Nona turned her head. Ara was kneeling on the bed, fully dressed. All the other beds lay empty, the dormitory deserted and full of slanting sunlight.
“W-where is everyone?” The sigil still burned across her vision.
“Breakfast then Blade.” Ara got off the bed. “You need to get up and dressed right away.” She paused, leaning forward. “Unless you need to go to Sister Rose? Jula thought we should fetch her. Most of them just thought it was funny when you wouldn’t get up, but Jula said you might be ill.”
“She’s not gone to—”
“No. I said I’d fetch Sister Rose if I couldn’t wake you up. Then Hessa said she thought you were ill too but that it was Sister Pan we should be sending for. She said there was something wrong with you but that it might be a Path-working. She said she would go to Sister Pan after breakfast if you didn’t show up.”
“You spoke my name,” Nona said, “my chosen one.”
Ara bit her lip. “I thought it might help. I’d tried everything else . . .” She looked slightly guilty. “You’ll want to dry your face. And your pillow’s a bit wet.”
“You threw water on me?”
“Twice. And I pulled your hair. Oh, and you’ve got nail marks on your arm where I pinched you.”
Nona sat up, wiping her face on her blanket. “Lucky the name worked! Sounds like in another minute you’d be setting my hair on fire or trying a kiss like that prince in the old story.”
Ara looked quickly down at her feet.
“You didn’t!” Nona jumped out of bed, reaching for her skirts.
Ara flashed a grin. “It would have been the first thing Clera tried.”
Nona frowned, tugging off her nightdress and wriggling into her underskirts. “Where is Clera? Didn’t she have an opinion?”
“She did.” Ara handed Nona her habit. “Her opinion was that you were fine and if we were late for Blade Sister Tallow would skin us. Or worse, leave us behind when the Caltess forging came.”
“She’s not wrong there!” Nona jammed her feet into her shoes and started to run for the door. “Hurry up! I’m starved!”
Nona devoured her breakfast and ran to her first lesson still chewing over her night-time encounter. Yisht’s sigil had sent her to her bed and a slumber so deep she almost didn’t wake from it. But what could she tell the nuns? What evidence did she have? The emperor’s own sister had sent the woman and she seemed to have licence to do whatever she pleased. Even if Yisht admitted to sigil-work she’d just say it was to warn her of threats to Zole.
• • •
THE REMAINDER OF the week was given over to Blade, much to the disgust of Mistresses Path, Academia and Spirit. Mistress Shade confessed herself relieved to have a break from the thick-wittedness of novices and vowed to spend the time brewing a new toxin that she would be requiring test subjects for on their return.
Sister Tallow drilled Grey Class without mercy, sending them aching to their beds each night. She used Zole and her repertoire of unfamiliar combat styles to wake the novices to the idea that the Caltess fighters would not come at them using forms they knew.
“Nona and Zole.” Sister Tallow waved them together. The meeting had been inevitable.
Zole straightened, wiping sweat-soaked hair from her eyes. Sand coated half her face from where Ara had at last managed to throw her to the ground. It had been Ara’s only victory.
“Back for more.” Zole watched her, unsmiling.
Nona offered a fierce grin and shrugged. She had practised the Torca moves Zole favoured and paid close attention as the ice-triber threw the rest of Grey Class around.
They closed, feet making a dozen rapid adjustments before either laid hand upon the other. Nona braced, held her core tight, body low, all counters to the throws Zole liked to use. Zole’s hand gripped her habit just above her breast. Nona reached for the elbow, sinking lower still to resist the throw, but Zole let her grip slide, her other arm fluttering past Nona’s defence in a slow and fluid motion that should have been easy to intercept—but wasn’t. Both Zole’s hands reached Nona’s face. Nona clung to the elbow of one but hadn’t the strength to stop the larger girl. Zole didn’t punch—the lack of speed that had fooled Nona meant there wasn’t much power in the blow—rather she achieved some combination of buffeting and slapping that left Nona stumbling past her, disoriented.
“Noi-tal soft-hands!” Sister Tallow called out. “Just because you have seen your foe fight one way against a previous opponent do not let this make you over-commit to the counter-tactics. Variety is important. A predictable warrior, no matter how talented, will end up dead sooner than a less skilled warrior who can less easily be anticipated.”
