Red Sister

  “What good am I going to do?” Hessa shook her head and went on down the tunnel, ill at ease on the uneven surface. “If falling over is the worst that happens to me . . .” She spoke to give herself courage. Before her the threads that led to Yisht snaked away into darkness.

  Ten yards on the threads veered into a fissure in the wall, so low that Hessa would have to abandon her crutch and crawl. “How did she . . .” But of course, even though the fissure was so tight that it daunted Nona, the novices had proved to Yisht she would fit through it.

  Hessa went to all fours on the muddy floor. Or to all threes—her withered leg would do nothing but drag. She turned around, shuffling backwards into the fissure on her behind. She pushed the lantern ahead of her, praying it wouldn’t fall, praying she wouldn’t get stuck, praying that Yisht had already been apprehended and wasn’t already wriggling her way back through the very same gaps.

  The distance to the larger tunnel was perhaps twenty yards, but squeezing through it took a lifetime and left Hessa flat on her back when she finally emerged, gasping and trembling. At the tightest spot Hessa had seen that the rock had been scooped away, leaving strange smooth gouges, widening the passage.

  “A rock-worker then.” The rarest of the elemental marjal talents. Yisht’s unique qualifications were becoming apparent.

  Hessa angled her lantern up. The shaft in the tunnel roof led to a boarded-over entrance. She looked down the tunnel. At any moment a knife could come winging out of that darkness and hammer into her, and Hessa’s story would be over, drawn into the great story of the Ancestor, a raindrop in an ocean. She should just wait for the nuns.

  The threads running invisible through Hessa’s fingers said Yisht was not so close . . . but had she come alone, or did the black tunnel hold some accomplice, waiting, silent and ready to cut throats?

  With a sigh Hessa began to shuffle along the tunnel floor, inch by inch, foot by foot. The seat of her habit would be worn through. “If I survive this Sister Mop will kill me.”

  She carried on, knowing that in the shadows about her lay the spot where Yisht had all but choked the life from Nona.

  Some minutes later she sat looking up at the entrance to the crawl-tunnel that joined her passage to the one where Yisht had been digging when Nona had found her. A knotted rope dangled from the hole, presumably set when the nuns came down to investigate. Without it Hessa would have had no chance of getting up there. Even with it she had to touch the Path in order to put enough strength in her arms to haul herself up. She lay in the connecting crawl-way, panting. She preferred not to touch the Path: its energies disquieted her and filled her with dreams of power that fitted awkwardly at best into her ordered mind. Thread-work suited her far better, had greater subtlety to it. She enjoyed working so close to the Path but not allowing its force to dominate and overmaster her. In its way thread-work was every bit as powerful as Path-walking, closer to the wonders Abbess Glass achieved without violence or threat. Path-walking was closer to the blunt and brutal methods of the Tacsis—not that they were unique among the Sis for that.

  A gentle pull on Yisht’s thread revealed her to be close now, but focused on some task. Hessa could almost see her, high in the rising cut she had made over long weeks of digging. She was digging once more, but pausing every now and then to touch the stone, changing it into something less resistant that fell easily beneath the swings of her pick.

  Hessa had never gathered such strong and detailed impressions from a thread before. She stared at her hand where the threads twined. Curious. Then she felt it. The pulse of the shipheart, thrumming through the thread, thrumming through everything, even the stone itself. Eager, she wriggled on through the narrow passage, seeing the space around her fill with detail as the shipheart built upon the power within her. She saw the threads of other people’s passing. Nona’s, Yisht’s, three nuns whom she might identify if she were to pick out their threads and examine them. By the time she reached the opening into the wider passage beyond, strewn with rubble, Hessa was starting to see threads in the rocks themselves, their lineage running back across the aeons into ancient seas or the fires of the earth. She even saw the threads of the waters that had once run here, carving out these tunnels, threads that led on to rivers and oceans, up into the sky, down to percolate through dark soil and run in secret rivers.

  Hessa shook her head, banishing the visions, focusing on her own task. She understood Yisht’s accelerating progress now. The rock-worker had used her marjal powers to aid her excavation, but as she grew closer to the shipheart its aura enhanced her talents and she was able to tunnel ever more swiftly.

