Grey Sister

When at last Thuran Tacsis lifted the device from her spasming stomach the pain lifted, leaving only nausea and tingling. Nona lay there gasping. The limbs she thought broken looked untouched. The eyes through which she looked were unharmed. Where the Harm had touched her she had expected a charred circle of raw flesh, but the skin there showed just faint impressions of the sigils that had been pressed against it.

“You see?” Lord Tacsis replaced the leather cover and returned the disk to his pocket. “No marks. As if it never happened. Cutting off a nose may not hurt quite as much, but there’s a horror to it. Don’t you think?” He smiled and let the Noi-Guin help him to his feet. “I’ll be back soon, novice. I’ve paid more gold than you can possibly imagine for this and I intend to get my money’s worth.”

Lano paused, dark eyes still on her. “It’s a nice toy Father has, but now it’s back in his pocket you’re not in pain any more, are you?” He held up his right hand, the middle two fingers crooked over as if he couldn’t straighten them. “You did this to me.”

Nona remembered. Lano had shed his disguise and attacked her on the abbess’s steps, in front of the judge his father owned. She wished she’d done more than slice his hand. She wished she’d cut his head from his shoulders. She wanted to say it, to spit defiance at him. But pinned on the floor at his feet, her body still spasming with the aftershocks of the agony that had run through the marrow of her, she lacked the courage. And she hated herself for it.

A heartbeat later, with full-blood hunska swiftness, Lano was leaning over her, his face close to hers, the point of a thin blade inserted into her left nostril. She felt his breath on her lips. “Before you die I’ll take your fingers, one by one, and then your eyes.” He stood and at the last moment pulled his knife up through her nose. The sudden burning pain made her cry out. Hot blood spilled across her face, the taste of it filling her mouth.

“Back soon!” A grin and Lano hastened after his father.

 

* * *

• • •



NONA LAY HELPLESS and shaking for a long time after the last of the Lightless left her cell. She hunched around herself, soiled and weak, and made no move until at last Keot’s voice sounded in her skull.

You have to admire their cruelty.

They’re sick. Evil.

Those are just words. Thuran’s desire is a pure thing. Just because it is at odds with your own does not make it lesser.

He’s a monster. So is Lano. Nona rolled, surprised to find no lingering pain save the burn of her cut nostril. She levered herself to her hands and knees. Why didn’t you pass into him if you admire him so much?

We’re bound until death, Nona. But when the old one kills you . . .

The two of you deserve each other. Nona spat and started to follow her chain hand over hand to the wall.

So pious! You can’t claim to be much different. You have felt that same desire to hurt, motivated by revenge. I found a home in you because of it, because of how you killed Raymel Tacsis.

Nona paused before replying. It was true that part of her had rejoiced in taking Raymel’s life. There had been an unholy joy in plunging the knife into him over and over. She had told herself it was for Hessa. But in the moment it had been an end in and of itself. People are complicated. We’re all made of parts we like and parts we don’t. She tugged absently at her chain. Zole said you were a part of the Missing. All of you devils. Parts they didn’t want any more.

It was Keot’s turn to fall silent. He went so quiet while Nona returned to working at the chain pin that she wondered if he might have left entirely.

An hour later she abandoned the chain to let her muscles recover their speed. Her mind returned to the agony Thuran Tacsis had inflicted and to the threat of his return. The wound on her nose still throbbed and ached. So much hurt for so little a thing. She tried to distract herself.

What’s Kettle up to? Nona couldn’t understand how the nun could be inside the Tetragode and have the thread-bond between them remain so quiet. Kettle must have joined her when the Tacsis lord had used the Harm on her. Nona hoped Kettle hadn’t felt the full horror of it. The idea that Kettle might suffer the tortures that Thuran Tacsis had planned for her filled Nona with despair. She hadn’t thought you could add anything to being tortured that would make it worse, but forcing Kettle to watch and to share the pain . . . that was worse.

Finding her thoughts had once again returned to what awaited her, Nona forced them onto a new path. Clearly Kettle’s plan to lie low was working. She only hoped Zole was hidden just as successfully.

Maybe the nun has run away. The girl from the ice too. Keot had tired of Nona’s efforts against the wall pin, seeming to have abandoned hope and resigned himself to Nona’s destruction. His ambitions now lay in the chance that she could at least maim one of the Lightless before they secured her for the Tacsis lord’s next visit. If she were honest, Nona’s own plans didn’t extend much beyond that either. For Nona, though, what followed would end in pain and death. Keot had hopes that Thuran Tacsis would be his new home once the man finally put an end to Nona.

Unable to keep her mind from the Tacsis lord and his plans, Nona returned to her work. Coil, twist, coil, twist. One effort became the next, each consuming precious time, devouring the gap before Thuran Tacsis returned from his party. In a pause in which she gathered her strength Nona tried to imagine what social event could have drawn the Sis into the barren mountains she’d seen through Kettle’s eyes. Her imagination failed her and she returned to her labour. Coil, twist, coil, twist. She stopped to examine the pin.

It’s moved! It turned!

She tried to twist the pin by hand, and found no give in it.

Really? Keot sounded unconvinced.

Nona tried again, coiling the chain and twisting. She returned to the pin once more. It’s moved again. I can feel powdered stone on it.

She tried again, first to the left, then the right before gripping the pin in her fist. I can almost turn it . . .

Again to the left. She knelt and seized the chain close to the pin. She yanked it to the right and it shifted minutely, grating against the rock. She repeated the effort, right, left, right, tugging from one side then the other, and suddenly the pin came free, dangling from the end of the chain in her hand. Impossible. A miracle.

Nona stood, panting. She held the chain taut against her hip, the length of it running up from her ankle.

What now? Keot asked.

It was a good question and one for which Nona had no answer.

A key rattled in the lock.

Another trick. Keot howled. Like the knife. They were watching. Waiting.

The cell door began to open. And suddenly Nona had her answer to “what now?”

Now I kill as many of them as I can before they get me.

34

NONA SWUNG HER leg, flailing the chain, getting the feel of it. In the convent the novices’ game of Step involved a rope looped around an ankle with a block of wood at the far end. The game was to spin it around one ankle while stepping over the rope with the other leg each time it came round. Naturally the novices most keen on earning the Red also made a fight of it.

The first Lightless through the door had a club raised above his head, a two-foot staff that Nona would struggle to close her hand around. She lashed out with her foot and the chain followed, snapping out to its full length. The last two links hit the Lightless between the eyes, breaking his forehead. He collapsed to his knees and toppled to the floor, facefirst.