Red Sister

  “So . . . what can I use? Harsh language?” Nona frowned. “And what can she do to me?”

  “Shadow-work is deeper than what Sister Apple has yet shown you. Concealment is the least of such manipulation. A shadow-worker learns to call fear. Others may be able to bleed the darkness into you. Blindness is the easiest harm to inflict but a whole limb may turn traitor if infected with shadow.”

  “You’re sure I can’t just kick her in the face before she starts?”

  “You, Nona, will find your serenity, and in its armour be safe from all such attacks.”

  “Even the infection thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s all there is? Serenity beats shadows?”

  Sister Pan chewed at the inside of her cheek for a moment. “A render can use their own shadow to attack. It can tear flesh and there’s no physical defence. Clever thread-work can defeat such malice. Or you can just put a hole through the shadow-worker. But rending is a rare skill and in the unlikely event that young Luta possesses such power she will even now be getting told by Academic Untust not to employ it against you, just as I am telling you not to punch the poor girl.”

  Nona thought of the audience waiting for her out there. All those stern-faced and serious Academics, their minds filled with the intricacies of marjal enchantment. She felt nervous enough here under the painted stares of the audience on the wall . . .

  “I don’t think I can . . . I’m bad at serenity even back in the convent, with friends. Here . . . with all those strangers . . .”

  “It’s a performance, Nona.” Sister Pan smiled. “You’re a warrior. You might have the Path running in your veins but we both know at heart you’re a fighter. And what is a fight if not a performance?” She paused and raised her hand, theatrical. “Every star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look. Every great deed needs to be witnessed. Go out there and do something great.”

  “So . . .” Nona glanced around at the painted disapproval all across the walls. “Serene . . .” She started to run the words of the moon-song through her head.

  She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

  The moon, the m—

  Sister Pan returned to the door. “She’s going to work fast. So find your serenity faster.”

  “You’re not helping!”

  “The world seldom does, girl.”

  36

  NONA STEPPED OUT into the hall. Luta emerged from the door opposite a moment later, pale behind the pale fall of her hair, her stare intense.

  She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

  Soon, soon,

  Luta looked around. The hall was well lit by the windows in the dome high above them but shadows lay about the base of the east wall, shallow but there. Darker shadows lay beneath the Academics’ table to which Sister Pan was retreating.

  The ice will come, the ice will close,

  No moon, no moon,

  Luta walked to the east wall and where she walked along it the shadows grew thinner, gathering instead about her like a gown of grey mist. Nona ground her teeth as the pain and sickness rose together. She glanced at the blue-robed Academic. Was it him? Toying with her somehow on Raymel’s orders?

  We’ll all fall down, we’ll all fall down,

  Soon, too soon.

  Nona didn’t feel serene. She felt like vomiting. She felt like rolling on the floor, writhing to find some relief. She felt like rushing across and felling the girl with a blow to the neck.

  Luta passed by the judges’ table, muttering her own enchantments. Where once her shadow upon the floor had been slim and comprehensible it had now become a many-angled thing, dark corners moving here, there the legs or back of a chair reaching out like the spindly feelers of some great black insect. The agony flared in Nona’s bones but somehow failed to sink its teeth into her.

  She’s falling down, she’s falling down,

  Soon, soon.

  Nona envisioned serenity as a thick white coat, the fur of the white bear, soft, enfolding, deadening the harshness of the world, taking the sting from any barb. She drew the coat about her shoulders. Her pain became a distant thing that belonged to someone else. An object of curiosity, little more. She didn’t allow herself to think about how long it would stay remote.

  The shadows around Luta swirled, shapes glimpsed within, ambiguous, allowing every disturbing projection Nona could imagine. Her nightmares lay there, feeding on what she gave them. It was a darkness in which Raymel Tacsis hulked in the background while to the fore a broken Four-Foot fell, tried to rise, and fell again.

  Luta raised her arms and the shadows streamed forth, spiralling around Nona, touching her skin with cold, feathery caresses. The fear rose from within her, not from without. The terror she had known on the track through the Rellam Forest, with darkness nipping at her heels and the trees whispering on every side. The fear of drowning in the Glasswater, and of dead girls’ bones fathoms deep in the black mud below. The fear of failing. The fear of her truths, of being revealed as a monster; and the end of friendships.

  Perhaps without the enfolding serenity to blunt the attack Nona might have run or fallen to the floor, curled foetal around her terror. Perhaps. But Nona didn’t think so, not beneath the dome, under the gaze of so many strangers. On a moon-dark night in some lonely quarter . . . very likely.

  The shadows wrapped her close, an irregular tiling of her flesh in shades of grey. She felt it like cold and dirty water, trying to sink beneath her skin, but just like water it ran off.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Nona spoke past gritted teeth, her pain still huge but distant.

  Luta slumped with just her own shadow pooled about her feet. She opened her mouth to speak but in that moment Nona’s pain returned to her and in the same instant a spasm took command of Luta’s face, a contortion that turned resignation into animal fury. She thrust her arms before her, shoulders forward, fingers spread at uncomfortable angles, and her shadow flowed forward as if the sun were sinking behind her, growing from its puddle and fanning out wraith-like, clawed hands reaching.

