Red Sister

  “Get in out of sight, girl.” Tarkax waved Clera behind him. “And they’re not the emperor’s men. No uniforms. I killed two in the gullies. One died slower than the other. Said he was a Tacsis man.”

  “Thuran Tacsis . . .” Ruli held Nona’s arm. “But he said he’d leave Nona alone. He swore it to the emperor!”

  “He didn’t swear he wouldn’t come after Ara though,” Clera said.

  Tarkax edged back from the entrance. “Some men will swear anything to anyone to get what they want. I wouldn’t place much faith in Tacsis words.” He drew his tular, the flat blade hissing from its scabbard sounding just like Yisht’s had back in the tunnels. “They’re coming. They must have sent more scouts out and spotted you.”

  “We can’t stay here!” Ara started towards the entrance. “We need to run.”

  Tarkax lowered his blade into her path. “We’d be caught and killed in the open. Here they can only come at us from one direction.”

  “There’s twelve of them!” Darla from the rear of the cave.

  Tarkax rolled his head and shrugged. “On the right ground twelve I can take.”

  • • •

  “YOU, IN THE cave!”

  It had taken the best part of an hour before the shout came. Perhaps the Tacsis men had spread out to encircle and catch the prey they expected to run. Nona had seen few hours pass more slowly—as if she clung to every heartbeat of it with hunska battle-speed. Tarkax had returned his sword to its scabbard and told them Sister Tallow would bring the Red Sisters out looking for them in two days. He also said that they would all be dead or on their way again before sunset, so whatever Sister Tallow might do was of no relevance.

  “Nona?” Ara leaned forward, her face in shadow. “Are you all right? There’s . . . something odd about your eyes.”

  “We’ve more to worry about than my eyes.” Nona looked away towards the brightness beyond the rocky entrance.

  The shout came again. “You, in the cave!”

  “Only my voice.” Tarkax held a finger to his lips and backed towards the bunched novices, coming to stand between Zole and Ara. “They mustn’t know who or how many stand with me.” He cupped his hands and called out. “You, outside!”

  “We want the girl! Send her out and we’ll go.”

  “I met two of your number in the gully to the east,” Tarkax shouted back. “They have joined the Ancestor. I am Tarkax, the Ice-Spear. If you want the girl you must come and take her.” He glanced over his shoulder. “They’ll waste an hour finding their dead if we’re lucky.”

  “Why would they do that?” Ara asked.

  “There’s a lot to learn from dead men,” Tarkax said. “Were they shot with an arrow, taken from behind, garrotted, killed in the same place or apart, by one person or more, were the attackers bleeding when they left?” He shrugged. “A cautious man would want to know. These soldiers—they know my name. Now they wish to learn if the man calling it to them is really Tarkax. Perhaps they will wait until they can bring more troops. The longer they spend out in the open growing cold, the better it is for us.”

  “You couldn’t really kill twelve, could you?” Ara asked.

  The warrior puffed out his chest. “I am Tarkax . . .” He winced and started to turn.

  “Ow!” Ara’s face creased with sudden pain and she too started to turn.

  Nona was already spinning around when she felt the sharp jab in the side of her neck. As she turned Nona saw Clera tangled with Zole, both of them twisting, punching, blocking with a speed that only a hunska full-blood could hope to follow. They fell together, Clera beneath the ice-tribe girl.

  “Get Zole off her!” Ara dived in snatching at a wrist and missing.

  Tarkax stood unmoving for what seemed an age at fight speed, long enough for Ara to finally catch Zole’s arm and hang on despite a kick to the stomach. Nona just watched, flooded with a cold certainty and hot despair. Jula, Ruli, and Darla also stood statue-still, but trapped in the moment as any without hunska blood would be.

  Clera tore free, bleeding from the mouth, a hank of her dark hair in Zole’s fist as Ara wrestled the girl from the ice away, gaining momentary advantage from the fact that the whole of her attention was aimed at Clera. For his part Tarkax threw himself back and to the left, towards the cave wall. And Nona watched. Her neck stung where the venom-coated pin had been jabbed in.

