Holy Sister

Nona felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Ruli and Jula stared from her to Markus and back, open-mouthed. Nona opened her own, calling on the Ancestor, or the Hope, or any small god who might be listening to put some words there, any words at all as long as they were cool, witty, and sophisticated. A moment’s silence stretched to the point at which any coherent sound would be acceptable as long as it vaguely resembled a response …

‘Ancestor’s blessings, brother?’ Ruli asked, probably for the tenth time. ‘Ancestor’s blessings?’ Eleven.

‘It was all I could think to say.’ Nona picked up the pace again. Verity’s lights lay three miles behind them, the twinkling of the convent two miles ahead.

‘But Ancestor’s blessings?’ Jula panted.

‘I was stressed, all right?’ Nona saw Markus’s eyebrow go up again. She couldn’t stop seeing it.

‘Leave Nona alone.’ Ara came up alongside her, running tirelessly. ‘Brother Markus is clearly a very holy man. It’s only natural that Nona should want to share blessings with him. Rather than, you know, respond to what he said.’

Ruli and Jula snorted and fell back, gasping for breath.

Nona ran on towards the Rock of Faith. A kind of hysteria had infected her friends. The type that demanded you cry or you laugh. In the east distant fires peppered the countryside, too many and too bright. And on the road, despite the hour, they had already passed a dozen ragged bands limping towards the city, many with everything they owned heaped upon handcarts.

The fears that surrounded the novices were the kind that were too big to hold inside all the time. War in the east. War in the west. Both converging on the capital with horrifying speed. And now the distinct possibility that the full authority of the Church itself would be turned upon them, the novices branded as thieves of a forbidden book, a crime for which Nona had no doubt that some antique law would demand a gruesome and almost certainly fatal punishment. She vowed it wouldn’t come to that, but even if the others agreed to fight their way free … any future that awaited them looked very bleak.

Close to the plateau’s base Nona called a halt. She and Ara waited while Ruli and Jula caught them up. Ara patrolled the area, her shadow-work unravelling the night for inspection while Jula got her breath back.

‘I’ll go up first,’ Nona said. ‘Ara will check the Seren Way, shadow-wrapped, and get you two into the undercaves.’ The cave entrance lay close to the start of the track. ‘Ruli will lead Jula through to the novice cloisters, and somewhere on the way you can find a place to hide the book. Somewhere Jula will be able to visit alone when she needs to study it.’

‘What if they’re guarding the track?’ Jula asked. ‘We could all go around to the Styx Valley and come up from the west …’

‘Too far.’ Nona shook her head. Gaining the plateau from the west was easy and the Styx Valley was generally unwatched but it would take a detour of several miles. ‘Ara will have to make a distraction so you can get into the caves, then find her own way up so she can scout the cloister exit for you.’ Nona stared up at the cliffs. Here and there the moonlight caught a hint of the Seren Way zigzagging its path towards the heights. ‘Ara can take the Vinery Stair. I’ll climb.’

‘By myself?’ Ara threw up her hands in mock horror.

‘We all know the story if we’re caught. I’ll reach the convent first and check that nobody is waiting for the rest of you at the dorms.’

‘You’ll check the coast is clear using … your legendary shadow-weaving skill?’ Ruli said. ‘Ara should be the first in!’

‘Ara will wait for you at the laundry well.’ Nona didn’t care that Ruli had a point. If anyone was waiting for their return it would be Nona that they caught, not Ara, not Ruli or Jula.

‘I have to go through the caves blind?’ Jula asked. ‘And rely on Ruli to find the way?’

‘Yes. And don’t drop the book,’ Nona said.

‘I said we should have brought a lantern!’ Jula pouted.

‘You did not.’

‘Well … I thought it!’

Ruli rolled her eyes and set off towards the base of the cliffs. ‘See you in the dormitory, Nona. Or trying to swim in the Glasswater with iron yokes on. One or the other.’

Nona had no answer to that. It was an end she had come perilously close to before, and with Wheel now in charge it seemed that the oldest and cruellest of the Church’s punishments were more likely to be applied than they had been for many years.

‘Get Jula back safe. Don’t tell anyone where you put the book. Not even me or Ara!’ Nona called after her. She turned to Ara. ‘Make sure you get them in safe, and watch out for Joeli.’

Ara gave a curt nod and set off after Ruli, pulling Jula with her, all of them grave-faced. The good humour that had sustained them after Nona’s parting words to Markus had died somewhere along the road home. Perhaps as they passed the first of the refugees, or when they first caught the smell of smoke on the wind, or maybe at the point when they saw the convent lights blazing, every window in the abbess’s house aglow, the comfort of routine cast aside on a night where sleep would be a stranger.

Nona scaled the cliffs, choosing a spot that steered well clear of the windows to the Shade classroom. She came up behind the convent where the peninsula narrowed, and hung with just her head above the edge, waiting for the moon’s focus to blind any watchers.

The moonlight had been building as Nona climbed, the warmth rising with her. The convent buildings began to shine, crimson in the focused light of the dying sun. And Nona marvelled, as she had so many times before, that the moon reflecting that light had been put there by men and women like her, people who now stood within the Ancestor and whose blood ran in her veins.

Nona hauled herself over the clifftop with sufficient strength to land on her feet. Keeping low amid the fierce dazzle of the focus, she ran towards the convent, hiding in the mists vomiting from the Glasswater sinkhole. Like the mist she allowed herself to be drawn away on the uncertain wind, angling towards her target.

Nona made a quick circuit of the convent, watching for any sign of trouble that might be waiting for the others. Although too many lights burned in the windows the spaces between the buildings seemed quiet. Unusually so. She spotted Sister Rock on patrol and a subtle bump on the conical roof of the rookery tower that was likely one of the Grey Sisters keeping watch for troubles of a different order than errant novices.

Nona watched until Ara came slinking in from the Vinery Stair, betrayed only by the shadow trailing thickly in her wake. They watched together from the cloister roof, wrapped in those same shadows, as Jula and Ruli emerged hesitantly from the laundry wing and hurried to the dormitories.

Before the girls made it to the door a band of mounted soldiers clattered in among the convent buildings, their lanterns held high as if seeking something.

‘Hells, they’ll be spotted!’ Ara hissed.

Already Sister Rock was hurrying towards the sound of hooves and the bump on the rookery roof had detached itself, now no doubt flowing invisibly to join the riders. If Jula and Ruli were hauled before the abbess’s desk their whole night’s work could unravel. Wheel wasn’t shy of using harsh methods to get to a truth that satisfied her, and if she had discovered the theft of her seal there was no telling what anger might drive her to.