Grey Sister

  “Before we get to your mission report . . . this business with Safira.”

  Kettle flinched. The abbess doubted she would have reacted at all if she were outside the convent, if she had her Grey-face on, but here in her home, here she let her guard down, allowed herself both to be vulnerable and to be loved.

  Glass started again. “You said Safira knew Zole was coming. Who took the message to Lord Mensis?”

  “Sister Pail.”

  “Hmmm.” As Novice Suleri, Sister Pail had been somewhat impetuous and hot-tempered but never someone Glass would have considered easily corrupted. The abbess wasn’t naïve enough to think that anyone was incorruptible, but Sister Pail wouldn’t be her choice as the weakest link in the convent’s chain. “Someone let the news slip, and not many of us knew. Look into it when you’ve time.”

  Kettle nodded. “If Sherzal has an ear in Sweet Mercy I’ll cut it off.”

  Glass shook her head. “If Sherzal has an ear in Sweet Mercy I want to decide what it hears. Now, to the matter in hand.” She picked up the report before her. “You’ve been out in the world, Kettle. Getting your hands dirty once again. Doing the things that let others sleep at night. Necessary things, but cruel. Such acts can taint us, if we let them.”

  “I am already tainted, Mother.” Kettle raised her dark eyes and Glass for a moment felt her own weakness, her own taint.

  “They call me abbess now.”

  Kettle returned her gaze to her hands.

  Glass’s given title had been Reverend Mother and the novices called her Mother. She had not long buried Able and while her son had gone beneath the ground her grief had stayed above it. She had given up the worldly, her job, her home, her wealth, but not her sorrow—that she had worn to the convent like a second habit. And the novices had been her children. She knew that now. Each of them a grain of sand to balance in the scales against the stone of her loss. But a mother is the root of the family and the strength, and the mother to so many must be stronger than most can imagine. Her weakness, her taint, had been to care for each instead of caring for the whole. So she set the title Reverend Mother aside and became the abbess. Her care was for all of them and it must be singular, it must be iron.

  “Abbess,” said Sister Kettle. Somehow in her mouth it still sounded like Mother.

  “Sister Apple pushed you into the shadow, Kettle. You did not step into it yourself and from where you stand you can still see the light. I believe the Ancestor will take you in when your work is done.”

  Kettle had been a waif when she joined them. So quiet you might have thought she lost her tongue rather than her mother. But children have resilience. Children scar and those scars remain across the years, but children grow too. Kettle grew around her hurts and learned to laugh again—learned wickedness as they taught her scripture—learned the swiftness of her body and the sharpness of her mind. She grew into a woman and learned to love and to be loved.

  “I’ve read your report, sister. Exceptional work, once again.”

  Kettle twitched a smile, shadows rising across her throat like a blush spreading. Sometimes they danced around her, sometimes they lay quiet, a drifting smoke of them into which Glass’s imagination would pattern horrors of her own making. Some would call it a corruption. Some would say that the darkness spoke inside Kettle now and soon she would start to listen to it. But corruption knocked at every door, and power often invited it in, the power of emperors, of high priests, even of abbesses. Glass would back Kettle to turn a deaf ear to corruption’s whispers where many of those who might accuse her would be seduced.

  Glass set the report down and laid her hand upon the papers, each covered with Kettle’s neat lettering, curled tight across the page. “Should we fear Adoma?”

  “Mistress Shade teaches us to set fear aside.” Kettle looked at her hands.

  “Sister Apple is correct, as she so often is.” No Grey Sister had come as close to the Scithrowl battle-queen as Kettle had. As much as she wanted to know Adoma’s plans Glass wanted to know the woman more. Plans were one thing, but what a person would do when the ice pressed depended more upon what lay inside them than on what they had written on parchment about the future. “Caution is wise, but fear is seldom of help and should be set aside. What do we need to set aside for Queen Adoma?”

  Kettle smiled, a hint of the mischievous novice who had once dusted Sister Wheel’s habit with a sneezing powder so powerful that the nun had blown her own headdress off. “The queen is a very passionate woman. Nothing seemed to motivate her so much as being denied. I was never close enough to touch her, but I heard her hold court. She speaks well and knows it.”

