Red Sister

Around her the novices’ faces had frozen into a range of expressions, from horror and shock on Jula and Ruli, to amazement on Clera, and on Arabella a smile that could mean anything. Nona wanted to take back what she said – even now she wanted to apologize and beg to stay … but she couldn’t get the words past her locked jaw.

‘You’re right, Nona.’ The abbess nodded to herself, her attention resting for the moment on her only ring, set with a large amethyst.

Nona blinked, she’d been tensing for the blow, or the condemnation.

‘If we spent our whole lives here we would have little to offer the world and know little enough of the world to have context for our prayer …’ Seeing Nona’s frown she spoke more simply. ‘We wouldn’t understand what we’re praying for. Without knowing the chaos and confusion that washes all around this plateau, our Rock of Faith, we could not appreciate the serenity we seek.’ Abbess Glass paused and fixed Nona with dark eyes. It seemed important to her that Nona understand … that Nona believe. ‘I wasn’t always a nun. I had a son and I breathed for him. When we buried him my sorrow consumed me. Was my grief holy? Was it unique? All our hurts and follies are repeated time and again. Generation after generation live the same mistakes. But we’re not like the fire, or the river, or the wind – we’re not a single tune, its variations played out forever, a game of numbers until the world dies. There’s a story written in us. Your parents – your father and his ice tunnels, your mother and her Church of Hope, both of them, whether they loved you or left you, are in you bone-deep, remembered in your blood. The hunska has risen to the surface in you, the quickness of some relative dead these past ten thousand years – you think your mother and father are less present?’

Nona found her teeth clenched too tight for reply. Anger over her mother seethed through her and her hands twitched for violence.

‘There’s a story written in us, added to with each conception – it remembers and it changes us – we move to something from something.’ Abbess Glass held her two hands before her side by side, palms out, thumbs folded in, very close together so that the narrowest of gaps stood between the index finger of both. ‘Life.’ She raised one hand a fraction. ‘Death.’ She raised the other to match it. ‘We spend all our years on the short journey across this gap. But look – the gap is narrow if you cross it, but follow it and it’s long. As long as you like. You and I journey across the gap, but as a people we follow it. The Ancestor stands at both ends. The Ancestor watches us from before the flight – before the shiphearts first beat their rhythm. That is the Ancestor of singular form, the origin, the alpha. Along our journey we have become many and varied. The Ancestor watches us from the start and from the end, from beyond the death of stars, in the cold dark of beyond. That is the Ancestor of singular mind, the destination, the omega.

‘The Ancestor is meaning in chaos, memory in time, and that is holy. The ritual that Sister Wheel teaches is part of that memory – our connection to it, and it is important, whatever you think about the person who delivers the message. But what I really care about is the knowing behind it. We are many parts of the one. We are the steps, the Ancestor is the journey.’ She stood and reached for Nona’s hand. ‘Come on, we’d better go.’

Surprise loosened Nona’s tongue. ‘Why? Where?’ She stepped back, suspicious.

‘By now Sister Wheel will have found the Blade Hall locked, gone in search of Sister Tallow, found her in the sanatorium and recovered the key. Do you want to be here when she gets back with that wire-cane?’ She reached the door and opened it, pulling Nona after her. ‘Behave yourselves, girls. Mistress Spirit will be looking to use that cane and won’t require much excuse.’

‘Sister Wheel will calm down soon enough.’ The abbess crossed the foyer to open the main doors. ‘At least as calm as she gets. Though I won’t pretend that she’s not the sort to hold a grudge. She carries her passion for the faith in both hands, does Sister Wheel, and any disrespect to me, real or assumed, is to her an attack on that faith, Nona. Stay on her good side and pay attention: you need to know what she teaches.’

They approached the abbess’s house, where her cat, Malkin, lay sleeping on the steps. Abbess Glass paused. ‘You can always speak your mind to me, Nona, but it will go easier on you with Sister Wheel and others if you’re seen to be punished for disrespect for the office I represent. Today you will spend an hour in contemplation at the sinkhole instead of joining your class for the evening meal.’

‘Yes, abbess.’ Nona had eaten a week’s worth of food in two days: she could miss dinner and hardly notice it. She had known hunger before. True hunger.

A figure came running towards them across the ground between the dome and the forest of pillars. The abbess stared at the approaching nun. ‘You need to learn what Mistress Spirit teaches. Once it is given over you can make it your own. You can order and prioritize the tenets of the faith to your own liking, as do we all. But first you need to know what they are …’ She trailed off distractedly as the runner drew close, sleeves and skirts flapping, and came to a halt before them.

‘Sister Flint?’ Abbess Glass tilted her head.

The etiolated nun inclined her head, seemingly untroubled by her long sprint. ‘Visitors approach, abbess. A judge of the high circuit and nine men-at-arms.’

‘Curious.’ The abbess pursed her lips. ‘Not by the Seren Way, nor the Vinery Stair, or we would have had warning. Is Sister Oak still patrolling the Cart Way?’

Sister Flint nodded.

‘Then our visitors have either flown here on the backs of eagles or taken a very long walk in order to come upon us unannounced …’

‘Eagles?’ Nona asked.

‘A joke, dear.’ The abbess frowned and looked up at Sister Flint. ‘When will they arrive?’

‘A few minutes.’

‘Hmmm.’ Abbess Glass lowered herself, with a little difficulty, to sit upon the steps of her official residence. ‘Fetch my crozier, Nona, will you? Just behind the front door. It’s open.’

Nona hurried up the steps and pushed through the panelled door into a dim hallway tiled in black and white. Her footsteps echoed in the vaulted space above her as she entered. A rack of five identical croziers stood against the wall a little way in, hefty staves bound with iron hoops, the top coiling like a shepherd’s crook, the flat spiral covered in plates of very thinly beaten gold, each one embossed with scenes from the book of the Ancestor. She took the first, surprised at its weight, and hurried back to the abbess.

‘Thank you.’ Abbess Glass took the crozier and patted the step beside her. ‘Sit.’

Nona sat, and Malkin stalked away. Sister Flint waited at the bottom of the steps, the wind wrapping her habit tight about her painful thinness.

Before too long they saw the visitors making their way through the pillars, ill at ease among the forest of stone. ‘Did you know, Nona, that the stone from which those pillars are made can’t be found anywhere in the Corridor? It’s all beneath the ice now. Lost to us.’

Nona started to reply then let the words fall. Abbess Glass knew she knew nothing.

The approaching men wore long red cloaks and breastplates of burnished steel, their helms gleaming and ornate. They flanked a grey-haired man in a thick black robe riding an enormous horse, one built for endurance rather than speed. A second man, also in a black robe, but a thinner one, tossed by the wind, followed, leading a mule with laden saddlebags.