Red Sister

‘Wh—’ Nona wanted to ask what a Shield was but the abbess set her large foot over Nona’s small one.

‘The Shield will have almost as many enemies as the Argatha. It was my duty to protect her until she is able to protect both herself and the Chosen One. She is just a child. Her safety lay in secrecy. Unfortunately, now you have forced a damaging choice: reveal the truth of her identity or let you drown her in ignorance.’

‘This is ridiculous, Abbess Glass. Anyone can claim a holy vision to save themselves from justice.’

‘Were not my first words to you in this court an invitation to consider why I would do such a thing? Rather than giving serious thought to that question you preferred to blame it on a mothering instinct that was singularly absent before my courses ran dry. I ask you once more – knowing what you know of me – do you seriously believe the words that came from your mouth?’

Nona knew herself a stranger to tact but even to her ears the abbess didn’t seem to be doing a good job of convincing a proud man to change his mind. She gave him no retreat, no escape, and yet he held all the power. Not even the archons could tell him what to do.

High Priest Jacob cleared his throat, gathered his robes about him as if he might be chilled, and stamped his staff beside his chair. ‘I am unconvinced, abbess. The sentence of this court is that—’

‘I demand the test.’

‘Test? What test?’ The high priest glanced to either side as if missing something. Answering his rhetoric, a black-clad assistant leaned in to whisper into his ear. The high priest frowned, the furrows across his forehead growing deeper from one second to the next. Then a smile. ‘You want to set this child before the Red Sisters and let them shoot her full of arrows? It’s certainly a more interesting form of execution than drowning the girl.’ The assistant raised his head from the open book in his arms and leaned in again. ‘The child would have to agree to such an ordeal though. Apparently.’

‘No.’ The pressure on Nona’s foot increased as the abbess shook her head. ‘That would be ridiculous. The ordeal of the Shield is for any sister that claims the title. It was never intended for a novice. Certainly not one who has worn the habit little more than a week. The test I refer to is the one that became legal precedent after Sister Cane’s vision of the Three Arks.’ The abbess lifted her foot, freeing Nona’s. ‘You will have to look in Lorca’s book on ecclesiastical proof. I believe Archon Philo’s attendant has a copy at the bottom of the pile he has stacked by the archon’s chair …’

‘Why don’t you save us the bother, Abbess Glass, and just tell us?’ The high priest clapped one hand over the fist of the other and rested his chin upon it, elbows on his knees.

A smile twitched across the abbess’s lips. ‘I’m tempted to say that I must affirm my vision to each archon and as a bride of the Ancestor that would be sufficient.’ She held up a hand as High Priest Jacob raised his head to object. ‘Sadly the ordeal that Sister Cane endured to prove her words was a rather unpleasant one.’ A quaver in her voice now.

Archon Anasta spoke into the quiet moment. ‘The nun in question held her hand just above the flame of a votive candle until she was believed. The precedent is that either the presiding official is swayed to believe the testimony and allows the witness to withdraw their hand. Or the witness withdraws their hand without permission and by doing so admits the lie. Or, I suppose, the candle burns out, which should be proof enough for anyone of something extraordinary. The whole thing is archaic, barbaric, and rife with superstition, but then again the prophecy to which Abbess Glass refers is archaic and rife with superstition, and the punishment that High Priest Jacob seems determined to impose carries an even greater degree of barbarism and antiquity …’ The old woman raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Who has a candle?’

The archon’s request passed via a chain of assistants and guards to the sisters waiting outside and a silence followed as presumably nuns scattered in search of a votive candle.

‘How will burning your hand change his mind?’ Nona asked. Her wrists had started to hurt and some sensation had returned to her fingers, though the yoke was no less tight. ‘He won’t care: he likes to hurt things.’

‘The high priest will see the depth of my conviction. Every second he delays will shame him before the archons against whom he has set his opinion. He will know that a woman who can stand the flame is capable of anything, and it will sway him.’ The abbess spoke with a calm serenity, her eyes fixed on High Priest Jacob in his chair across the chamber.

Nona wondered how Abbess Glass could be so calm. She had burned her fingers in the embers of a fire when she could barely walk and the heat had seared those hot moments of agony into her mind ever since. ‘If a woman like that is capable of anything, then she’s capable of lying too?’

‘Would he care about that? This has never been about truth.’ The abbess kept her eyes on High Priest Jacob. ‘If he decides to hurt me he will also at the end of it have to set me loose in the world. You think he has the balls for that?’

Nona knew she would be sweating in the abbess’s position. Looking for an escape. Ready to fight. But the woman looked so … serene. ‘You’re doing it, aren’t you? That mind game Sister Pan teaches.’ Shadowing the Path the novices called it. Not following it like a quantal could, but coming close enough to alter the way their minds worked.

‘Serenity.’ The abbess made a slow nod.

Nona frowned. Serene or not the abbess would still burn.

A young church guard bustled in, cloak rain-spattered, helm askew. She approached the archons, clutching a votive candle as if it were a holy artefact.

‘Remove the prisoner’s yoke and bring her before us,’ the high priest called. ‘Set a table … there. And a rope, to keep her from raising her hand too high above the flame.’

‘That hardly seems necessary. I—’

‘She’s proving herself to me, not to you Archon Kratton, and I deem it necessary!’ He wiped at his mouth. ‘Bring the girl too.’

Beside Nona a guard was working with a heavy key, rotating a screw that allowed the slow separation of the yoke that held Abbess Glass’s hands up to either side of her head. The device made a painful sound, sometimes a squeal, sometimes a deeper scraping.

‘It would be best if you looked away for this, Nona dear,’ the abbess said, easing one hand out from the yoke as the guard moved to release the other. ‘Don’t interrupt – you won’t be helping. I’ll need to concentrate.’

Nona watched as the yoke was lifted from around Abbess Glass’s neck and, flexing her wrists, she walked out to where the candle had been set upon a table. Nona wondered if the abbess had saved her from the noose as she first said on some point of principle, outraged at the corruption and failure of the empire law? Or because she valued the skills Nona had shown? Or had she truly been led by a vision? Or was that claim made in desperation? None of it made sense. The abbess had said words are steps along a path: the important thing is to get where you’re going. Nona wondered if the abbess knew where she was going now or if the game had got away from her the day she walked out of Harriton prison holding Nona’s hand.