Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

The three of them turned to look up at Archon Philo. ‘Really, Anasta?’

She nodded. ‘At my age what I want is a comfortable chair, not too far from the privy, not too close. And chamile tea. Lots of it.’

‘Nevis then.’

‘That’s done then.’ Archon Kratton dusted off his hands. ‘Congratulations, High Priest Nevis. You can pay for your own staff. Now, if you don’t mind I have a church to consecrate, an outbreak of shellpox to deal with, and a prize mare that may already have given birth. Shall we go?’

‘You forget, Kratton.’ Anasta raised a hand. ‘We’re short of one archon. I suggest the new high priest pick Abbess Glass.’

Nevis frowned and bowed his head, chins doubling, then tripling. ‘That would be irregular, but—’

At the far end of the hall the main door slammed shut behind the former incumbent.

‘Thank you.’ Abbess Glass took a step towards High Priest Nevis. ‘But no, my place is here, I have my sisters to serve, novices to raise to nuns, and besides, politicking has never been my forte.’

The high priest and all three archons spluttered with laughter at that, Nevis and Anasta laughing longest.

‘Abbess Glass.’ Nevis wiped at his eyes. ‘Sometimes I think that if you ever gave up the great game the ice would close on us.’ He looked at the sisters to either side of her. ‘Get this woman to the sanatorium, and the child – she probably bleeds faster than anyone should too.’ He clapped his hands and Nona found herself lifted easily in Sister Kettle’s arms. The pain bit once more, hard, making her cry out and she buried her face against Kettle’s shoulder as the nun carried her from the hall.

19

Sister Rose had given Nona a bitter drink that looked like ditch water. Sleep had taken her almost immediately. Now she cracked open a bleary eye and tried to focus. She felt much like she imagined the sheets in the laundry must after being trampled in the tubs.

‘Abbess?’ Nona finally made sense of the blurred shape beside her. Her voice escaped in a cracked whisper that seemed to go unnoticed. She brought up a hand to examine the hole beneath her collarbone, only to discover both it and her other hand were bound in strips of linen, stained across the palms with some kind of orange paste. She rolled with a groan and felt an echo of her earlier pain. Linen sheets limited her movement and she discovered herself naked beneath them, save for the broad strips of gauze wrapped around the injured shoulder, across her chest and beneath the right arm. ‘Abbess.’ The word came louder this time.

Abbess Glass leaned over from her bed and held a cup of water for Nona to sip from. She looked older, papery wrinkles around her eyes. ‘More. Drink it all if you can.’

Nona found she could.

‘Now sleep.’

And Nona found she could do that too.

Within the sanatorium Sister Rose’s opinion held ultimate authority. It didn’t matter who had just been offered an archon’s chair or who had just passed the ordeal of the Shield. The small ward boasted five beds, all in a line, opposite a large window overlooking the private herb garden. Abbess Glass lay in the bed furthest from the door, Nona in the one next to her.

That first day Sister Rose allowed no visitors. By evening Nona lay propped up on pillows watching the sun set behind the rooftop across the garden. Abbess Glass sat reading from one of several scrolls piled on the table beside her bed. She had bandages on both wrists and her right hand was still heavily wrapped. Awkward with her left, she cursed like a woodsman the third time the scroll escaped her and rolled itself up, only to remember Nona’s presence and break off into a fake cough.

‘Your name has been spoken before the emperor in his throne room, Nona, did you know that?’ The abbess looked across from her work.

‘My name?’ Nona blinked. She couldn’t imagine even her name entering the palace.

‘A high priest has fallen. It’s no small matter. The church is one of the pillars upon which the emperor’s power rests. He has considerable interest in it being solid from the foundation to the highest point. Thuran Tacsis was summoned to court. He has pledged to put aside his grievance against you, and by extension the convent that shelters you. The matter is closed.’

‘And you believe him?’ Nona saw Raymel Tacsis’s face, the same arrogance had been mirrored on his brother’s. They would not forgive or forget.

‘Thuran Tacsis is a cold and ruthless man. He would murder a thousand small girls if they stood in the way of his ambition. But he is not a mad dog. Oaths are not lightly given to the emperor. He will move on. Our Lord Tacsis has bigger fish to fry than you, novice, and this matter has already set him back. Don’t forget him though, for he will surely not forget you. Some people have a slow anger in them, that builds up a piece at a time so you won’t see it coming. Such anger has a momentum to it, so it’ll come to the boil sometimes even when the thing provoking it has stopped. Thuran Tacsis is not alone in that – watch for such people, Nona. But yes, I believe him, for now.’

Nona let the tension run from her, giving herself to the pillows’ embrace. Outside the rain fell at a steep wind-borne slant.

‘Did that old nun really talk about me a hundred years ago?’

‘No.’ The abbess didn’t look up, only tilted her scroll more towards the candle she had just lit.

‘But …’ Nona hadn’t wanted it to be true but the sudden dismissal left her feeling slightly put out. ‘But they said Sister Argatha was a famous Holy Witch. She made a prophecy …’

‘There’s no such thing as prophecy, Nona. Or rather there is but it’s madmen that tell them, or people who were once listened to for their wisdom and have found themselves growing old and unwise yet still wanting to be heard. There’s no magic in it. Magic doesn’t work that way.’

‘Sister Argatha was feeble-minded when she said it?’ Nona watched the red glow fade above the rooftop. ‘I didn’t want to be the Shield in any case – I wanted to be the Sword.’

The abbess laid down her scroll with a sigh, straightening it out. It promptly sprang back into a tight coil the moment she lifted her hand. ‘You deserve the truth, Nona, and I don’t want to stain Sister Argatha’s good name in any case, but you must promise to keep what I tell you to yourself. Can you do that?’

‘Yes.’ Nona was good at keeping secrets.

‘No telling that Clera you’re so tight with?’

‘No, abbess.’

Abbess Glass folded her hands in her lap, then winced and unfolded them. Sister Rose had given her three doses of sorrinbark for the pain but Nona saw that she still suffered, moving with the brittle delicacy of those who carry the worst kinds of hurt.

‘Sister Argatha did a great many things, most good, some bad, and twice to my knowledge they were plain stupid. What she did not do is make prophecies. The Argatha prophecy was the work of two archons about thirty-five years ago when Emperor Crucical’s grandfather, Edissat, was on the throne. They were troubled times: Edissat was in his dotage, his eldest son in exile, war threatened with the Durnishmen, ice-winds ruined several harvests. The prophecy gave us focus. It reminded us of the salvation the Ancestor promised us. It reminded us that the Ark could be opened, would be opened, and that we owned it, together.’