Grey Sister

“What? No! Of course not.”

Nona was through the door before Mickel started after her.

“Wait! That’s forbidden!”

A corridor ran for twenty yards, three doors to the left, two to the right, and one at the far end. Nona glanced around, took the lantern from the wall, then ran for the second door on the left, which was heavier than the rest and bound with iron straps.

“She’s not in there! Don’t be stupid!” Mickel came flapping through the church door after her. He sounded as though he were hiding something.

Nona reached for her serenity so that she could pull the lock’s thread but waves of emotion pushed her back, a turbulence she couldn’t still. With the preacher closing on her she punched a flaw-blade into the heavy lock, once, twice, three times, then turned it. The ruined mechanism surrendered with a squeal and, shrugging off Mickel’s grasping fingers, she pushed through.

The room beyond was a small one, windowless, with a broad shelf set at waist height running around three walls. An image of the Hope returned the lantern light, sparkling in a thousand pieces of glass, mirror, and crystal. Scores of objects covered the shelf, arranged with reverence rather than scattered.

“I thought—” Nona let the preacher wrestle her back into the corridor. Her mother was dead. Her denial had been stupid. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Mickel shoved her back against the wall. “You’ve defiled the Hope’s sanctum! And broken my door . . .”

Images of Nona’s mother filled her mind. The hurt was worse than a wire-whip. She needed something, anything, to drive the memories out. Questions might help. “What is all that stuff?” Nona tried to see past the preacher’s shoulder.

Pieces of the old world. Keot broke his silence.

“Treasures.” The preacher tried to push her down the corridor towards the rear exit.

“I saw black-skin . . .” Red Sisters made their armour from black-skin, the oily sheen of the stuff was unmistakable. Even the scrap among Mickel’s treasures would be worth more than the building. “And . . .” Nona didn’t have names for the rest of the things but some of them had the same grey glinting quality of old Gallabeth’s precious whetstone. “Ark-bone.”

The preacher had her by the hood of her range-coat, pulling her to the back door. He lifted the bar and kicked it open. “They are parts of the ships that carried our tribes here across the black sea between the stars, and parts of the works they built here. When the Hope comes he will make them whole again just as he will bind flesh to bone and raise the dead from their graves to live once more.”

He pushed Nona out into the blustery night. She put her foot against the door as he tried to haul it closed.

“Where does it come from?”

“It’s the gift of the Hope.” Mickel tugged the door again. Nona held it open. One more tug and Mickel relented, hanging his head. “The Sis build their homes over the best of what remains in the Corridor. The emperors themselves built their palace above the Ark and bind the Academy to them with its power. We pay explorers to hunt beneath the ice.”

“My father—”

“Your father sold my predecessor much of what we keep here.”

Nona blinked and in her moment of surprise the preacher pulled the door free and slammed it between them.

Nona turned slowly from the doorway. The wind came laced with a cold rain. A graveyard lay before her, scores of headstones black in the moonless night. Her mother was dead. Her bones buried, waiting for the Hope. They would never speak again. Nona would never ask whether her mother truly sent her child away to save her from Sherzal’s revenge. She felt nothing, only an emptiness that reached up from her chest to constrict her throat. She stumbled between the headstones, dazed, trembling with a hurt that had no centre to it.

Where are we going? You said you’d kill someone. That was the deal when I helped you win your game with the tree and the box.

Nona straightened. The headstones were thinning out now, the ground overgrown with bramble. A few buildings lay ahead, lights at their windows, more behind them, their number building rapidly towards the town. The hurt and loss that had taken her breath contracted into a tight ball of rage. “I am going to kill someone.” She spoke it to the night and to the dead. “Perhaps a lot of people.”

Yisht? Is she first? How will you find her?

“I’m going to Sherzal’s palace and when I leave the emperor will only have one sister living.”

Something punched Nona in the shoulder. She turned and stared back into the darkness of the graveyard, trying to find her opponent. Her fingers discovered something like a narrow stick standing proud from her coat and she yanked it clear. A black shaft similar to Giljohn’s, but thinner. Another hit her just below the collarbone. Too late Nona dived for cover behind the nearest headstone. She could feel a stiffness in her muscles already, lock-up, the same toxin that Clera had jabbed her with on the day they parted company.

Did you see them? Keot asked.

No. The attacker had to be close: the darts couldn’t be fired more than thirty yards with any accuracy, but Nona hadn’t seen anything save blackness and hints of the graveyard. I can’t stay here. I need to kill them while I can still move. Was it the preacher? Or had Giljohn followed her for a second bite at the hundred sovereigns? If she were properly prepared she would have a dozen antidotes in her habit, but she had fled the convent empty-handed. Help me see!

Keot needed no encouragement. He poured into her eyes and when the burning sensation dulled enough for her to unscrew them Nona saw a world on fire. She gathered herself, ready to spring. Belatedly she pulled out the second dart and stared at the yellow line of it for a moment, trying to focus her thoughts. They refused to order themselves.

Something . . . different . . . on this one . . . groton? Was it really Giljohn again, after she had spared him?

With an oath Nona flung herself from cover, the graveyard revealing itself in shades of orange. She could see no attacker, only a clot of darkness beside one of the larger tombs sporting a winged Hope.

Darkness? Keot saw through darkness . . .

A third dart came hissing towards her out of that impenetrable inkiness. This one at least she could see. She reached for it with the remnants of her quickness, muscles screaming in protest. Darla had once described her father coming home drunk from a military banquet. Nona felt as if she were re-enacting Darla’s mimicry of her father’s uncoordinated stagger. The dart slipped past her grasping fingers and sunk into her flesh just above her left hipbone.

“Oh.” And she pitched forward into her own midnight.

25

ABBESS GLASS

WITH SISTER KETTLE gone from the convent Abbess Glass had to rely more heavily on Mistress Shade’s network of Grey novices for information on the inquisitors’ activities. Apple used her most trusted and promising candidates for the Grey to observe Brother Pelter and his watchers. However well trained the inquisitors might be nobody knew the convent better than the novices who grew up there, and it was easy enough to keep an open ear in most corners.

“Here comes trouble.” Glass watched Sister Spire cross the square, habit flapping around her legs, her walk close enough to a run that it might be called either. The abbess’s window comprised a dozen panes of puddle-glass, their unevenness lending a flowing quality to the nun’s approach. Sister Spire vanished around the corner of the building and Glass went to her desk to wait.