Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘Malkin’s nice,’ Jula said, not looking up. ‘Just a bit old and confused.’

‘Needs drowning!’ Shouted back through the door as Ketti vanished in the direction of the laundry.

‘The only male in the convent and he spends his time pissing on everything.’ Clera from her bed.

‘There’s the roosters too.’ Jula still not looking up.

‘Who spend their time crowing and strutting about,’ Clera said.

‘And the pigs.’

‘Who eat and shit,’ Clera said. ‘I rest my case.’

Nona crossed to her bed.

‘Is Sister Kettle getting those letters to stick in your head, Nona?’ Clera looked up from the silver crown she’d been walking across her knuckles. Her tone held something distant in it: perhaps her day at the prison had given her bad news this time.

‘She’s having more luck with it than Sister Pan is with her stupid Path.’ Nona flomped down on her bed, stretching her hand out and sighing. ‘We need to get her to let us off to practise blade-path next time.’

‘We do.’ Clera nodded. She studied Nona as if she were something new to her. ‘Anyway, hurry up and learn to read. You don’t want to take up too many of Kettle’s seven-days or the Poisoner will not be a happy little Poisoner.’

‘Why?’ Nona frowned.

‘You don’t know? Really? Oh come on—’

The ringing of a bell cut across Clera. A bell Nona hadn’t heard before, sharp and very loud. Three rings, a pause, three more. A steel bell.

‘Ancestor bleed me!’ Clera looked shocked. ‘That’s Bitel! We have to get out, now!’

Moments later the Red Class girls were crowding out through the dormitories’ main door, along with a dozen or so older novices. Outside in the growing gloom nuns and novices were on the move, streaming from all directions, some running, others striding briskly, all headed towards the abbess’s house.

Bitel found its tongue again. Clang. Rooks broke for the sky from behind Heart Hall. Clang. Clera and Nona broke into a run. Clang. Somewhere in the distance a woman started to shout.

The entire convent gathered before Abbess Glass’s doors. Nona and Clera pushed in among the novices, some still wet and steaming from bathhouse. The senior nuns arranged themselves around the perimeter of the crowd, several carrying lanterns.

‘It’s a fire?’ Jula elbowing through behind them.

‘I heard it was a collapse in the Shade caverns …’ Ruli, her long hair in a bathhouse towel.

‘Ssshh!’ Ghena pointed towards the abbess’s doors.

Sister Tallow and Sister Apple preceded the abbess, Sister Tallow with her arm in a sling. Abbess Glass followed, crozier in hand, and halted on the steps from where she commanded a view over her gathered flock.

‘Sisters.’ Abbess Glass smiled for them though it lacked joy. ‘Novices. Word has just arrived that High Priest Jacob and the four archons are approaching. They will be with us within the hour. This visit is a great honour for us and for Sweet Mercy. I expect you all to be on your best behaviour.

‘The high priest and his retinue will be accommodated in Heart Hall, which will be off limits until further notice. Novices will be expected to stay up to greet High Priest Jacob, after which they will retire to their dormitories. Sister Rule will lead the choir in Aethsan’s Hymn to the Ancestor, and Saint Jula’s Requiem.

‘The high priest will undoubtedly wish to lead a service in the dome, and all sisters will be expected to attend.’ Abbess Glass clapped her hands. ‘We have an hour! Get the lanterns lit, food and wine prepared, the choir properly attired … Go! Go!’

Nona looked around for a direction in which to go, only to find a broad, brown hand descending upon her shoulder.

‘Red Class,’ Sister Oak called from her considerable elevation. ‘With me to the refectory. We will be carrying out tables and chairs to set before the Dome of the Ancestor for the welcoming ceremony.’

Waving a fleshy arm, Sister Oak led off and the Red Class novices filed after her. Clera should have joined the choir but instead she stuck with the class, perhaps not ready to perform for such a high audience. Nona glanced back as they left. The abbess descended her steps, the golden curl of her crozier stealing the lanterns’ brightness. Her lips made a grim line in the gloom beneath.

15

Lights blinking in and out of view among the pillars gave the first visible sign of the high priest’s arrival. Nona imagined the churchmen dwarfed among the hugeness of the columns, their small patches of illumination in all that darkness, shadows swinging around them. She wondered how many had come and to what purpose. Raymel Tacsis’s brother, Lano, had said his father knew High Priest Jacob. How far did Thuran Tacsis’s influence reach? Abbess Glass must know the high priest too – surely that would count for more?

‘They’re here for you. You know that, right?’

Nona turned to look up at Clera, standing behind her a little to her left in the second row of novices. Each class stood in two lines, the shortest to the fore.

‘It was all over town, Nona. You should have told me.’ Clera kept her gaze on the approaching lights. To either side of her Ruli and Ketti turned to stare.

‘Told you what?’ Jula asked, beside Nona.

‘Nona half-killed Raymel Tacsis, Thuran Tacsis’s son – the ring-fighter. And when Lano Tacsis came up here with a high court judge the other day—’

‘He didn’t!’ Ghena from Nona’s right. ‘Did he?’

‘He did, and Nona nearly cut off two of his fingers. It took a marjal wizard from the Academy to save them. Raymel’s still under the care of four other Academy mages.’

‘Where did you get a knife?’ Ghena hissed.

Nona glanced along the line and saw Arabella staring at her with startling intensity.

‘Why did you attack him?’ Jula whispered.

Nona made no reply. She looked down into her empty hands and wondered why Clera hadn’t asked her questions back in the dormitory. She must have been angry at being misled by Nona’s story of Amondo in the forest. Though that story held more truth in it than the first one Nona had told her … Had she learned about Raymel last seven-day or just today? Clera had held her anger so well, kept it cold and close, then used it like a blade. Nona hadn’t understood that about her friend – but then she understood so little about people. She expected them all to be like her and found instead that each of them was a mystery, from Clera with her copper penny that became a silver crown, Ruli so easy in her skin, kindness without ambition, to Jula and her faith, Hessa and her magics, even Ghena’s anger, so close to her own, never yielded to explanation or prediction.

The churchmen came into view, picked out in the guttering light of the bonfire the nuns had set burning in the fire-pit before the convent. Under Sister Rule’s direction the choir gave voice to Aethsan’s Hymn, the younger novices first, piercing the night with high, sweet notes, singular and wind-torn, hanging a moment before the sisters underwrote it with more strength, the words flowing together into melody. Sister Mop stood to the fore, dumpy, her face plain and careworn, but her voice a marvel, sending chills along the backs of Nona’s arms.