Zole remained inscrutable. Nona would have preferred a sneer or a mocking smile: at least then she would have felt noticed.
• • •
SISTER TALLOW SAVED the final humiliation for six-day afternoon, ahead of the seven-day break and their early morning departure for Verity as the new week began.
“Break.” Sister Tallow snapped the word like a whip, and across Blade Hall pairs of novices stopped their sparring. Nona stood panting, grinning at Clera, who faked a stagger, though the sweat dripping from her fringe wasn’t faked. They’d fought each other to a standstill with blinding combinations of punches, blocks and snap-kicks. Nona no longer lacked that much in height against Clera and was perhaps a fraction quicker, but Clera made up for that fraction with low cunning and creativity.
“Zole!” Sister Tallow pointed at Sherzal’s ward and Nona groaned, thinking they were to be skewered yet again on the sharp point of the girl’s versatility. She’d already been left eating sand on at least four occasions over the past three days. But Zole simply nodded and walked to the main doors, opening one and leaning out. A moment later she was walking back, with Yisht at her heels.
Yisht followed Zole into the novices’ midst where she stood surveying them with dead eyes set above raw and prominent cheekbones. She wore her usual black coat, black leather belts beneath it, slung across a tunic that might once have been yellowish, now gone to brown with dirt and age.
Sister Tallow crossed to stand beside the bodyguard. “Yisht-Raani here is a warrior of some renown whose sword commands a high price. I’ve asked her to demonstrate her martial skills this afternoon. Unarmed of course—I’d rather there were survivors to take to the Caltess.”
Nona started to raise her hand to volunteer. A fire burned in her and that fire wanted to see Yisht bleed. But something in the woman’s shark-dead eyes made her hesitate. She found her hand trembling, and realized that what held her back was fear.
“Who’s she going to fight?” asked Darla, face still red from her bout with Jula. She stood a head taller than Yisht and thicker in both body and limb.
“All of you,” Sister Tallow said, as if it were a stupid question.
“Who first?” Darla rarely knew when to stop.
“Together.”
• • •
THE NOVICES, TWELVE in all, lined up, ready and eager to attack. Zole positioned herself at the rear of the group and Nona fell back to join her.
“What are you doing?” Clera hissed as Yisht took her position close to the wall and set her blades against the stonework. “This is going to be fun!”
“Sister Tallow isn’t stupid,” Nona hissed back. “This woman’s dangerous. I want to see how she fights. Be careful against her. I mean it!”
“Come.” Yisht beckoned her opponents forward.
Darla, Ara, and Ketti were first to reach her, the others having to crowd in around the sides or wait their turn. Yisht ducked into Darla, evading her blow. The big girl’s momentum carried her over Yisht’s shoulder and on into the wall. In the meantime Darla’s hefty body, flying through the air, provided a shield, beneath which Yisht continued to move, emerging at a surprising angle just in time to catch Ara’s wri
st in one hand and deflect Ketti’s kick with the other.
Once she was caught, Ara’s speed meant little; controlled as she was by the desire not to have her wrist broken, she had no option other than to allow Yisht to steer her into the wall. Alata moved in with Leeni, the dark girl landing a heavy punch into Yisht’s ribs as she spun with Ara, the pale girl attempting to grapple Yisht’s legs and catching one of them. Sister Tallow had not spent long on teamwork as Red Sisters are most likely to be called on to act alone, but she had drilled them on working together against a superior foe. Leeni was following those instructions, making herself vulnerable but isolating a limb. If others did the same the fight should be a short one.
Yisht seemed untroubled by Alata’s punch and smacked her elbow into the girl’s neck. The ice-triber moved quickly but lacked hunska speed. Somehow though she deflected another kick from Ketti, turning it on her shoulder, and caught Clera’s arm as a punch cracked in towards her face.
“She knows.” Nona said it to herself but Zole grunted in affirmation beside her. Yisht seemed to anticipate every attack and end up positioned to defeat it even though the hunska novices were considerably faster than her.
