Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

Evening found Nona and the handful of seniors gathered around one of the refectory tables, a cold meal before them, rustled up from stores. Most of the nuns were in the Dome of the Ancestor, praying for the lost. Sisters Oak and Rule had helped Kettle across the convent to the Dome to join the prayer though Abbess Rose had insisted she stay in bed.

Nona sat, chewing on a heel of bread. Sister Elm had baked it. She would never bake another. At her side Ara sipped water from a clay cup and watched the light of the setting sun finger through the shutters.

‘The Durns are still coming.’ Clera banged the end of her knife on the table. ‘Are you going to light up a few of their barges and hope that they run away too? Because sooner or later you’re going to be standing before the throne and the emperor himself is going to order you to burn their cities to cinders.’

‘Have you ever been on the ice in a focus moon, Clera?’ Nona asked.

‘No.’ Clera scowled. ‘I didn’t last long enough at the convent to go ice-ranging. And why would I want to? It’s just Church stupidity, sending children up there.’

‘I used to think that,’ Nona said. ‘But I’ve been up there and I’ve waited through the focus, miles from the Corridor. You know what happens? The ice melts. An inch of ice melts. Then it freezes solid again. There’s nowhere for it to run. All that heat wasted. All the moon’s energy spent melting the same inch of ice night after night.’

Ruli looked up from her tortured hand. ‘But now you’ve got the moon! You can have it do anything!’

Jula shook her head. ‘The Ark told you that if you narrowed the focus from what it is it would kill plants and animals. That’s why it wouldn’t let you … until Zole said it should.’

‘We’ve seen it kill …’ Ruli gazed into space as if imagining the black circle of char that was all the moon left of the battle-queen.

Nona shook her head. ‘The focus stopped narrowing a long time ago. Anything that couldn’t live with what we experience every night has died out. What has survived has toughened. We can narrow the focus and see how things go. Or we can narrow it to a torch and run it along the edge of the ice, the whole focus burning along a strip a mile wide. We could burn channels to take the meltwater to the sea … the possibilities are endless … but the point is that we have control. We can try. We can change.

‘And even if we choose not to use it the moon is a weapon beyond all others. We can institute a peace. And with peace comes progress. We lost our knowledge through the course of a thousand wars. We fail to rediscover it only because our minds are always turned to survival, the ice is always pressing, and war is the result. Constantly. The moon can deliver peace. No army will march, no fleet set sail, if they know the moon itself will sear them from the world.

‘Peace, progress, hope. We can buy centuries and in those years discover new answers. The old tales tell us that the Missing learned to burn the ice itself! I think we have enough of that to keep us warm forever!’

Ara had stood and begun to pace while Nona set her ideas before them. Now she stopped. ‘And if the emperor won’t listen? If he wants to burn the Scithrowl and the Durn from the Corridor? What if he doesn’t want to stop even there?’

‘It would still be a peace,’ Nona said. ‘But the moon listens to me not him, and unless Zole comes back that is not going to change. If Crucical wants murder then I will tell him that I answer to the high priest and not to the emperor.’

‘The same high priest who ordered you to be left alone to guard the convent?’ Ara snorted. ‘Nevis has sold himself to the emperor and the Sis before. His price might be higher than his predecessor’s, but he still has one.’

Nona shook her head. ‘It was Abbess Glass who set the high priest’s staff in Nevis’s hand. If you know anything about that woman you’ll know that that was no accident. She could have engineered for Archon Anasta to take the staff, or either of the other two. But she chose Nevis. He has his price, but the abbess knew his heart and thought him worthy. Nevis is a merchant. Merchants love peace. They love prosperity. Merchants will sell themselves when they have no other bargain to make, but when I place myself and the moon in Nevis’s hands he will understand that the power lies with him and the bargains he makes then will be very different ones.’

Nona stood. She knew now how Darla must have felt, towering above the other novices. ‘Abbess Wheel was right to believe in the Chosen One. The Argatha came to the Ark and the moon is ours. Zole chose me … so I guess that makes me the Chosen One now.

‘We’re going to build a new future, sisters. So have a little faith. Because that’s what the future is always built on.’

Epilogue

‘Mistress Blade! Mistress Blade!’

Nona raised her hand and Red Class came to a halt. The thrown novices picked themselves up and brushed sand from their habits. Their partners, standing to attention, watched Nona.

‘Come.’ Nona waved in the novice at the doorway, Adela from Mystic Class, she thought. Or Abela.

‘Abbess Rule needs you at the big house.’

Nona sighed. ‘Novices, repeat that throw. I want to see at least one of you get it right by the time I get back.’

She followed Adela, or Abela, from Blade Hall. The Corridor wind was in the east, streaming their habits before them. Mistress Spirit rounded the curve of the Ancestor’s dome with a string of Grey Class novices at her back. There had been some consternation when Jula was appointed to the post at such a young age but Abbess Rule had threatened to raise her to sister superior if that would make it more fitting, and the objections subsided. Abbess Rule also pointed out that the high priest couldn’t find a nun across the whole of the empire who knew the Book of the Ancestor better than Sister Page … and nobody could dispute that.

A novice ran ahead of them lugging a crate of wine jars, a hulking girl who put Nona in mind of Darla. She beat them to the abbess’s steps. Nona had always thought Ruli would end up running the convent winery but she’d ended up running her father’s fleet of tradeships, quadrupling the tonnage and landing enough Sweet Mercy red on the Durn shores to drown the barbarians.

A novice with golden hair hurried from the door as they approached. A new recruit. Abbess Rule had scouts out looking for suitable girls. She’d even contracted Giljohn to join the effort, the old man had a rare eye for early signs of the bloods. Terms and conditions of the acquisitions were rather different these days though. The novices returned to their families twice a year.

The girl rushed by with a ‘sorry!’ She had Ara’s hair. She’d be a beauty too. Nona had heard that all the lords’ boys for two hundred miles had lined up ready to woo Arabella Jotsis when she returned to the ruins of her uncle’s castle. Her home might have been a charred heap of rubble, but the Jotsis lands remained and as the closest surviving heir Ara had to accept the lordship. Apparently she had rejected all her suitors so far. Perhaps someone else still had hold of her heart.

‘You’re in so much trouble!’ Clera sat in the abbess’s hall, her jacket a subtle symphony in shades of black, moleskin, and suede, the diamonds in her earlobes the only open admission of wealth. They called her the Farmer in Verity. Merchants whispered that she could plant a copper and pick gold from the tree that sprang up. Quite why she had so many business interests to discuss with the abbess Nona hadn’t yet fathomed. She suspected that Clera just liked visiting.