Grey Sister (Book of the Ancestor 2)

Nona crossed from the doorway and sat on the end of Ara’s bed. She missed moments like this, lying boneless beside Ara after the heat of the baths, complaining together as they wrote essays for Academia or Spirit class, just spending time. She already felt like an interloper in the Grey dormitory. Wincing, she lowered herself slowly: she still had an ache or three from the beating Joeli’s friends had dished out. “If Sherzal’s so hungry for power why doesn’t she set the Inquisition on her brother? Or can’t emperors sin?”

Ara grinned. “Emperors are famed for their sinning, but be careful where you say it! However, the only place the Inquisition can hold the Lansis to account is in their palaces. All the most highly placed people have rights about where they can and can’t be put on trial.”

“So Sherzal should send the Inquisition into Crucical’s throne room?”

“That’s where the emperors got clever. Their line is the only one that can refuse admission to the Inquisition. So unless Crucical invites them in, the Inquisition can’t touch him,” Ara said. “That’s what keeps Sherzal’s sister, Velera, safe too.”

“The emperor should just disband the Inquisition. I’ve heard how they get their confessions.” Nona shuddered.

“The Inquisition keeps us pure,” Jula said. “Someone has to see that the faith doesn’t slip away from its foundations.”

“Who keeps them pure?” Nona asked.

“Anyway this isn’t about Zole,” Ara said, returning to Ruli’s assertion. “This is about the whole thing. The Grey and the Red. The emperor wants control. He wants to send the sisters against his enemies, not have to beg High Priest Nevis. That’s what my father says. The emperor will be doing the same with the monasteries. They’ll have inquisitors up at Narrow Path too, trying to find fault with the abbot. Crucical will want the Red Brothers and the Grey too.”

Nona watched Jula sew, fingers quick, stitches neat and accurate. The tear in her habit had outlasted her memory of what had caused it.

“Why would Sherzal do anything to help her brother?” Ruli asked, reluctant to let go of her theory. “Wouldn’t she take the Red Sisters for herself?”

“The emperor wouldn’t stand for that. His legions would be at her door within the week.” Ara shook her head. “There’s been bargaining. A trade. Sherzal will get something she wants—but not Sweet Mercy. Not all of it anyway.”

“We should go back to the caves.” Nona reached over to set her fingers to a second tear in Jula’s habit. “Who knows how many more chances we’ll get if they set watchers on us?”

Only Ara acknowledged Nona had spoken. “I don’t want to.”

The rest carried on as if no words had passed her lips.

Much of Nona shared Ara’s desire to avoid the caves from now until the moon finally fell from the sky, but other more stubborn parts refused to agree. Sherzal had sent the Inquisition into Sweet Mercy and yet her hands were stained with Hessa’s blood, whatever Safira might claim. Yisht was Sherzal’s weapon, she was responsible for what that weapon cut. Nona owed it to Hessa to undertake her own inquisition. To see if her friend had left her any clue or message in the place where she died. Added to this was the fact that Nona had been driven from those caves, fleeing in terror, her friends’ minds altered. It was not in her to let such a challenge go unanswered. The Ancestor didn’t value pride but Nona had never quite managed to let hers go, and it drew her back to the scene of that disgrace, more strongly with each passing day. And if vengeance and pride were not enough, Yisht had stolen the shipheart, striking at the abbess’s reputation, robbing Sweet Mercy of its most valued treasure, walling its inhabitants away from their magics. It had to be recovered, and where better to start than at the beginning?

Nona held silent, watching the others. It seemed that time was only hardening their denial into fact. Patience would not solve the problem, and in any event time was running out.

Fix them yourself.

How?

Experiment.

And if something goes wrong?

Peh. Keot managed to convey an air of complete indifference. Are you not here to learn? Mistakes are how you learn.

“How did this tear?” Nona asked, lifting the sleeve towards Jula.

“I caught it on something.” The stitching continued, a little faster, a lot less neat.

I need help, Keot. It needs two people.

I’ll help—

Thank you.

But you would have to let me use your body to kill someone.

No! And who?

Anyone, I don’t care. Joeli if you like.

No!

You weren’t so squeamish about Raymel Tacsis. You enjoyed it. That’s why I’m in you. Keot sank down her back, burning as he went. Think about it. Otherwise you’ll need two minds for both the silly trances you think you need. Perhaps Joeli will help you. He settled into a sullen silence.

Nona sat back. She needed a friend, and who was there who wasn’t sitting before her? Only Amondo, and that had been the foolishness of a lonely child. Zole could help but Nona had no clue where her loyalties lay.

Jula had returned to her stitching. Nona watched her, letting her eyes defocus and reaching for her serenity. The lines of the old song ran through her: She’s falling down, she’s falling down, the moon, the moon. She reached for her clarity. Mistress Path had never spoken of entering more than one trance at a time, as if it made no more sense than riding more than one horse at a time, but to Nona it seemed akin to juggling. The slow and certain motion of Amondo’s hands filled her mind. She had watched them with a child’s eyes so many years ago that it seemed little more than a dream, and yet those days and the moments of them were written into her and no part of them had ever left. To reach clarity Nona watched a flame then turned to the shadow and watched the memory of the flame’s dance. Lacking a flame she drew only on memory. And now she ran the song and the dance together without one tainting the other.

The ice will come, the ice will close,

(the memory of flame dancing on the darkness to a music all its own)

No moon, no moon,

(two hands making their own pattern, catch and throw, exchanging speed and potential)

We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down,

(a single petal of flame dancing on a dark ocean)

Soon, too soon.

The song, the dance, the sure hands of a juggler keeping it all in the air.

Nona saw the world with new eyes and through each part of it the Path ran, burning and binding. She looked away as Sister Pan had taught her, to the halo, the pale nimbus of threads about each of her friends.

“We should go back to the caves.” Her voice sounded impossibly distant, as if she spoke from the bottom of a deep well. But they heard her. She saw it in the aura of threads shrouding each girl. “Something chased us out. We don’t run. Not here.”

Nona saw how her words pulled on the vast web that connected them all, each to the other, and to everything else too, saw the vibrations spread, transmit, cross the space between them . . . and die. She focused her clarity on the place where her words failed to reach Jula. “We should go back.” A tremor. Something knotted . . . Nona raised her hands, struggling to see the minute detail where the harm had been done. She pulled on a darker thread. “To the caves, Jula.” She pulled again and the knot unravelled, momentarily too bright to look upon.