Red Sister

Nona’s blade slipped past Ara’s block and wrote a black line across her stomach. An immediate flood of guilt washed through her. She had spent two years thinking her friend could have stabbed her in her sleep, or at the least threatened to do so.

‘Of course, against untrained opponents combat may often be concluded within moments. A slash to the throat and swift advance to the next target is recommended, though a stab to the heart, the eye, or up under the jaw are possibilities if the opponent’s blade is controlled.’

Circle-slash-block. Circle-slash-block.

‘Break! You can join the others for ten minutes before next bell.’

Nona straightened, blinking sweat from her eyes. Time had escaped her, but the blisters on her knife hand and the circle of floor kicked free of sand had kept a more accurate measure than her mind.

‘Yes, Mistress Blade.’ Ara nodded and hurried off towards the changing room.

Nona pushed her wet hair back across her forehead, blinked again, and gave chase.

‘It’s great you came up.’ Ara finished with the last tie and stripped off her blade-habit in one fluid motion. ‘I was getting worried we wouldn’t range together.’

‘We’ve still got three months for that.’ Nona wriggled into her day-habit and brushed her hands through her hair, a short thick shock of it. She wanted to grow it long but it went wild if she let it get past a hand span and brushing wouldn’t tame it. When it got long Sister Wheel stopped calling her peasant and called her harlot instead – which made it almost worth it, but not quite.

‘I hope more of the others make it up before then too.’ Ara picked up her stockings and shoes, ready to go.

‘We need Ruli and Jula at least.’ Nona nodded. Grey Class went on the ranging every year, the novices sent on a long journey across open country. It was an important part of the year’s lessons. Without resources they had to live off the land and pass several convent challenges on the way. On the previous ranging two girls had been injured, one failing to reach the target in the allotted time. The abbess wouldn’t throw novices out for failing on the ranging – though her predecessor had – but it was certain that nobody who failed a ranging would ever take the grey or the red. ‘It’ll be the first time I’ve got off this rock in … since I arrived here.’

‘Come on!’ Ara pulled Nona’s arm, shaking her out of her contemplation of the fact that she hadn’t ever passed back through the pillars outside the convent. ‘Race you.’

Nona and Ara scrambled barefoot up the stairs to the platform in the blade-path chamber, Ara bursting through well in the lead and almost knocking a girl over the edge. About half the novices had already abandoned practice in favour of an early bath, but they still had some competition. Ketti sat with her back to them, legs dangling out into space and two older novices stood waiting their turns. Taller of the two, who Ara had nearly pitched into the net below, was Alata. Her dark eyes narrowed in disapproval at Nona’s arrival. The girl had ink-black hair so tightly curled it seemed to float about her head, her dark skin had been patterned with darker scars, their raised bumps looking as if they spelled out a message whose meaning lay just beyond comprehension. The other novice was Leeni, a red-haired girl with skin so pale that her veins showed in blue webs across her bare legs and arms.

Out on the path itself Clera, still in her blade-habit, wobbled dangerously as she attempted the first rise of the spiral.

‘Watch your back foot!’ Ara called out.

Clera twitched, flailed at the air, and fell with a furious shriek, dark hair streaming up to shroud her face. Ara turned to Nona with a guilty look, raising her hands. ‘Well, she did have it placed wrongly.’

Nona said nothing, though to be fair, Clera had been poorly positioned.

Alata gestured to the pipe with a broad hand. ‘See what you got, new girl.’

‘You.’ The pale girl pointed at Nona. ‘I want to see if the Shield drops faster than the rest of us.’

Nona shrugged. She and Clera were the only acknowledged hunska full-bloods in the lower classes, though Ara might also be, and she was certainly very fast for a prime. Full-bloods always got jealousy and awe in equal measures but Nona’s showing at the ordeal had pushed the reaction to greater extremes.

It took a moment to brush the sand from her feet and apply resin. Ara had made her a gift of a small tub of the stickiest blend Nona had seen. The tub itself was silver, embossed and worked, by far the most valuable thing Nona had touched, and yet passed to her as if it were no more than an apple-core.

‘Remember, take your time, think!’ Ara spoke as Nona set foot on the pipe, arms out for balance. ‘You always go too fast.’ Ara’s first completion was less than a month old and her enthusiasm for giving advice had yet to wane. She had taken a little over four hundred beats compared to Clera’s best of two hundred and ninety, and failed to improve on it in her two completions since.

Nona edged out, having to pull to free each foot from the traction that would prove vital in the steeper sections. She still had yet to pass the halfway point. Something never felt quite right, as if the whole shifting shape of the blade-path had been designed just to throw her, Nona Grey, into the net below, as a personal insult. Some elusive part of the puzzle escaped her every time, a sour note in the song, the wrongness of someone else’s shoe on her foot.

‘You’re doing well!’ Ara from the platform, already far above Nona’s head as she finished the long slow curve of the initial descent and approached the sharp rise of the spiral’s first turn.

‘The net wants you, little girl.’ The pale novice.

‘Darla wants you too!’ Alata called.

Laughter and hoots rose from below where other novices watched at the doorway.

Nona started the climb, making sure that her back foot held a better position than Clera’s had. She rose with slow steps, stuttered corrections here and there as she made the difficult transfer from the inner surface of the spiral to the outer. The structure rocked and swayed on its supporting cables. She drew a slow breath and crossed the vertex of the first loop.

Click. The pendulum swung past its midpoint and the dial advanced another notch, counting out Nona’s sloth. The leap to the top of the next spiral tempted her, but the rules of the game said the whole blade-path must be walked. She started her descent, relying on the resin to stop her slipping. Click.

Some yards ahead a heavy section of the blade-path rotated on a joint, reacting to the shifting of Nona’s weight on the spiral. Every part of the blade-path levered some other part: the smallest step could set some section in motion, the whole path flexing and reconfiguring.

Nona dropped into the moment, slowing the world to a crawl, the novices’ laughter crashing through the registers until it reached the deep rumble of a mud-ox. She reached for support, shifting her own weight to counter the motion beneath her feet. A slow hunt for balance in the space between heartbeats.

Somehow it ended as it so often ended, with Nona understanding that she had passed the point of no return, knowing that no lunge could save her now, and letting gravity take her. She fell without sound, just a silent snarl across her lips. The impact with the net, the bounce, the scramble to the side, all passed without notice: she knew she could walk the blade-path, knew it blood to bone, and yet … and yet …