  Ara held Zole atop her, her arms looped beneath Zole’s armpits, her hands clamped behind Zole’s head and both legs wrapped around the ice-triber, but Zole still somehow managed to reach down and grip beneath Ara’s ribcage, causing her to cry out in excruciating pain. It was all the chance Zole needed to twist out of the hold. She rolled across the floor towards Clera.

  Nona didn’t act. She couldn’t act. She had to see this played out. She had to believe it. She stood and she watched through slitted eyes.

  Tarkax landed beside his backpack and tore it open.

  Zole rose from her roll, hurling herself bodily at Clera. Clera’s foot, aimed at her face, caught her collarbone and brought her down with a snapping sound, the whole of Clera’s thigh muscle absorbing the girl’s momentum.

  Tarkax, fumbling, brought out a leather wrap from among his supplies and began to unroll it. It held close on a dozen small leather tubes, sealed with wax and sewn to the wrap. A throwing star blurred across Nona’s vision and took the leather strip, tubes and all, from Tarkax’s grip. Clera’s throwing star.

  Ara got up, stiffly. Zole rolled to her side and jerked into a sitting position, eyes blazing. Tarkax drew his tular in a stuttering motion.

  “You?” Ara stared at Clera, horrified. She took an awkward step towards her. “Why?” She had to jerk her whole body around to take the next step.

  Zole tried to stand but fell to her side. Tarkax staggered forward and tumbled, the sword flying from his hand, his head hitting the rocks hard.

  “Money,” said Clera, rising smoothly to her feet. “Lots of money. Enough gold to raise my family to the Sis, and more besides.” She turned to look at Nona, still standing where she had stood since the first sharp prick of betrayal. “It’s Ara he wants, Nona. Thuran Tacsis swore to the emperor not to harm you. He’ll take her, get his concessions from the Jotsis and sell her back. All through third parties. She won’t lose anything but a month or two and some family prospects. And that scarcely matters if she’s to be a Red Sister.” Clera stepped closer. “So you see, it’s hardly anything.” Closer still. Close enough to whisper. “I’ll miss you, Nona.” She pulled her head back and stared. “What in hell is wrong with your eyes? They’re black . . . every bit—”

  Nona’s fist connected with the side of Clera’s head, the sort of solid blow that puts an end to conversations and to fights. She was at Tarkax’s pack almost before Clera hit the ground, but she felt as though she were running through a bad dream. Clera would abandon her for as little as money? Trust, Sister Apple had said, was the most insidious of poisons. It hurt Nona to know how well she had learned that lesson.

  “Tie her up, quick!” She threw the rope from the warrior’s pack at Darla. “Quick! Gag her too.”

  A moment later she had the leather wrap, crouching so as not to be seen from outside the cave. Clera’s throwing star, the four-pointed one from Partnis Reeve, was stuck in it. The contents of four tubes dripped from the leather, unstoppered by the impact.

  She brought it back across the cave and threw herself down beside Tarkax. “Which one? Which one?” She waved it before his face but his eyes were unfocused, blood leaking from beneath his cheek and forehead where he had struck a rock. He had been reaching for the antidote, she knew that, but which tube was it in? She couldn’t risk using the wrong one. She might dose him with a whole new poison.

  Rising, Nona went to Ara and held her face in both hands, putting herself in her eye line. “You’ve been poisoned, Ara. Clera jabbed you with a nee
dle. It was coated with lock-up. Tincture of segren root. You had it before, first day with the Poisoner. You’ll be fine.” She glanced across to Ruli, standing helpless, watching as Darla and Jula bound the unconscious Clera. “Help me lie her down.”

  Together they lay Ara on the ground, the unnatural stiffness of her limbs unpleasant to touch.

  “Your eyes, Nona.” Ruli looked up from her examination of Ara, one hand still twined in the gold of her hair. “What’s wrong with them?”

  “I . . .” Nona reached up to touch them. “I don’t know. I can see. They don’t hurt.”

  “But, they’re black . . . like someone poured ink into them.” Ruli looked frightened, but there was plenty more to be frightened about than odd eyes.

  “I took the black cure . . . the one I made with Hessa and Ara.”

  Ruli’s fear turned to horror. “Why? Why would you do that?”

