Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

Nona edged past them both at the corner of the laundry, checking the courtyard beyond for any nuns. The wind wrapped her habit about her legs, biting through, and her hands were already numb. She hated to think what the ranging would be like.

‘It worked on Hessa,’ Ruli muttered, and at Nona’s signal she sprinted across the yard to crouch by the wall of the scriptorium opposite.

‘It did.’ Nona replied to the night. Hessa had collapsed bonelessly and they’d left her safe on her side in her bed. Would a full-grown woman go down so swiftly though? Were the ice-tribes a different breed?

Nona waved Clera across and sent Ara on her heels.

A minute later they were all four gathered in the shelter of the entrance to the tunnel that led down to Shade.

‘You’ve got this?’ Clera asked.

‘I’ve got it.’ Ara grunted. ‘Now shut up.’ She was on her knees, face level with the lock. Hessa had spent hours trying to teach her the thread trick with locks.

‘But Shade has a different lock!’ Ara had protested when she had finally worked the lock on the supply cupboard in the dormitory entrance hall.

‘You’re missing the whole point!’ Hessa had thrown up her hands and nearly lost her crutch. ‘One lock, another lock, complicated or simple, tumblers or latches … they’re all either locked or unlocked. You just need to find the thread for the lock and pull it.

‘Like this?’

‘That’s the thread for the oak that the planks came from.’

‘This?’

‘You just rotated one of the anchor screws …’

Out in the icy wind and darkness the trick of unthreading a lock was proving no easier than it had in the dorm.

‘Hurry up!’ Clera stamped in impatience.

‘Shut up!’ Ara pressed her eye to the keyhole as if the lock’s secret might reveal itself to her more easily that way.

Ruli came into sight, rolling the barrel across the open plateau between Academia Tower and the entrance to the undercaves. At one point the wind nearly stole it from her. Nona pictured Ruli chasing the barrel as the ice-wind pitched it over the edge towards the vineyards far below.

‘We’ll meet Yisht at this rate.’ Clera hugged herself while Ara continued to work on the lock.

‘She has a tunnel down from her room. I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’ Nona gripped the freezing bars of the gate, feeling more vulnerable with each passing second spent out in the open.

Ruli arrived with the barrel, which offered a degree of shelter from the wind. ‘She couldn’t dig down from there. Someone would have heard her.’

Nona shrugged. ‘It’s the only way. She must have explored the route I took but not followed it to the end.’ Yisht had a room in the guest wing attached to Heart Hall. By Nona’s reckoning the tunnel that led on from the Shade cavern would pass below the hall. She had always been thankful that Yisht hadn’t been permitted to fill her role as Zole’s bodyguard by sleeping with them in Grey dormitory, but it seemed perhaps that it would have been better if she had been allowed.

‘You’ll have to blast it, Nona!’ Clera said.

‘Blast it,’ Ruli agreed, blowing into her hands.

‘I’ll blast you if you don’t SHUT UP!’ Ara didn’t sound as serene as perhaps she might.

‘I think someone’s coming,’ Clera said, staring into the dark and open plateau to the east.

click

Ara stood up and pushed the gate open.

‘Get the barrel in, quick!’

Moments later they had the gate closed again, with the barrel propped against it.

‘That won’t stay there,’ Nona said, poking at the barrel. ‘A strong gust will send it end over end down the stairs after us.’

‘Well we can hardly leave someone to hold it. We’re going to need all of us to move Yisht.’ Ara poked the barrel, frowning as it wobbled. A third of the base overhung the first step.

‘We don’t need all four of us to take Yisht out though.’ Nona patted the bulge where Clera’s gourd of boneless, brewed from the catweed, sat under her habit. ‘I’ll get in position and wait for her. When it’s done I’ll come back for you to help me drag her.’ Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the lantern from Clera and hurried down the stairs.

‘Be careful!’ Clera called after her. ‘If you break that gourd when you’re squeezing through then you’re going to be down there a while!’

It took perhaps a quarter of an hour for Nona to retrace her route from her first exploration and reach Yisht’s excavations. It felt closer to quarter of a lifetime. In the tight sections, through the narrowest part of the fissure and wriggling along the slim connecting tunnel at the end, she expected at each moment to hear a dull crack as the gourd surrendered to the pressure and catweed liquor to begin leaking down her leg. If the victim drank the liquor the effects were said to be almost instant, each muscle relaxing rapidly to the point at which they couldn’t so much as lift a finger. The important thing was to make sure the victim didn’t swallow their tongue and suffocate. They had laid Hessa out with great care, in line with the Poisoner’s lessons, to ensure her safety.

When the liquor was absorbed through the skin the effects were slower and varied, depending on which part of the body took the dose. Nona’s plan was to splatter the gourd’s contents in Yisht’s face and run for it. The boneless would undo her pretty swiftly. With luck she’d swallow some too and go down even faster.

Nona waited in the mouth of the narrow connecting tunnel, the lantern behind her on its rope. She watched for any glimmer of light, or any hint of sound. Nothing. She waited anyway. In the Blade class after Yisht had single-handedly felled all of Nona’s fellow novices, save Zole, Sister Tallow had commented on the display.

‘A good fighter lives in the moment, but they see into the future. The better the fighter the further they see. Everyone can develop whatever natural talent the Ancestor gave them for this. Some however, some marjals, have an unnatural talent for it. Seeing five heartbeats into every future goes a long way towards compensating for any amount of hunska speed.’ On reflection Nona realized that every move made against her Yisht had seen coming. But had it been experience though, or something more?

She pulled her lantern to her and dropped to the floor of the larger tunnel. The slightest rotation of the lantern’s cowl let enough light bleed out to show the dark entrance to Yisht’s excavation. Nona could feel the shipheart’s power thrumming through the marrow of her bones, singing in her blood, setting every small hair on its end, filling her with possibility. She had but to will it and her feet would leave the floor, she felt sure of it.

Nona advanced, buzzing with energy, but with feet firmly on the stone. Yisht had cut a narrow rising slot into the limestone, tall enough to stand in and swing a pick. The excavation led upward for twenty yards: extraordinary progress that left Nona open-mouthed. In places the walls lay scored with pick-marks, in others they had the peculiar melted quality that Nona had noticed in the vertical shaft she suspected led to Yisht’s sleeping quarters.

At the cutting face the air seemed to throb with the shipheart’s pulse. Nona’s own heart slowed to match the tempo. She closed her eyes and the Path lay before her, broad as a river, too bright to look upon and too bright to look away from.