Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

‘What’s inside?’ Nona asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ the abbess said. ‘But given that the emperor’s authority rests on the fact that he controls the Ark, it would be nice if he could open it, no?’

‘But someone must know.’ Nona frowned.

‘Maybe someone does. The trouble is that so many people claim to know and their claims are so varied, that it’s hard to know which, if any, are correct. A lot of people believe that it can control the moon.’

‘The moon? But—’

‘The point is that the prophecy told us that the key lay among us, among our children or the children yet to be. I believed it heart and soul. I was a young woman then, and zealous.’ She managed a smile though pain still haunted her eyes. ‘In any event, it served its purpose. I didn’t learn the truth until I became abbess here and had access to the sectioned histories. It doesn’t matter much now – but this is not a tale that should spread. I’m trusting you, Nona. And that’s a burden rather than a gift. Do you understand that?’

‘I understand.’ At least she half-understood. ‘But didn’t the high priest know? The archons too?’

‘Jacob was never a great one for reading. Or listening.’ The abbess’s smile was fuller this time. ‘The archons? I’m sure Anasta knew. Philo too, probably. Kratton? I don’t know. He often surprises me. Nevis, perhaps not. Or perhaps like Sister Wheel they know but choose to believe anyway.’

Nona frowned. ‘So why did you save me?’

‘You heard what I told the archons. It was enough for them to find me innocent.’

‘But you said you had a vi—’

‘I lied, Nona. I do that sometimes even when someone isn’t threating to fork my tongue and whip me from the convent.’

Nona remembered what the abbess had said when they were hurrying from the prison. Words are steps along a path: the important thing is to get where you’re going. And where had the abbess got?

‘You didn’t like the high priest.’

‘No.’

‘He was a thorn in your side.’

‘More like a knife in my kidney.’

‘And you don’t like Thuran Tacsis.’

‘No.’

‘And now Thuran doesn’t have the high priest for a friend.’

‘He doesn’t have the high priest in his pocket, no. For all his faults Nevis will not sell himself so cheaply as Jacob did.’

‘Why are you telling me these things?’ Nona frowned, trying to see if the abbess was mocking her.

‘You asked.’

‘But … you shouldn’t talk about archons like that … Not to a novice. Not to me. I’m so new.’

‘Your shoes may still be shiny, Nona, but your habit has several holes in it.’ The abbess regarded her, unsmiling. ‘You bled for me. I owe you some answers. Or perhaps I want to see how closely you keep secrets?’

‘If the high priest was such a bad one, why didn’t the archons vote him out before?’ It had seemed a simple enough matter.

‘The archons each have their own see to govern and their cathedrals are very far from Verity. You have to move mountains to get two archons in the same place, let alone four. It’s an assembly I could never have called.’

‘But the high priest didn’t even need them to throw you out?’

‘He needed them to make it look like something other than a grudge. We have a history, Jacob and I. Just declaring me guilty would make him look weak. A man who spends as long as the high priest does in the emperor’s court can’t afford to look weak. There are too many sharks in those waters. He thought he had more of a hold on the archons than he did. More sway. If just one of them had agreed with him there would not have been an issue. So Thuran Tacsis floated all four archons to my doorstep on a river of gold – just to get at you, dear.’

‘And you knew he would …’ Nona started to see the shape of something. The outline of a plan.

‘I thought it likely.’ The abbess nodded.

‘But … but, you burned yourself. Even though you knew it wouldn’t help. You knew it wouldn’t change the high priest’s mind.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because … you knew it would make me say I would take the ordeal. But I said I would at the start.’

‘If I had accepted your offer at that point the archons would never have voted the staff from Jacob’s hand. They had to see me suffer – they had to see him make me suffer. Getting four archons in one place is a feat, but it is nothing compared to the task of getting them to agree on something of import.’

‘So … all this … from that first day … was to bring down the high priest and hurt Thuran Tacsis.’

The abbess just watched her.

‘How … how could you know I would pass the ordeal?’ Nona shifted her shoulder and winced. Hessa almost hadn’t survived, and even a scratch on her would have seen Nona drowned.

‘Sister Tallow watched you that first day at Blade. A small girl who could wreak such harm on Raymel Tacsis that it takes four Academy men to hold him on the edge of life … a gerant pit-fighter … I thought that such a child would be fast. Sister Tallow watched you on the sand and told me that she herself was not so swift in her prime.’

Nona lay silent then, the pain of her wound pulsing, her hands and wrists burning with a deep fire. Abbess Glass was neither fast, nor strong, she had no obvious wealth, her office held no great sway, and yet with her truth and with her lies she had turned one wheel against another against another and in due course mountains had moved, the mighty had fallen, and the world sang the song she chose for it. Nona didn’t know how she felt about that. She knew that she had tried to lay some portion of her guilt over Saida’s death on the abbess’s steps and that in truth the guilt was hers and hers alone. She should never have stopped fighting, never allowed them to be taken to face ‘justice’. Nona knew that she didn’t understand people. Not how they worked in their webs of fragile, flexible friendships and shifting loyalties, not how the games of smiles and hugs, scowls and turned backs were played at court or over a convent breakfast table, and not the workings of their hidden hearts. She knew she didn’t understand these things, but with Abbess Glass she understood still less. They had wanted to throw Nona chained into the black and unreflecting waters of the sinkhole, where novices swam and bones crowded in the silt deep below the kicking of their legs. Abbess Glass and that sinkhole perhaps had more in common than their name.

Glass and her church. Nona had no loyalty to either now. And perhaps that was just another of the abbess’s wheels turning … but the time to run had passed her by. She had called Clera and Hessa friends and that bond ran deeper than blood: it was the foundation of a world that she could understand.

A faith that mattered.

20

Abbess Glass returned to her house and to her duties after that first night. Nona lay abed three more days with Sister Rose in close attendance.

Clera and Ruli came to see her on the first morning, released from Academia for the visit. Ruli shy at first, hiding behind her hair, Clera all smiles and hugs from the moment she burst through the door. They sat on her bed and chatted, about everything except what had happened. Clera told them of a ball her father had taken her to back before his fall from grace.