In three short seconds three more girls were on the sand—Jula, Katcha, and Ruli—none of them keen to get up again. Darla and Ara lay stunned at the base of the wall. Leeni had Yisht’s foot on her throat and had released the other leg. Ketti, with her legs swept away, landed heavily on her back.
Nona leapt in over Alata’s collapse, Zole following behind, Sheelar and Croy closing along the wall from opposite directions, Clera still trying to kick even as Yisht twisted her wrist.
Yisht released Clera—already off-balance and falling—and reached out, catching Sheelar’s arm while having her other arm caught by Croy, advancing on the left. With this support Yisht lifted up both legs, a kick to Clera’s chest propelling her into Zole’s path. Nona, already in the air and under gravity’s control, found herself sailing towards Yisht’s outstretched foot.
With both arms crossed before her to cushion the blow Nona crashed into Yisht’s foot and a moment later everyone seemed to be falling. By the time Nona rose from the sand clutching her ribs Yisht had somehow contrived to smash Sheelar into Croy, leaving neither fit to fight on. Clera lay behind Nona now, struggling to heave breath back into her lungs. And Zole . . . Zole landed, having leapt over Clera. She stood ready to strike as Yisht twisted out from beneath Croy and Sheelar. Zole had her arm crooked, ready to punch the exposed back of the warrior’s neck.
Yisht raised a hand acknowledging defeat and Zole stepped back, her blow unstruck. All around them novices lay in the sand, ten in all. Several, Clera included, were in the process of getting up, ready to rejoin the fray, but more than half weren’t getting up any time soon, Ara among them.
“The first novices to touch the far wall are selected for the Caltess matches.” Sister Tallow spoke in a conversational tone and for a moment no one fully registered her words.
Clera was the first to start scrambling towards the door. Jula had got to all fours just in front of her and Clera used her to lever herself up, pushing Jula’s face into the sand as she did so. She took off, though she hadn’t taken the trouble to finish standing up first so it was part-crawl, part-stumble rather than actual running. Zole set off next, quickly overtaking Clera. Alata got up, clutching her throat, and started to run. Croy tripped Leeni as she tried to rise, and staggered to her feet.
Nona watched them. Did she want to go back? Did she want to fight under the Caltess roof, with Partnis Reeve watching on? To put coin in his purse as Verity’s wealthy bet on which way the blood would spatter? She thought of Raymel Tacsis. Would he be watching? Would it shame him more if she didn’t even rank among the convent’s offering? Or did she want to look into his eyes and show him she had no fear?
Jula had got to her knees again, spitting sand. With two of the three places in the fist rounds gone to Clera and Zole the last would be hers. Nona found herself running. Her mouth shouted a “sorry” as she shot past Jula, but her legs just pumped harder.
30
THE CALTESS HAD a smell all its own. Nona had not remarked it on her arrival with the child-taker but now, among the many stinks of Verity, it was the particular smell of the place that brought Saida’s ghost to stand beside her. Sweat, blood, sawdust, sewage, old beer, stale wine—the Caltess could be inhaled and known in a single breath from floor to rafter.
The five competing girls from Grey Class, accompanied by Sisters Tallow, Flint, and Rock, were afforded a corner of the main hall in which to train. Partnis’s children had set out chairs and a long table to which the Caltess cooks brought the midday meal and periodic refreshments. This ensured that the nuns and novices would not have to mix with the Caltess’s various inhabitants.
The remainder of Grey Class watched from a roped area in the corner opposite the one where ales were sold on fight nights. Sister Kettle kept watch over them. Yisht came too but strode the hall like a predator in search of prey, with no regard to boundaries.
Nona felt on display the whole time, more so than if they had sat at table with the ring-fighters, apprentices, and bonded-children for their meal. She knew that every crack and chink in the ceiling high above her had an eye to it. There would be new kings to rule that particular roost—Regol and Denam would long since have joined the ranks of Partnis’s apprentices—but nothing else would have changed up there among the sacks and dust of the attic.
Several young men from the apprentice hall lounged at the main doors, watching with an amused indolence, though they must surely have seen the same spectacle on several occasions. Even the ring-fighters seemed to find excuses to cross back and forth across the hall more times than seemed reasonable.
