Without the unrelenting grapple-tossing on their caving expedition Nona would have lost heart, believing that if you didn’t manage to snag something on the tenth attempt you weren’t ever going to do it. It took an age before the loop encompassed the box and didn’t slip away when she pulled.

Go on!

If it slides out and falls it’s all over.

Do it!

Before she could raise the string Nona felt a familiar tickle at the back of her nose. No! She screwed her eyes tight, bit down hard, concentrated the formidable power of her will so hard on not sneezing that her face hurt with the twisting of it. Still the tickle grew. No! Damnation! Keot! Do something!

What will you give me? He burned along the veins of her neck, stretching out across her cheek.

Anything, just stop the sneeze!

Anything? You’ll kill for me?

What? No!

Keot retreated. The sneeze rose, unstoppable, coming to summon a barrage of challenges.

All right! I’ll kill. But I choose who!

Keot hesitated then burned into her nose and down her throat. It hurt, but when he surfaced the sneeze had gone.

You should kill the one called Jula.

Yisht. I’ll kill Yisht.

Keot made no reply but she could feel his disapproval. Even so as he retreated across her shoulders the devil felt more deeply bedded in her flesh, and it wasn’t a good feeling.

Nona pursed her lips then returned her attention to the box, still lassoed despite how much her hand had trembled when she fought the sneeze. She pulled gently, then with more force. The box shifted, twisted, lifted. “Yes!”

As it rose the box began to spin, the kind of motion that would draw the eye. Ara had been waiting for this moment, Ruli too. Ruli, lounging inside the cloister, stood and ran across the main entrance. Ara, waiting outside, charged in once more, head covered.

“Just stop her!” Joeli yelled. They weren’t supposed to lay a finger on anyone, only to challenge. The person on trial had to stop when challenged. They would all lose another meal over it, probably, to be added to the two hungry days they had yet to find out about, earned when Nona reached the tree.

Nona lifted the box. “Three more days, not two, Joeli.” And began to lower the substitute.

By the time the novices had wrested Ara’s headscarf from her in a struggle that put several of them on the ground, Nona had lowered the fake box into place and slipped the doubled string free of the hook. It looked deeply unconvincing to her and she turned her attention to the real item, certain that she would have only moments before a challenge rang out, aimed at the tree.

“Keep hold of her!” Jolie was presumably tired of catching the same imposters over again. “And the other one—Rula is she?”

The box was surprisingly heavy. It didn’t rattle, and didn’t even seem to have hinges. Each of the six faces bore three locks. Nona clambered to a more secure position where she could sit with both hands free, secured by her legs. She called on her clarity and defocused her vision to bring her thread-sight to the fore. A billion green threads laced the tree itself, every branch and twig joined to every other, every leaf, every part of every leaf, interlocked in a web of life, joined with slow, sure, vegetable certainty.

Nona focused on the first lock, a keyhole set into a disk of black iron not that dissimilar to Ruli’s charred washers. “Locks I can do.” Novices were introduced to locks in Shade during their Mystic Class years, though younger novices often acquired sets of picks and practised around the convent. Nona had never had the money for picks or the inclination to spend time on the fiddly business, but she knew a few thread tricks.

The first lock surrendered quickly. Finding its thread took a little hunting and a lot of concentration but once pulled the satisfying click followed immediately. The second lock proved a nightmare. It had two threads, connected in some complex way Nona couldn’t fathom. Pulling one unlocked something, pulling the other unlocked a different thing and locked the first thing . . . Eventually she managed to pull both together in a way that sounded as if it did the job.

“Only sixteen left to go.” Nona looked out into the leaves seething around her. Down below the cloister sounded almost deserted. How long did she have before Bray rang out for Shade class? She could only work on the box between breakfast and dinner, and outside class time. The prospect of another blind leap into the tree did not appeal, even if the distractions could be made to work again.

You’ll have to leave the tree for class. They’ll spot you then anyway.

Nona said nothing, only curled her lip, but the devil had it right. She hadn’t imagined she would get so far and her plans had extended no further than securing and replacing the box.

Nona turned the box in her hands, seeking a lock that looked easier than the rest. Across the rooftops Bray sounded, calling out from the Academia Tower. “Blood!”

Nona started to climb down. If the guards left the cloister before she did then the contest was over. More than over, her achievements so far might no longer count. She paused for a moment low among the branches, struggling with the box one last time. In the next moment rather than be caught trying to creep out, she stuffed the box into her habit and dropped from the tree, landing in a crouch some yards from the trunk.

“Ancestor!” A handful of novices were still making their way out and the cordon of Mystic Class guards were beginning their retreat towards the exits. “It’s her!” The first girl to speak wasn’t even one of the guards.

“You got me.” Nona straightened and stepped towards the little novice. “Elsie, isn’t it? Red Class?”

“Challenge!” Joeli shrieked it, shoving Mally and Meesha aside as she stormed towards Nona.

“Too late.” Nona turned to face her. “I’ve finished.”

“Challenge!” Joeli looked ugly with her face twisted and red. She had both hands raised as if about to strike her enemy.

“Finished?” Sister Apple stepped out from behind the tree. Quite how she could have been there unseen Nona couldn’t fathom. True, her range-coat was bark-patterned, but you couldn’t hold a feather over your head and expect people to believe you were a hen.

“She’s lying!” Joeli shrugged off Elani who sought to calm her. “She’s a lying peasant bitch!” Her arm, raised in accusation, swung to point at the puzzle-box nestled in the fork of the tree. Nona peered up at it. From down below it did look quite convincing.

“That’s not the box,” Sister Apple said. “But to be finished you would have to have opened the real one, Nona. And that does sound unlikely.”

Mystic Class crowded round now, Darla and Zole joining them.

Nona drew the puzzle-box from her habit, holding it carefully. It sat across her cupped palms.

“Still locked!” Joeli spat.

“It’s a difficult box to open.” Sister Apple smiled. “It was a marvellous effort to retrieve it.”

Nona flattened her palms out a fraction and the puzzle-box fell into four sections along the lines that her flaw-blades had cut through it. The thing was a solid block of bone with no space inside.

“Is that open enough?”

17

THE LAST DAYS leading up to seven-day proved rather tense ones. No one in Mystic Class save Nona, Darla, and Zole got to eat. Mistress Shade totalled the failures of the Shade Trial guards at seven days without meals. The abbess decreed that seven-day be an exception, presumably concerned that an unbroken fast of such duration might do physical harm to some of the leanest novices. The class did not take their punishment with good humour.