  Nona pointed towards the brightness of the slopes. “Those soldiers haven’t just come for Ara. I don’t care what promises Thuran Tacsis made or where he made them. Raymel Tacsis wants his revenge and someone out there knows that if they don’t go back with me they may as well not go back at all. Maybe all of them know that. And if they come I’m going to go down fighting, not poisoned and helpless, ready to be bound and carried off to some torture chamber.” It was almost true. She had put the vial to her lips when she heard that the soldiers were advancing on the cave, worried that they might carry venoms to take her alive—but what had made her tip it into her mouth? That had been the memory of Clera coming back off the plateau having brewed the catweed liquor. She had blamed the stink on poor Malkin because, despite the plant’s name, Sister Apple’s silly rhyme held truth: catweed didn’t smell like a cat weed, but segren root did.

  “I took it because I didn’t trust my friend.” That was the truth, and like many truths it was hard and it hurt.

  When Nona raided Sister Apple’s stores she had stolen catweed and segren root along with anything else that looked useful. After Clera’s alchemy out on the plateau some of both were missing, the segren root cut to disguise the loss . . . but Nona had spotted it anyway, because the smell had made her suspicious and, hating herself, she had checked up on Clera. Nona had come on the ranging knowing that Clera was carrying lock-up . . . she just hadn’t quite known why.

  “Zole’s talking . . .” Jula was crouched beside the girl that Sherzal had set among them. The four-blood come to claim her place in history.

  “Tarkax got the biggest dose, then Ara, then me. Zole got jabbed in the fight but Clera must have been running out of needles, or used one twice.”

  “Kill. Her.” Zole watched Nona kneel beside her, her black eyes dull.

  “I’m not killing her,” Nona said. Whatever Clera had done she was Nona’s friend. It wasn’t a bond made for breaking. “She’s well tied.”

  “Kill.”

  “No!” Nona snapped the word. “Tell me what Sherzal wants. We’re probably going to die here, so you may as well. The Tacsis aren’t going to want to leave witnesses. Tell me and I’ll do my best to draw things out so you’ve got a chance to face this on your feet.”

  “Argatha.” Zole forced the word past a locked jaw.

  “I know she doesn’t want that . . .” Nona frowned. “She did. Once. But something changed. She gave you to the abbess.”

  “Argatha. Not. Four-blood.”

  “Yes it is. That’s what the prophecy says. Four bloods speaking with one voice, and the Ark will listen.”

  “Four. Hearts.”

  “Oh gods.” Nona looked around. Only Darla and Jula were on their feet, both looking blank.

  “Yisht!” Ruli said.

  “Yisht.” Nona nodded. “Sherzal’s after four shiphearts, not one four-blood. And Yisht’s not going to have given up on getting the one from the convent.”

  Nona bent back down to Zole. “What can the Ark do?”

  Zole shook her head, just a faint vibration of movement.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “I know,” Jula said, her voice faint.

  “You?” Nona got to her feet.

  “Well.” Jula spread her hands. “I know what the books in the convent library say about it. Some of them anyway. I helped Hessa research it. It’s what she’s been doing for two years while we train to fight.”

  “And?” Nona wasn’t sure why she cared. There were soldiers out in the gully with swords in hand and murder on their minds. “What do the books say?”

  “They say a lot of things. Miracles, cures, wisdom, all those things . . .”

  “So they tell us nothing?” Nona had harboured suspicions about whether anything of worth might be found in a book.

  “Hessa said there’s a common thread,” Jula said. “That’s how she found the right books. She’s very good with thread-work. Better than—”

  “Tell me!” Nona barked. In her mind’s eye the soldiers were already advancing, spread across the slopes, the sun’s red light bleeding across their blades.

  “Most accounts agree that the Ark can take us to the Hope just like the four tribes were brought here in their ships. And . . .”

  “And?” Nona remembered Sherzal’s smile when Ara tried to cow her with the power of the Path. She hadn’t looked like a woman who would go to all these lengths to run away to a distant sun. Even one that burned so white amid heavens scattered with the red embers of dying stars.

  “And . . . it controls the moon. It can turn it, change the focus . . .”

  “Ancestor!” Ruli covered her mouth with a hand.

  “Shit!” Darla let her jaw drop.

