Red Sister

Clera pulled at Nona’s arm. ‘If he’s Tacsis then you might reconsider how you feel about Zole … The enemy of my enemy may be my friend.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course the friend of my friend is often a jerk.’ She jabbed a black-gloved thumb surreptitiously in Ara’s direction.

Sister Tallow came down the steps, raising her hand for the novices to gather around her. Nona came to stand by Tarkax and he looked down at her and grinned. ‘My friend from the Caltess.’

‘You told me you were a ring-fighter,’ Nona said.

Tarkax raised his hands, one to the east, one to the west. ‘And what is the Corridor if not a ring?’

‘You lied to me.’ Nona scowled.

‘Pay attention to your nun.’ Tarkax slapped her around the back of the head without malice.

‘… from where we will journey to the starting station on the margins of the Harran Fens. After that you’ll be on your own.’ Sister Tallow looked around the group then led off along the Cart Way.

Nona followed, rubbing the back of her head and wondering how Tarkax got a name as silly as the Ice-Spear.

‘I don’t know how any of us is going to survive this,’ Jula said.

The Grey Class novices had been trudging along behind Sister Tallow for several hours and Jula had expressed the same thought in at least eight different ways since they came down off the Rock of Faith.

‘Grey Class goes ranging every year, Jula. Croy has been three times! She’d been in the class a week the first time.’ Ruli seemed happy to be out and on the move, her cheeks red, her eyes bright.

‘But we’ve had no training!’ Jula limped on, complaining that her shoes were rubbing.

‘We’ve had some,’ Ara said. ‘And this is training!’

‘Stop whining, Jula.’ Clera trudged on without looking left or right. ‘It’s quite unusual for anyone to die on a ranging.’

They came into the open from a small valley and the ice-wind caught them by surprise, howling across an expanse of barren fields. Nona staggered before leaning into the blast. Two novices ahead of her were driven to their knees. Tarkax just bent his head and went strolling along behind Zole as if it were nothing more than a stiff breeze.

Midday saw them huddled in the lee of a cattle barn with the sun dominating the sky above them, huge and crimson, but offering little heat, and what it did give, the wind snatched away the moment it arrived. Nona munched her bread and cheese, staring at nothing, her mind on Raymel Tacsis. Had it been his hand behind the shadow-worker’s attack at the Academy? Or had the senior Academic’s protest been genuine – had some enemy within the church itself set Markus or his friend to drive the girl mad with rage? She couldn’t think it was Markus, but perhaps for him Giljohn’s cage was just a memory, a dry fact that could be taken out and studied without emotion.

Thuran Tacsis had sworn in court, sworn before the emperor’s throne, that the matter was finished. Her name, Nona Grey, had been spoken in the emperor’s hearing: her mother would be … Nona shook the thought away. She’d been covered in blood when she’d left the village, and though the blood had long since been washed away, the stains would never be gone.

‘They say there’s trouble on the coast.’ Darla broke across Nona’s thoughts.

‘Trouble?’ Nona recalled the pirate raids. Without them Sherzal wouldn’t have dared come to Verity and risk her brother’s displeasure.

‘The Durnish have come in force. Regular troops on the pirate barges, just not in uniform. And Crucical’s summoned General Cathrad from the Scithrowl border.’

Nona looked up at Darla. ‘How do you know this stuff?’ It was normally Ara who knew things about the world.

‘My father’s an officer on Cathrad’s staff. He’s come ahead of the general to gather intelligence.’ Darla nodded. ‘He says corsairs have come ashore and sent raiding parties along the northern ice while the emperor and Velera are tied up around Honisport.’

‘So … don’t go too close to the ice then?’

‘Not unless you want to join in the war,’ Darla said.

‘We’re at war?’ Nona hadn’t realized it was that bad.

‘We’re always at war.’ Darla shrugged. ‘As long as the ice is closing we’ll always have war – that’s what my father says. The only difference is what they call it. Right now they’re calling it raids. The church will have to play its part. What did you think has been keeping the abbess so busy? They say she’s even been to court!’

‘And they’re sending us out ranging? In a war?’ Nona asked.

Darla shrugged again. ‘Technically we’ll be fleeing a war. The Kring is in the opposite direction. That’s probably why they picked it this year. Last year we had to get to Hern’s Island off the coast. And anyway, the ranging is one of the oldest parts of a nun’s training. They say the training fits the times. If it’s open war ahead of us then it’s not so surprising they send us out in this …’

Marching down the tracks and lanes of the empire’s heartland brought back memories of travelling with Giljohn, though the roads he had chosen were more obscure and there had been far less walking involved. Even so, when the ice-wind blew everywhere took on that same bleak look. It wasn’t without a certain beauty to it. A thin screed of icy snow covered the fields, hiding the crops. Most would recover – farmers grew the breeds that would – but some would always gamble on a long enough stretch of Corridor wind to sow and harvest something more valuable and vulnerable. The hedgerows stood thick with ice, coating every twig, blunting the thorns, glistening, gleaming, surreal, holding everything behind glass, for observation, not to be touched, put in storage … for a while. One day it would be forever.

In the woods screw-pine and frost-oak stood hung with icicles, a multitude of them, hanging thickly from every limb, some longer than Nona’s arm. At the height of the ice-wind the focus couldn’t wholly melt the ice and every night the icicles would grow and multiply, until the wind finally relented or the great weight of the ice tore the tree apart. Men had died passing through forests in the ice-wind. When the focus came every branch of every tree could shed a man’s weight and more in yard-long icicles in minutes, turning any wood into a nightmare of plunging ice-spears.

By evening they’d passed the town of Averine and come over a low range of hills to a ridge from where they could see the River Rattle snaking its way towards the Marn. Sister Tallow found them lodging for the night in a hay barn close to the river and the unimaginatively named village of Bridge that sat on both sides of a long stone-built bridge spanning the Rattle.

‘You know why they call it the Rattle?’ Jula asked as Nona worked herself in amongst the hay.

‘No.’ Two years ago a hay bed would have felt like luxury. Now it was sharp and itchy and the barn an ice-box. Sweet Mercy might have armed Nona with many of the arts of war but it’d made her soft in other ways. The ranging was an overdue lesson – one that she intended to pay close attention to.

‘When the melt-surge comes down – that’s just before dawn here – the waters run so fast that all the stones in the riverbed rattle over each other. I read it in Hennan’s Geographical History of the Quantal See.’ Jula wriggled against a hay bale, frowning. ‘I’m not going to be able to sleep here …’