Holy Sister. Mark Lawrence
start of the Seren Way lay close at hand, just a few minutes’ walk around the Rock, but Wheel had taken to watching it of late. The old woman spent whole nights seated at the narrowest part, wrapped in a great blanket and staring at the night with watery eyes, just waiting to catch any errant novice. Why she didn’t just check the dormitories was unclear but Ruli claimed Wheel had been made to vow never to enter the building under the tenure of the previous abbess following an unspecified ‘incident’. Ruli claimed a novice had been killed, but when pressed she had to admit making that part up.
Nona craned her neck and looked up at the dark acreage of stone. Here and there moonlight picked out a line where it caught upon an edge of rock. She took a deep breath, swung her arms, and began to climb. She followed an old fault line, digging her leather-clad toes into the crack, reaching up for fingerholds. Her flaw-blades would make a quicker, easier job of it but Nona had learned the danger in relying too much on something that might not always be there. Besides, the pattern of regular slots driven into the rock might be spotted one day, and it would be hard to deny her own signature.
As she gained height Nona’s arms began to join her legs in complaint. Her hands ached from punching Denam over and over. The thought of him falling gave her fresh energy, though. She had wanted to fight him for years. She could say it was to take him down a peg or three, punishment for being a bully, or that it was payment for his attempt to break her in the ring on the instructions of Raymel Tacsis. The truth though was something less laudable, and came in two parts, both now settling into her mind as truths often do when a head is empty of all things save the demands of hard labour.
Nona had fought Denam because even with Keot gone a hunger for violence burned in her and if left unfed too long it would break out in dangerous ways. Much of what she had blamed on Raymel’s devil seemed instead to be some fundamental part of who she had grown into. Denam represented that rare someone, a person she could hit over and over without the danger of killing them, or any need for remorse over pain inflicted.
The other reasons for the contest had been Markus and Regol. She had asked Markus to break holy law. She owed it to him to show him who he was breaking those rules for. And Regol … Regol needed to see it too. Regol who spoke foolishness into the pillows when she joined him beneath the roof that Partnis Reeve put over his head. Regol who thought her something precious, as holy as the vows she broke. He needed to see what really lay behind the eyes he claimed to lose himself in. Something sharp-angled and vicious – not the princess he sometimes let himself pretend she was. Nona knew better than to allow him to build his hopes upon a lie. Regol fulfilled a need, as Denam had, one in the ring, one in the furs. She and Regol were friends whose bodies were pleasing to each other. She couldn’t let a friend build their hopes upon such a flawed foundation as her. She hadn’t saved Saida, or Hessa, or Darla. Even as an agent of vengeance she had failed. Sherzal, the architect behind so many deaths, still walked the world, as did others who had served her will.
Nona hauled herself over the edge of the cliff and lay on her back on the cold stone, just inches from the fall. Her arms trembled, her body knew the bone-deep exhaustion of prolonged mistreatment, but her mind still raced, images rising from the darkness, one after the next. Denam’s anger, Regol’s surprise, Markus’s caution, a hundred other scenes, drawn by threads of memory.
In time she rolled onto her side and levered herself up. She passed around the far end of Blade Hall, slipping along the perimeter of the courtyard before Heart Hall. Moving between moonshadows she skirted the buildings, placing each foot with the caution of one born to the Grey.
‘Novice Nona.’ A soft voice at her shoulder. ‘You smell of man-sweat.’
Nona turned, unable to see anyone in the darkness behind her. ‘And you smell of apples, sister. One red Apple, to be more precise.’
‘Then our sins are evenly matched.’ The shadows melted from Sister Kettle and she stepped forward with a half-smile.
‘Perhaps.’ Nona grinned. ‘But I earned mine in front of an audience—’
‘Well, that’s novel.’ Kettle widened both eyes and her smile.
‘In a ring at the Caltess.’
‘No Regol tonight?’ Kettle frowned.
‘That’s a habit I should discard,’ Nona said. ‘This one, I should keep on.’ She patted her garment. ‘I’ll be taking a nun’s vows soon. If they don’t mean more to me than the promises novices make then I shouldn’t say them.’
‘There are other ways to serve.’ Kettle pursed her lips. ‘You don’t have to stay. Nor do you have to be perfect. But … you do have to go to bed.’ She pointed.
Nona nodded. ‘Bed sounds good. A bath would be good too. But I would probably fall asleep and drown.’ She shrugged and turned to go.
‘Watch out for Joeli.’ Hissed at her back.
Nona approached the dormitories. She examined the main door before opening it and entering the hall beyond. A sleepy novice emerged from the Red dorm, lantern in hand, and passed her without looking up, bound for the Necessary. Nona moved on, climbing the stairs to the Holy floor at the top of the building.
She studied the door to her dorm more closely than she had the main one. Defocusing her sight, she picked out a glowing thread laid across the floor just in front of the door, another looping the handle, both veering off at strange angles to the world. They were trip-threads most likely, set to warn Joeli of her comings and goings, but there could be more to them. Some threads could cut you, others could just make it hurt as much as if they had cut you, others could wreak more complex damage, or adhere and trail out behind you, providing information to anyone holding them closer to where they joined the Path. How many of those tricks Joeli had mastered, Nona couldn’t say, except that she had definitely used both trip-threads and pain-threads in the past. Nona’s own talents still lagged behind, but not so far as they once had.
Nona removed the threads, pushing them temporarily out of alignment with the world. They would return shortly and appear untouched. She saw the third thread just as she reached for the door handle, gossamer thin, turning virulent green as she brought it into focus. Something new and unfriendly. Fortunately it too gave way when she worked to remove it from her path, though it scalded her fingertips before it vanished.
A moment later Nona entered the dorm. Almost half the top floor was given over to individual study rooms. The Holy Class novices slept in a long hall not much bigger than the one given over to the novices in Red Class. The girls were not yet trusted with the privacy of a nun’s cell, but the class code was to overlook each other’s indiscretions, and Wheel would undoubtedly have apoplexy were she to watch a typical evening unfold.
Nona moved silently down the row of beds, her eyes returning several times to the long curves beneath Joeli’s blankets. The abbess had been forced to accept the girl’s return a year earlier as part of the emperor’s efforts at reconciliation and unity after the events at Sherzal’s palace. Lord Namsis had secured his daughter’s re-entry by having her submit to the Inquisition. The interrogator had been armed with one of Sister Apple’s bitter little truth pills. To the astonishment of everyone who knew her Joeli had affirmed her innocence with a black tongue. She had used her thread-work against Darla and Regol only with the intention of scaring them into retreat, hoping to end the bloodshed that way.
Nona slipped into her bed, still watching Joeli in the dim glow of the night-lantern. Her own thought was that Lord Namsis had paid an Academy man, a quantal thread-worker, to undertake the delicate task of altering Joeli’s memories. The girl now believed her own story and hadn’t lied, even though what she said was not true.
In the warmth of her blankets Nona released the breath she had been holding and surrendered to exhaustion. The next day would be a long one. Not only would she undergo her final Blade-test, she needed to steal the convent’s seal of office from the abbess. Neither task would be easy.