“If that were true then Flint would never have got hers,” Ara said, raising her eyes to the ceiling. She tolerated Clera to about the same degree that Clera tolerated her, but the claws were never wholly sheathed when the two spoke.
“Perhaps that’s why she likes talking about it so much.” Clera waved the topic away. “Anyway—little Nona . . . in Grey Class! It’s going to be great. Jula and Ruli will come through soon. I know they will. Ruli’s just got to get her stamp from Mistress Blade . . .”
Nona opened her mouth to say that Jula just needed her Shade stamp and the test was scheduled for next four-day, but a shadow fell across her and the words stayed where they were. A hand, seeming the size of a dinner plate, reached for her. She grabbed one large, outstretched finger as the rest fastened on her shoulder and heaved her painfully from her chair.
“I’m Darla.” The novice lifted her from the ground, her grip so tight that Nona felt sure the fingers digging into her must have punched through her skin.
“Nona,” she gasped. The girl had looked big when hunched over her desk. In the refectory she stood taller than most of the novices in Holy Class, most of the nuns too. But close up she was enormous.
“You’re the Shield, eh?” Darla had a blunt face that looked as if it had been put to hard use scrubbing floors. Her head had been shaved perhaps a week earlier and a pale seam of scar curved from just above her left eyebrow back across forehead and scalp, visible among the coarse brown stubble. She carried Nona, one-armed, pressing her to the wall. “Don’t look so much to me.”
“You saw her in the test!” Ara, loud and angry.
“Put her down!” Ketti reaching towards Darla’s arm.
Darla grunted, increasing the pressure on Nona’s shoulder until the joint creaked. “There’s more to winning than speed. Don’t care what Tallow says.” With her spare hand she poked Nona in the gut, hard enough to make her writhe. “What you gonna do now, fast girl?”
Another of the older novices pulled Ketti’s arm from Darla’s and sent Clera staggering back with a bump of her hip.
“This is the first lesson you learn in Grey Class—that it’s not all about ratty little hunskas. Least not while I’m in it.” Darla poked again. “It’s not a lesson that gets written in ink either! I’ll leave you a few bruises so you can study it again tonight. Your friends all got theirs first day. ’Cept the princess. I let her off.” She drew back her fist.
Nona met the girl’s flat brown eyes. The grip on her shoulder was iron. Her feet, dangling above the floor, might just touch Darla’s stomach if she ignored the pain and thrashed to reach—but she could kick a tree trunk for all the good it would do.
“Nothing to say?” Darla grinned. An ugly thing.
Nona untwisted her mouth and grinned back past the pain. She reached across to grab with her other hand the single finger she had managed to secure a hold on as Darla seized her. And yanked with all her strength.
Darla’s scream, the crack of bone, and the thunk of one meaty fist into Nona’s face all joined into a single sound. After that came a fall to the floor, screaming, a torrent of kicks, more screaming. Though dazed and half-blinded with the pain Nona tried to twist to minimize the impacts, folding herself around the heaviest of the kicks. Forged into a tough strip of muscle, gristle and bone by more than two years of training in blade-fist Nona knew how to take punishment. Finally a kick made solid contact and lifted her from the ground, slamming her back against the base of the wall. Even with the breath gone from her lungs she managed to arch out of the way of the next, allowing Darla to kick the wall. The novice howled. She hopped away, scattering desks and screaming curses, clutching at her foot. The other novices leapt clear of Darla’s erratic path, leaving her to find herself face to face with Sister Tallow at the doorway.
“Darla. You appear to have broken your finger,” Sister Tallow said without heat.
Darla looked down at her hand, the finger jutting at an alarming angle. She paled almost to green and straightened, putting her foot down, only to grimace and whimper another curse.
“And some toes.” Sister Tallow frowned. “Get to the sanatorium. We will speak of this later.”
Darla hobbled out, hissing with every second step. Clera and Ara helped Nona up, and although every part of her wanted to stay there on the floor, coiled about the pain in her ribs and stomach, she let them lift her to her feet. Hessa stood close by, leaning on her crutch looking concerned but also puzzled.
