Holy Sister

‘True …’ Ara nodded.

‘And secondly we know that it must be different for each person, otherwise Pan would just have trained the three of us together.’

Ara began to climb the stairs, Jula and Nona on her heels. They went up in silence, stopping just below the classroom.

‘Should we really be doing this?’ Jula asked for the tenth time that morning.

‘No,’ said Ara.

‘We’re not doing this. At least you aren’t, Jula. And it was your idea! Forget whether we should be doing it. Will the book get us into the high priest’s library? Will the library have Aquinas’s Book of the Moon? And will the moon save the empire?’ Nona watched the girl’s face, pale in the daylight that filtered down from the trapdoor to the classroom.

‘The moon’s the only hope,’ Jula said, her voice small.

Nona nodded. Jula had real faith in Aquinas and his book. Kettle had shown Nona the conflict’s horrors through their thread-bond. The empire was losing on both fronts. It would not be long before those horrors arrived at Verity’s walls, and if the emperor fell then the empire was lost, the Ark taken. Kettle had said the end would come in months rather than years. The Grey Sister scouted for the emperor’s armies both east and west. Adoma’s hordes seemed to be endlessly replaced, ready to spend their lives for the Battle-Queen, and she ready to spend them. Sherzal had all but filled the Grand Pass with Scithrowl corpses and still they had flooded over the Grampains.

The ferocity of Sherzal’s defence and the cleverness of her stepped retreat had been what forced the emperor to overlook reports of her planned treason. Sherzal had organized and directed the ongoing attacks in the mountains to continually disrupt Adoma’s supply lines. That and a scorched earth withdrawal had slowed Adoma’s advance from a charge that would have reached Verity in weeks to a crawl that had taken almost two years to get just over half way, but like with thin ice, a slow creaking could become a sudden plunge into freezing death, and the empire’s defence had started to fracture weeks ago. Emperor Crucical needed his sister.

The Durns to the west were a different breed, not fanatics these, and given to quarrelling among themselves, but blood-hungry and backed by the magics of their priests. They had crossed the Marn Sea in their barges, coming in force once news of the Scithrowl victories reached them. Their holy men came to war wielding sick-wood staves and wreaking havoc with both marjal fire-work and water-work. Nona had seen too many towns aflame, too many families strewn across the fields from which they tried to feed themselves.

The emperor kept the Red and the Grey close, and the Mystics as a last reserve, but soon he would unleash them all. Whether that would turn the tide of war, push the Scithrowl back beyond the mountains, drown the Durns in a red sea, Nona didn’t know. She only knew that in the land left behind such a conflict the dead would outnumber the living.

Sister Pan always led the way when she took novices to the sealed rooms. She had taken Nona and Ara to the first two rooms. The third they knew to exist only because the tower held space for it and because every novice knew that the Path-test required you to reach the Third Room unaided. Nona turned and walked down the spiral stair, squeezing past Ara and Jula. She defocused her vision as she always did when she followed Sister Pan to the sealed rooms. Normally that gaze would be fixed between the ancient’s shoulder blades. She focused her thoughts on the Third Room, the place where it should lie, the shape of it, the wall where a door would likely be set.

Nona was so deep in her search it was a shock to find someone on the stairs blocking her way as she followed the spiral down. ‘Abbess …’ The abbess rarely came to Path Tower.

‘Where’s Pan?’ the abbess snapped, eyeing the girl before her with evident distaste.

‘Mistress Path is in the scriptorium, Abbess.’ Nona met the hostility of the old woman’s stare.

‘Hmmph.’ The abbess turned away, evidently unable to find fault with Nona’s reply, her bad temper further inflamed by this failure. She glanced over her shoulder, new suspicion in her pale eyes. ‘What are you doing here, girl? Stealing?’

‘No, abbess.’ Nona had stolen from the abbess that morning, and she would be stealing from Path Tower this afternoon with any luck. But right now she wasn’t stealing.

‘Praying, in the dome, that’s where you should be.’ Shaking her head, the abbess stamped off back down the stairs, thumping her crozier on every step.

Ara came into view behind Nona, smoothing her palms over the stonework. ‘Was that Abbess Wheel?’

‘Yes.’ Nona returned to her own search.

‘Ancestor’s blood!’ From behind Ara. As close as Jula got to an oath. ‘We really shouldn’t be doing this.’

Nona searched more quickly than her friends, leaving them behind her. About halfway down her vision shook for a moment. After that, nothing. Not even a tingle. She returned to the spot and studied it with thread-sight. Nothing. She visualized the Path and tried to see past it into the wall. Nothing. She placed both hands upon the stone and exerted her will, pressing as hard as she could. ‘Open, damn you!’ At the same time she set one foot upon the glowing glory of Path, the river of power that joins and defines all things. Nona felt something give, a lurch within her as if she had fallen through thin ice. The cry of victory died on her lips though. She was still standing on the stairs, her hands against the cold stone. Feeling foolish, she reached for her serenity and tried again. Nothing, not even a twinge. She wiped her palms on her habit and continued down the stairs, calling on her clarity trance to reveal any faint trace that might indicate a place to exert her magics.

One of the others stumbled behind her. ‘Keep it quiet,’ Nona hissed without looking back. ‘Abbess Wheel might still be lurking downstairs.’

Nona reached the bottom step without finding any further hint of an entrance. The abbess seemed to have decided against waiting for Pan and to have taken her leave of the tower. Nona sighed and turned to climb the steps again. Something caught her eye. A new portrait hanging amid the others. Just to the right of the door that the abbess must have left by. She walked across to the painting, marvelling that she had never seen it before. It seemed impossible that she had simply missed it in the past given that she had visited the tower almost every day for the best part of a decade. Perhaps Sister Pan had hung it recently. There was something familiar about the woman, her face pinched but friendly, high cheekbones, blue eyes. She had pale hair, curling close to her skull but with wisp after wisp trailing off into the air to create a faint haze of threads that filled the space all around her.

Nona cocked her head. The nun looked thirty at least. And yet …

‘Hessa?’ Nona’s eyes blurred with tears. ‘How—’ She bowed her head, wiping at her face. Hessa had died as a child and Nona had missed her friend every day since. Her death at Yisht’s hands had taught Nona many of the bitter lessons that stand as milestones along the road between girl and woman. Her own fallibility wasn’t the least of those lessons. How many times had a friend died because she lacked what had been necessary to save them? How often had her own faults tripped her up? Her pride, her anger … Losing Hessa taught her the hollow lie of vengeance, a conceit to distract oneself with, an addiction that offered no cure.