‘I am not a monster.’ The words tasted sickly sweet on her tongue.
She met Clera hanging by the gate to the Poisoner’s caverns, trying to build up the courage to go down. The courtyard lay empty, the rest of the novices at the cloisters or still at their evening meal.
Nona joined her, still in pain but now able to walk without hunching over. ‘Where did you get that throwing star? Why have you got it?’
‘I told you.’ Clera pressed her lips together, scowling furiously. ‘Partnis Reeve gave it to me. He wants me to fight for him. My father told him I wouldn’t take the red when I’m done here.’ She sucked her teeth, wincing at some over-strong flavour. ‘Anyway … why did your mother sell you then?’
Nona turned towards the gate, which had been left ajar. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ She led off and Clera followed.
Sister Apple sat behind her desk reading from a scroll, the lesson chamber returned to its normal layout.
‘Novice Clera, Novice Nona, good of you to return.’ She set her pointer stick, a slim length of wire-willow, over the scroll to mark her place. ‘I’ve just been reading about sweet aloe, a plant that’s been lost to the ice. Apparently it’s very good at mellowing bitterness. I would have liked to try it in my truth toxin – which, as you will have noticed, is not the sort of thing you can slip someone unawares.’ She set her hands upon the desk and stood up. ‘Perhaps the cathedral archives still hold some seeds …’ She crossed the room to stand before them. ‘What did you learn, girls?’
‘Not to trust you,’ Nona said.
The nun laughed. ‘I’ve been trying to teach you that since the first day you came down those stairs, Nona Grey. Will the lesson stick this time?’ Her eyes slid to the left. ‘And Clera?’
‘The truth is a weapon and lies are a necessary shield.’
‘Put like a poet,’ Sister Apple said. She reached out and laid a hand on each girl’s shoulder, ushering them closer together. ‘But when I asked what lesson you learned … I wanted to hear “patience”.’ And with that she banged their heads together.
32
‘Is the sea like this?’ Nona sat with the others, legs dangling out over the drop to the distant waters. The moonlight revealed the far side of the sinkhole but darkness held the rest. The Glasswater lay many fathoms deeper than the fall from its rocky lips to the rippled surface. Nona found that hard to imagine.
‘Ha!’ Ruli often spoke her amusement and rarely laughed. ‘The sea is huge.’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’ Nona had seen the maps. Sister Rule’s charts reached all the way around the Corridor, though those of the most distant lands were centuries old. ‘I meant as deep.’
Ruli shook her head and Clera snorted, though Nona knew she had never been to the shore. ‘Deeper,’ Ruli said. ‘My father used to say something he took from a book.’ She frowned, trying to remember. ‘Whatever befalls it the sea will close upon itself and keep its secrets, erasing with a curtain of waves all that has passed. The deep sea waits. Patient, hungry depths unknown to those who skid over its surface and think they know the whole. There are empty miles, dark places where light has never been, and man’s eyes will never know them. What wonders there … I forget the rest.’ She pushed her hair back over her shoulders and leaned forward to stare down past her toes. ‘He wants me to come back, when I’ve finished here. He says there’s more in Abeth than the Church of the Ancestor. But I think I’ll stay. If I can’t be a Grey Sister then I’ll be a Holy.’
‘You don’t think there’s more out there to see?’ Hessa asked from her perch on a nearby rock – she didn’t ever sit on the edge, perhaps shy of her withered leg, or knowing that if she fell she would drown.
‘Oh I do,’ Ruli said. ‘More than I could ever know. But there’s more than I could ever know here too.’ She pulled her nightdress tighter around her, the wind warmed by the approaching focus but still too cold for comfort.
‘That’s how they get you,’ Clera said. ‘They say you’re free to leave and families pay the fees year after year, but how many do leave? There’s always something – the faith, the mysteries, pride – this place always seems to manage to hook them.’ She put her head back. ‘Not me though. As soon as I’m offered the red I’m out of here.’
‘You see Yisht watching us?’ Ara hissed. ‘Don’t look!’ As Ruli started to swivel.
‘She’s always watching us,’ Hessa said. ‘Well, watching you and Nona anyway.’
‘Isn’t she supposed to be watching Zole?’ Clera threw a loose stone, arcing down into the water.
‘Ghena said she saw her climbing on the dome,’ Ruli said. ‘She said she told Abbess Glass and she wouldn’t listen.’
‘Wouldn’t listen?’ Nona asked.
‘It’s all the sisters.’ Ruli nodded. ‘They’re all terrified that Sherzal will take Zole back. That’s what I’ve heard. Though why they care I don’t know. Maybe the high priest would be angry? Anyway, Zole’s getting private lessons from Sister Pan, did you know that? And from the Poisoner!’ She crossed her arms. ‘And that’s why they won’t do anything about Yisht. They think if they throw Yisht out then Zole will go too. So Yisht can climb all over the Dome of the Ancestor if she wants.’
‘Ghena’s always making up stories.’ Clera shook her head. ‘I hope I’m out of Grey Class before she leaves Red. But she’s right about one thing: Yisht is up to something. She is always prying.’
‘I think she’s hunting for something,’ Hessa said.
‘You think Yisht will tell the abbess about this?’ Ruli asked. ‘Us being here?’ Sneaking out of the dormitories at night wasn’t unheard of but it certainly wasn’t allowed.
‘Well, if she does it’ll be your fault,’ Clera said. ‘You could have shown us in the bathhouse, there’s plenty of steam there.’
‘I can’t do it in the bathhouse. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the air’s always moving.’
‘The air’s moving here too – or didn’t you notice the wind?’
‘Not down there!’ Ruli pointed to the water. ‘Well, not so much. I don’t know … maybe—’
‘Maybe you just can’t do it anywhere,’ Clera said.
‘We’ll find out in a moment,’ Ara said. ‘So there’s no need to argue.’
She was right. The focus was approaching, the moon nearly overhead, the sinkhole’s shadows slinking away, hugging the near wall. Beneath their feet a second moon, a red rectangle, danced in the water.
The warmth built on Nona’s shoulders, and became heat. She narrowed her eyes. Clera and Ara lay back, eyes closed, arms spread, embracing the brilliant light.
Nona watched as the water began to steam, caught between two burning moons. Within a few minutes the whole of the sinkhole had filled with mist, a new surface billowing below her feet and rising swiftly. She was glad not to be in her habit now: the plateau was hotter than the bathhouse and sweat beaded on her arms, trickling across her ribs beneath the thin material of her nightdress.