Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor 1)

Sister Tallow watched Nona for a long, silent moment, eyes narrow. ‘Grey Class to the hall then. Let’s see how ready you are, novice.’ A curt nod and she left the room.

‘What? You need to go to Sister Rose, Nona!’ Ara wiped at Nona’s mouth with the sleeve of her habit and it came away stained.

‘Why didn’t you take her down?’ Clera asked, not loud, almost lost in the tumult of voices.

Nona cricked her neck and took a pace forward, resisting the urge to clutch her side. ‘How would I do that? She’s a giant!’

Clera gave her a narrow stare remarkably like Sister Tallow’s. Nona shrugged. Taken by surprise and held tight her speed hadn’t mattered much. She would have had to cut Darla to win free without injury. She swallowed more blood.

‘You should have pounded her.’ Clera curled her lip, perhaps imagining herself delivering such a beating.

‘Even if I could, it’s not worth making an enemy over such a small matter.’

‘Small?’

‘She wanted me to know she’s the boss. If you’re going to let someone take your measure you should at least get something worth having in return. Mistress Blade taught us that.’

‘She did?’ Clera looked surprised. All around them the novices were gathering their stuff and starting to head out to the changing room. ‘Really?’

Ara came across from Nona’s desk with her lesson bag. ‘Really. I think you turn off your ears when Sister Tallow puts down her sword and starts talking theory.’

‘I took a few kicks and in exchange I don’t have to watch my back or worry about Darla poisoning my food,’ Nona said. ‘Being feared is clearly very important to her. Why take it away?’

‘Why break her finger then?’ Clera demanded, deep furrows across her brow.

‘She’ll remember she beat me so she won’t carry a grudge. She’ll remember it hurt so she’ll convince herself she doesn’t need to do it again.’

‘And the toes?’

‘I got tired of being kicked.’ And Nona hobbled through the door.

Hessa stumped along with Nona, keeping pace easily for once. ‘Was all that true?’

Nona glanced her way, wincing. ‘Yes.’

‘Was it all the truth though?’

‘Not all of it,’ Nona said. There was more, and, as usual, Hessa knew. ‘She hurt you. I wanted to break her bones.’

‘She knocks every new novice about.’ Hessa turned for the exit: she spent Blade class pursuing her other studies.

‘Yes, but yours I felt.’ Once Hessa had shared with Nona the memory of her last day with Giljohn and somehow her inexperience had led to the forging of a more permanent bond. Perhaps once a month they would share a nightmare. Never a good dream, always something traumatic. And in moments of true panic or pain Hessa’s thoughts would reach out and overwhelm Nona’s. It happened in the other direction to a lesser degree. When Nona had taken the arrow Hessa had collapsed from more than shock. The pain had echoed in her too. When Darla had knocked Hessa to the floor and set her foot to Hessa’s face, Nona had in that same moment shared her skin – the mixture bubbling before her in Shade class forgotten and unseen – had felt the weight of Darla’s shoe, the agony in Hessa’s hip, the humiliation of many eyes watching as she squirmed. She’d known all of it and been unable to act. ‘I’m not going to get beaten twice and not bite back.’

Hessa offered a shy grin. ‘Well. She’s certainly been bitten.’ And with that she took herself off across the hall, the swing of her leg leaving a dashed line alongside each of her single footprints.

Out on the sands Sister Tallow waited for them, in her hand a naked blade, the long thin sword favoured by the sisterhood, a strip of Ark-steel, carrying a slight curve and an edge that could cut the truth from a lie. Nona jogged after the others, uncomfortable in the blade-habit assigned to her, a heavy tunic of padded leather, bleached to a pale beige. The long sleeves overlapped awkward gauntlets, all designed to minimize the potential for novices gutting each other. She went to stand beside Clera and Ketti.

Sister Tallow always had a stillness about her. Often in blade-fist Nona would start and finish a bout only to find the nun in the same position, watching, as if her flesh was inanimate and she had been carved from it rather than grown. Today though, she paced, glancing up at the windows. Long, swift strides, impatient, spinning to turn and pace again.

Before the novices were gathered and arrayed in their lines the main doors opened and Sister Wheel slipped through, the cone of her headdress scraping the wood. She stayed by the doors, seeming to glare at everyone in the hall.

‘Some of you will have seen this before, most will not.’ Sister Tallow held her sword up as they hastened into their lines. ‘You won’t hold one unless you graduate this class – and all your other Grey classes – and come to me again in Mystic Class. But if you do become Martial Sisters it will be through such a weapon that you may need to direct the Ancestor’s will. Pray that you are never called upon to use it, but know that there have been few sisters who took the red and kept their blade unsullied.’

‘Sullied?’ Clera bit back on the question but it escaped even so.

‘Blood is always a failure.’ Sister Tallow’s glance flickered to Nona. ‘Often the failure of the sister who holds the sword. Sometimes of those who send her into conflict. Or sometimes the failure lies years back, in the hands of someone who missed an opportunity for peace, who saw a chance to avert a distant violence and did not take it … or who failed to see that chance.’ She returned the sword to the scabbard at her hip. ‘I spend Red Class, that’s two years for most of you, on unarmed combat. One reason I make you dangerous without a weapon – and will continue to reinforce that training – is so that you have an alternative to this.’ She slapped her hip. ‘You may be called upon to enforce the authority and the will of the church. It would be better if you did so in a manner that allows the transgressor to see the error of their ways rather than the contents of their body. The sword is a final solution.’ Sister Tallow looked along their lines as if considering fruit at market and finding none to her standard. ‘Knives today – training blades. Equip yourselves. Run, but remember where your blade is and what it will cut if you fall.’

The novices took off running, sand scattering beneath bare feet. Nona brought up the rear, limping to spare tender flesh already turning to bruise. Darla had been a lesson in herself. Take a giant by surprise and you could fell Raymel Tacsis with a blow. Let a giant take you by surprise and your options might dwindle to nothing.

As she turned where the corridor split, changing room to the left, storeroom to the right, Nona caught sight of a figure in the dark corridor that continued to the blade-path chamber. It almost looked like Kettle, but the hard-eyed stare held nothing of the nun’s humour.

‘She’ll shave your head!’ Clera raced from the storeroom holding a long knife as Nona approached the door.

By the time Nona had fought her way through the novices bundling from the doorway, all with daggers in hand, the room lay empty. It wasn’t clear where the girls had taken their knives from: at the far end of the chamber a bewildering array of weapons lined the shelves, hilts out ready for the taking. Nona passed by the racks. Swords of various lengths and weights, long-hafted axes, climbing picks, hook knives, throwing knives, poniards, killing spikes … She hurried to the furthest corner. Kneeling, she reached up beneath the lowest shelf, stretching. Craw-spiders sometimes lurked in such places but she hadn’t time for caution. Her fingers found only space and for a moment she thought it had been discovered at last. One more stretch, cheek hard against the shelf’s edge, and she found the hilt. A tug brought it free.