  Touch. Glass suppressed a shiver. For a Grey Sister “close enough to touch” meant close enough to kill. Kettle hadn’t been instructed to put an end to Adoma but any Grey took pride in coming close enough for the touch, whether they then made that touch or not.

  “You did well to reach the black ice, sister.” In Scithrowl, not far from the border, the black ice touched the southern wall of the Corridor. Few from the empire had ever seen it, though. Glass flipped pages to reach the relevant section of the report. Here the writing grew tighter, smaller, as if unwilling to let go of its information. “You did well, but I found the account of your experiences there somewhat confused. You lost track of Adoma and her priests in the outer chambers?”

  “It is a difficult place to account for, abbess.” Kettle hunched on her chair, cold with memory. “In places the black ice lies beside the clean ice, like ink on a white page, running through it. But when you approach from the Scithrowl margins you pass through tunnels and chambers where the ice greys, grows darker, and shades to black over the course of several miles. It is a taint. A pollution that clouds thoughts just as it clouds the ice. Something lives in it. Or at least there is something in there that is not dead.”

  “How did you lose Adoma’s party?” Abbess Glass traced her finger along the text.

  “The tunnels are narrow and she left numerous guards in her wake.” Kettle frowned. “But the truth is I didn’t lose her. I lost me.”

  “You lost your path?”

  “I fell into . . . nightmare. The ice took me.” Kettle’s mouth became a snarl, perhaps remembering the mask she wore in the world outside. “I would not have lived if I weren’t . . .” She held her hand out and shadow ran between her fingers. “. . . like this.”

  “Then I am glad that Mistress Shade was able to save you twice.” Glass smiled. “You have done the Church a service of some significance, sister. Your report concerning Adoma’s gathering of both the Scithrowl shiphearts to herself is of particular interest. Also you have placed flesh on the bones of these rumours about the battle-queen’s explorations beneath the ice. Some even doubted the existence of black ice.”

  Sister Kettle reached into her habit. “I can lay those doubts to rest.” She produced a vial filled with inky liquid. Glass found her eyes fascinated by the blackness of the stuff. “I chipped some free. It melted.” Kettle returned the vial to an inner pocket. “Apple thinks it is related to the Durns’ sickwood.”

  Glass pursed her lips. The Durnishmen built their barges from sickwood. Some claimed the stuff lived even when cut to timbers and planks, imbued with its own malign spirit and harnessed to the Durns’ cause by their shamans.

  “The forest in which the sickwood trees grow is fed by meltwaters. The rumour is that the ice in that region is grey. Sister Rule once showed me the works of Alderbron, the archon who was brother to Sister Cloud. They hint that it is some work of the Missing that taints the ice.”

  Glass turned the pages back and set her hand to the topmost. “Is there anything else I should be telling High Priest Nevis when I report to him next seven-day?”

  “I would be more worried about whether you’ll get to report to him, abbess. I came through Verity on my return and I took the time to listen at several important corners . . .”

  Glass knew that meant places no nun had any right to be. “And
. . .”

  “The Inquisition is coming to Sweet Mercy.”

  11

  NONA HOBBLED DOWN the rock-hewn steps to the Shade chamber. Parts of her that she did not remember being struck had stiffened and now protested at each movement. She took the last steps with both hands to the wall, teeth gritted, sweat sticking her undershirt to her flesh.

  All of Mystic Class looked towards the door when she entered, some stares narrow-eyed and accusatory, others wondering.

  “Nona, good of you to join us.” Sister Apple watched her without expression from the front of the class. She had a hat and scarf in her hands. “Your tardiness has volunteered you to spend your study period on third-day helping me with Red Class. We’re brewing retchweed.”

  Nona knew better than to argue. She hobbled across to sit by Darla. Retchweed distilled to a liquid that could rapidly induce vomiting and diarrhoea. The smell of the stuff sometimes had the same effect. It was always a messy lesson.

  “You look like you fell off the Rock.” Darla shuffled up.

  Nona looked around. Neither Elani nor Joeli were there. Crocey sat hunched over her notes, one eye black and swollen to a slit, a bruise covering most of the other side of her face.

