“That . . . I haven’t figured out,” Nona admitted. Part of her wanted to tie Yisht up, drag her to the most remote shaft, and leave her hanging in it.
“Barrels . . .” Ruli looked up. “Barrels!”
“What are you talking about?” Ara asked.
“We put her in a barrel,” Ruli said.
“Great. Then we’ve got a deadly warrior in a barrel.” Ara spread her hands.
“Easy to roll off a cliff though!” Clera said.
“A wine barrel,” Ruli said. “There are lots of empties at the winery. We put her in, pad it with straw, and set it with the others for the wagon. It’s coming tomorrow.”
“And when they open it?” Nona asked.
“Tomorrow’s wagon is bound for Marsport. I know because it’s the one that goes to my father. He ships some of the wine across the Marn to Durn. They mark the ones for the ship with his name rune. I can put that on Yisht’s barrel and they’ll ship her to Durn!”
“Brilliant.” Clera clapped her hands. She rubbed her forehead, perhaps remembering how Yisht had knocked her down in Blade. “Could they push her barrel overboard when they’re out at sea?”
“This won’t work.” Hessa banged her crutch against her chair. “A barrel of wine is worth a sovereign at the least. You don’t think they might count how many they’re supposed to take? There’s all manner of notes made on inventory scrolls and—”
“I know,” said Ruli. “I’ve been helping Sister Oak with that. She says I’m a natural merchant.”
“But won’t Yisht just get out and come back?” Ara asked. “I mean, fun as it all sounds, won’t we be risking getting murdered just to inconvenience her for a few days?”
“You’re not seeing it.” Nona shook her head. “That shaft I saw. It has to lead down from Yisht’s quarters. When Yisht doesn’t turn up to guard Zole the nuns will go to her room. They’ll see the tunnel down. We’ll make sure they do. They’ll investigate and the abbess will know that the shipheart was the target. By the time Yisht’s out of the barrel every sister at Sweet Mercy will have orders to stop her on sight and Sherzal will be in plenty of trouble too!”
• • •
HESSA AND NONA sat together at the back of Spirit class. Sister Wheel claimed that the further away a novice sat from the chalkboard the more sinful she was apt to be. Nona took pride in setting her spine against the rear wall. Zole sat practically close enough to the board to get chalk dust on her nose. Yisht never sat in lessons, or at least she never sat in Spirit, which was the only class she was admitted to, but stood by the wall as near to Zole as possible.
On this occasion, although her eyes were aimed towards the ice-triber, Nona’s focus was actually on the porthole window above her head. Outside, the ice-wind cracked its cheeks, howling loud enough to drown out Sister Wheel’s litany. The constant passage of wind-blown sleet created the illusion that the dome was a great ship moving backwards through a sea of ice.
“How does she expect to escape with it?” Hessa hissed.
“What?” Nona glanced back, keeping her voice low.
“The . . . thing . . . if Yisht gets it. How does she think she’ll get away with it?”
“She got in,” Nona said. “She knows she can get out. And she probably doesn’t know that Sister Pan and I can sense the ship— the thing.”
“She knows about thread-work, though. Sherzal’s hardly going to have sent her here without knowing that. There could be a dozen nuns here who would know the moment it had been moved—maybe even a few minutes before! They were on that dagger of yours fast enough.”
“But none of the nuns were even born when the shipheart was put there. How would they be bound to it? And do they even have access to it now? Perhaps it’s walled in on all sides. Or threads don’t stick to it . . . I don’t know.” Nona’s eyes flickered back to the woman, dark against the wall, her attention on Sister Wheel, one hand on the hilt of her tular. It did seem strange that she thought she might just walk unnoticed out of the convent with the shipheart. Or did she really think she could cut her way through Red Sisters as if they were nothing?
“Nona and Hessa—I hesitate to call them novices—will repeat the emperor’s prayer seven times before the Ancestor after class.” Sister Wheel lifted her voice so it reached them above the wind’s howl. “Mistress Academia tells me that there was a time when a novice’s tongue could be split for idle chatter in Spirit class. So let that stand as an indication that not all progress is good progress.”