“Nona too—you look to have had the worst of it.” Sister Tallow waved her towards the door.
Nona straightened with a wince, shaking the hands from her. “I feel fine, mistress.” She spat a crimson mess to the floor and showed Mistress Blade a fierce and bloody grin. “I’ve waited two years to have you show me blade-lore. I’m ready now.”
Sister Tallow watched Nona for a long, silent moment, eyes narrow. “Grey Class to the hall then. Let’s see how ready you are, novice.” A curt nod and she left the room.
“What? You need to go to Sister Rose, Nona!” Ara wiped at Nona’s mouth with the sleeve of her habit and it came away stained.
“Why didn’t you take her down?” Clera asked, not loud, almost lost in the tumult of voices.
Nona cricked her neck and took a pace forward, resisting the urge to clutch her side. “How would I do that? She’s a giant!”
Clera gave her a narrow stare remarkably like Sister Tallow’s. Nona shrugged. Taken by surprise and held tight her speed hadn’t mattered much. She would have had to cut Darla to win free without injury. She swallowed more blood.
“You should have pounded her.” Clera curled her lip, perhaps imagining herself delivering such a beating.
“Even if I could, it’s not worth making an enemy over such a small matter.”
“Small?”
“She wanted me to know she’s the boss. If you’re going to let someone take your measure you should at least get something worth having in return. Mistress Blade taught us that.”
“She did?” Clera looked surprised. All around them the novices were gathering their stuff and starting to head out to the changing room. “Really?”
Ara came across from Nona’s desk with her lesson bag. “Really. I think you turn off your ears when Sister Tallow puts down her sword and starts talking theory.”
“I took a few kicks and in exchange I don’t have to watch my back or worry about Darla poisoning my food,” Nona said. “Being feared is clearly very important to her. Why take it away?”
“Why break her finger then?” Clera demanded, deep furrows across her brow.
“She’ll remember she beat me so she won’t carry a grudge. She’ll remember it hurt so she’ll convince herself she doesn’t need to do it again.”
“And the toes?”
“I got tired of being kicked.” And Nona hobbled through the door.
Hessa stumped along with Nona, keeping pace easily for once. “Was all that true?”
Nona glanced her way, wincing. “Yes.”
“Was it all the truth though?”
“Not all of it,” Nona said. There was more and, as usual, Hessa knew. “She hurt you. I wanted to break her bones.”
“She knocks every new novice about.” Hessa turned for the exit; she spent Blade class pursuing her other studies.
“Yes, but yours I felt.” Once Hessa had shared with Nona the memory of her last day with Giljohn and somehow her inexperience had led to the forging of a more permanent bond. Perhaps once a month they would share a nightmare. Never a good dream, always something traumatic. And in moments of true panic or pain Hessa’s thoughts would reach out and overwhelm Nona’s. It happened in the other direction to a lesser degree. When Nona had taken the arrow Hessa had collapsed from more than shock. The pain had echoed in her too. When Darla had knocked Hessa to the floor and set her foot to Hessa’s face, Nona had in th
at same moment shared her skin—the mixture bubbling before her in Shade class forgotten and unseen—had felt the weight of Darla’s shoe, the agony in Hessa’s hip, the humiliation of many eyes watching as she squirmed. She’d known all of it and been unable to act. “I’m not going to get beaten twice and not bite back.”
Hessa offered a shy grin. “Well. She’s certainly been bitten.” And with that she took herself off across the hall, the swing of her leg leaving a dashed line alongside each of her single footprints.
• • •
OUT ON THE sands Sister Tallow waited for them, in her hand a naked blade, the long thin sword favoured by the sisterhood, a strip of Ark-steel, carrying a slight curve and an edge that could cut the truth from a lie. Nona jogged after the others, uncomfortable in the blade-habit assigned to her, a heavy tunic of padded leather, bleached to a pale beige. The long sleeves overlapped awkward gauntlets, all designed to minimize the potential for novices gutting each other. She went to stand beside Clera and Ketti.
