Red Sister

  “I think not.” The high priest leaned his staff into Sister Tallow’s path as she reached him. “Mistress Blade, is it not? How would we know, those of us with slow eyes, if it were the child who defended you or if you defended yourself?”

  “I would tell you.” Sister Tallow narrowed her eyes into a stare whose discomfort Nona could feel across the hall. The high priest wilted before it.

  “Yes, yes . . .” He rallied as a new thought struck him. “But the child could hardly defend someone as tall as you, Mistress Blade. She barely reaches past your hip. We must pair her with someone close to her own stature, no? For a fair test.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “We need a novice. If there are no volunteers then that lack of faith speaks for itself—she can hardly be the Shield if no one believes in her. As well as defend, the Shield must represent and carry our belief.” The high priest looked around, his gaze running across the crowded seating. “A novice! A girl from her own class would be most suitable. Who is ready to put their lives in this criminal’s hands?”

  Nona wondered how many of those present had seen the ordeal of the Shield undertaken. None of the novices, if Sister Kettle had been the last to take it. Perhaps there were demonstrations, or maybe just stories, and sometimes the story of a thing created more fear than the reality. Either way, none of Red Class were leaping to their feet. Clera had her eyes down, staring at the back of someone’s head. Beside her, Ruli was at least looking at Nona but with a wide and hopeless stare. She spotted Ketti and Ghena together, the former pale, her mouth half-open, the latter scowling furiously as if she’d just been insulted. Behind them and to the right two shaved heads. Jula seemed to be crying, Arabella about to open her mouth, perhaps to laugh.

  “No one?” High Priest Jacob pressed his lips into a thin smile. “The matter is settle—”

  “I will.” Hessa had been bending down for her crutch. Now she used it to get to her feet.

  Nona’s eyes misted. The story running wild through the convent was of how she’d failed to save Saida. How she’d let her friend die. She hadn’t expected any of them to trust her to protect them. She looked down at her hands, made fists of them, and squeezed until it hurt.

  Hessa made her way down from the seating with agonizing slowness, awkward on the steps, all eyes upon her. The high priest leaned forward to the tier below him and tapped Sister Wheel on the shoulder. In the hush as Hessa descended the last steps High Priest Jacob’s voice carried further than perhaps he intended.

  “—not chosen to be a Red Sister. She’s not quantal?”

  Sister Wheel muttered something in reply. Nona heard the word “waste” in the high priest’s answer. Maybe he thought quantal blood too precious to spill in such an exercise, but Sister Wheel seemed unconcerned, perhaps willing to pay that price to rid the convent of a peasant. And a crippled one at that.

  Hessa stumped across the sand to join Nona and Sister Rose, swinging her withered leg, the foot leaving shallow scuff-marks behind her. She offered Nona an uncertain smile, the blue of her eyes darker than Nona had ever seen it.

  “You shouldn’t do this,” Nona said.

  “I’m your friend,” Hessa said. “Besides, you’ll protect me.”

  Nona’s eyes widened. “Friend?”

  “Of course, silly. You don’t think Clera’s your only friend, do you? People can be friends without saying so.”

  Nona opened her mouth and found that she had run out of words. She had vowed that she would never let a friend down, that she would do anything, anything at all, to protect them. A vow more sacred to her than the Ancestor, more holy than the church from tallest spire to lowest crypt. The idea that someone might count her as a friend without her knowledge or agreement suddenly complicated things.

  Sister Rose set her hands to their shoulders. “Do you both understand the trial?”

  Nona shook her head but Hessa replied, “I have to stand still and Nona has to defend me from a thrown spear and a throwing star, and . . . are there four stages in the full trial or three?”

  “There are—”

  “Sister Rose!” The high priest calling down from the back of the stands. “Get them ready if you will. And provide Captain Rogan with a spear.” At his words one of the church-guards standing at the main doorway stepped forward, not a gerant but well over six foot and solid in chest and limb. He removed his helm and brushed back short brown hair sprinkled, like his short brown beard, with grey. A pallid scar pulled his mouth into a sneer. His eyes, though, were neither cruel nor kind, only incurious, as if throwing a spear at little girls was just another of the day’s duties.