  Hessa saw then why no thread-warnings could be set around the shipheart or the tunnels about it as had been done with the Noi-Guin knife that Nona hid. The beat of the shipheart rippled out like waves, unhindered by thickness of stone, and would wash away any such workings. Only true threads survived and no entanglement would last for long under such conditions.

  Another rope dangled from the tunnel’s far end, anchored on an iron spike driven into a crack in the wall. One of the nuns who came down to investigate lacked the athleticism required to make the journey without help. No Red Sister then.

  • • •

  “NONA! NONA!”

  Nona shook her head, spluttering, icy water dripping from her face. “Where . . . ?”

  “They’re gathering again outside.” Jula leaned into view, water-canteen in hand. Above her the roof of the cave lay rippled in red and shadow as the sun sank behind the ridges.

  “You fell . . . you’ve been lying there for ages, muttering . . . we thought the segren root had got you . . . or the black cure . . . or both.”

  Nona rolled her head to look towards the entrance. Darla was there, hooded and filling out Tarkax’s sealskins pretty well, tular in hand.

  “She’s been letting them see her so they don’t think we’re escaping out the back tunnel,” Ruli said.

  Nona tried to get up at that, shaking the last strands of Hessa’s thoughts from her mind.

  “There’s no back tunnel!” Jula said, glowering at Ruli.“We’ve looked.”

  “Let’s get you up.” Ruli hooked an arm under Nona.

  “Wait!” Nona shouted it loud enough to draw Darla’s attention from the slopes. “I was with Hessa—I mean, seeing what she’s seeing. Yisht is back at the convent again. She’s trying to steal the shipheart. Hessa’s going to try to stop her.”

  “Yisht? What are you talking about?” Darla came stomping across, stepping over first Tarkax then Ara. “How do you know this?”

  “How can Hessa stop her?” Ruli demanded.

  “She’ll get killed!” Jula looked shocked.

  Nona sat up. “She thinks she can do it. She’s not scared any more. That’s why I’m not there. We only join when something really bad is happening to one of us.”

  “Hell, she should be watching us then!” Darla snorted. “We’ve got twelve kinds of bad right outside.”

  Nona frowned. “There are no coincidences among the thread-bound,” she repeated Sister Pan’s words. The nun had told them that the rhythm of their lives would start to match—and here they were both face to face with death.

  “Hessa thinks she can beat Yisht?” Ruli asked, doubtful.

  “Yes, but she can’t do it.” Nona shook her head. “It’s the shipheart, it does that, it gives you power, makes you think you’re indestructible . . . it’s like the Path. But Yisht will kill her!”

  Darla returned to peer out at the slopes, knowing that to those out there in the day’s last light she would be invisible within the cave’s gloom.

  “Why is this happening?” Ruli helped Nona up. “I mean, why now, why is Yisht going for the shipheart just as we’re trapped and about to die?”

  “We’re not going to die.” Nona shrugged off her range-coat. “They are.” She flexed her fists and felt the flaw
-blades form. “And what better chance would Yisht get? Half the Red Sisters are out with Tallow to escort us back. The best of the Grey Sisters are absent too. And if news of Sister Kettle has reached the convent then the abbess may have sent more sisters to help . . . it’s the ideal time to strike.”

  “The soldiers who went looking for Tarkax’s kills are back. The full twelve are on the slope again. They’re getting ready to make their move.” Darla kept her voice low but it shook with nerves.

  Nona started to advance. “Let me—” But Hessa’s terror reached out and seized her. Nona fought the thread-bond, knowing she would only be able to watch Hessa’s fight, knowing her friends needed her in theirs. But the bond’s strength proved too great. Her body fell, helpless, with her enemies gathering to strike. And once more Nona became bound within Hessa’s mind. A silent witness.

  • • •

  HESSA LET HERSELF down the rope, good leg questing for the floor, the lantern dangling from her elbow on its strap, smoky and hot. She made it and collapsed to the smooth wet stone, the muscles in her arms burning.

