Red Sister

  “Your name has been spoken before the emperor in his throne room, Nona, did you know that?” The abbess looked across from her work.

  “My name?” Nona blinked. She couldn’t imagine even her name entering the palace.

  “A high priest has fallen. It’s no small matter. The church is one of the pillars upon which the emperor’s power rests. He has considerable interest in it being solid from the foundation to the highest point. Thuran Tacsis was summoned to court. He has pledged to put aside his grievance against you, and by extension the convent that shelters you. The matter is closed.”

  “And you believe him?” Nona saw Raymel Tacsis’s face; the same arrogance had been mirrored on his brother’s. They would not forgive or forget.

  “Thuran Tacsis is a cold and ruthless man. He would murder a thousand small girls if they stood in the way of his ambition. But he is not a mad dog. Oaths are not lightly given to the emperor. He will move on. Our Lord Tacsis has bigger fish to fry than you, novice, and this matter has already set him back. Don’t forget him though, for he will surely not forget you. Some people have a slow anger in them, that builds up a piece at a time so you won’t see it coming. Such anger has a momentum to it, so it’ll come to the boil sometimes even when the thing provoking it has stopped. Thuran Tacsis is not alone in that—watch for such people, Nona. But yes, I believe him, for now.”

  Nona let the tension run from her, giving herself to the pillows’ embrace. Outside the rain fell at a steep wind-borne slant.

  “Did that old nun really talk about me a hundred years ago?”

  “No.” The abbess didn’t look up, only tilted her scroll more towards the candle she had just lit.

  “But . . .” Nona hadn’t wanted it to be true but the sudden dismissal left her feeling slightly put out. “But they said Sister Argatha was a famous Holy Witch. She made a prophecy . . .”

  “There’s no such thing as prophecy, Nona. Or rather there is but it’s madmen that tell them, or people who were once listened to for their wisdom and have found themselves growing old and unwise yet still wanting to be heard. There’s no magic in it. Magic doesn’t work that way.”

  “Sister Argatha was feeble-minded when she said it?” Nona watched the red glow fade above the rooftop. “I didn’t want to be the Shield in any case—I wanted to be the Sword.”

  The abbess laid down her scroll with a sigh, straightening it out. It promptly sprang back into a tight coil the moment she lifted her hand. “You deserve the truth, Nona, and I don’t want to stain Sister Argatha’s good name in any case, but you must promise to keep what I tell you to yourself. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.” Nona was good at keeping secrets.

  “No telling that Clera you’re so tight with?”

  “No, abbess.”

  Abbess Glass folded her hands in her lap, then winced and unfolded them. Sister Rose had given her three doses of sorrinbark for the pain but Nona saw that she still suffered, moving with the brittle delicacy of those who carry the worst kinds of hurt.

  “Sister Argatha did a great many things, most good, some bad, and twice to my knowledge they were plain stupid. What she did not do is make prophecies. The Argatha prophecy was the work of two archons about thirty-five years ago when Emperor Crucical’s grandfather, Edissat, was on the throne. They were troubled times: Edissat was in his dotage, his eldest son in exile, war threatened with the Durnishmen, ice-winds ruined several harvests. The prophecy gave us focus. It reminded us of the salvation the Ancestor promised us. It reminded us that the Ark could be opened, would be opened, and that we owned it, together.”

  “What’s inside?” Nona asked.

  “Nobody knows,” the abbess said. “But given that the emperor’s authority rests on the fact that he controls the Ark, it would be nice if he could open it, no?”

  “But someone must know.” Nona frowned.

  “Maybe someone does. The trouble is that so many people claim to know and their claims are so varied, that it’s hard to know which, if any, are correct. A lot of people believe that it can control the moon.”