  “Gods!” Nona shook her head. A person who could steer the moon wouldn’t want to flee Abeth . . . they would own Abeth!

  “Send out Nona Reeve!” The shout came from outside. “The rest of you can go free.”

  “I thought Clera said they wanted Ara . . .” Ruli looked confused.

  “They lied to her. Raymel is behind this, not Thuran.” Nona wondered what would have happened if the Tacsis agent had told Clera the truth; would her price have gone up because of their friendship, or down because Nona had nobody to avenge her? She wondered how long Clera had been slipping into the Tacsis pocket. What information had she first sold to turn that copper penny into a silver crown . . .

  “Send out Nona Reeve!”

  On the floor Clera opened her eyes and started to struggle in her bonds, grunting around the strip of cloth that Darla had gagged her with. How long had she been feigning unconsciousness? Just one more deception? And why this sudden panic? Nona met her gaze and realized she felt anger, but no hate. Her friend would never have sold her. The Tacsis had used Clera, tricked her, played on her resentment of Ara’s wealth.

  “Just the girl!” Shouted from the slope.

  Nona spun around. “I’ll go to them, but we’re going to have to fight either way.”

  “Fight?” Darla snorted and kicked Clera into stillness. “With what? We’re going fists against swords?”

  Nona pressed Clera’s throwing star into Ruli’s palm. “That’s one dead right there.” She retrieved Tarkax’s forgotten tular from the shadows, surprised by the weight of it, and put it into Darla’s hands. “Get his jacket and trews on. You’re not that much bigger. Keep your hood. If they’re scared of you it gives you an edge.” She bent and pulled the long knife and hatchet from Tarkax’s belt. Close up he smelled of woodsmoke and a spice she didn’t recognize. “Jula, take these.” She pushed them at her.

  “W-what are you going to use?” Jula asked, the weapons trembling in her grip. She was a natural warrior despite her affection for books, but also terrified, and why not? The Tacsis soldiers would make as short work of the novices as Partnis Reeve’s apprentices had. They were adults against children, and well-trained. Darla might be a man’s match in strength
but she held an unfamiliar sword and it shook in a white-knuckled grip. Also, there were twelve out there and in the cave Nona was the only hunska standing.

  “Let me tell you a story,” she said.

  “What?” Darla seemed unimpressed, angry at her own fear.

  “A story.” Nona motioned for them to sit. “We have time. If they weren’t going to check Tarkax’s kills then they would have rushed us by now.”

  “What story?” Ruli asked, turning the throwing star over and over in her hand, her gaze on Clera.

  “A true story.” Nona looked across to where Ara lay watching, trapped in her poisoned body. “I lied before, about why my village gave me to the child-taker . . . why my mother let them . . . I lied and lied again. Now it’s time to tell the truth.” She had their attention now. Even Darla, whom she had told no lies, would have heard the story from others. Perhaps even Zole knew it.

  “A juggler once came to my village. He was my first friend.” And Nona let the words run from her tongue. It had been the truth that she told the second time, of how Amondo had left and her mother blamed Nona for it, and Nona had believed her mother even though the reasons were beyond her understanding. It had been the truth when she said that she had followed the juggler, taking directions from Mother Sible out in the far-fields. It had all been the truth up until the first trees of the Rellam Forest rose around the road.

  • • •

  EVERYWHERE HAS ITS ghosts, Amondo had said, but in most places those ghosts are at least hidden in the corners, or tucked away at right angles to the world, waiting their moment. In the Rellam Forest you could see the ghosts, patterned on the gloom beneath the canopy, the distortion of their faces frozen into the bark of ancient trunks. And you could hear them too, screaming into the silence, not quite breaking it but making it tremble.

  I followed, not caring about ghost or faerie, because when a true fear takes hold of you it drives out the others, the ones people try to give you, try to put into the heart of you with stories and dark looks. A true fear grows in the bones of you.

  I followed because I thought that if I turned back then I would keep turning back, turning away from every other fear, from every new thing, and that I would never leave that place to which my father had brought me. I would live, toil, grow old, and die, all within sight of my mother’s hut, and the ice would remain forever a line glimpsed in the distance, and I wouldn’t matter to the world nor would it matter to me.