  Lifting her lantern, she cried out in horror. Just an arm’s length from her face and unseen during her descent Sister Flint sat with her back to the wall beneath the connecting passage. Her long neck lay at an odd angle to her shoulders, the bones making an unsightly bulge beneath dark skin where the angle grew most acute. Her eyes stared at nothing, reflecting the lantern’s flame, and a thin red line of drool ran from the corner of her mouth.

  Go back. Nona spoke into the clamour of Hessa’s thoughts and went unheard.

  Hessa looked towards the entrance to Yisht’s shaft, glowing with the distant light of the assassin’s lantern. The sound of pick-blows and crashing rock echoed back and out into the main tunnel. She returned her gaze to Sister Flint. She had been a Red Sister, as fine a warrior as Sweet Mercy could produce. And Yisht had killed her.

  Go back! Nona shouted it but struggled to be heard against the beat of the shipheart’s pulse.

  Hessa raised her hands. She could see the threads that she had drawn from Yisht hanging in her fingers, golden, silver, scarlet, and black. Pull on this golden thread and a stream of memories would come rushing to flood her with the woman’s bloodstained history. Pull it far enough and she would see the ice, see Yisht even before her memory began, swaddled in furs and innocence. Pull on that scarlet one and she could change the woman’s mind, pull hard enough and any opinion she might hold would be overturned, however firm it might be set. Pull this silver thread, the one that anchored her to her soul, and the woman would come undone. Hessa knew she could do it. She held Yisht’s life in her hands, and the shipheart gave her all the power and clarity she needed.

  Hessa edged to the shaft, scraping herself across the rubble, cutting her hands, tearing her habit. Dark splatters amongst the broken rock caught the light of Hessa’s lantern and returned it. She rolled and touched a finger to one glistening patch. “Blood!” Yisht hadn’t escaped unharmed from her encounter with Sister Flint then . . .

  A tremendous crash echoed down the shaft and moments later rock dust billowed out, obliterating Hessa’s vision, making her cough.

  Silence. Then, as the dust began to settle, the sound of loose rock being pulled away. Hessa shuffled the last foot and peered around to see up along the steep slope of the narrow slot that Yisht had carved. The whole passage glowed. Light, from some source far brighter than any lantern, caught the last of the dust and turned it into gold. At first Hessa thought Yisht must have broken through to the surface, but as the dust continued to settle she saw the woman’s blurred black outline, and on every side the light shafted around her as if a miniature sun were before her, level with her waist. And if it were a sun then it was the Hope rather than Abeth’s red star, a young sun full of white and gold.

  And the heat. Even at this distance it made Hessa sweat.

  “She’ll never get out with it . . .” Hessa squinted against the brightness.

  The light changed, shadows ran and swung, the quality of the shipheart’s pulse altered. Yisht turned to the side, her fingers red around the shipheart’s glowing sphere, her bones dark within the rosy haze of her flesh.

  Leave! Nona shouted it at Hessa and for a moment she thought that she might have been noticed.

  Hessa watched, just one eye at the very edge of the cut, her resolve blown away like focus mist in an ice-wind. Yisht would never get out with the shipheart. She started to pull away. Yisht held the shipheart before her and thrust it towards the wall. The air whined as if a thousand mosquitoes had gathered to feast . . . and the rock flowed away as though it were liquid mud. Yisht stepped forward into the void.

  “No!” Hessa understood now. Yisht might be a marjal half-blood, or even a prime, but her rock-work was only sufficient to aid her in digging, weakening the stone ready for the pick’s swing, or allowing a slow and silent start to the shaft she had sunk beneath her guest quarters. Perhaps it also gave her intuition as to where the tunnels and fissures ran . . . But as she had come closer to the shipheart her skills had been magnified, allowing the last yards of the cut to be hewn away in just a few hours. And now—actually holding the shipheart—the rocks moved to her will. Hessa had no idea what such a gift must be costing Yisht. There was a reason that the shipheart lay buried rather than in the hands of a nun . . . but whatever it cost her it also afforded a marjal rock-worker their escape. She could tunnel out, closing the shaft behind her and emerging at some pre-arranged location, no doubt to be met by Sherzal’s troops.

