Holy Sister

‘Sister Cauldron,’ Nona corrected. ‘Don’t underestimate her.’

Abbess Wheel did not emerge until all the novices were gathered and in order. Sisters Superior Rose and Rule stood one step below the abbess’s doorway, Sister Apple a step below them and with her, Sister Iron. It hurt Nona to see the woman in Sister Tallow’s place and she looked again for the older woman in the crowd, finding her still close, beside Sister Rock.

As Wheel’s assistant, Sister Ice, opened the door Sister Pan came up the steps to join Apple and Iron. She cast a grim eye over the assembled novices.

‘Ancestor …’ Jula muttered a prayer.

‘She doesn’t look happy,’ Ruli hissed. ‘Is she there to own up to the forbidden book?’

If she was it would be the last nail in their coffin. Who else could have stolen Pan’s book but Ara or Nona? And Sister Pan never joined the abbess on the steps, not even when it had been Glass, someone she liked, rather than Wheel, someone she did not.

Wheel emerged and scanned the crowd with her customary glower. Nona’s fingers closed about the abbess’s seal in the depths of her habit pocket. It was hard to tell from the old woman’s face whether she had discovered it missing. She looked close to fury most of the time anyway.

The abbess thumped her crozier for attention. It put Nona in mind of High Priest Jacob stamping his staff at Abbess Glass’s trial.

‘Novice Nona, approach.’ Wheel glared in her direction.

Nona’s heart sank. She didn’t know if she would try to fight her way past nuns she had known for years, or surrender to injustice. She couldn’t take her friends with her. Certainly Jula wouldn’t come. The knowledge paralysed her.

Her cheeks prickled with shame or shock. Nona wasn’t sure which. Half-dazed, she walked towards the abbess’s steps. After Zole the old woman had abandoned all talk of the Argatha prophecy. There had never been a moment following Nona’s return when Wheel had indicated that she might be the Chosen One. The abbess had shown no interest in the interpretation that said four shiphearts rather than four bloods were the key to the Ark. With Zole gone the whole matter was over as far as Sweet Mercy was concerned.

Abbess Wheel scanned the assembly with a sour eye. ‘These proceedings are highly irregular but we live in pressing times and haste is required.’ She gestured imperiously with her crozier to a spot before the lowest step. ‘Stand there.’

Nona stood, summoned by the steel bell, the focus of the whole convent upon her, head bowed.

‘Well, Sister Pan?’ Wheel said. ‘Get on with it.’

Pan frowned and hunched her shoulders. She raised her voice. ‘Novice Nona has entered the Third Room of Path Tower. She is judged …’

Nona readied herself to run.

‘… to have passed the Path test. And I offer her the Blue of a Mystic Sister.’

Sister Iron coughed. ‘The novice has passed the Blade-test and is acceptable to wear the Red. I offer her a place as a Martial Sister.’

Nona looked up. Bewildered.

Sister Apple fixed her with a narrow stare. ‘Novice Nona has passed the wire-test and I can find no legitimate reason for her not to be offered the Grey of a Sister of Discretion.’

‘There you have it,’ Abbess Wheel snapped. ‘Choose. And hurry up. You’re not the last to take her orders today. There’s war on our doorstep.’

Nona glanced past Wheel, past the roof of the abbess’s house. Smoke streaked the sky as if Verity’s chimneys had crept to the foot of the plateau overnight. She opened her mouth then closed it. How close must Adoma’s troops be now?

‘Well girl?’ Abbess Wheel stamped her crozier again. ‘You have what you wanted. Take it.’

Nona returned her gaze to the steps, to Sister Pan, bowed beneath her years, dark eyes watching from a dark face, to Sister Iron’s level stare, to Apple, pale in the morning light, her headdress as ever unequal to the task, a red coil escaping.

Abbess Glass had said this day would come. She had said it on her deathbed and Nona had nodded and said that she believed it and felt guilty because she did not.

‘I …’ Nona looked from one sister to the next. Unexpectedly she thought of Zole, the girl from the ice-tribes with her quest to achieve perfection in this life rather than in the embrace of the Ancestor in the time beyond.

‘Well?’

‘A Holy Sister,’ Nona said. ‘I want to be a Holy Sister.’

A burst of exclamation rose behind her, a swell of muttered questions, quickly silenced as the abbess came down from her steps, pushing past the sister superiors.

‘A Holy Sister? You wish to be a Bride of the Ancestor?’ The old woman raised her hand and Nona resisted the urge to block the blow.

‘I do, abbess.’

Wheel clasped her bony fingers to Nona’s cheek. ‘A Holy Sister!’ She raised her voice. ‘A Holy Sister! For faith is what is needed in the darkest hours. Faith!’ She stared past Nona at the ranks of novices behind, daring any to disagree. Her gaze returned to Nona. She drew back her hand. ‘Perhaps I was wrong about you …’ A shake of her head. ‘Perhaps.’

The old woman embraced her as every abbess must embrace each soul called to the Ancestor’s service.

‘May I serve, abbess?’ Nona went to her knees as all novices do to receive their orders, rising again as nuns.

Wheel stood above her. She patted the front of her habit, then frowned as if remembering some annoyance. Her fingers paused over a lump beneath the cloth. The frown deepened. She reached to her neck and drew from beneath her collar a necklace of prayer beads, the Ancestor’s tree in gold on a silver chain, the keys to her front door and … on a knotted leather thong, her seal of office. Nona had tied it around Wheel’s neck during their embrace just a moment before. She hoped that she had hidden the act in the moment as Mistress Shade had taught her. Times when all eyes are upon you are often those when such sleight of hand is most easily accomplished.

‘A day of miracles!’ A rare smile twisted the abbess’s lips. She took the seal and pressed it to Nona’s lips. ‘Stand, Sister Cage, stand!’

And Nona stood. Sister Cage of Sweet Mercy Convent, Bride of the Ancestor. Holy Sister.

‘Novice Arabella!’ Abbess Wheel called. ‘Approach the steps.’

16



Three Years Earlier



The Escape



Nona crouched in the margins of the shipheart’s glow and watched the devils slowly leach from Yisht’s corpse into the ice, a sliding patchwork of grey moving across the woman’s hands. Rats abandoning a ship that had sunk.

One patch of colour lingered on the back of Yisht’s hand even as others flowed over, under, and around it. In the end it remained, sinking by fractions towards the two fingertips that touched the ice and through which the rest had drained into the greater blackness.

For a moment the blasting of vents and the gurgling of meltwater in hidden channels fell almost silent.

‘Keot?’ A whisper. In this frozen place of horrors, so deeply buried, anything familiar could be counted a comfort. Even a devil carved from the mind of one of the Missing aeons ago. ‘Is that you?’

Nona sensed no reply. Whatever fault line had let the devil into her when she killed Raymel Tacsis no longer seemed wide enough to admit Keot. Killing Yisht had been an empty thing. Even now, with the woman’s torso cooling in front of her and her severed head lying somewhere in the dark, Nona felt no satisfaction in the deed, just the echoing loss of her friends.