  Sister Rose steered the two girls towards a part of the wall covered by a splintered wooden hoarding. Nona felt a tremble in the woman’s hand. “Do your best, Nona.” Her voice wavered. “Oh dear. And Hessa, don’t be scared. Sister Tallow says Nona is very fast . . . and . . . I’m sure the abbess is right . . . She had a vision, and . . .” The nun choked on the next word, instead taking them into her arms, pressing them both against her fatness. Nona was surprised to find herself not wanting to be let go of. The ordeal hadn’t scared her until the high priest had put a person’s life in her hands—and now that person was Hessa. Her friend Hessa.

  “Sister Rose!” The high priest’s voice, not well pleased by the delay.

  The nun struggled, weeping, to her feet and let Sister Flint lead her off. Flint glanced back once, dark eyes finding Nona’s. A curt nod and she looked away, helping Sister Rose to the back of the hall.

  Nona turned and stepped closer to Hessa, so close their noses almost touched. “Don’t move. I won’t have time to look at you. I have to know you’re where I put you.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Hessa gave a weak smile, very pale now, glancing towards Captain Rogan, now being presented with a spear from the stores. “In any case, it takes me ages to get anywhere.”

  The captain hefted his weapon, a plain ash shaft nearly two yards long, iron shod, the blade narrow, designed to penetrate armour. “You have anything heavier? Broad-leaf?”

  Sister Tallow narrowed her eyes at the man. “Nothing heavier. We have blade-headed spears, if your desire is to cut as much flesh as possible, captain.”

  The man shrugged and waved away the suggestion with no apparent embarrassment. “This will serve.”

  The high priest stamped staff to floor. “Let’s get this nonsense over with.”

  Nona looked towards Abbess Glass and the abbess gave her the same calculating look she’d given that day at the prison, tossing hoare-apples at her. Nona turned, set her hands to Hessa’s shoulders, positioned her, then faced the captain, taking five paces forward. Less time to see the spear coming—more time for any slight deflection to grow.

  “Sister Wheel, if you will adjudicate.” The high priest opened his palms in a gentle shoving motion, and taking the hint, the nun descended to the sands, moving in that strange gangling way of hers that seemed as if it should belong to something not born of a woman.

  Nona spent the wait studying the captain, watching the gleam of his breastplate, the sway of the iron-studded leather tongues of the undershirt as it divided into a skirt to protect his upper legs. The bright point of his spear. The thickness of his arm.

  At last Sister Wheel took her place at the middle of the hall and raised her hand. “Ancestor witness this our trial of faith and swiftness, the Argatha’s Shield.” She looked left, right. “Ready?” She let her arm fall.

  Nona lengthened her heartbeats and watched. The captain’s arm hooked back, launched forward, sliding through the air, a wordless roar on his lips. Fingers opened at the full extension of his arm, releasing the spear’s shaft. Nona wrapped the world about her, watching the bright steel point of the blade pulse slightly up and down as the spear’s shaft flexed with the power of the throw.

  Captain Rogan aimed his throw at Nona’s heart. She began to twist to the side.
Swiftness depends on reaction, on the speed with which the mind understands what the eyes show it, and with which it sends its orders to the body. No matter how fast those messages though, there are limits to what muscles can do. Nona knew that a finger can be moved more swiftly than a hand, a hand quicker than an arm, an arm faster than a body. She worked to move her torso from the path of the spear’s flight, her thin body suddenly heavier than iron, sullenly resisting her strength as she strove to shove it aside.

  While she twisted she raised her arms, readying her hands, one atop the other, backs flat to her chest. Every part of the hall lay frozen, faces, eyes, the shower of sand from the captain’s heels hanging in the air. Only Nona moved, Nona and the spear, sliding inexorably towards her heart.

  By the time the steel point reached her, in the thick deep silence of her speed, Nona had almost twisted clear of the line that joined its sharpness to her friend’s heart. The widest part of the blade touched her fingers as it passed. The tickle wouldn’t reach her for a while yet but her muscles had already been primed to push, and with near perfect timing they did, driving her palm against the haft of the spear.

