Red Sister

‘There are things that can’t be bought or sold,’ Nona said.

Clera shook her head. ‘Some would say everything has its price, and that it’s often surprisingly cheap. Others that if a thing cannot be bought, it has no value.’

‘What about friendship?’ Nona asked.

‘Ah.’ Clera lay back, settling herself to sleep. ‘There you have to be careful.’

Ara had managed to establish that several novices had passed through the village hours before them, but how many novices or hours proved difficult to pin down. Nona doubted that there were any behind them, though. Not unless the Durns had them.

The novices took turns watching through the night. Nona spent her hours staring at the darkness, wondering if Sister Kettle still lived and what horrors Sister Apple might have wrought upon her attackers if not. She wondered too at the raiders she’d seen, lying at broken angles where the Noi-Guin had left them. They’d been young men, pale with short, fair beards and eyes the blue of cornflowers. She wondered what had driven them across the sea. They looked too well-fed, too well-equipped, to have come so far in order to terrorize peasants in their shacks. Does a man with a good iron sword cross an ocean to steal a half-starved goat?

She watched the darkness and painted the raiders across it, breathing life back into their pale limbs. Would they come this far inland, or retreat now, fearing to be cut off when the emperor’s new armies arrived?

No raiders came in the night. Or if they did they moved on, hoping for richer pickings than promised by the cluster of hovels. The three girls got up as the sky paled and set off towards the valley, a shallow one that stretched east and north towards the distant hills where the sun would soon rise.

‘She said it was the only way through. The only easy way anyhow – and if we want to catch the others we want the quickest path.’ Clera had taken the lead. The old woman who extorted a copper from her for last night’s bread had also furnished her with directions to Aemon’s Cut, a gorge that she claimed to be the only safe passage through the colourfully named Devil’s Spine.

Nona could tell from the terrain that some river of ice had pressed forward here as it once had across the Grey, but more recently, perhaps only a century or two earlier, retreating to leave the bedrock scraped bare of soil, fierce ridges standing where veins of harder stone ran. The Spine was one such vein of obdurate granite left standing where the slow, implacable currents of the ice carved softer rock away. It stood perhaps a thousand yards proud of its surroundings but near vertical, and honed to a razor-edge running north and south for a dozen miles and more.

The novices had heard of the Devil’s Spine. Ara had even seen it before as a small child – a curiosity on a trip to visit some or other far-flung fruit of her family tree. But not until they drew close, harried by the ice-wind, did they properly appreciate the wisdom in seeking an easy passage from one side to the other.

‘We’ll go to Aemon’s Cut and press on. We’ll catch the rest or we won’t. We can meet them at the Kring if not,’ Clera said. ‘Apart from not having Ruli, this is the group we were going to be in anyway.’

Crossing the rock wastes took longer than anticipated. Fissures ran across the stone, miles long, yards wide in places. In other areas the stone lay pockmarked with sink-holes, some filled with dark water, some empty with sharp edges, some wide enough to drown in, some small enough to trap a foot and break an unwary ankle.

By late afternoon they had spotted the Cut. By early evening they had reached the approach. The three novices wound their way through a maze of rocky gullies that snaked in confusion across the fractured rock up towards the Cut still almost half a mile off. The wind, that had plagued them since leaving the Rock of Faith, slackened as if daunted by the Devil’s Spine, growing fitful.

‘It’s changing,’ Ara said.

‘We might find we have a Corridor wind tomorrow to blow us the rest of the way to the Kring,’ Clera said.

Nona hoped so. Her father had hunted up on the ice most of his life whereas she had spent most of hers hiding behind whatever walls she could find when the ice-winds blew. Three days bearing up under its breath had only deepened the respect she felt for him. It added a new dimension to her concerns over Yisht. Would a woman raised in such a place truly let her ambitions be thwarted by children or forget the indignity they’d heaped upon her?

A break in the clouds scattered sunlight across the ridged rock. Nona stopped in her tracks. Just as there’s a power in many clear voices, ringing in harmonies, it lives too in the shadows of clouds, and in the light moving across landscapes, watched in still moments.

‘It is changing,’ Clera started up again. ‘We’ll be home and safe in the warm before we know it. I’m going to buy everything in the Pillared Market.’ Her chatter had a nervousness to it. She seemed distracted, glancing around.

‘We should—’ Nona bit off the words, eyes upon the pebble that had just bounced past her. She made a slow turn, poised to spring. Ahead of her Ara and Clera came to a halt. Tarkax stood in the mouth of a small cave some way back along the gully. They had passed just ten yards beneath without seeing him. He beckoned to them, an urgent gesture, one finger to his lips. Behind him in the shadows they could see a smaller figure in a range-coat.

‘Come on!’ Nona started off towards the warrior.

‘No!’ Clera called after her. ‘We need to push on – you can’t trust him.’

Nona looked back. Clera hadn’t moved. Ara stumbled to a halt halfway between them.

‘That’s why we’re here!’ Nona said. ‘We came to find Tarkax. Sister Kettle told me to. So Ara has a guard over her now Sister Apple’s gone. Trusting him is the whole point.’

‘Well I don’t.’ Clera raised her arm towards Aemon’s Cut. ‘That’s where we need to go. That’s the path to our target. Sister Tallow is waiting there. She’ll have half the convent’s Red Sisters with her now they know how serious it is with the Durnish.’

‘I told Kettle we’d find Tarkax,’ Nona said, frowning.

‘Well we’ve found him. Now let’s go,’ Clera said. ‘Remember who he is. I saw him at the Caltess, talking to Yisht. If we hadn’t put her in a barrel it would be her standing in that cave. It would be her that Sister Kettle told you to find to look after Ara. Did you trust Yisht?’

Nona didn’t answer that, just glanced back towards Tarkax, now crouched further back in the shadow of the cave’s entrance.

‘Let’s go!’ Clera started back along the gully towards the Cut.

‘No! Clera!’ Nona had promised Kettle. She had sworn to a dying woman. To her friend. ‘Come on.’ She waved Ara after her and hurried up across the steep slope towards the warrior of the ice-tribes.

‘Nona …’ Ara followed, but slower, faltering. ‘What about Clera?’

‘She’ll follow us,’ Nona said, unsure of whether she wanted it to be true.

Nona reached the cave first. Tarkax remained crouched, his eyes not straying to her but keeping to the ridges and gullies. Nona moved past him, seeing in surprise that the gloom held four novices. Her eyes had yet to adjust but one of them was so large she could only be Darla. Ignoring them for the moment, Nona turned to see Ara coming past Tarkax, and running up behind her, a wrathful Clera looking ready to punch someone.