Grey Sister

Two novices were leaving as they arrived, their hair steaming. Both offered wondering looks but said nothing. In the hot moistness of the changing room the warmth enfolded them, shot through with the shouts, splashes, and laughter of girls crowding the pool. Darla sat Nona on a bench and stripped her own habit with a few quick motions. Every inch of her lay thick with muscle, as if it wanted to burst free.

“Don’t drown.” And Darla walked off towards the water.

Nona sighed and began the slow process of disrobing. The fingers of her left hand were too clumsy for her ties, and she winced at every stretch or lift. At last she stepped from her smallclothes and limped after Darla into the mist, too tired to weave it around her.

10

ABBESS GLASS

“COME IN, SISTER.” Abbess Glass motioned Sister Kettle from the doorway and pointed to the chair before her desk.

The nun flashed a nervous smile and hurried across. Glass had never truly fathomed the girl. Even if she hadn’t summoned her she would have known it was Kettle at the door by the tentative knock, the hesitation. Was this the disguise she wore at convent, or the real girl? It was the Kettle she remembered from classes, a lithe girl, sharp-featured, with an impish smile, Novice Mai Tanner, middle daughter of a cobbler who plied his trade on the steps of Leather Street in Verity. Given over to the convent when her mother was taken. Mai had told the other novices it was the weeping sickness, but in truth a sailor had taken her mother: new love and new horizons. Abandonment of one’s sons and daughters was perhaps a sadder tale than the random cruelty of disease. Little wonder the child tied herself so tightly to the Ancestor in whom all bonds of blood are bound and drawn tight.

“Sit.”

Sister Kettle took her seat, hands folded in her lap, shoulders hunched although a fire burned in the hearth. Outside the convent Kettle’s deeds had earned her a reputation for deadly efficiency that few Sisters of Discretion could surpass. Inside she appeared the same friendly, awkward girl Glass had watched grow. Was one an act and the other truth, or were both masks she chose to wear? Glass’s instincts rarely failed her but here they gave her nothing.

“I’m sorry that this is the first chance for us to speak properly since your return from the ice,” Glass said. “The last few weeks have been busy. You’ve seen some of it yourself at the convent table, and in Verity . . .” She wondered how deeply Kettle had been affected by meeting Safira at the Mensis house. To Glass’s mind a knife was a very effective way to cut off any relationship but the bonds of affection Kettle formed were resilient ones and she had been very close to Safira for years. In that respect she shared much with Nona. Whilst the novice condemned the actions of her friend Clera Ghomal, actions that included personal treachery, she would still not condemn the girl herself. Loyalty of that degree seemed like a way to get yourself killed . . . but then what was the Ancestor’s creed if not about bonds? The importance of them and the strength that outlasted years and deeds.

“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?”