  In the space of a heartbeat Luta went from defeat to blind rage. In the same broken second her shadow surged across the floor. Nona slowed the world but she couldn’t stop the shadow climbing her, and where it touched her flesh skin parted as if beneath the edge of a keen knife. Nona had little doubt that once it reached her neck and face the cuts would be deeper: Luta’s expression held no room for mercy.

  Across the room the Academics at their table had barely even registered Luta’s change of mind: in the time it would take them to act it would all be over. Nona started to dive back and to the side but a shadow can move as quickly as the light and she knew evasion would not suffice. In desperation she summoned her blades and hacked at the leading hand as the shadow climbed, knowing she couldn’t cut herself. The effect was instant. As invisible blades met shadow they sliced, and every trace of shadow above the slice vanished. And in the same instant Nona’s world exploded into bright fragments of agony, so dazzling that she neither saw the floor reach up to take her nor felt it when it struck.

  • • •

  NONA HEARD VOICES, and the voices drew her from the depths that had held her.

  “. . . with her?” A man.

  “How did she even fight it off? That was a rending!” A woman, younger than the man.

  “Yes.” Sister Pan’s voice. “Yes it was. How could you put such an unstable student up against my novice? There will be repercussions.” She shuffled closer to Nona. “Many will be strongly of the opinion that this was no random attack. How far into the Academy does Thuran Tacsis’s golden hand reach, they will ask?”

  Nona realized that she no longer hurt. She couldn’t even feel pain where the rending shadow had sliced her legs.

  “Look to your own, sist
er.” The man’s voice. They were in a much smaller room than the testing hall. Nona kept her eyes shut, not moving for fear of interrupting their conversation.

  “To my own?” Sister Pan raised her voice in outrage.

  “Proxim Luta wasn’t following some clandestine order. You saw her. She had to be dragged from the hall, raging. Even the damage to her shadow didn’t cow her,” the woman said. “One of those empaths from the monastery put that anger there. You need to be talking to the priest, or to Brother Jax at Saint Croyus.”

  “I don’t believe for a moment that a servant of the Ancestor, brother or novice, would—”

  “But how did she fight it? There are no Path-magics that would do that . . . are there? How did she damage Luta’s shadow?” The woman returned to her original question. “And why is she so sick from such minor cuts?”

  “She fought it off because she’s marjal,” the man said.

  “And she’s sick because of the blood-war raging in her.” Sister Pan’s voice. “The marjal is fighting the quantal.”

  “Blood-war,” the man said. “Exacerbated by the use of marjal enchantments close at hand . . . I wonder what set it off, though? It’s normally some significant challenge to the system. That Mistress Shade of yours is a marjal prime, no? But would some basic shade-work be enough to spark this off?”

  “The girl touched Raymel Tacsis two weeks ago,” Sister Pan answered, adding somewhat dryly, “Didn’t your Academy men leave the boy full of demons?”

  A pause. “That would do it.”

  The woman spoke up. “Marjal versus quantal is always the hardest of the battles.” She sounded unconvinced. “But, even so, I’ve never read of a case so bad. Her metabolism was dangerously out of alignment. She must have been in agony. I don’t see how—”

  “She’s three-blood. She’s a full hunska.”

  “Ancestor bleed me!”

  A moment’s silence held the room and kept it.

  “Three-blood?” Doubt in the man’s voice. “You realize what—”

  “I understand better than you know, Rexxus Degon.” Sister Pan sounded her true age for once.

  “You had better get her back to the convent before the emperor hears of it. And tell Nevis. He’s the best high priest you’ve had in a while—not that that’s saying much. You’ve at least a chance with him on your side.”

  Nona heard the words but couldn’t put them together in her mind, not in a way that would fit. If she were a three-blood . . . Did that make her the Chosen One? What did it make Ara? She turned her thoughts to something more easily grasped. “I’m not poisoned?” Nona opened her eyes. The ceiling above her lay the pale blue of a sky she had never seen and stuccoed plaster decorations reached across from all sides like strangely intricate and angular clouds.

  “You’re not poisoned.” Sister Pan leaned into view. “And how long have you been eavesdropping?”

  Nona sat up. “But I’ve always had my blades . . .”

  “Your?” It was the woman speaking, an Academic with long grey hair and a white robe.

  “Blades.” They had carried her to a sanatorium not unlike Sister Rose’s. She was lying on one of a row of beds in a low-roofed gallery.

  “Blades?” The woman furrowed her brow.

  With a smooth motion Sister Pan produced from her habit a knife, the serious kind, nine inches of dark steel, honed for gutting. “Show me.” She held it out.

  Nona reached forward, thought of the sick, wet snapping when Raymel broke Saida’s arm, and drew her hand across the knife, close but not touching. Sister Pan grunted at the effort required to hold it steady, and when Nona withdrew her hand three bright lines lay scored across the steel, three corresponding notches in the cutting edge.

  “Remarkable!” The older Academic, Rexxus, who had overseen the contests, moved forward to examine the damage.

  “I’ve always been able to do it . . .”