  “The moon? But—”

  “The point is that the prophecy told us that the key lay among us, among our children or the children yet to be. I believed it heart and soul. I was a young woman then, and zealous.” She managed a smile though pain still haunted her eyes. “In any event, it served its purpose. I didn’t learn the truth until I became abbess here and had access to the sectioned histories. It doesn’t matter much now—but this is not a tale that should spread. I’m trusting you, Nona. And that’s a burden rather than a gift. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand.” At least she half-understood. “But didn’t the high priest know? The archons too?”

  “Jacob was never a great one for reading. Or listening.” The abbess’s smile was fuller this time. “The archons? I’m sure Anasta knew. Philo too, probably. Kratton? I don’t know. He often surprises me. Nevis, perhaps not. Or perhaps like Sister Wheel they know but choose to believe anyway.”

  Nona frowned. “So why did you save me?”

  “You heard what I told the archons. It was enough for them to find me innocent.”

  “But you said you had a vi—”

  “I lied, Nona. I do that sometimes even when someone isn’t threatening to fork my tongue and whip me from the convent.”

  Nona remembered what the abbess had said when they were hurrying from the prison. Words are steps along a path: the important thing is to get where you’re going. And where had the abbess got?

  “You didn’t like the high priest.”

  “No.”

  “He was a thorn in your side.”

  “More like a knife in my kidney.”

  “And you don’t like Thuran Tacsis.”

  “No.”

  “And now Thuran doesn’t have the high priest for a friend.”

  “He doesn’t have the high priest in his pocket, no. For all his faults Nevis will not sell himself so cheaply as Jacob did.”

  “Why are you telling me these things?” Nona frowned, trying to see if the abbess was mocking her.

  “You asked.”

  “But . . . you shouldn’t talk about archons like that . . . Not to a novice. Not to me. I’m so new.”

  “Your shoes may still be shiny, Nona, but your habit has several holes in it.” The abbess regarded her, unsmiling. “You bled for me. I owe you some answers. Or perhaps I want to see how closely you keep secrets?”

  “If the high priest was such a bad one, why didn’t the archons vote him out before?” It had seemed a simple enough matter.

  “The archons each have their own see to govern and their cathedrals are very far from Verity. You have to move mountains to get two archons in the same place, let alone four. It’s an assembly I could never have called.”

  “But the high priest didn’t even need them to throw you out?”

  “He needed them to make it look like something other than a grudge. We have a history, Jacob and I. Just declaring me guilty would make him look weak. A man who spends as long as the high priest does in the emperor’s court can’t afford to look weak. There are too many sharks in those waters. He thought he had more of a hold on the archons than he did. More sway. If just one of them had agreed with him there would not have been an issue. So Thuran Tacsis floated all four archons to my doorstep on a river of gold—just to get at you, dear.”

  “And you knew he would . . .” Nona started to see the shape of something. The outline of a plan.

  “I thought it likely.” The abbess nodded.

  “But . . . but, you burned yourself. Even though you knew it wouldn’t help. You knew it wouldn’t change the high priest’s mind.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because . . . you knew it would make me say I would take the ordeal. But I said I would at the start.”
/>
  “If I had accepted your offer at that point the archons would never have voted the staff from Jacob’s hand. They had to see me suffer—they had to see him make me suffer. Getting four archons in one place is a feat, but it is nothing compared to the task of getting them to agree on something of import.”

  “So . . . all this . . . from that first day . . . was to bring down the high priest and hurt Thuran Tacsis.”

  The abbess just watched her.

  “How . . . how could you know I would pass the ordeal?” Nona shifted her shoulder and winced. Hessa almost hadn’t survived, and even a scratch on her would have seen Nona drowned.

  “Sister Tallow watched you that first day at Blade. A small girl who could wreak such harm on Raymel Tacsis that it takes four Academy men to hold him on the edge of life . . . a gerant pit-fighter . . . I thought that such a child would be fast. Sister Tallow watched you on the sand and told me that she herself was not so swift in her prime.”