Sister Tallow always had a stillness about her. Often in blade-fist Nona would start and finish a bout only to find the nun in the same position, watching, as if her flesh were inanimate and she had been carved from it rather than grown. Today though, she paced, glancing up at the windows. Long, swift strides, impatient, spinning to turn and pace again.
Before the novices were gathered and arrayed in their lines the main doors opened and Sister Wheel slipped through, the cone of her headdress scraping the wood. She stayed by the doors, seeming to glare at everyone in the hall.
“Some of you will have seen this before, most will not.” Sister Tallow held her sword up as they hastened into their lines. “You won’t hold one unless you graduate this class—and all your other Grey classes—and come to me again in Mystic Class. But if you do become Martial Sisters it will be through such a weapon that you may need to direct the Ancestor’s will. Pray that you are never called upon to use it, but know that there have been few sisters who took the red and kept their blade unsullied.”
“Sullied?” Clera bit back on the question but it escaped even so.
“Blood is always a failure.” Sister Tallow’s glance flickered to Nona. “Often the failure of the sister who holds the sword. Sometimes of those who send her into conflict. Or sometimes the failure lies years back, in the hands of someone who missed an opportunity for peace, who saw a chance to avert a distant violence and did not take it . . . or who failed to see that chance.” She returned the sword to the scabbard at her hip. “I spend Red Class, that’s two years for most of you, on unarmed combat. One reason I make you dangerous without a weapon—and will continue to reinforce that training—is so that you have an alternative to this.” She slapped her hip. “You may be called upon to enforce the authority and the will of the church. It would be better if you did so in a manner that allows the transgressor to see the error of their ways rather than the contents of their body. The sword is a final solution.” Sister Tallow looked along their lines as if considering fruit at market and finding none to her standard. “Knives today—training blades. Equip yourselves. Run, but remember where your blade is and what it will cut if you fall.”
The novices took off running, sand scattering beneath bare feet. Nona brought up the rear, limping to spare tender flesh already turning to bruise. Darla had been a lesson in herself. Take a giant by surprise and you could fell Raymel Tacsis with a blow. Let a giant take you by surprise and your options might dwindle to nothing.
As she turned where the corridor split, changing room to the left, storeroom to the right, Nona caught sight of a figure in the dark corridor that continued to the blade-path chamber. It almost looked like Kettle, but the hard-eyed stare held nothing of the nun’s humour.
“She’ll shave your head!” Clera raced from the storeroom holding a long knife as Nona approached the door.
By the time Nona had fought her way through the novices bundling from the doorway, all with daggers in hand, the room lay empty. It wasn’t clear where the girls had taken their knives from: at the far end of the chamber a bewildering array of weapons lined the shelves, hilts out ready for the taking. Nona passed by the racks. Swords of various lengths and weights, long-hafted axes, climbing picks, hook knives, throwing knives, poniards, killing spikes . . . She hurried to the furthest corner. Kneeling, she reached up beneath the lowest shelf, stretching. Craw-spiders sometimes lurked in such places but she hadn’t time for caution. Her fingers found only space and for a moment she thought it had been discovered at last. One more stretch, cheek hard against the shelf’s edge, and she found the hilt. A tug brought it free.
Nona ran back, knife in hand, the one Ara had sunk into her pillow on her first night. Back before they were . . . almost . . . friends. The knife had stood between them for two years now, between the Chosen and her Shield, never spoken of, never mentioned, and all the sharper for it. She ran as fast as her injuries allowed, chased down the dark corridor by the ghosts of that distant night, footsteps at her heels.
The others were lined up and ready, Sister Tallow watching the tunnel as Nona ran from it and came to a halt with a wince.
“I repeat this lesson for every novice to join Grey Class. Before you leave you will have heard it a dozen times and still it will not have been enough.” Sister Tallow motioned for Nona to take her place at the rear of the group.
“Yes, Mistress Blade.” Nona joined in the chorus.