  “We call that a sport,” the woman said. “An isolated marjal talent. Self-contained and unconsciously generated. It’s not that uncommon in children before the blood properly manifests . . .” She frowned at the knife in Sister Pan’s grasp. “Though flaw-blades are of course almost never seen.”

  “Orren of Manners Reach can sustain a mobile flaw-wall . . .” Rexxus’s gaze remained on Nona’s hand. “This though . . .” He shook his head. “Get her back, sister. Quickly and quietly.”

  37

  “THEY CARTED YOU out of there in such a hurry!” Ara sat on the end of Nona’s bed. “We were really worried!”

  “I rode a donkey home!” Hessa eased herself into one of the chairs that Sister Rose had brought into the sanatorium. “It’s not as much fun as I’d thought it would be. My backside hurts worse than my leg now!”

  Ara shot Hessa a look. “Mistress Path and I had to walk! And she’s at least a thousand.” She looked around the room. “You should just get your own bed in here. It seems like you spend half your time in the san.”

  Nona pursed her lips. It was almost true. She did feel that she was Sister Rose’s best customer. Her gaze wandered to the garden. Ice hung from every bush. “If this gets any worse they’ll send us on the ranging. We need to deal with Yisht before then.”

  “Or tell the abbess,” said Hessa, exasperated.

  “The abbess doesn’t want to hear,” Ara said. “She’s got a blind spot for Yisht. I don’t know why. And Sister Wheel? Sister Wheel seems to love her. I keep seeing her whispering in Yisht’s ear.”

  “She would want to hear if the shipheart was about to be stolen!” Hessa exclaimed. “Without the shipheart we’re no different to any other convent. Half the quantals would never touch the Path again, marjal touches wouldn’t be able to shadow-weave, it’d take a prime at least. And I doubt the abbess would stay an abbess for long if she lost it.”

  “Look, we’ll tell the abbess if that’s the only way.” Nona really did not want it to come to that. “But what if I can stop Yisht without having to admit I broke into the undercaves and stole from Sister Apple’s stores? If I can do that before the ranging . . .”

  “You need to get better first,” Hessa said. “What happened to you? Did you take the cure despite everything?”

  “No.” Nona patted her habit above the pocket that held the vial. “Rosy isn’t sure what was wrong with me, but it seems to be better now.” Sister Pan had sworn her to secrecy about her marjal blood. The nun had said she would tell the abbess, but no one else for now. The first three-blood in a hundred years would drive the Argathians into a frenzy. The mob would want to carry her to the Ark on their shoulders. They would camp outside the pillars. And what the emperor and his sisters might do to own her . . . Sister Pan didn’t say but the implication was that it might be bloody. The Academic, Rexxus, had agreed to keep the matter confidential but Sister Pan didn’t seem to have much faith in his assurances. In addition, with such an audience of Academics to watch the contests it was entirely possible that one or more among their number would unravel the puzzle over what had happened and deduce the truth independently. “I can leave as soon as she’s given me one more check-over.”

  The door at the end of the hall opened and Ruli poked her head around. She’d scraped the colourless length of her hair into a tight bun and the change it made to her face made Nona laugh. Ruli stumbled in, pushed by Clera. Both rushed over to her, still damp from the bathhouse.

  “What’s this madness about going up against Yisht?” Clera flung herself down on the end of the bed.

  “She’s after the shipheart,” Hessa said. “Take that and you may as well close Path Tower for good.”

  “Excellent! I can’t stand all that dreary meditation.” Clera curled her lip in distaste.

  “And there’d be no hot water,” Nona said.

  “How’re we taking Yisht down?” Clera’s eyes sparkled with righteous indignation.

 
“I don’t see how it can be done,” Ara said.

  “Of course it can be done.” Clera snorted.

  “She can beat you all without drawing a sword,” Hessa said. “The sisters would see you trying in any event and stop you. Then the abbess would take your habits. And even if you could beat her—unseen—what are you going to do with her? Lock her in a store cupboard and hope nobody hears her?”

  “Drop her in the Glasswater,” Clera said darkly.

  “We’re not going to kill her!” Ruli’s shock made her paler than ever.

  “I have a plan.” Nona sat back. “For everything but the last part. And no, Clera, I don’t want to dump her in the sinkhole.”

  “So let’s hear it.” Ara slipped off the bed and drew up a chair, as if she needed the distance to properly judge Nona’s proposal.

  Nona frowned. She had a sense that they were all digging themselves deeper than ever before, a certainty that the things they decided now could not be undone and would steer their fates for many years to come—if indeed any of them had many years, or even a single year, to look forward to. “If you go to my dormitory bed and reach below you’ll find a bag tied to the underside of one of the boards.” Nona glanced at Hessa. “I didn’t just take the ingredients for the black cure when I raided the Poisoner’s stores.”

  A slow grin spread across Clera’s face.

  “You’ll find a bunch of dried catweed in there, and the—”

  “The ingredients for the boneless mix,” Clera crowed. “We poison her and when she’s too weak to move . . .”

  “But everyone will see!” Hessa protested.

  “Not if I do it in the tunnels,” Nona said.

  “And then?” Hessa asked.