  At speed everything refuses motion with an obdurate stubbornness, as if the air itself were thickest mud. Although the weight of the spear proved problematic Nona had two advantages. Firstly, she was applying pressure right at the end she wished to deflect, just behind the spearhead. Secondly, she was sufficiently in advance of her friend that moving the spearhead just an inch at this point would see it miss Hessa entirely.

  Nona shoved with all the strength and speed that lay in her limbs. The wooden shaft slid across her palm. A moment’s panic washed through her as she realized that if she continued to push after the spear’s midpoint had passed across her hands she might be turning the spearhead back towards Hessa. Her mind spoke but it took an age for her arms to cease their advance. The spear’s midpoint had passed her hands, and several inches more had travelled across her palm, when the contact ceased—the spear now on its new path, her only chance to influence it passed.

  Nona let the world spin up to its given speed around her, her gaze locked on Captain Rogan. If his spear killed Hessa she would give him a new scar for his collection. And more besides. The impact thundered around her, echoing back from walls and ceiling. For a moment there was only the voice of the spear, the shuddering of its shaft about a point now bedded deep. And then . . . a rising cheer. Nona turned to see Hessa, just as she had left her, eyes crinkled shut but beginning to open, the spear standing proud of the wall, a three-inch gap between its shaft and her upper arm.

  “Thank you,” Hessa gasped. She came forward on her crutch and put Nona in an awkward one-armed embrace.

  “Proceed!” On the stands the high priest thumped his staff down. “I assume this gets more taxing as we go?”

  “The throwing star!” Sister Wheel’s cracked voice silenced the last remnants of conversation. “Mistress Blade, if you will?”

  “Not her. Wheel, you do it.” The high priest waved Sister Tallow back to her seat. “And put your damn arm into it.”

  “Sister Wheel?” Nona snorted under her breath. She turned to Hessa. “Good. What can she do?”

  “Bad!” Hessa shook her head. “You don’t know? She took her orders as a Red Sister. She passed all the trials. Then renounced it to be a Holy. She doesn’t think Red Sisters are proper nuns—not close enough to the Ancestor. She—”

  “The throwing star!” Sister Wheel had taken the captain’s place and now held her hand overhead, a steel throwing star catching the light from the windows. The thing was almost unbroken blade: a small heavy centre, five broad, bright blades, gaps behind and between them where Sister Wheel held it. Quite how she would release it in the throw without slicing her own fingers off Nona didn’t know.

  “Ancestor witness this our trial of faith and swiftness.” Sister Wheel narrowed her eyes at Nona, as if she were the target, not Hessa. She shook her long arm, twisting the over-flexible wrist. Her eyes, normally wide as if in permanent and vaguely comical surprise, became something else entirely when slitted: in those moments something baleful and other than human watched the world through them.

  Nona brought her arms before her, hands crossed.

  Without further warning Wheel shook her arm, cracking it like a whip to set the throwing star flying. The motion looked too casual to have imparted such speed but the star sliced through the air considerably more swiftly than Captain Rogan’s spear, revolving around its centre, blades cutting sparkles from the light. It came spinning around the vertical axis, the disc of it parallel to the floor, aimed at Nona’s chest. Even if she could deflect the weapon by pressing at the side of it she would need to push the thing off course by a large enough degree to send it over Hessa’s head or into the ground before her feet. A huge deflection. To move it the small amount to miss Hessa to the left or right Nona would have to press against the whirling blades . . . Even as she considered the matter the throwing star devoured a third of the distance between them, and for once in her life Nona found she could burrow no further into the space between her heartbeats.

  She started to extend one arm towards the oncoming star. With the other she started to run her nails from the habit’s cuff towards her armpit. The tough cloth parted beneath her fingers without resistance. When she was tiny Billem Smithson had tried to hurt her. Nona had held her bloody hands out to her mother. This was what was inside him. The boy’s skin had sliced where she touched him, four parallel wounds, as if she had invisible blades reaching from her fingers. The same had happened when she struck Raymel Tacsis and again when she had reached to fend off his brother on the abbess’s steps. She’d tried to make it happen many times, in long boring hours, on dull days when the rain fell thick with ice . . . but only in Harriton prison had the sharpness come to her outside a moment of panic or rage. The ropes that had bound her hands behind her had given way beneath her touch.