  Hessa reached her arm around the edge of the cut and pulled on all Yisht’s threads at once. The warrior came flying backwards out of the hole she had created. The opposite wall arrested her motion with a crunch that made Hessa wince. For a moment she felt guilty—she hadn’t meant to injure the woman—then ridiculous, knowing exactly what Yisht would do to her given a chance. In the moment after that Yisht’s thoughts and memories flooded her, drawn out when Hessa pulled on the golden thread of her being.

  • • •

  IMAGES WASHED OVER Nona, trapped at the back of Hessa’s mind. One image, burning with importance, caught her attention and Nona seized it as it passed: the amulet she’d taken from Yisht, the sigil black against a tide of moments, recollections, sensations. And with the amulet’s image came understanding. A sigil of negation, fashioned with vanishingly rare talent by a master of the art a century before. Yisht’s key to the defences on the abbess’s house. Her secondary mission, to claim the secrets there, now abandoned . . . Pressed to any enchantment the amulet would erase the magic or at the very least disrupt it.

  • • •

  YISHT UNFOLDED HERSELF slowly, the light from the shipheart breaking around her as she straightened to expose it.

  Kill her! Nona shouted. Quick! This close to the shipheart, and with threads drawn from Yisht’s own blood . . . she could snap the silver tie that bound Yisht’s spirit, and the woman’s warm flesh would topple to the ground, empty.

  Hessa worked quickly, the deft fingers of her mind sorting and plucking the threads that connected her to Yisht.

  “Put it down.” Hessa only mouthed the words but Yisht found herself lowering the shipheart to the ground, not against her will but because her will had changed.

  End her! Nona knew killers. Yisht was a killer. Hessa was not. The killer always has the edge. Don’t give her a moment!

  Yisht raised a hand and above Hessa a thickness of rock fractured away from the ceiling.

  There was no time to react, no pain, no memory of the impact, just the knowledge that the world had turned upon its side, that the lantern oil was flaring somewhere around her legs, and that she now saw Yisht through a single eye full of blood. Nothing hurt, and that worried Hessa most of all.

  Yisht approached down the cut, a slim knife in her hand, her gait uncertain as if her collision with the wall had broken something inside.

&
nbsp; “The personal touch.” Hessa thought the words but her lips scarcely moved and her breath sputtered out wetly.

  • • •

  NONA THREW EVERY ounce of her will against the bond that tied her to Hessa, but all that happened was that the world started shaking, as if Yisht had decided against the knife and raised all her earth-magics to crush her foe.

  “Nona!” A slap that made her cheek blaze. “Nona!” Screamed at her face, full of desperation.

  Nona didn’t open her eyes—they were already open—but she started seeing through them again. Darla was shaking her. “Wake up! They’re coming! All of them!”

  “Buy me a minute!” She gasped the words out and Darla dropped her in shock.

  “What?”

  “One minute.” Nona sat. “I need to help Hessa.” Her shadow lay before her, thrown by the descending sun, stretching out to the rear of the cave where it joined the general gloom. Nona made a fist and extended one finger from it, sheathed in a single flaw-blade.

  “Wait, we’re sending her out,” Darla shouted from the cave entrance. She ducked back. “If they’re going to kill us anyway why are they so keen we send you out?”

  “So I don’t get killed in any fighting. Once swords start swinging anything can happen.” Nona started to cut at her shadow, slicing it away from below her feet. “Arrrgh! Gods damn it, that hurts!” She’d known her blades cut shadow—that lesson had been taught to her at the Academy. She hadn’t known that cutting her own shadow would hurt as much as cutting her own flesh.

  “What?” Ruli stared in horror at the ragged edge of Nona’s shadow and the strange twisting of the light about the gap. “How will that stop them?”

  “Not them. Her!” Nona slashed again, a long tearing motion, screaming out the agony of it.

  Behind her, Darla scooped up Ara’s stiff body and carried her towards the cave mouth. “We had to subdue her with poison!” she called out.