Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor 3)

Nona sent her escort back to her off-class duties and knocked on the abbess’s door.

‘Come.’

Abbess Rule sat at her desk. Regol stood with his hands bound behind his back, Kettle behind him wearing a wicked grin. ‘I caught him trying to sneak in. Again.’ She flashed Nona a look. ‘He’s fast but not very bright or good at hiding.’ Sister Cauldron stood at the abbess’s shoulder, watching Kettle as Nona had seen her do so often, waiting for that day when Kettle might see past Apple’s ghost and find her waiting there.

Abbess Rule reached for her crozier which she employed in much the same way she had her yardstick when she had been Mistress Academia. ‘This is getting silly, Sister Cage. I can’t have this young man climbing cliffs and creeping through the undercaves. I simply won’t tolerate it! It’s extremely dangerous. If Verity’s most renowned ring-fighter were to be killed on convent property there would be all hell to pay!’ She rose from her seat and glanced up at Abbess Glass’s portrait. ‘She of the Moon’ they called Glass these days. Rule’s eyes flitted to Abbess Wheel’s portrait, ‘She of the Battle’. She sighed. When the abbess spoke again it was with the voice she had used in class laying down the law, not of the Church but of the world itself. Harsh and immutable. ‘Sister Cage, you must consider your options. We all have to find our own path and walk it as long as we may. You are young and the places your road may lead you are many, some beyond imagining. Take some time. Think hard. Return to me with your answer. Whatever it is, whether it leads you from this convent or not, you will have the Ancestor’s blessing. And mine.’

‘Vows?’

Regol and Nona were sitting together on the edge of the Glasswater sinkhole. She nodded, frowning, torn. The horizon lay green and distant but her memory still crowded it with the smoke of war. When the end had come so very close it had been her sisters who filled her thoughts. Ara. Though they were no less capable of looking after themselves than Regol. She gazed down into the sinkhole as if the answer to the riddle of herself might lie within.

There was no lake now, just thirty yards of newly exposed wall, black with slime, and a dark tunnel leading off from the muddy bottom. It didn’t smell too good but if you sat on the windward side it wasn’t a problem.

‘Vows?’ Regol repeated.

‘Vows,’ Nona said.

‘You’re sticking to your vows?’

‘I am. I vowed them.’

‘But … nuns are celibate.’ Regol tossed a loose stone. It looped down into the mud far below their feet.

‘And you wouldn’t want me if you couldn’t have your way with me?’ Nona leaned in quizzically, one hand placed lightly between Regol’s shoulder blades.

‘Now … wait … I didn’t say … I mean …’ He gripped the edge of the sinkhole, seeming suddenly very aware of how deep it was.

‘You can’t keep coming here, Regol. And I can’t leave.’

‘Can’t?’ A hardness found its way into his eyes.

‘I need to stay. This place … it’s more than old walls and a place to lay my head. I named myself after that cage I rode in, and I was only in it for a few weeks. I’ve been here more than a decade. It’s in my bones.’

‘You want me to go?’

‘Want isn’t the right word. But you will go, and the ladies of the Sis will thank me for it, and you will be the glorious champion of the Caltess, and this small blow to the heart will be something you walk off.’

‘I don’t think it will, Sister Cage.’ Regol bowed his head. ‘It’s more like a denam.’

‘A what?’

‘That last kick to the groin you gave Denam. It’s a recognized move now with its own name.’ Regol raised his face again, his old smile back in place, though somewhat crooked.

‘Did he … I mean is he—’

‘Survive? No. He died at the Amber Gate, but you should hear how he fell. He slaughtered so many Scithrowl that— Well, there’s a song about it.’

‘He would have liked that.’

‘Yes, he would.’

Regol got to his feet and Nona rose to hers. He took her hands. ‘The Caltess taught me that on occasion everyone loses, but to do it with grace because you never know what might happen.’ He raised her right hand and kissed the back of it. ‘It still hurts though. Goodbye, Nona Grey.’

Regol let her hand go and walked away towards the convent buildings, slowly at first, then more briskly. By the time he was halfway to the nearest of them he had started to whistle.

‘Goodbye, Regol.’

Nona sat a long time at the sinkhole’s edge after Regol had left. She stared into the depths as shadows filled them. She thought of those she had lost and those she had saved and those who had saved her. She thought of the riddle of her life and the fact that even Abbess Glass’s best advice on the subject had been that people are complicated, especially from the inside.

The sun began to sink, kissing the ice to end another day. Nona sighed and made to stand again but a shadow fell across her.

Nona looked up. ‘Lord Jotsis …’ Ara stood there beside her in trousers and a fine jacket embroidered with gold. The wind billowed her cloak behind her and the dying sun made a fire of her hair.

‘No, just Sister Thorn. I made my little sister the lord. She always wanted it.’

‘You came back.’ Nona found that she was whispering.

‘You left me to guard the convent once, then came back for me,’ Ara said. ‘You didn’t think I would leave you when you needed me?’

‘How did you know I did?’ Nona’s mouth felt dry. A trembling ran through her. She wasn’t sure if she was going to cry or laugh.

‘We have a bond.’ Ara reached down for her hand.

‘A thread-bond.’ Nona laced her fingers with Ara’s and let herself be drawn to her feet.

‘That too,’ Ara said.

For a long moment they stood face to face, just an inch between them, the wind tugging this way and that as if it couldn’t make up its mind which way to blow. And then, hand in hand, both turned and walked slowly back to Sweet Mercy.

Moons might rise and fall, empires wax and wane, even the stars come and go, but there are constants too, and though the story of our kind is ever-changing it is also always the same.

END