Red Sister

Nona drew a breath, sharp and cold across her teeth. That fold was a man’s knee, the next an arm, that curve a shield. Perhaps half a dozen of them lay sprawled in death, tangled amid the undergrowth, one hand raised among the thorny coils of the briar.

What to do? Move on in ignorance? Investigate and accept the exchange of risk for knowledge? Nona scanned the ridge, then stared again into the stubborn gloom between the trees. Anyone could be watching … but why?

She called on her clarity. In her mind she began to juggle, directing her hands to the task, guiding each ball through the necessity of its arc. First three balls, the pattern she saw Amondo try to teach the village children, then four, the pattern he employed while delivering his banter to an audience, drawing them in for his show. Then the five with which the juggler dazzled, and the six with which he struggled, sweating and anxious, crowning his performance. By nine the world about her lay bound in crystal, no contrast enhanced, no shadow lightened, no detail magnified, the same but different. She stood and everything around her shouted out its meaning, every part of the puzzle yielded its secrets. She walked in a clarity so fierce it burned her eyes. Nothing had changed, yet everything had, and the world no longer held a place to hide from Nona Grey.

There were five men lying dead, warriors all: raiders, from their garb and the salt stains still bedded in their cloaks. Nona approached on slow feet, the mystery of the forest unfolding before her.

The attacker had killed them with thrown daggers and a thin sword. Precise blows, no frenzy, no mercy. The slaughter had begun among the trees and ended at the margins. Nona came closer, close enough to smell the rankness of the dead men, the blood, the unwashed stink of travel, the sewer stench that gives the honest and undignified truth of sudden death on a sharp edge. Ice-rimed blond hair scattered across blue eyes. Sword and axe lay unattended, some hands open and white, some clenched around a last moment of agony, dark with gore. No breath misted from them.

Nona snagged the loop of a pack with her toe and drew it closer. She took the dried meat and hard biscuit out of its wrap of oiled cloth, and added it to the crumbs of her own supplies. Still ravenous she reached for another pack – and froze. Out of the depths of her clarity a single fact rose to take her by the throat. Somewhere close another human heart was beating. From what evidence this fact had been assembled Nona couldn’t say. She knew only that it was true. She stood, watching the silence of the trees and of the shadowed spaces between them.

The raiders had been moving through the edge of the copse where it reached back along the stream. They had been attacked as they moved to leave, aimed at the sheep-wall where Nona had been sleeping. Ten yards past the first splash of the raiders’ blood Nona left their trail, written in the patchy ice and half-frozen mud, to strike deeper into the forest. She tore through bramble, broke a path among the sharp and brittle branches of the stunted ardna bushes where they grew thick between the elms. To her own ears she sounded like an army on the move. Every instinct told her to leave, to carry on along her path, reach the target and leave this mystery for others. But why would anyone lie in wait for her in a freezing wood when they could have found her sleeping?

Nona saw blood on the leaves first, then blood against the trunk of one tree, smeared across another. Then the boot. Then the leg. Then, coming around the bole of a great frost-oak, the body, sitting propped against the tree, head down, face hidden within the hood of a convent ranging coat.

She stood, suddenly terrified, her heart unwilling to beat. A moment later what she had taken for her sixth corpse of the morning rolled its head back.

‘H-hello … Nona.’ Sister Kettle watched her, eyes dark in a pale face, the blood around her mouth a shocking crimson, the smile that was always there, there no longer.

‘Kettle!’ Nona rushed to crouch beside the fallen nun. ‘What—’ The white hand clutched around a knife hilt stole her words. The blade jutted from Kettle’s side, the coat below glistening with blood. The pommel, an iron ball, was all that showed of the knife: the rest was lost in her grip.

‘Little Nona.’ Sister Kettle discovered her old smile. ‘You found me.’ She coughed, sputtering scarlet, her lips very red. ‘Oh. I shouldn’t do that.’ A grimace. ‘It hurts.’

Nona found her eyes misting, one hand on Kettle’s shoulder, the other in her hair. ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right.’

‘You need to run, little Nona.’ Kettle’s eyes scanned the trees, her head unmoving.

‘No.’ Nona shook her head. ‘You killed them. They’re all dead. I checked.’

‘Th-that wasn’t me.’ Kettle licked her lips. ‘You don’t have any water?’

Nona bent and started to dig out her canteen.

‘That … wasn’t me.’ She smiled. ‘N-natural hazard. I wouldn’t have stopped them finding you. All part … of the ranging. T-tough break, but these are … tough times, Nona.’

‘Who did it then?’ Nona glanced around while she held the canteen to Kettle’s mouth. The clarity had left her in a moment, taken by shock when Kettle raised her face.

‘Noi-Guin. That’s why I was set to follow you.’

‘Why?’ The word sat in front of too many questions and Nona couldn’t pick which one to ask.

‘Wanted you for herself. Proud, these Noi-Guin. A small girl escaped her two years ago. Wasn’t going to let that stand, no matter what promises Thuran Tacsis might have made the emperor.’

‘Where is she?’ Nona’s gaze returned to the knife in Kettle’s side. She had held its twin, pulled it from her bed …

‘H-hurt.’ Kettle showed her teeth, red with blood. ‘I got her good. But … she ran.’ She winced. ‘You have to run too. She could come back. Others with her.’

‘I’m not going.’ Nona hunted for a reason. ‘I’m safer with you.’

‘No. They don’t know where you’re going. They trailed us from the convent or knew we land the novices along the Rattle. But the target’s always different. Cover your tracks and head north a way, then make for the Kring. You should be able to catch up with Ara. She’s safe, Sister Apple is shadowing her. Takes more than a storm to shake Apple off.’

‘Apple! Are we all under guard?’ Nona frowned. Even now, with blood dripping from the trees it felt wrong. Like cheating.

‘Little Nona …’ Kettle grinned as if reading her mind. ‘Not all. Just you because of the assassins. And Ara … because of her … father. And the Chosen One.’

‘And the Chosen One?’ Nona frowned.

‘Heh.’ Kettle spat blood. ‘Appy will kill me. But …’ She shrugged, winced, and glanced down at the knife, ‘… she’ll have to hurry.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Arabella’s not the Chosen One. You’re not either.’ Kettle put her hand on the one Nona had on her shoulder. It felt like ice. ‘You’re both … shields, if you like. It’s Zole. She’s a straight-up certified four-blood.’ And a tear rolled down Kettle’s cheek. ‘Stepped out of legend. She’s come to save us, Nona. I know it.’

‘Zole?’ Nona blinked, wondering if Kettle had grown delirious.