• • •
SISTER WHEEL’S PUNISHMENT meant that Clera was left to do the brewing alone, out on the promontory where they had cooked up the black cure the week before. With the ice-wind blowing and no Hessa to light the fire Nona imagined that Clera would have a miserable time of it—if she managed at all.
While Nona and Hessa repeated the emperor’s prayer, all fourteen verses of it, time and time again at the base of the Ancestor’s golden statue, Ara and Ruli were arranging the barrel and adjusting the records. Ruli was on quill duty while Ara was appointed to “distraction.” Something her rank and beauty left her uniquely qualified for.
Nona shuffled on her sore knees. Sister Wheel hadn’t given them prayer cushions. The nun was a great believer that pain and prayer went together hand in hand.
“Ancestor guide the emperor in his choices and in his actions. May you watch over him at the rising of the sun and at the setting. May you watch over him in the long marches of the night. May you—”
“She’s gone.” Hessa shuffled forward. She was allowed to sit rather than kneel, on account of her withered leg—a fact that seemed to give Sister Wheel as much offence as if Hessa had declared for the Hope church and taken to star-watching.
Nona stopped praying but stayed on her knees, eyes on the distant door. Sister Wheel liked to double back and catch novices in disobedience.
“Is it still there?” Hessa asked.
“Yes.” The shipheart’s aura still reached out from the rear of the dome. Not as strongly as it did down in the tunnels though where she had felt the rhythm of it beating through the rock. Yisht must be closer to it down there than they were up top.
“We could look for the way in up here . . .” Hessa suggested.
“There will be good reasons why Yisht is digging her way to it. If she could just open a door here and climb down some steps she’d already be halfway back to the border with it.”
• • •
ON THEIR RETURN to the dormitories Nona made a decision.
“You go on, Hessa. I’ve got something I need to do.”
“You’re going to tell the abbess,” Hessa said, no question in her voice.
“How—”
“Thread-bound.” Hessa tapped her forehead.
“I’ve got to. What if I get one of you hurt, just trying to save myself?”
Hessa gave her a weak smile and made no attempt to talk her out of it. Nona turned and walked away, wondering just how much she might be leaving behind.
It wasn’t far to the abbess’s steps but it felt as if it were the longest journey of her life. The abbess would have to banish her from the convent at the very least. If Sister Wheel got involved then the punishment might be considerably worse.
The house loomed closer, foreboding, the end to her dreams.
“Where are you going, Nona?” Sister Rock came up behind her.
“To see the abbess.” Nona thought that much should be obvious.
“You’ll have a long wait. She’s been called to the palace. Sister Apple and Sister Tallow have gone with her. I’ll be taking Blade class tomorrow. What did you want her for?”
“I . . . It’s not important.” Gone? How could she be gone? “When will she be back?”
Sister Rock went up the steps, taking a large key from her pocket. “A day? Maybe two. Hopefully before Grey Class goes ranging if tha
t’s what you’re worried about. Something I can help you with?”
“No.” Nona turned to go, not knowing quite how to feel. “Thank you.” She didn’t know who else to tell. The sister superiors were in charge now, Wheel and Rose. Sister Wheel Nona mistrusted almost as much as she mistrusted Yisht. Sister Rose had a good heart but she was timid with it and Nona couldn’t imagine her being much help.
Nona walked a wandering path back to the dormitories. Her choices seemed to have dwindled to none. They would have to deal with the thief themselves.
• • •
AT THE NIGHT bell Clera had yet to return. Nona sat on her bed with Ara and Ruli to either side. They had identified a suitable empty barrel and put the export mark on it. Ruli had adjusted the ledgers and Ara had “borrowed” the cooper’s tools necessary for removing and replacing the barrel lid. Quite how to use them was an outstanding issue, but Ruli said she’d seen Sister Scar do it a dozen times and it didn’t look that difficult.
