Holy Sister

‘I was trying to make sure that the only thing they remembered about you was your dazzling blue eyes.’ His gaze flickered to her face and he forced a quick grin.

‘Will it work?’

He shrugged. ‘I hope so.’

Nona turned back. ‘Let’s give them a different story to tell.’ She took from beneath her habit a Scithrowl carver, the leaf-bladed dagger issued to Adoma’s shock troops. Years ago Zole had given her the blade after taking it from a boy who probably got it from his father. She set it by the guard’s feet before retreating into the vault and pulling the door closed. Just inside the chamber beyond she dropped a copper groat, worn and stamped with the head of Adoma’s father. It bounced and rolled against the wall. She didn’t see which way it landed, but heads or tails it would still point eastwards.

‘What are you doing?’

‘A little misdirection. Let them think it was Scithrowl agents in disguise.’

‘Very careless Scithrowl agents!’

‘The horde is on our doorstep, everyone’s jumping at shadows, it won’t take much to send them running the wrong way. Let them think spies were here and that soon Adoma’s Fist will blow open the city gates for their queen,’ Nona said. It probably wasn’t far from the truth in any case. She turned towards the towering shelves.

In the space before the shelves a thick and slightly narrowing length of ironwood wandered down from the ceiling and continued into the stone floor. The deepest root of the tree of the Ancestor, part of the golden arborat that once spread above the cathedral. The taproot leading back to the source. Nona wondered what she might find if she dug down after it. She shook away the thought. ‘We need the book, Jula!’

Jula, who had been gazing in hungry amazement at the stacks of tightly bound tomes, jolted back into the moment and began to move between the rows. The shelves bore labels relating to the books they held, each tome carefully wrapped in skeilskin to fend off the damp. The air hung heavy with mildew, mould, and the stink of foxed paper. Markus began to sneeze and Nona, feeling her own nose begin to tingle, moved to the vault door and fresher air, opening it a crack.

‘I’ll listen out for any trouble.’

She waited, calling back the tatters of her serenity trance so that she wouldn’t be tempted to urge Jula to hurry up. Outside, Ara and Ruli would be imagining all manner of disasters that might have befallen them.

Time crept by, seeming slower than the deepest Nona’s hunska blood could bury her between the seconds. She discovered her foot tapping without instruction. Outside the door either Edran or the church guard made a soft grunt, probably an angry shout muted by the boneless.

More moments crawled by, mounting slowly into minutes. ‘How’s it going?’

‘I’m getting there. I’ve found the right section, I think. I’m having to unwrap everything though, and then wrap it back up so they don’t know what we were after.’

A distant shout rang out and at the same time Ara pulsed along their thread-bond an image of soldiers crowding in through the cathedral doors above.

‘Hurry! Someone’s coming!’ Nona hissed.

The distant sound of booted feet approaching at a run. Lots of booted feet.

‘Dung on it!’ Nona stepped back and pulled the door to, locking it. ‘We’ve been found out …’ It didn’t seem possible.

‘Found out?’ Markus hurried over. ‘Ancestor! They’ll hang us all! How can we be found out?’

‘We’ve been betrayed.’ Nona stared around the shadowed corners of the vault. There must have been a lot of them coming or Ara and Ruli would have delayed them more effectively.

‘We’re done for. We can’t get past them!’

Nona started to walk the perimeter of the vault, trailing her fingers across the wall. ‘Jula! Hurry up with that book!’

Markus followed, panic in his voice. ‘Leave the damn book. If we don’t touch it we can say this was all about turning in the other book. Just that we were rather too zealous about it …’ He trailed off, hearing how weak the excuse sounded once said out loud.

Someone outside shouted into the pause. ‘Open up!’ A fist pounding on iron panels.

‘Barricade the door, Markus.’ Nona took hold of his shoulders and pointed him back at it. ‘They’ll get another key soon enough.’

‘How will that help?’ But he went, taking hold of a ladder used to reach the top shelves.

Nona’s mind raced, shredding her serenity. She might battle a way through the soldiers who crowded the antechamber and corridors beyond, but it would hardly be an escape. Murder would be added to the charge of theft. Her own sisters would be sent to hunt her down. All she had worked for lost.

She continued pacing, stepping away from the wall where the shelves demanded it, returning to set her fingers to the stone once more. Marjal rock-work allowed for more than the manipulation of stone. Nona sank her senses through the blocks lining the vault and into the ground beyond, a mixture of subsoil and rubble used for the cathedral’s foundations. She moved on, her perception continuing to quest through the walls.

‘Found it!’ Jula had to shout over the hammering at the door. She lifted her lantern in one hand, in the other a fat book bound with black leather.

‘Wrap the others. Put them back,’ Nona shouted.

‘I don’t know how long this door will hold!’ Markus had the ladder wedged against it and was struggling to move one of the smaller free-standing shelves, books spilling to the ground as it lurched and wobbled.

The door looked undamaged to Nona. She hoped they’d take hammers to it and that by the time another key was found the lock would be jammed or the door panel too warped to open.

On the wall opposite the entrance Nona found what she was looking for. A void beyond the stone blocks. The space beneath the cathedral would have housed store chambers, vaults, sewers, drainage channels, and catacombs where the rich and the holy were interred. Nona wished she had the talent to tell how far off the void was, whether it led anywhere, and what lay between her and it. All she could say was that it was a reasonably large space and probably not more than a yard from where her fingertips pressed the wall.

Nona didn’t want to follow through with her plan but their options had narrowed to almost none. Joeli had done this. Nona felt sure of it. She had thought that if the Namsis girl discovered their actions she would wait longer, eager to unravel more of their plan and unmask them before the abbess. But even if Joeli missed out on seeing her enemies come to grief this way, she would undoubtedly relish the idea of having them caught like rats in a trap, bottled up in the very room they had tried so hard to enter.

Something hit the door with considerably greater force than any previous blow. Nona glanced back at Jula and Markus’s shocked faces and the great dent in the door behind them. The ladder clattered to the ground and the shelf shed more books.

‘You should stand back and cover your ears,’ Nona said.

She had only to picture Joeli’s face to summon the anger she needed. Nona shut her eyes and against the red mist she saw the bright line she sought, burning through her vision. The door shuddered again, another mighty blow reverberating around the vault, and without hesitation Nona leapt at the Path.