  Now her fingers sliced the sleeve of her habit into long ribbons. Perhaps they were shredding the skin and muscle beneath too—there hadn’t been time for any pain to reach her yet or for any blood to fall.

  The throwing star approached Nona’s outstretched hand just as her other hand reached her armpit and continued, now with just one finger extended, to slice a line across her chest. The star passed within a breath of the veins in her wrist and whirred along just beneath her reaching arm where the ribbons of her sleeve had not yet had time to fall. It swept through them, cutting through whatever opposed it, but tangling other ribbons in the narrow spaces between the blades, winding them up about itself as it flew beneath Nona’s elbow.

  When her finger reached her breastbone Nona stopped cutting and reversed the thrust of her arm, pushing against the momentum of blood and bone, fingers cupped to scoop up the flap of cloth sliced free before them.

  The bundled throwing star travelled the length of her arm, reaching the point where it would start to pass beneath her shoulder. Nona’s other hand met it, the cloth of her habit balled into a palm angled down and to the side. The force of the impact rippled up through her arm. Nona had done everything she could. She let the moment go.

  The thud of the cloth-wrapped star, the jolt of its impact up her arm, and the sharp pain in her hand, all reached Nona at the same time. The star fell to the sand, its energy spent. Looking down she saw her hand filling with blood and thought for a moment that her whole arm might be sliced open, but a darker spot among the crimson wash revealed the truth—one point of the throwing star had penetrated all the cloth layers to puncture her palm, a small hole but deep and bleeding freely.

  The cheering rose around her as she tugged free a trailing strip of her sleeve and bound it tight about her hand.

  “Cover yourself, girl!” Sister Wheel stalked towards her, scowling her disapproval, peering at the shredded sleeve and the broad flap torn loose across Nona’s chest. “What have you done?”


  “I protected Hessa.” Nona bit down on the harsher words queuing behind her lips.

  “You’ve ruined your habit!” Suspicious eyes ran over exposed flesh and the sharp upper edge of the rip across Nona’s chest. “How . . .”

  Nona waved her sleeve, fixing Sister Wheel with her stare. “Your throwing star chewed this up.” Would you rather it had been my flesh? Something in the glare the Holy Sister returned suggested she just might.

  “I hope the last round of this ordeal is rather more testing!” The high priest broke the line that joined their eyes. Nona blinked and shook her head. She hadn’t thought enough time had passed for the old man to limp down all those steps. She looked up at him, his scowl as ugly as Sister Wheel’s, and found herself dizzy. The hand she raised to her face seemed to take an age—voices buzzed around her like angry flies.

  “—wrong with the girl?” The high priest snorted. “She’s hardly a Shield if the sight of a few drops of blood has her reeling around.”

  “I’m all right.” Nona didn’t feel it though. She felt weak in every limb, tired beyond endurance. A puppet with one string remaining, and if that would just let her go she would lie face down in the softness of the sand and sleep.

  “The last trial is the bow,” Sister Wheel said, mouth pressed into an unreadable line. “Fetch me a bow!”

  “No!” The high priest raised his hand. “You’ve had your chance, Wheel. I have just the man for this—and just the bow. Devid?” He raised his voice, looking around. “Devid!”

  A big man vaulted down from the first row of seating, one of the bearers for the high priest’s sedan chair, his arms roped with muscle.

  “Fetch the eagle-bow from my luggage train. Go! Quick about it!”

  The man sped off, sand flying from his heels. Nona stepped away until her back was against the wall. Hessa took her shoulder and tried to turn her. “What’s the matter? You look awful.”

  Nona slid until her bottom touched the floor. She bowed her head. “Long night. Just tired.” The words slurred from her mouth. Had the throwing star been dipped in some kind of venom? “Just . . . close my . . . eyes.”