Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

Nona hung her head. Without her shadow even the simplest manipulation of the dark lay beyond her. When the lights went out she was as blind and helpless as someone without a drop of marjal blood in their veins. Knowing where her shadow lay softened the loss, but not by much. A minor compensation was that because her shadow was still bound to the Sweet Mercy shipheart she received a small but steady contact with the heart’s power. Even now she could feel it pulsing along the shadow-thread that bound them. The shipheart remained in Sherzal’s keeping, part of the terms of the uneasy truce with her brother. But Nona kept to the hope that the years ahead held an opportunity both to recover her shadow and to exact justice for Sherzal’s crimes. Hessa and Darla had both died because of the woman’s machinations, and Nona would see Sherzal bleed for it.

‘Or,’ Sister Apple continued, ‘we could practise your wire skills, which are equally in need of attention.’

Nona looked up. Wire-work included garrotting, which was always a messy business, and the setting of various unpleasant traps, but at least it was something she could do.

‘Any preferences?’

Nona and Ara knew better than to speak. Apple had an instinct for the truth even without her little pills, and she would choose the option neither of them wanted. Nona considered bluffing and asking for the option she least liked, but kept quiet, sure Apple would see through it.

‘Wire-work?’ Leeni held up a hand.

‘Wire-work it is.’ Sister Apple allowed herself a narrow smile and bent to unlock the drawer where she kept the equipment. She rummaged for a while then removed seven kits, each a small box of polished wood containing a set of wires cut to various standard lengths. Holding the stack of cases against her body, the nun moved around the class, distributing them.

‘Thank you, Mistress Shade.’ Nona didn’t reach for hers, instead letting Sister Apple set it down in front of her.

Before opening the box Nona slipped her hands inside her sleeves. Contact poison was a favourite punishment for tardy novices. Inside, the wires rested tight-coiled in small compartments. A set of iron thimbles and finger-sleeves fashioned from very fine chainmail were included to help avoid lacerations. Beside the finger-guards a wide variety of hooks, wedges, and blocks were set into a narrow line of depressions shaped to accommodate them. Grey Sisters might be entrusted with sigil-locks to secure wire-work at speed, but only the best were trusted with such expensive tools and every Sister of Discretion needed to be able to fall back on more basic methods.

‘Work in pairs. I want the windows wired. Sharlot, you’re to do the door. Lock it first, dear.’ Sister Apple waved them to their tasks and returned to her desk.

Ara and Nona hurried to claim the centre window. Each of the windows was a rectangular tunnel about three yards long cut through the limestone. They exited the Rock of Faith via the cliffs that towered over Verity’s garden land. The windows were wide enough to move along crouched or on all fours, so wires could be set at intervals from one end to the other.

‘I’ll prepare, you set. Then we’ll swap.’ Nona waved Ara into the tunnel. Nona would select the required wedges and lengths while Ara went about the fiddly business of fixing wire to block and winding away unwanted length.

Nona reached for a claw hook. Ara would want a claw hook. She would probably want six. The hooks worked pretty well on the edges and fissures you found in limestone. Her fingers paused an inch from the device she needed. She leaned in, squinting and sniffing. With a sigh she took a cloth from her pocket. ‘Poison on the kits, Ara.’ Sister Apple had worked fast, probably with boneless resin, touching a few of the key components. Up ahead Ara grunted her acknowledgement.

‘You have a count of five hundred!’ Sister Apple called out from her desk.

Nona put on an iron thimble and took a length of wire, running it carefully through the cloth. There were no smithies that could make wire of useful quality or length. Only Ark-steel had the strength to be dangerous at a thinness that might render it invisible to the unsuspecting or hurried. Nona had felt a certain pride on discovering that the wire in the kits had been recovered from ice tunnels by scavengers like her father, an elite breed who would dare the inky depths of the ice hunting for treasures buried beneath its advance. There were things of great worth to be found in the cities men had abandoned centuries before. Follow any tunnel out from the margins and you journeyed back in time. Find the right tunnel, put enough miles between you and the Corridor and the ground you trod had last been green millennia before. In rare spots traces survived, sheltered from the flow of the ice behind granite ridges, or buried in caves. The true prizes though were not the ancient remnants of man’s work but the cities of the Missing. In such places a scavenger might find Ark-steel already formed into wire, fragments of rose crystal, quicksilver gathered in hollows, beads of nightblack, and a hundred other wonders.

Nona fixed the tiny claw hook to the wire’s end, taking great care not to slice her finger. Given only slight pressure the wire could cut her to the bone. She wondered, as she always did, what the Missing had used such stuff for and what they would think of the ends to which the Sisters of Discretion turned it in the Ancestor’s name.

Struck by a sudden thought, Nona defocused her gaze, wanting to follow the threads of the Ark-steel back as she had followed those of Sister Pan’s lock. There was the remote possibility that somewhere along the steel’s thread her father might be waiting for her. Perhaps he stood there amid visions of the exploration on which he had recovered it. But to unravel such secrets lay beyond her thread-work. Instead she saw the wire as if it were its own thread, gleaming with mystery, woven around the lives of anonymous Grey Sisters and leading back towards the darkness beneath the ice. The details of its discovery and the distant wonder of its forging were shrouded in an unsettling mist …

‘Nona?’ Ara’s voice, tinged with exasperation. ‘Corner bridge!’

Nona started. She blinked away her thread-sight and returned guiltily to her work. ‘Coming. Sorry.’

‘Four hundred counts left,’ Sister Apple called. Someone in the next window-tunnel let out an oath. A moment’s distraction could see you cut.

Ara set four wires, two crossing diagonally from opposite corners, one slicing off a corner where a hand might reach, another horizontal at a height level with her eyes. She retreated two feet between each placement and dusted the metal with soot to hide its gleam. A staggered placement minimized the chances of detection and meant that the victim might fall onto a second and third wire with greater force, leaving yet more, potentially both ahead and behind, to catch others.

Once Ara had crawled back out Nona went in to begin setting her own wires. The first wedge she set was a rectangular block rather like those employed by mountaineers, though far smaller.

‘One hundred!’ Sister Apple called.

Nona found it hard to believe so little time remained. She could hear Leeni cursing in the next tunnel. She called on her serenity and bade her fingers work faster, setting wedge and hook, stretching wires between them.

‘Out!’ Sister Apple had no tolerance for any who tried to finish off their work after the allotted time.

Nona retreated from her fourth wire.

‘At home my little sister is learning how to arrange flowers,’ Ara said as Nona brushed off her knees.