Grey Sister

“Novice, nice of you to join us.” Sister Tallow looked around as Nona creaked the doors open, icy-gusts lifting her habit around her. The rest of the class were paired on the sands, swords at the ready. “Novice Joeli can shave your head after the bell. I feel she should get to wield a blade this lesson.” She nodded to where Joeli sat on the sidelines, her cane to one side, golden hair boiling around her shoulders, brushed to a high shine.

Nona gritted her teeth and ran for the stores to get a weapon.

The rest of the lesson passed in a flickering blur of swordplay, Alata gratefully surrendering her place opposite Zole to Nona. The pair of them fought with dedication, Zole precise, relentless and without mercy just as usual, Nona finding her instinctive fear of sharpened steel pushed out by anger at the humiliation waiting for her under Joeli’s hands. With the prospect of the Namsis girl holding a cut-throat razor inches from her face, Nona found Zole armed with a sword a less intimidating prospect.

“Good.” Sister Tallow’s voice inserted itself into a gap in their sparring.

Zole and Nona paused, both panting. Mistress Blade used the g-word so rarely that the moment required witnessing. Nona realized she was dripping with sweat and saw that Zole’s blade-habit was stained red around the site of her last thrust, the blunted point of her blade having penetrated deep enough to make the ice-triber bleed. Looking down, Nona saw she sported two similar injuries.

“Hah!” Zole launched another attack.

Nona dived into the space between heartbeats, deep as she had ever been. Even so the fight seemed blindingly fast, swords clashing, parrying, twisting, the sharp adjustment of feet, the stuttering advances and retreats. Their blades met perhaps twenty times before Zole dropped into an unexpected leg-swipe. Nona jumped it, almost. They crashed together, snarling, blades crossed between them, both pressing close. And leapt apart, feet bracing to rush in once again, sand piling up behind them.

“Break!” Sister Tallow called.

All around them the other novices watched amazed. Apart from the dropping of jaws none of them had had time to move.

“Good,” Tallow repeated. “Changing rooms.”

“There.” Zole heaved in a breath. “Was that a bell?”

Nona hadn’t heard it either. She grinned. An echo of it showed on Zole’s lips. The ice-triber pushed back sweaty hair and turned for the changing room.

“Nona.” Sister Tallow pointed to the chair that Joeli had vacated. “When you’ve finished here, Nona, have Sister Rose look at those injuries.” The nun walked across to Joeli, now standing beside the chair, and handed her the razor. “If you cut her, Joeli, you’ll be her sparring partner next lesson.”

Sister Tallow relieved Nona of her training sword and went to stow it away. Nona took her place in the chair without a word, staring straight ahead.

“A close shave will make it easier to wear a wig for the Shade Trial.” Joeli held the back of Nona’s head, lifting the razor to Nona’s brow, the steel cold on her skin. “You might get past us as a blonde . . .” The razor scraped and a chunk of black hair fell into Nona’s lap.

Slice her throat. Say she tried to kill you. Keot flowed along the veins and tendons in Nona’s wrist.

No. For a moment the idea tempted her. Keot’s violence bleeding through. At least Nona hoped it was just that.

Yes! Keot moved across her down-turned palm, a scarlet scald. He twitched in her fingers, trying to take control.

No. Nona forced him back.

Joeli worked quickly with a sure hand, and although Nona kept her teeth gritted, her body tensed to spring into action, it was only hair that came down rather than blood.

With a surprisingly gentle touch, Joeli tilted Nona’s head forward to scrape away the last of the hair from the base of her neck. Nona’s head felt cold and strange.

“Of course you’ve no more chance of passing the trial than you do of taking the Grey.” Another scrape of the blade. “Any more than you stand a chance of catching Yisht. It’s been what, almost three years now? Your little peasant friend will just have to go as unrevenged as she was unmourned.”

Nona snarled and thrust her head back, intending to get herself cut if that was the price of a sparring session with Joeli. But the razor was no longer there.

“I don’t have to be fast if you’re going to be predictable, now do I?” Joeli stepped away, laughing that same tinkling laugh that Ara and Terra had shared in the Mensis mansion, something as artificial to Nona’s ear as it was ugly.

16

“YOU WANT ME to throw you into the sinkhole?”

“Yes.” Nona followed in Darla’s wake, out across the fractured stone towards the yawning mouth of the Glasswater.

“In an ice-wind!”

“Yes.”

“You’ll freeze to death.”

Darla had a point: the wind howled around them. Nona’s head was already starting to feel like a solid block of ice.

“It’s a risk I’m prepared to take. At least I won’t have to dry my hair.”

Darla barked a laugh at that and ran a hand over Nona’s baldness.

“Why do you want me to throw you in?” Darla peered over the edge at the dark waters forty feet below.

“Because you’re the strongest.” Nona looked up at her friend. At fifteen Darla stood a good six-foot nine inches, broad in the chest, her arms thicker than Nona’s thighs.

Darla sighed. “Let’s get this over with.” She reached for Nona.

“Not from here!” Nona skipped away from Darla’s hand. “Over there!” Pointing, she ran to her chosen spot ten yards back into the wind.

Darla walked after her. “I know you’re a shrimp, but I’m not sure I can throw you that far, even wind-assisted.”

“I’m going to help you,” Nona said. “Put your hands like this, down low.” She cupped her hands together. “I’ll run at you, step in your hands, and you boost me over your head.”

Darla spread her arms, palms out. “That’s insane!”

“You said you’d help me out!” Nona hugged herself against the wind’s cold.

“But . . .” Darla shook her head and spat out a piece of ice. “What’s this for?”

“Can’t tell you. Conflict of interest. I’m protecting you.”

Darla pursed her lips, frowning. “Do we have to do it this far back? What if you fall short?”

“If I fall short then I’ll probably hurt myself.”

“Can’t we start closer?” Darla looked over her shoulder, judging the distance.

“We are starting closer. Next time we’ll add five yards. And there’s only so many times I want to jump in today.” Zero was the true number.

“Ancestor!” Darla spat again. “You’re crazy. You know that?”

Nona grinned. “Ready?”

“No.” Darla knelt and put her hands into a stirrup, ready for Nona’s lead foot.

Nona started to back off.

Darla called after her. “Let’s at least practise the last few steps!”

And so they did. Nona took the last five steps of her run in, set her foot into Darla’s hands and Darla launched Nona over her head. Nona landed two yards behind her, the force of the impact concertinaing her into a tight hunch about folded legs. They repeated the move four times.