  Nona lay silent then, the pain of her wound pulsing, her hands and wrists burning with a deep fire. Abbess Glass was neither fast, nor strong, she had no obvious wealth, her office held no great sway, and yet with her truth and with her lies she had turned one wheel against another against another and in due course mountains had moved, the mighty had fallen, and the world sang the song she chose for it. Nona didn’t know how she felt about that. She knew that she had tried to lay some portion of her guilt over Saida’s death on the abbess’s steps and that in truth the guilt was hers and hers alone. She should never have stopped fighting, never allowed them to be taken to face “justice.” Nona knew that she didn’t understand people. Not how they worked in their webs of fragile, flexible friendships and shifting loyalties, not how the games of smiles and hugs, scowls and turned backs were played at court or over a convent breakfast table, and not the workings of their hidden hearts. She knew she didn’t understand these things, but with Abbess Glass she understood still less. They had wanted to throw Nona chained into the black and unreflecting waters of the sinkhole, where novices swam and bones crowded in the silt deep below the kicking of their legs. Abbess Glass and that sinkhole perhaps had more in common than their name.

  Glass and her church. Nona had no loyalty to either now. And perhaps that was just another of the abbess’s wheels turning . . . but the time to run had passed her by. She had called Clera and Hessa friends and that bond ran deeper than blood: it was the foundation of a world that she could understand.

  A faith that mattered.

  20

  ABBESS GLASS RETURNED to her house and to her duties after that first night. Nona lay abed three more days with Sister Rose in close attendance.

  Clera and Ruli came to see her on the first morning, released from Academia for the visit. Ruli shy at first, hiding behind her hair, Clera all smiles and hugs from the moment she burst through the door. They sat on her bed and chatted, about everything except what had happened. Clera told them of a ball her father had taken her to back before his fall from grace.

  “. . . and then Velera came in. She’s the younger sister but that never stopped her complaining that her brother sits on the throne while she slums it in her palace on the coast. Anyway, she had Lord Jotsis on her arm, the young one, and the Gersis heir on the other side. And her dress! She looked like she’d been poured into it. My father said she spilled some . . .”

  Hessa came that evening on her own, stumping in on her crutch.

  “I see Sister Rose gave you my bed.” She lowered herself carefully to sit on the end.

  They spoke of the ordeal. “I didn’t see anything,” Hessa said. “Just the guards and Sister Wheel getting ready to throw, and in the same moment something hitting the wall beside me. I jumped so hard I nearly fell over. I did fall over when you did. I had to wave my arms and tell them I hadn’t been hit!”

  Jula came the next day with Clera. “We can only come in twos. Sister Rose says we’ll tire you out. Sister Kettle wanted to send you your slate and some lettering but Rosy wouldn’t let her.” Clera sat down breathlessly. “Imagine that, wounded and having to do letters!”

  Jula came to Nona more cautiously, hugging her as if she might break, her short hair bristly against Nona’s cheek. As they parted her lower lip trembled. “Thank the Ancestor you’re all right! I thought—” Her voice broke and Nona was amazed to see that she was crying.

  It wasn’t until the morning of the third day that Nona told Sister Rose her fear. The hole that the arrow put in her, and the damage to hands and wrists she knew would heal—but her body had let her down, had failed her when she most needed it.

  “The abbess thinks I’m fast.” Nona said it between gulps of a sour brew that Sister Rose kept tipping to her lips, though she could hold it by herself. “But I’m not. I tried to be fast with the arrow—I thought I could—but I just couldn’t. I got so tired.”

  “Tired?” Sister Rose laughed, her face mounding and crinkling. “That’s the hunska burn. Everyone gets it. Leastways all of you with lightning in your veins. I can’t move that quickly but I can lumber on for hours.” Sister Rose took the cup away and squinted into it, checking that Nona had had the nasty gritty bits at the bottom. “You’re using up your resources when you do those things.” She pinched Nona’s arm. “And you’re all bones anyhow—what have you got to burn? I’m amazed you managed what you did. Most hunska are ready to fall over after just a few seconds of fighting at speed. Drinking sugar-water after helps. But there’s only so much your body can give. Take too much and something will break. With hunska it’s normally the heart. Not that you last long one way or the other . . .”