“Where is she?” Ruli twisted Nona’s blanket in her hands.
“If she doesn’t come soon Mally will want to turn the lantern down.” Ara’s eyes were on the high windows, all shut and opaque with layered ice.
“Mally’ll probably report her too.” Hessa from her bed across the width of the dormitory.
Ruli nodded. The head-girl didn’t like Clera.
“You should go and look for her.” Jula on her bed next to Hessa’s gave a sad smile, still concerned despite the fact that Clera said something awful to her every day.
Nona was about to agree when the door banged open and Clera staggered in, ice-caked and dripping. “I think I’m dying.”
Ara reached for her towel. “Get over here and stop milking it.”
Clera’s face was red with cold and she did look to have been in the wars.
“Poo, you stink.” Ara wrinkled her nose.
“Malkin pissed on my spare habit and I didn’t have time to change it.” Clera sat down heavily, making the bed bounce. Ara only got the towel under her just in time.
“Malkin peed on your spare habit . . . and so you . . . changed into it?” Ara made a face and looked to the others. Nona frowned. The abbess’s cat was a liability for certain—but the rest didn’t make sense.
“Of course.” Clera rolled her eyes and lowered her voice to a hiss. “I got out of Spirit and was going to spend the next Ancestor knows how many hours doing unlicensed alchemy. What do you think the first thing I would want to do when I got back was?”
“Change into a clean . . . oh! I get you.” Ruli smiled. “So you had to take off your clean one, and put on the one Malkin had ‘blessed’ so that you’d have a clean one for now.”
Clera nodded. “I was planning on visiting the bathhouse of course, but it took so damn long!”
It did seem to have taken an age, but in the wind and ice . . . Nona shrugged. “So you have it?”
“Of course! I’m Clera!” She took out a small, waxed gourd with its stopper sealed in place. “Boneless syrup. Guaranteed to make a strong man go weak at the knees almost as fast as I can.”
“You know if this doesn’t work she’ll kill us?” Ara said, reaching for the gourd.
“Us?” Clera let her take it. “I thought Nona was doing it.”
“Us.” Ara nodded. “Once Yisht is down it will take four of us to move her. At least.”
“And if it goes wrong the abbess will kill us,” Ruli said.
“Metaphorically,” Ara said.
“And Yisht will kill us,” Nona said.
“Literally.” Ara pressed her lips into a worried line.
38
“WE SHOULD HAVE tested it!” Clera hissed.
“We did test it. And anyway—you made it—are you saying it’s no good?” Ara replied.
Nona edged past them both at the corner of the laundry, checking the courtyard beyond for any nuns. The wind wrapped her habit about her legs, biting through, and her hands were already numb. She hated to think what the ranging would be like.
“It worked on Hessa,” Ruli muttered, and at Nona’s signal she sprinted across the yard to crouch by the wall of the scriptorium opposite.
“It did.” Nona replied to the night. Hessa had collapsed bonelessly and they’d left her safe on her side in her bed. Would a full-grown woman go down so swiftly though? Were the ice-tribes a different breed?
Nona waved Clera across and sent Ara on her heels.
A minute later they were all four gathered in the shelter of the entrance to the tunnel that led down to Shade.
“You’ve got this?” Clera asked.
“I’ve got it.” Ara grunted. “Now shut up.” She was on her knees, face level with the lock. Hessa had spent hours trying to teach her the thread trick with locks.
“But Shade has a different lock!” Ara had protested when she had finally worked the lock on the supply cupboard in the dormitory entrance hall.
“You’re missing the whole point!” Hessa had thrown up her hands and nearly lost her crutch. “One lock, another lock, complicated or simple, tumblers or latches . . . they’re all either locked or unlocked. You just need to find the thread for the lock and pull it.”
“Like this?”
“That’s the thread for the oak that the planks came from.”
“This?”
“You just rotated one of the anchor screws . . .”
Out in the icy wind and darkness the trick of unthreading a lock was proving no easier than it had in the dorm.
