Grey Sister

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.”