  “We don’t?” Nona sat up, her shoulder an ache now rather than a pain.

  “Mistress Academia hasn’t— Of course not.” The humour left her. “I forget how little time you’ve been with us, Nona.” Sister Rose set the cup aside and drew her chair as close to the bed as her legs would allow. “The four tribes that came to Abeth found it a harsh world, even before the ice. It was mixing their blood that bred a people who could live here. The hunska and the gerant live short lives, one too fast for their hearts in this land, the other too large. Sister Tallow is the oldest hunska I’ve known, and she isn’t as old as she looks. Not by a long margin . . . The quantal and marjal draw on the power of place, tapping into the magics that lie beneath and above and through all the things of this world. But this is not the land that bred them and its magics are sharp, quick to burn the unwary, or warp them . . .”

  “I—” A knock at the door cut Nona off.

  Sister Rose patted her hands. “Those that burn short burn bright. The shortest lives can cast the longest shadows.”

  Nona thought of Saida, cold in the ground, and the shadow she cast. The knocking came again.

  “Come.” Sister Rose struggled to her feet.

  The door to the foyer opened and Arabella Jotsis stuck her head around, her scalp now covered with short blonde hair making something boyish of her. “Sister Pan has asked to see Nona and me.”

  “Well you can tell Sister Pan that Nona isn’t leaving this—”

  “It’s for the naming.”

  “Oh.” Sister Rose looked at Nona, back at Arabella, back at Nona. “How do you feel, Nona? Could you manage a walk to the Path Tower do you think? I could get some sisters to carry you . . .”

  “No, I can walk.” Nona swung her legs off the bed and got up before Sister Rose could insist she be lifted like a baby. Her shoulder hurt worse than she had thought it would, but she gritted her teeth against it and walked to the door with more care.

  Outside the cold made her gasp: an ice-wind had come, blowing off the southern sheet, and three days in the sanatorium’s warmth had left her open to it.

  “Filthy weather.” Arabella hugged her habit around her but didn’t hurry; Nona could see the restraint in her steps and tried to walk more quickly, her shoulder flooding with hot, wet pain
at each jolt.

  “What’s ‘the naming’?” Nona thought those might be the first three words she had spoken to Arabella. It seemed odd to be walking with her, as if everything were normal, as if Arabella had never tried to stab her in her bed, as if they hadn’t been enemies from the first moment. But if that fake prophecy got its teeth into them Arabella Jotsis might be forced to play the role of Chosen One and Nona her reluctant Shield.

  “The naming? Do you think Sister Kettle was called Kettle by her mother?” Arabella watched her with a sideways look and an amused smile.

  “But . . . but the older novices, they still have their names! Suleri is in Holy Class and she’s still Suleri . . .” Nona scowled, wondering whether Suleri was the name of a thing like glass or apple, but just one that peasants didn’t know.

  “Yes, but they all have their holy names. They just have to keep them secret until they take their orders and become nuns. If they get that far. Every novice gets to choose their name in front of Mistress Path when she calls them. She calls most of them during their first year.”

  Nona relaxed. She hadn’t wanted to give up her name. “We’ll still be Arabella and Nona then.”

  “Ara.”

  “What?”

  “Ara. Everyone calls me Ara. You should too.”

  Path Tower loomed above them, dark against the morning, the four open approaches framed in stone.

  “I take the east door,” Ara said.

  “Why?”

  “That’s where the Path leads me.” Ara paused, tilting her head to study the smaller girl. “Try it. Close your eyes and see.” She laughed. “That’s what Sister Pan says.”

  Nona closed her eyes. She saw only what she always saw, orange and grey, afterimages pulsing and fading, the last traces shaped into ideas and suggestions—the edges of dreams.