Holy Sister

‘What?’ His eyes widened at the sight of hers. ‘How dare you!’

At the same time Nona reached around with her other arm to pinch the silver chain she had seen at the back of his neck above the bed-robe’s collar. With the links between her fingertips she applied enough sharpness to part them and let the chain fall. In that instant she gave the old man a shove hard enough to rock him back on his heels. ‘It’s important!’

Somewhere between Edran’s bare ankles and slippered feet an amulet tinkled unnoticed to the floor trailing a silver chain.

‘Guards!’ Edran’s shout was hoarse with rage.

‘Explain again, Markus!’ Nona called out.

Markus, halfway down the hall and being manhandled away at speed, spoke over the guardsman’s shoulder. ‘You want to help us.’

Edran’s anger clouded with confusion. ‘Wait …’

Mika released the monk, brushing at his habit apologetically. ‘Let me help …’

‘We need to get this book stored safely in the vault before nightfall,’ Markus said.

The old man threw up his hands. ‘If you must, you must!’ He frowned at Nona as if remembering the shove. A guardsman rounded the corner, puffing, but Edran waved him away impatiently. He turned to Markus. ‘Wait here. I’ll get my keys.’ And with that he retreated to his room, closing the door.

‘You should go now.’ Markus sent the guardsman back to his post.

Nona bent to scoop up the amulet, and as Markus turned back to her she opened her hand to display it, a sigil wrought in silver.

‘It’s the mendant sigil.’ Markus squinted at it as if the thing were too bright to look upon. ‘To negate manipulation of thoughts and emotions. Abbot Jacob and the senior monks at St Croyus have similar protection. The novices would be in charge otherwise.’

Nona closed her fist around it. Part of her wanted to take the thing as her own. Security against Joeli’s manipulations and whatever else might come her way in the future. But such a valuable object would be missed and in the resultant hue and cry her visit to the archives would undoubtedly be discovered. With reluctance she set the amulet down by the doorway. ‘Let him find it later.’

Edran kept them waiting ten minutes, finally emerging in his ink-stained work-robes, jingling a heavy bunch of keys.

‘This really is most irregular. Let me see your order.’

‘It’s here, archivist.’ Jula produced the document and held out Aquinas’s Book of Lost Cities.

Edran studied both, raising a white eyebrow as he leafed through the pages of the latter. ‘Hmm. Amazing that such works keep cropping up.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Let’s be about it then!’

He led them through more corridors, unlocking two sets of doors, and descending a flight of steps. ‘I’ve told them a thousand times that it’s madness to store books in the catacombs, but do they listen?’ With his lantern raised, Edran hurried along a tunnel lined with empty niches, coming to a halt before a heavy door on which he rapped: four knocks, a pause, three knocks.

After a long pause someone unbolted the door and Edran pushed through. The antechamber beyond lay bare save for candles arrayed around the walls and a chair on which a single guardsman had been sitting. Opposite the door they entered by stood the iron portal to the high priest’s vault.

‘Hernas, I’m making a deposit.’ Edran held out an impatient hand towards Jula. ‘The book, girl.’

The guardsman adjusted his iron helm and stepped in close, frowning. Unlike the hirelings at the entrance this was a church guard, perhaps forty, weathered by the Corridor wind, the lines of old cuts recorded in white seams across his hands and face, his tabard displaying the Ancestor’s tree, a sword at his hip. He stood in contrast to the soft boys and geriatrics they passed on the way in. ‘The vault stays shut after hours, archivist. You know that.’

‘I …’ Edran hesitated.

‘He’s making an exception.’ Markus said. ‘It will be all right.’

The last words buzzed with power, each pulling at a multitude of threads. Nona found herself nodding – it would be all right.

The church guard’s hand slid towards the hilt of his sword. Nona moved fast. Like Edran, the man before her seemed immune to Markus’s influence: like Edran he was likely wearing the mendant sigil. If she could get the thing off him, and quickly, the possibility remained that Markus could smooth things over. The helm! It had to be the helm. It looked too well made, out of place on a church guard with no other armour save a chainmail vest beneath his tabard. She crashed into the man, contriving to cut his chinstrap and tear the helm free before they both hit the door behind him.

‘Tell him, Markus!’ Nona seized the man’s wrist, trapping his sword in its scabbard.

Markus blinked in surprise at finding both of them on the ground. ‘You should help us.’ Spoken through teeth gritted against the strain of command.

‘To arms!’ the church guard yelled. ‘To a—’ Nona banged his head against the door hard enough to silence him.

‘Well.’ Nona slipped a vial of boneless syrup from her habit and administered it to the dazed guard. ‘Perhaps we should have come back tomorrow.’

‘I don’t understand …’ Edran started to back towards the door.

‘Sorry.’ Jula caught the archivist’s arm and twisted it behind him. ‘Do you file the books using the Occadavian system? Or is this place still on Dooey ordering?’

‘How dare you!’ The old man bristled, craning his neck to glare at the novice behind him.

‘Sorry …’ Jula gave an apologetic smile and twisted his arm higher until he yelped. ‘But I really do have to know.’

‘Dooey! Dooey!’

Jula eased the pressure. ‘And is that with chronological ordering and the aleph categories for research?’

‘I don’t … yes!’ Another twist replaced truculence with a squeaked affirmation.

‘Got what you need?’ Nona asked.

‘If he’s not lying,’ Jula said.

‘I don’t think he is.’ Markus approached, staring the old man in the face. ‘No.’

Nona shrugged and, knocking aside Edran’s hand, smeared the last drops of her boneless across his lips.

They laid him beside the guardsman, both face down.

‘We should have asked him which key,’ Jula said as Nona pulled the bunch from Edran’s limp fingers.

‘It’ll be the biggest one.’ Nona brought up the best candidate, black iron and nearly six inches in length.

The guess proved right and Nona pushed the door open on hinges that squealed louder than Edran had. Fortunately the vault’s secure location put it out of earshot of all but a handful of clerics, and Markus had made Edran send those on their way.

‘Ready?’ Nona looked pointedly at Markus, still crouched over the paralysed men.

The monk nodded, lifting his hands from the backs of their necks, still muttering something. A sigil amulet, twin to Edran’s, glimmered on a chain hanging from his fingers. He replaced it around the church guard’s neck before standing and stepping away. Nona followed Jula into the vault, Markus close behind her.

‘What did you do to them?’