Red Sister

First came a dozen church-guards in polished steel breastplates, the visors of their helms smooth, reflecting the world. Four drummers behind their armoured ranks started up a grim beat that drowned out the voices of nun and novice, the beat at odds with the metre of the hymn. Behind the drummers, eight priests holding aloft the standards of the four archons and of the four states of the empire. Each standard fluttered beneath a short crossbar on the bearer’s long pole, a boss of silver and brass gleaming at the very top.

The archons came on horseback, their stallions similar enough to be brothers from the same sire and mare. Two clerics attended each archon, riding smaller ponies. Even these attendants wore silver chains of office and plush robes, trimmed with the fur of ice lynx. A dozen men bore the high priest’s sedan chair between them on two poles.

The drummers ceased their beat only when the high priest’s bearers set down the sedan chair. The choir had fallen silent and nobody spoke as a lone bearer hurried from his position to open the door to the closed sedan.

A young man, blond and handsome in black velvets, ducked out through the open door, a leather-bound book clutched to his chest. Nona wondered at priests and judges: did they also carry a book to the Necessary with them to tell them what to do?

High Priest Jacob followed after a dignified pause, a small man almost swallowed by the robe of his office, a thing of deep purple folds, embroidered with enough golden thread to weight him down should a gust try to make him take flight. Short grey hair escaped beneath a black headpiece rising in scrolls. He stood thirty yards from Nona, lit by flickers, but even so there was something familiar about the man. Something that made her lip curl.

The high priest looked around, sharp-eyed, ignoring the hand his bearer offered to help him down. His assistant reached into the sedan and brought out a long straight staff, a couple of feet taller than him and made of wood so dark it might be black, the end of it stamped in gold with the interlocked alpha and omega of the Ancestor. The high priest took the staff and cast a disapproving eye over the welcoming committee.

Sister Knife approached with a bow. With eyes lowered, she gestured towards the steps where the abbess waited. The abbess stood flanked not by Sisters Apple and Tallow as so often before but by Sister Wheel and by Sister Rose from the sanatorium, their funnelled headdresses now seeming to indicate some kind of church seniority.

Taking his cue, the high priest approached the abbess. He walked with a pronounced limp, leaning on his staff. Behind him the four archons dismounted and the bearers began to remove luggage from the sedan.

‘High Priest Jacob! Welcome to Sweet Mercy.’ Abbess Glass nodded towards the choir to begin the requiem.

The high priest raised his hand to forestall them. ‘This is not a visit that I am happy to be making. If you would join me, abbess …’ He beckoned her to his side.

‘I know him …’ Nona hadn’t meant to say the words but they emerged as a whisper.

‘You do not!’ Ghena hissed to her right. ‘That’s High Priest Jacob, primate of the faith. Not some wandering preacher a peasant might have seen.’

‘Abbess?’ The high priest beckoned again.

Abbess Glass pursed her lips, eyeing the two bearers approaching from the sedan, carrying an iron-cornered box between them on rope handles. With a sigh she descended between Wheel and Rose to join the high priest out before the fire-pit.

‘The girl too.’ High Priest Jacob scanned the Red Class line, the fire glinting in his eyes. The light and shadow made something skull-like of his face. Nona knew him then. The man from Hessa’s memories. The man who had beaten Four-Foot to death.

The abbess looked puzzled. ‘What g—’

‘Do not,’ the high priest said.

‘Nona!’ Abbess Glass waved her over, and without thinking of escape Nona came. She shot a narrow look up at the high priest, meeting his pale eyes and registering the surprise there. For a moment she imagined leaping for his throat. The image pleased her.

‘This is the novice?’ he asked as she drew near.

The abbess nodded. ‘She’s a small thing to bring the high priest and all four archons up such a steep and winding path, is she not?’

‘This was not well done, Shella.’ The high priest frowned. Behind him the bearers opened the box and began to remove something heavy and clanking.

‘Is this necessary, Jacob?’ Abbess Glass glanced at the box with distaste.

‘Do you truly not understand who Thuran Tacsis is?’ High Priest Jacob shook his head. ‘I thought you were clever, Shella, devious even. This makes … no sense.’ He waved and the bearers stepped forward, heavy iron yokes in their arms, trailing lengths of chain. ‘Abbess Glass, Novice Nona, you are both to be placed under church arrest pending trial at sunrise.’

The larger of the two men opened the iron yoke in his hands and stepped forward to place it over the abbess’s head. Nona heard gasps and cries from behind her. The other man stepped towards her and she backed away.

‘Let him do it, Nona dear.’ Abbess Glass smiled, then winced as the weight of her yoke settled on her shoulders. ‘The high priest has spoken. The Ancestor will watch over us.’

Nona willed herself to stop. She didn’t much care if the Ancestor watched or not, but she knew the abbess stood before her humbled and in chains because she had taken her from the very shadow of the gallows, moments before they tried to set the rope about her neck. Nona didn’t understand why the abbess had done that but she understood the debt upon her.

‘I would kill him again.’ Nona stood straight as the yoke descended upon her. ‘I would kill his brother too, and his father if they think this is right.’

‘She condemns herself.’ The high priest spread his hands. ‘Do we even need a trial?’

‘She’s a child, Jacob.’ The abbess stumbled as she stepped towards him, her features strained.

As the weight settled on Nona her legs gave way and she fell to her knees on the rock. One bearer supported her while the other man tried to lock the yoke in place, encompassing her neck and both wrists. It took the use of a spanner to tighten the yoke sufficiently that her hands wouldn’t simply slip out.

‘Give her up now and there may still be a place in the church for you, Shella. It isn’t like you to get sentimental over a child. And why this child?’

‘My name is Glass. We will have a trial and see what that name is worth.’

The high priest sighed. He removed his hat, smoothed his hair into place and resettled it before the wind could undo his work. ‘Take them to the recluse.’

And so with the convent watching on and the welcome meal cooling on the long tables, Abbess Glass and Nona were led off to wait upon their trial. Nona looked towards her classmates as she staggered by, partly supported by one of the church-guards. Some looked away or at their feet, Clera among them. Others stared in horror. Even Arabella Jotsis looked stricken, though Nona couldn’t imagine why.

Sister Apple had to lead the high priest’s men to the recluse – every convent had one but the location varied from site to site. Sweet Mercy’s recluse was a cavern at the end of the tunnel that led past the Shade classroom. Sister Apple took them more than a hundred yards further into the bedrock of the plateau, holding her lantern high. In the depths the darkness moved aside before the nun’s intrusions only with reluctance. She navigated past half a dozen junctions where the tunnel forked into smaller or larger ways and eventually the corridor ended in a small cave where the walls had been smoothed by waters that had long since found a swifter course, leaving an almost spherical chamber. Iron bars blocked the corridor and the smaller entry path of the vanished stream. Sister Apple unlocked a gate in the bars and the abbess walked through with as much dignity as she could manage. Nona’s guardsmen helped her in. Sister Apple locked the gate.