Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

Nona’s mind raced. To be left on the Rock of Faith watching over children while her friends fought and died together before the emperor’s walls was not an option. ‘It’s the shipheart the high priest wants guarded. And it’s the shipheart that puts the novices most at risk …’ Nona glanced at the window and the Dome of the Ancestor beyond. ‘We should take it with us!’

‘What?’

‘Take it with us. The shipheart. You know I can bring it up from the vault and put it somewhere safe at the palace. We need it on the front line: all the quantals will fight more effectively, and if we lose there the enemy will get the shipheart whether it’s with us or hidden here.’

Abbess Wheel tilted her head, considering. ‘Do it.’

Nona stood in shock for a moment. Wheel had actually agreed with her! For once she had done what Nona needed her to do. It struck her then that this was at least part of what Abbess Glass had wanted, what she had purchased with the promises she had extracted. How else could Nona Grey have obtained the goodwill and cooperation of Abbess Wheel?

The abbess frowned and tapped a finger to a ledger on the desk before her, the record of novices. ‘The young ones will still need guarding though. Someone capable. Maybe—’

‘Ara could do it! Sister Thorn, I mean!’ The idea struck Nona from nowhere. They didn’t all have to face the Scithrowl. She could save Ara. If the Ark fell Ara would lead the novices away to the west. Even the Durns would be better than the Scithrowl: they had their own gods and weren’t given to burning people over the finer points of Ancestral doctrine. Ara could do it. A weight lifted from Nona’s heart.

Again the abbess tilted her head. ‘She should have followed your example when called to her name, sister. Today of all days it’s faith that’s needed.’ More tapping of a finger on the ledger. ‘I suppose you’re right. Once upon a time I thought she was the Chosen One come to save us all. Let her save the children at least.’

‘Thank you, abbess!’ Nona could have wept. She made for the door as Wheel waved her dismissal.

Nona ran down the steps, weaving past startled sisters. She felt ready to endure the shipheart’s awful power, ready to stand with her sisters against the Scithrowl shock troops, ready for anything. All that scared her now, the only thing she felt unready for, was telling Ara that she had saved her.

18

Three Years Earlier

The Escape

The great white sheet, in which every part of Abeth save the green thread of the Corridor was wrapped, seemed to Nona as terrible a place in its own way as had the chambers and tunnels within the black ice. The very personal malice of the multitude of devils was replaced by the impersonal malice of an endless freezing wind beneath a bone-pale sky that stretched to forever in all directions. The openness of it staggered her, even though she had stood in places within the Corridor where the walls could not be seen. This was something different. A relentless exposure that made her feel like a single tiny dot of ink upon a vast unwritten page.

‘We’re going the wrong way.’ Nona spoke through the cloth that Zole had given her to bind around her face.

‘We are going the right way.’

‘We’re heading away from the Corridor,’ Nona said.

‘We need to make a fire,’ Zole said.

‘How in the name of the Ancestor will we do that? I mean, it would be nice …’ Just the thought of it made Nona pause to visualize crackling flames. ‘Should we find two icicles and rub them together?’

‘This close to the Corridor the tribes cache timber and coal. Out on the far ice there are far fewer caches and they will hold whale oil and dried blubber.’

‘And how are we going to find one of these caches?’ The idea seemed ridiculous. With the exception of the Grampains thrusting through the ice some miles to the west the sheet seemed entirely featureless.

‘They often lie along pressure ridges.’

‘But … we’re not following a pressure ridge. I can’t even see any.’

Zole said nothing, just carried on tramping across the snow. Nona, lacking any alternative, bowed her head against the wind and followed.

A mile further on Zole halted. ‘Look.’ Ahead of them the wind had eroded the snow across several acres exposing the ice beneath. White striations lay in parallel lines, running through the translucence all around them. ‘Pressure lines. The thickest of them often turn into pressure ridges.’

They carried on. The wind was beginning to get the cold into Nona’s bones in a way that even the freezing wetness of the tunnels had not. Her fingers became strangers to her again. She knew from Sister Tallow’s lectures that frostbite could set in in less than an hour. First the flesh turned a dead white, later black, and finally it would rot, poisoning your blood if the affected area were not amputated or cut away.

‘You were right.’ A pressure ridge had begun to make itself known. Ahead of them great plates of ice lifted like broken teeth, a fractured line following a roughly straight path off into the distance.

Zole walked as close to the ridge as the surface allowed, affording them a degree of relief from the wind. They walked another mile, then another.

Nona glanced left then right, across the endless white relief. Here and there the wind tore plumes of snow crystals from low drifts and set them racing across the ice in rivulets.

‘You really lived here? Whole tribes live here?’ Just crossing an expanse of the sheet felt like a foolish gamble. To spend a whole life in the vast unchanging whiteness, always freezing, always torn by the wind, didn’t seem remotely possible.

They followed the ridge for another mile.

The sun grew low in the west, skimming the ridge’s shadow across the ice for dozens of yards. Soon it would throw the shadow of the Grampains across them and night would descend.

At a point no different to any other Zole stopped. She stalked around, head down, kicking snow aside here and there.

‘You should dig in this place.’ Zole stamped.

‘Me?’

‘We do not have the correct tools. It would be foolish to risk our swords when you have blades that are sharper and more durable.’

Nona sighed and knelt at the spot. She extended her flaw-blades and began to cut the ice. Zole used her knife to prise free the blocks that Nona incised. Within a few minutes they could see a dark mass below them. It turned out to be a sack of charcoal packed with a small amount of kindling.

‘Now a shelter.’

Zole employed Nona and her blades to cut slabs of ice from the ridge where the untold pressures beneath had broken them clear of the sheet. By the time it grew dark they had, through Nona’s labour and Zole’s expertise, constructed a small shelter with three walls and a half roof. Zole produced an iron fire-bowl with three legs and made a tiny charcoal fire. They placed it in the middle of the shelter and squeezed in to either side of it. The change was marvellous. Nona felt as if she might almost survive the night.

‘Wake up.’

Nona groaned. All of her hurt. Even groaning hurt. Even in the turmoil of her nightmares waking up was not something she wanted to do.

‘Wake up!’

‘No.’

Nona found herself being dragged from the cold to somewhere much colder. She opened her eyes, trying to remember where she was.