  “Today we’re returning to the subject of disguise, Nona.” Sister Apple held the hat aloft, a shapeless thing of dark felt such as a market stallholder might wear. “Which is particularly appropriate as you’re up next for the Shade Trial.”

  Nona started to open her mouth in protest then clamped it shut. Each Mystic novice took the challenge every year; nobody graduating to Holy Class without a successful trial could entertain hopes of becoming a Sister of Discretion. Without a shadow Nona had no chance of that really, so it was good that she’d set her heart on the Red.

  “Disguise,” Sister Apple said, “is as much about changing your mind as about changing your appearance. I was taught by Sister Pepper. Yes, you’ve heard of her. Sister Pepper could, with nothing more than a simple grey tunic, or brown if you turned it inside out, pass convincingly at the gates of a dozen high houses and guild halls in Verity. I suspect she could have gained admittance to half of them wearing a sack. Sister Pepper knew in her heart of hearts that she belonged in each of those places. She knew who she was, why she was going, what to expect inside, and precisely how much attention to pay to those whose job it was to stop her. The body speaks its own language and Sister Pepper could use hers to say whatever she needed it to.”

  Nona stared at the hat, which was moving with Sister Apple’s hand as she made her points. Nona had never had a talent for acting or imitation. Ruli could sound like any of the mistresses. She zeroed in on their particular affectations and habits, exaggerating them to a degree that made novices laugh hard enough to wet themselves. It was like an ear for music. Nona lacked the talent.

  “We will speak of fuller disguises in later classes. Learning how to maintain an outfit or uniform and how to wear it is as important as getting the colour and number of buttons correct in the first place. However, even if you disguise yourself with a sufficiency of paint to resemble a section of wall, down to the smallest detail . . . a nervous wall that thinks it does not belong will be discovered, and stabbed, whereas a confident wall that knows her place and duty, that thinks wall thoughts and loves her bricks, will be fine. Trust me on this.”

  Sister Apple began to demonstrate a variety of gaits, from shuffling to bold. “As a Sister of Discretion, novices, a limp can save your life. People, as a whole, see very little and remember less. Imagine you limp your way through a market and stray close to a certain high official out in his furs and chain of office, his guards close at hand. Say that magistrate pats his inner pocket for the ninth time, checking on the important papers he is to bring before some still higher authority. And they’re gone! Suddenly he remembers the woman who stumbled against him—the momentary brush of contact. “Stop her!” he yells. Stop who? He struggles for detail. And all he can remember, all any of them can remember with surety is . . . ‘She had a limp!’ And of course now you don’t. You’re strolling away bolder than brass, head up. And not directly away but at a tangent that says you haven’t a care in the world.”

  Nona’s thoughts wandered away rather like the hypothetical novice in the market and led her to Thaybur Square. On at least a quarter of seven-days the Shade Trial kept the novices of Mystic Class from the chaperoned distractions of Verity’s markets or family visits, hemming them instead into the broadness of Thaybur Square. By all accounts it wasn’t too harsh an imposition. The square was popular with the merchant classes and many a well-dressed couple would promenade there, browsing the small number of licensed stalls and exchanging pleasantries. Older folk with good coin would play dominos or chess on hired boards at tables around the perimeter.

  Nona’s goal would be to reach the spreading pine at the centre of the square without being challenged by the novices on patrol. Reaching the pine would be nigh impossible. If she made it everyone on guard wouldn’t get to eat for two days. But the novices couldn’t afford to just challenge anyone who approached. An incorrect challenge lost everyone on guard a meal. Reaching the tree would be enough to continue being considered as a candidate for the Grey. For top marks though you had to not only reach the tree unchallenged but recover the puzzle-box hidden high in its branches. If you did that the guards missed meals for three days. The full task was to open the box as well, but you would have to be invisible to sit in the tree fiddling with the box long enough to open it and still not be challenged so Nona was not surprised to hear that none of the Poisoner’s graduates had managed it.

  “Zole can be first.” Sister Apple’s voice cut through Nona’s imaginings.

  Zole got to her feet, scowling, as the Poisoner beckoned her to the front.

