli’s thread-traps, she climbed the wall and slipped the shutter catch to Ara’s study room, creeping from there to her bed. Part of her wanted to cross the room, haul Joeli from her bed and pin her to the wall, with flaw-blades if she put up a fight. The truth would come out swiftly enough.

Nona bit back on her instincts and went to her bed instead. Ara already lay in the neighbouring bed feigning sleep and faintly illuminated by the hooded lantern on the wall. Nona slid beneath her covers, straining her ears for sounds of heavy feet on the staircase. Those soldiers had come for a reason. It couldn’t be long before they brought the abbess to the dormitory door and began to ask questions about the theft from the high priest’s vault.

She lay staring at the dark with the need for violence twitching in her fingers, still wanting to haul Joeli from her bed before the soldiers arrived. Kettle had once advised that she count to ten in such circumstances, or perhaps a thousand. Nona found that Abbess Glass was more of a help than counting. Not something the abbess had said, just how she had lived. The abbess had taken on more powerful enemies than Nona had, and bested them by playing the long game, a game her opponents had thought they were winning right until the moment of their defeat. The abbess had never raised her hand in anger, but the blows she struck were more powerful than any taught by Sister Tallow.

Nobody came. No tramp of boots on the dormitory stairs. Perhaps the soldiers had arrived on other business … As sleep took hold Nona saw again the abbess lying pale on her deathbed, the flesh wasted from her, eyes fever-bright. On that last night she had summoned Nona to her side and found the strength that often comes before that final goodbye. She had spoken to Nona, rediscovering the lucidity that had been a stranger to her for many days.

‘A million words won’t push the ice back, not even the breadth of a finger. But one word will break a heart, two will mend it, and three will lay the highest low.’

Abbess Glass had spoken and Nona had made promises. Promises to a friend. Promises she meant to keep.

The bell that drew Nona from her dreams spoke with a steel tongue. Bitel! All around, her fellow novices were jumping from their beds, shedding nightgowns, grabbing habits, shouting questions. All except Joeli who sat on her bed, fully dressed, her hair already brushed to its usual golden magnificence. She watched with a private smile as Nona struggled first into her smalls and skirts, and then the latest in a series of habits, this one already too short for her.

‘This is bad.’ Ara hopped across to Nona’s bed, trying to get her foot into her shoe.

‘You should be ready to run,’ Nona said.

Ara stood, frowning, her foot half in the shoe. ‘Where’s Jula going to run to? My father lives in a castle … Jula’s has rooms above an ink shop in Verity. And Ruli would have to cross fifty miles under Durnish occupation.’

Nona didn’t have an answer. She could have pointed out that Ara would have to cross more than twice that distance under Scithrowl occupation to reach her father’s holdings. And would likely find it smoking ruins, or home to one of Adoma’s royal cousins. If Lano Tacsis had spoken the truth the main Jotsis stronghold had already fallen.

Ruli joined Ara, white-faced at Nona’s bedside, and all the while Joeli smiled. Nona laced her shoes and wondered yet again if Joeli, with her key to Sister Apple’s stores, could really have been poisoning the abbess’s medicines. Or had Glass’s death, like so many evils in the world, been a simple matter of blind chance? Certainly the abbess had thought so. I’ll meet my son again in the Ancestor, so don’t cry, Nona Grey. She had taken Nona’s hand in the withered claw of her own, still scarred by the flame of that candle long ago. The fight matters. But in the end it is never truly won or lost, and victory lies in discovering that we are bigger than it is.

‘Where’s Jula?’ Nona could see no sign of her, and her bed lay empty.

‘An hour after we got back last night she took a lantern and went off to read that book.’ As Ara answered Jula appeared at the doorway, dark circles around her eyes, hair in disarray, and a look of mild panic on her face.

The opening of the door sparked a mass exodus, with Alata first out, pushing past a confused Jula. Within moments Nona and the rest of them were hurrying down the stairs, joining the stream of younger novices and the crush at the main door as everyone spilled out into the day.

Bitel’s harsh chimes ceased almost as soon as Nona left the dormitories. In the east the sun still occupied the notch that the Corridor put in the horizon and every shadow pointed to the abbess’s house.

Nuns and novices had begun to line up, organized by class, as Nona arrived. Bitel had rung out only a handful of times in her decade at the convent and on no occasion had the bell heralded anything good. Nona watched for church guards or the soldiers from last night. Finding none, she studied the disposition of the Red Sisters. If Abbess Wheel meant to detain them then given her low opinion of Nona’s piety she wouldn’t expect mere obedience to hold her in place while the yokes were brought out. Her heart sank as she saw that the Red Sisters were arrayed around the novices in a loose circle. Sister Tallow stood close at hand.

‘It looks like a trap,’ Ruli hissed.

‘Ruli, the abbess doesn’t need to trap us if she thinks we’ve done wrong.’ Jula sounded bone-tired, as if she had been reading the whole night. ‘Abbess Wheel speaks for the Church, and we obey.’

Nona understood then that breaking the rules once to get the book was as far down the road to damnation as Jula was prepared to go. If Abbess Wheel ordered her surrender, she would not be running. It spoke volumes that Jula had been prepared to come with her when she said she couldn’t find the book alone. Of all of Nona’s friends perhaps Jula was the only one with true faith, not only in the Ancestor but in the Church as an institution. Something she intended to devote her life to in the black habit of a Holy Sister.

‘All the Reds are here. Even the ones who should be on patrol.’ Ara kept her voice low, shuffling into the line beside Nona. ‘The Greys are positioned too, from what I can see.’ She motioned upwards with her eyes towards the big house. ‘Bhenta’s on the roof.’