“Hurry up!” Clera stamped in impatience.
“Shut up!” Ara pressed her eye to the keyhole as if the lock’s secret might reveal itself to her more easily that way.
Ruli came into sight, rolling the barrel across the open plateau between Academia Tower and the entrance to the undercaves. At one point the wind nearly stole it from her. Nona pictured Ruli chasing the barrel as the ice-wind pitched it over the edge toward the vineyards far below.
“We’ll meet Yisht at this rate.” Clera hugged herself while Ara continued to work on the lock.
“She has a tunnel down from her room. I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” Nona gripped the freezing bars of the gate, feeling more vulnerable with each passing second spent out in the open.
Ruli arrived with the barrel, which offered a degree of shelter from the wind. “She couldn’t dig down from there. Someone would have heard her.”
Nona shrugged. “It’s the only way. She must have explored the route I took but not followed it to the end.” Yisht had a room in the guest wing attached to Heart Hall. By Nona’s reckoning the tunnel that led on from the Shade cavern would pass below the hall. She had always been thankful that Yisht hadn’t been permitted to fill her role as Zole’s bodyguard by sleeping with them in Grey dormitory, but it seemed perhaps that it would have been better if she had been allowed.
“You’ll have to blast it, Nona!” Clera said.
“Blast it,” Ruli agreed, blowing into her hands.
“I’ll blast you if you don’t SHUT UP!” Ara didn’t sound as serene as perhaps she might.
“I think someone’s coming,” Clera said, staring into the dark and open plateau to the east.
click
Ara stood up and pushed the gate open.
“Get the barrel in, quick!”
Moments later they had the gate closed again, with the barrel propped against it.
“That won’t stay there,” Nona said, poking at the barrel. “A strong gust will send it end over end down the stairs after us.”
“Well we can hardly leave someone to hold it. We’re going to need all of us to move Yisht.” Ara poked the barrel, frowning as it wobbled. A third of the base overhung the first step.
“We don’t need all four of us to take Yisht out though.” Nona patted the bulge where Cler
a’s gourd of boneless, brewed from the catweed, sat under her habit. “I’ll get in position and wait for her. When it’s done I’ll come back for you to help me drag her.” Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the lantern from Clera and hurried down the stairs.
“Be careful!” Clera called after her. “If you break that gourd when you’re squeezing through then you’re going to be down there a while!”
• • •
IT TOOK PERHAPS a quarter of an hour for Nona to retrace her route from her first exploration and reach Yisht’s excavations. It felt closer to a quarter of a lifetime. In the tight sections, through the narrowest part of the fissure and wriggling along the slim connecting tunnel at the end, she expected at each moment to hear a dull crack as the gourd surrendered to the pressure and catweed liquor to begin leaking down her leg. If the victim drank the liquor the effects were said to be almost instant, each muscle relaxing rapidly to the point at which they couldn’t so much as lift a finger. The important thing was to make sure the victim didn’t swallow their tongue and suffocate. They had laid Hessa out with great care, in line with the Poisoner’s lessons, to ensure her safety.
When the liquor was absorbed through the skin the effects were slower and varied, depending on which part of the body took the dose. Nona’s plan was to splatter the gourd’s contents in Yisht’s face and run for it. The boneless would undo her pretty swiftly. With luck she’d swallow some too and go down even faster.
Nona waited in the mouth of the narrow connecting tunnel, the lantern behind her on its rope. She watched for any glimmer of light, or any hint of sound. Nothing. She waited anyway. In the Blade class after Yisht had single-handedly felled all of Nona’s fellow novices, save Zole, Sister Tallow had commented on the display.
“A good fighter lives in the moment, but they see into the future. The better the fighter the further they see. Everyone can develop whatever natural talent the Ancestor gave them for this. Some however, some marjals, have an unnatural talent for it. Seeing five heartbeats into every future goes a long way towards compensating for any amount of hunska speed.” On reflection Nona realized that every move made against her Yisht had seen coming. But had it been experience though, or something more?