Gretcha passed by once, the grizzled gerant fighter who had fought in the second ring that first night when Nona and Saida had watched Raymel at work. She offered the novices a gap-toothed grin.
“She’s huge!” Clera whispered beside Nona.
Nona just nodded. The woman’s arms were as thick as Nona’s whole body, banded by tattoos patterned in red and black like a winding serpent.
Two other gerant fighters paused to watch the novices work through their katas, each a towering mass of muscle, one with what looked to be deliberate facial scars, making something demonic of his smile, though the eyes above lacked malice. The other, balding, his grey hair cut to a stubble, scowled as though he’d happily eat a novice whole, given half a chance. A younger man sauntered by four times, humming to himself behind a sardonic smile.
“That’s Aegon,” Alata said after the first pass. “The Caltess’s newest ring-fighter. He sailed from Durn.”
“How do you know?” Croy’s eyes lingered on the doorway through which the man had gone. Nona supposed he had been handsome in a lean, dark manner.
“Everyone knows,” Clera said, before a snap of Sister Tallow’s fingers set them all back to their tasks.
• • •
THE APPOINTED HOUR approached—there were no bells in the Caltess but people began to gather even so. Sister Tallow broke training and allowed the novices to watch the watchers.
“Who’s that?” Clera pointed across to where Partnis Reeve stood, wine goblet in hand, amid a collection of ring-fighters and apprentices.
“The owner.” Nona had never quite managed to hate Partnis, though she knew she should.
Partnis Reeve waited, talking with his fight-masters and trainers as he watched his guests from the convent. Nona knew both the fight-masters: lean, grey men in their dark Caltess greens. A woman stood to one side of the group, or perhaps it was a man, hidden in cowl and robe. The nuns’ glances strayed towards the figure in quiet moments. On the other side a man Nona thought she recognized. He looked small compared to the fighters clustered around Partnis, though perhaps he missed six foot by only a few inches. He seemed out of place in sealskin trousers and
a shirt stitched from the fur of many small animals. The tular at his hip and the scars across both cheeks finally hooked the right memory and drew it to the surface. The man had intervened once when the attic’s bully, Denam, had caught Nona off-guard. He’d said he was a ring-fighter . . . Tarkax, that was his name.
At last children began to descend from the attic under the watchful eye of the giant, Maya, who played mother for the Caltess.
“You’re up first, Nona.” Sister Tallow nodded towards the ring. “Don’t break anyone.”
Nona climbed up onto the platform and vaulted over the ropes that made the rectangle in which she would fight. The fact they called it a ring still irritated her. A blond boy of no great size clambered in at the opposite corner, looking nervous. Nona looked around, finding that the elevation of less than two yards offered a profoundly different perspective. She looked down on the nuns, on Zole, Clera, Croy, and Alata; even the tallest of the gerants she could face nearly eye to eye. Gretcha, standing close to the ropes, gave her a grin and banged her barrel-chest with one huge fist.
“Fight!” barked one of Partnis’s fight-masters, and the boy came forward, fists raised.
Nona leaned back and kicked him as he closed the last yard. Her heel hammered into his solar plexus and he folded up with an “ooooff” made by all the air leaving his lungs at once and collapsed onto his side on the boards. Nona glanced around, wondering if she were the victim of some kind of trick. The novices watching seemed just as surprised.
“Next!” the fight-master shouted.
Gretcha stooped and reached in a long, muscular arm to haul the boy out beneath the bottom rope as a hefty red-faced girl clambered in to take his place, her Caltess shift dirty with the attic’s dust and cobwebs.
This one absorbed a couple of punches and took a kick to the back of the knee to put down. She tried to rise twice despite Nona’s elbow strikes to the back. But not a third time.
The next was a dark-haired girl, younger than Nona. She tried to dodge Nona’s first punch and had some speed to her, but not enough. Nona’s fist crunched into her nose and the girl staggered back with blood sheeting down her lips and chin, then burst into tears. Gretcha lifted her bodily over the ropes with one hand, frowning, though more in compassion than disgust.