“This.” Sister Tallow raised her own knife. “Is a great leveller. With your bare hands it is hard to disable an opponent—harder still to kill them. Despite all that I have taught you, unarmed you could be defeated by an opponent of considerably less skill if that opponent happens to weigh twice what you weigh, if they happen to be slabbed over with muscle, four times your strength. I am talking here of your average city guardsman. Do not overestimate how much your training will count for in an unequal contest. In such circumstances it may be only your willingness to move swiftly to the most savage of tactics that preserves you. The eyes, the groin, the throat.”
Sister Wheel moved from the doorway, making a slow gangling advance along the far wall, staring at the novices, glancing to the windows and the doors. Sister Tallow continued as if she were not there. “The sharp edge, however, removes a great deal of an opponent’s advantages in strength and size. No muscle, however hard or thick, will stop a sword thrust. A sharp edge applied to the neck will end any contest, and swiftly. A sharp edge applied to an arm or leg will open it to the bone with grievous and crippling injury. Be in no doubt that even a light slash can destroy a limb. Skin, muscle, blood vessels, nerves, all yield to steel with frightening ease.
“Nona—you will find time to visit Sister Rock in the kitchens and accompany her when she next slaughters a pig. The time after that you will make the cut and apply your blade further to the warm carcass to see how easily flesh opens before a honed knife and what lies within.”
Sister Flint appeared from the shadows of the corridor beneath the seating, looking around the hall as if searching for something, though what might be hiding among the rafters Nona couldn’t guess. The other novices had noticed Sisters Flint and Wheel, and exchanged glances.
“Pair up. Colour your blades and spar—alpha through delta cuts only.”
Clera and Ara both stepped towards Nona but Sister Tallow saved her from having to choose between them. “Nona, you’ll be with me.”
“Yes, sister.” It was for the best, she had no idea what an alpha cut was, and still less how to pair with Clera without upsetting Ara. Life had been easier in that respect since Clera joined Grey Class six months earlier.
The novices crowded around the stain-stand, each hurriedly wiping their knife against the bundled rags, taking the lamp-black onto the blunt edges and rounded point. Any contact would leave a line or dot on the pale leathers of the blade-habit.
Ara pulled her blade back from the rags, dark as ink,
and grinned at Nona, making an exaggerated slow-motion thrust towards her. Nona found she couldn’t echo the smile, remembering that the knife in her hand had once been a death threat. Even so, she lifted the knife in response to Ara’s thrust. In that instant something exploded from the base of the wall where nothing had been but shadows. A figure, moving with breathtaking swiftness, devouring the scant yards between them before Nona fully turned her head to see. The ground leapt up and Nona found her bruised body pinned to it, her attacker on top of her, securing her by both wrists. She tried to speak but the impact had hammered the breath out of her lungs.
“Nona?” The blurred figure astride her leaned in closer.
Nona managed to pull a breath back in past bruised ribs. She blinked, clearing her sight. “Kettle?”
“Sister Kettle?” Sister Tallow appeared over Sister Kettle’s shoulder, reaching down for her.
Kettle allowed Sister Tallow to bring her to her feet, pulling Nona up with her and keeping tight hold of Nona’s knife hand.
“What are you doing, sister?” Sister Tallow asked. Sister Flint loomed over all of them now, with Sister Wheel deploying sharp elbows to find a path through the crowding novices.
Kettle said nothing, only held up Nona’s hand with the knife clutched tight.
“An interesting weapon you have there, novice.” Sister Tallow raised a single brow in that manner of hers which Nona had been trying and failing to imitate for two years.
“The assassin!” hissed Sister Wheel. “This girl is in league with them?”
“Don’t be foolish, Wheel.” Sister Tallow waved the idea away. “Arabella and Nona shared a dorm room for over a year, and will start doing so again tonight.”
“The threads led us here!” Sister Wheel looked up at Tallow, indignant, hands on her hips. “Not just me. Flint and Kettle too!”
Sister Tallow motioned for Kettle to step back, her eyes on Nona’s. “Where did you get this interesting knife, novice?”
“I . . .” In the rush and with her mind on Darla, or at least the various hurts the girl had left her with, Nona had been too distracted to notice that the blade in her hand bore little resemblance to those the other novices held, being smaller and razor-edged, the point needle-sharp.