Holy Sister

Few lights burned in the windows but torches ringed the courtyard before the dormitories and on the steps sat Sister Scar. The nun looked older than Nona had ever imagined her behind her desk in the scriptorium. She clutched a cleaver from the kitchens in her lap. Above her at the Holy Class windows, where junior novices were forbidden on pain of a beating, dozens of small faces leaned out. They looked ridiculously young for the battlefield.

‘Protect the convent!’ Nona paused and met Sister Scar’s wide eyes. ‘No quarter. Let the Ancestor take care of mercy.’

The faint edge of a scream that reached Nona from the forest of pillars was lost in the far louder scream that threatened to shatter her skull from within. Ara! At the same time a white agony speared its way between her shoulders, an echo of Ara’s injury.

Ara! Ara! I’m coming!

Nona sprinted towards the battle, her mind reaching ahead of her for her friend and finding only darkness.

The Pelarthi stood between the pillars, a loose halo around the place where Ara lay in a pool of her own blood. To Nona’s amazement Clera stood above the fallen girl. For a bright moment Nona thought that somehow her friend was there to save Ara, but as their eyes met across the intervening yards a cold certainty took hold of her. Clera had been the one who had brought Ara down.

Clera opened her mouth to speak, and said nothing, condemned by the close company of the mercenaries all around her. Of all of them, in that moment only Clera seemed to have seen her.

Nona drew her sword as she ran towards the first of the Pelarthi. Sister Tallow had pressed the weapon’s hilt back into her hand barely an hour before and as Nona spun through a group of six she took her first lives with the blade. The Pelarthi knew all about her arrival then.

Back in the convent compound Bitel rang out. It seemed fitting. The bell had never heralded anything but disaster.

Nona scanned the forces arrayed before her. She felt her devils moving beneath her habit, their voices crying out for blood, and she found herself in agreement. The Book of the Ancestor says that for everything there is a season. This was a time to reap. A time for death. A time to die.

Bows creaked among the Pelarthi ranks, spears were lifted, knuckles whitened on the hilts of sword and axe. A hawk-eyed archer caught Nona’s eye, her cheek torn and bloody. She drew back her string but there was a tremble in her aim.

The Pelarthi would know stories about her. Clera was a teller of tales and they were here for her. They would know her as Nona, as the black-eyed child who slew Raymel Tacsis, the girl who broke Lord Thuran Tacsis’s mind with ancient pain magics. They would have heard that to some she was known as the Argatha, the Chosen One. Given Joeli’s spying they probably even knew her by her new name. Sister Cage.

Kill them all.

Make a red slaughter.

Fill the air with their screams.

Nona listened to the cries of her devils and found a dark smile on her face. The trembling archer let her arrow fall with a clatter. She turned without a word and began to push her way back, past the warriors of her clan. To her left another turned, a man thick with muscle, the names of his forefathers inked in runes along his arms. Two of those he pushed aside turned and ran with him. Sister Thorn had already shown them what a Red Sister could do.

The trickle became a flood. The Pelarthi left the scores of their dead, still scattered or heaped where Ara had killed them. They ran as if Nona had rolled the shipheart among them. Her devils howled their disappointment and it echoed through her.

Nona strode towards Clera and saw where Ara lay at her feet.

‘Is she dead?’ Her heart hurt, despair overwhelming her rage.

‘How are you here?’ Clera ignored the question. ‘You weren’t supposed to be here! How did you know? … And even then, how did you get here?’

Nona ignored the questions. Clera was an accomplished liar but seemed incapable of seeing that another Tacsis brother had lied to her. Again. About the same damn thing. Nona had always been the target, never Ara. ‘Is she dead?’ She rushed forward, pushing Clera away from Ara, who was still coiled around a spear. Nona knelt, reaching out to touch the spread gold of her hair. ‘Ara?’

‘You should never have let me go.’ The words sputtered from Clera as if she were hurt, as if it were her wrapped around a spear. ‘You had me bound. Guilty. You should have let them drown me.’

‘I wouldn’t do that to a friend.’ Nona had fought Zole, Darla, Ara … all of them, and insisted that Clera be allowed to run. What might have changed had she not? Who might still live that now walked with the Ancestor? She shook the thoughts away and set her fingers to Ara’s neck, seeking a pulse. The smallest of groans rewarded her, the smallest tremble of a hand. Nona found that she could breathe once more.

A short laugh burst from Clera, sounding as much like pain as mirth. ‘They all think you’re the big bad. The Church’s hammer. Cage the Shadowless. And you’re still acting like a child, Nona! You run into everything heart-first, expecting … what? You didn’t understand how people work when the abbess brought you here as a dirty-footed peasant. You didn’t understand when she sent you away. And you don’t understand now. People lie, Nona: they steal, they cheat, they’re unfaithful. People hurt you, they let you down. They sell you out.’

‘It doesn’t mean I have to be like that.’ Nona stared up at Clera who flinched. The devils inside her wanted Clera’s blood and Nona strove not to make that desire her own. ‘We have a whole Church built on ancestors.’ She waved an arm at the Dome. ‘Family. Dead family.’ She took Ara’s hand in hers. ‘You choose your friends. If you’re going to worship dead people you didn’t choose, then perhaps the bonds of friendship shouldn’t be so easily broken. No?’

Clera shook her head. ‘You’re a fool, Nona Grey. Are you going to kill me now, or let someone else do it?’

Nona fought to block out the voices of her devils. She had seen enough death for ten lifetimes. She had chosen the Black. Abbess Glass had made her a Holy Sister for a reason. War was not that reason.

‘Ara could live. If we get her to Sister Rose. Now!’ Nona glanced back towards the convent. They were coming. The old sisters and the young girls.

Clera waved her hand at the distant nuns, exasperated. ‘Let them take her. I don’t care. I didn’t come for Ara. She was just in the way.’

Nona released Ara’s hand with a squeeze and stood. ‘I’ve missed you, Clera. It’s been too many years.’

Clera glanced out across the plateau. ‘We were children, Nona. Children make and break friendships all the time. It’s not important. This, what we’re doing now, this is important. It’s about sides in the great game that’s being played. And you’re on the wrong one. The losing one. You should change sides.’

Nona shook her head. ‘I’m not playing. And I’ve always been on your side, Clera. You’ve just not properly understood it.’

Clera looked down at Ara. ‘I wanted her to run.’

‘I know.’

‘She should have run. There were too many of them for her. Why did she have to be so stupid?’

Nona shrugged, a slow gesture giving the lie to a racing mind. ‘Where is Lano Tacsis?’

‘You know the Tacsis.’ Clera nodded towards the plateau stretching out beyond the pillars. ‘They like to let you spend your power against people they consider expendable, then arrive to finish the job if anything’s left to finish.’