  Sister Apple offered her a smile in return. “Now, Zole, tell me how much you love to dance.” She raised a hand to forestall the objection. “And while you sell me the lie, also convince me, without using words, that you’re a native of Verity born to a merchant family of moderate wealth.” In that moment the nun’s accent so mirrored that of Zole and Yisht that Nona could believe her born on the ice and raised for thirty years without sight of green.

  “I live to dance.” Zole spoke through gritted teeth, tightening each word into something that sounded more like a Durnish sailor in pain than any subject of the emperor, let alone one of Verity’s moneyed class. “Dancing is my . . . pleasure.”

  “Hmmm.” Sister Apple nodded. “And do you favour the chattra or the mouse-step?”

  Darla elbowed Nona while the ice-triber ground out her replies as though they were death-threats. “Even Zole stands a better chance than you in the Shade Trial.” She pointed to her eyes with index and forefinger. “Joeli is going to organize a defence around that tree that a Noi-Guin couldn’t get through, and with those peepers of yours two street kids would be enough to spot you before you got within ten yards.”

  “Pay attention, Nona, you’re next.” Sister Apple snapped her fingers. “And Zole—that was terrible. You may never have an ear for accents but you can at least learn to lie more convincingly. Next class you will convince me of your love for dancing or I will convince you that your defences against poisoning are still inadequate. Here’s my tip. In your mind substitute something that you love for the thing you hate. Clearly you’re not a devotee of music and self-expression, so when you come to me again be thinking of something else every time you say the word ‘dance.’ You like punching people. When you’re telling me how you connect to the music and let it speak through you tell me instead about blade-fist: map that love onto the words coming from your mouth. This is how honest people lie.”

  Zole pursed her lips, gave a short nod, and returned to her seat.

  “Nona, you’re from the House Namsis and you’re disgusted that you have to have the peasants on your land resettled if you want to site a hunting lodge on their village. Make me believe your outrage. Go.”

  The door to the S
hade cavern opened. The mouths of a number of novices did too. You knocked at the Poisoner’s door, and then you waited, you did not just push on through.

  The man who walked in had to stoop to avoid cracking his head against the doorframe. He wore white robes.

  “Inquisitor.” Whispered among the class.

  “Well, girls.” Sister Apple pointed Nona back towards her desk. “We are honoured to have an unexpected visit from a Brother of Inquiry today.” She turned and raised her head to face the man. “How may we help you, brother?”

  “I am Pelter from Verity’s Hall of Questions. I am simply here to observe.”

  “Alata, get Brother Pelter a chair.” Sister Apple indicated a spot by the door.

  “I prefer to stand.” Pockmarks from some childhood illness marked one side of the man’s narrow face. He was perhaps fifty. The scrawny length of his neck, the prominence of his throat, and his greying hair, tufting up like the wool of a badly shorn sheep, would have made him comical if not for the brittle blueness of his eyes. Nona felt they were the eyes of a man who had witnessed horrors, and approved. She sat, grateful to join the others.

  “Well.” Sister Apple frowned and brought her hands together. “Let us return to the art of disguise . . .”

  The tall inquisitor set a long-fingered hand to his throat. “I believe you were discussing the business of lying.” He pointed to Nona. “Perhaps the girl could convince me that she is a Sis. A daughter of Elon Namsis. And that she wishes to clear peasants from her lands.”

  Sister Apple motioned Nona to her feet.

  Pelter’s gaze travelled the length of her, a sharp inspection that made Nona’s skin crawl. Beneath her habit Keot circled away to the small of her back. The inquisitor’s gaze met hers and she felt something new, a rustling of old memories, the focus moon through the starkness of bare branches, the Corridor wind through the wooden bars of a cage. Thread-work! Nona bit down hard, imagining the fist of her will closing around every thread that anchored her to the world and holding them fast. Her glance fell to the man’s hands, down at his sides now. There was little to betray him, just the slightest twitch of his fingers, but she knew it then. A quantal thread-worker running the dirty fingers of his mind through her thoughts. She raised the blackness of her eyes to him and saw a moment’s hesitation in his own. The inquisitor’s lip curled and the tugging on her threads grew stronger, but she held them. Denied, Brother Pelter narrowed his gaze, the blue of his eyes turning to ice like that advancing from north and south to swallow the world. His smile held only winter.