‘Enough, novice.’ The woman stood, apparently calm but with her chest heaving.

Nona repressed a snarl and let her head fall back against the sand.

‘Sister Tallow taught me to fight,’ Sister Iron said. ‘She did not teach me to fight like that.’ She stepped back, allowing Nona to sit.

Sister Tallow stepped forward, offering Nona her hand then pulling her to her feet. ‘You seemed to be in pain while fighting, novice. Did you sustain some injury sparring with Arabella?’

‘No, Mistress Blade. Just an old injury returned to haunt me.’ Nona sealed her lips. Joeli’s reinstatement was a matter of palace politics. Even if the abbess could be convinced of her guilt a Namsis would not be punished or sent from the convent. Not with the Scithrowl in the east advancing mile after mile and the Durns raiding from captured ports on the shores of the Marn.

Sister Iron studied Nona with evident displeasure. ‘The question is whether the Ancestor would be properly represented by such a warrior. Where was your serenity? You fight like a wild animal. I cannot recommend you be given an ancient blade. Would it even be proper for you to wear the Red?’

Nona ground her teeth. Revealing Joeli’s tricks might change the judgment but she wanted nothing of the Namsis girl in her trial. Others would say Joeli’s actions earned her the Red then stand between her and her revenge.

‘She is to be denied the Red then. Sister Iron has said so!’ Wheel called down from the stands, her cracked voice reverberating with long-sought triumph.

‘When we leave this hall Sister Iron will be Mistress Blade.’ Sister Tallow raised her voice, a thing Nona had heard on maybe three occasions in the half of her life spent at Sweet Mercy. ‘But she is not yet.’ Tallow set her hand on Nona’s shoulder. She had to reach upwards. Once she had seemed so tall. She had no recollection of the woman touching anyone except to adjust a fighting stance or deliver a stinging reprimand. The hand remained on her shoulder. ‘Nona has passed the Blade-test. If she accepts ordination and takes on her new name then when I take up the devotions of a Holy Sister she shall have my sword.’ Tallow turned towards Iron, her voice low now, conciliatory. ‘Many of the lessons I tried to teach this girl have not stuck. But the important ones have. And when the ice presses we need sisters in the Red who can win, however ugly that victory may be.’

What followed passed in a blur. The bows given to, and reciprocated by, the sister superiors, the required formal embrace with the abbess, the long march from the hall. Before she knew it Nona found herself hurrying from the building, the Blade-test behind her. With her arms raised against the sharp burden of ice carried on the wind she set off to find her friends.

Nona came dripping and shivering to the well-head. It lay in a seldom-used back chamber to the rear of the laundry wing, a structure that formed one arm of the novice cloister. She defocused her sight to check for any traps Joeli might have placed. She didn’t think the girl knew of the oubliette beneath the centre oak, but then again there were clues if one paid attention, and in past weeks she had seen Joeli gazing at the laundry wing, her brow furrowed.

Nona went down the rope hand over hand, not using her legs. The Blade-test had left her muscles tired and aching but not so weak she couldn’t climb a rope. At the bottom she swung, released her hold, and landed on the rocky edge of the subterranean pool. Jula, Ruli, Ara, and Ketti waited to one side of the chamber, hunched around a single candle. Glimmers of their light picked out the descending, stone-clad forest of the centre oak’s roots.

‘Nona! Sister Tallow didn’t cut your head off!’ Ruli jumped to her feet as Nona approached.

‘It was Sister Iron, our new Mistress Blade.’ Nona wasn’t supposed to speak about the test but she felt she could share this much.

‘New what?’

‘But Sister Tallow—’

‘Did you pass?’ Ara cut across the others.

‘Yes, I passed.’ Nona raised a hand to forestall Ara’s next question. ‘And I got a sword.’

‘We’re not to call you Nona Pink then?’ Jula grinned.

‘No.’ Nona sat down with Ruli. ‘If they let me take my orders I’ll be a proper Red.’

‘So how did—’

‘We’re not here to talk about my blade-test,’ Nona said. ‘We’re here to talk about Jula’s book.’

‘Hey, it’s not my book,’ Jula protested.

‘A pity. If it was your book we wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble to steal it.’ Ketti frowned, then brightened as if finding new resolve.

‘We’ve been talking through it again, Nona. We’re agreed. We need two things to pull this off, and we’re going to have to steal both of them, and I’ve no idea how.’ Ara held up two fingers to count them off.

‘We have to steal before we can steal,’ Ruli interrupted, showing no sign of remorse at the proposed criminality. ‘And we’re meeting underground with one candle. It’s like we’re Noi-Guin!’

Ara scowled at Ruli’s enthusiasm. ‘One, we need The Book of Lost Cities from Sister Pan’s secret stash. That’s got to be in the Third Room. Unless we have a forbidden book to take back we’re not going to have a reason to be anywhere near the high priest’s vault.’ She pulled her second finger back. ‘Two, we need the abbess’s seal of office. Without her seal on our message they’ll never let us in.’

Nona raised one of her fingers. ‘We also need the eye drops the Poisoner was working on.’

Jula looked shocked. ‘She stashed those away for good reason, Nona. They’re dangerous. She said you could go blind using them.’

‘They’re the only way I’ll get in there unrecognized,’ Nona said.

‘Plus they make you look good,’ Ketti added.

‘It doesn’t have to be you, Nona,’ Ara said. ‘Any of us could do it.’

‘It has to be me. And it doesn’t matter about looking good, Ketti.’ Nona shot her a narrow glance. Though it was true that she had loved those few days when her eyes had looked like any other person’s. Regol had said he liked her the way she was normally. Unique. But whatever he said he had spent a long time looking into her newly cleared eyes and part of her wanted that again. ‘Four!’ Nona said before Ara and Jula could object. ‘We need a brilliant marjal empath or this just won’t work.’

‘So, four impossible things then.’ Ara swirled darkness around the candle flame, making shadow birds take flight.

‘No.’ Nona shook her head. ‘Just two. Like you said.’

‘But—’

‘I found us an empath at the fight rings last night. The strongest I’ve ever met.’ Four mouths opened. Nona spoke first. ‘And I have this.’ She drew from her habit a disc of amber, carved in deep relief on one side, its edge guarded by a hoop of gold, the whole thing making slow revolutions on its golden chain.

‘The abbess’s seal …’ Jula stared at it, wide-eyed. ‘How …?’

‘I stole it from her when she embraced me after the blade-test.’

6

Holy Class

Present Day