With a roar Nona forced Hellan off her and rolled clear, a slow and ungainly move with Hellan still clutching at her. The swing of the quarterstaff couldn’t be avoided. Nona took the blow on the triceps of her left arm. Better a bruise than a fracture. She swept Crocey’s legs from beneath her as she rose. Elani came at her now, swinging half her broken staff in each hand. Behind her Meera staggered towards the fray, clutching her throat, blood on her chin.
Nona caught one of the shortened staffs in her hand, using it as a lever to twist Elani’s arm while she blocked the other on her forearm. Without hesitation, and still holding the trapped staff, she threw her body weight down on Elani’s twisted elbow. It snapped beneath her.
On the ground Hellan caught at Nona’s ankle. Meera brought her to the floor with a grappling lunge and tried to pin her, and at the same time Crocey rose to her feet, swinging her quarterstaff with renewed fury at the parts of Nona still exposed.
Nona’s rage grew. She felt the blows of the staff as distant thuds against her legs and sides. Blinded with blood, she saw the Path coiling bright before her mind’s eye. With one hand Nona sought Hellan’s eyes, stiff-fingered. With the other she shielded her head while seeking to fasten her teeth in the flesh and standing tendons of Meera’s neck. She might go down but any she left standing would be insufficient to carry the dead away.
“No!”
Before her jaws could snap shut, before she touched the awful power of the Path, Meera was hauled away from her, her body sailing through the doorway into Grey dorm. Something big loomed over Nona and Hellan. Nona blinked the blood away. A hulking figure. A quarterstaff hammered into the figure’s shoulder, wood splintering.
“Really?” Darla’s voice.
Darla turned and flattened the surprised Crocey with a punch. She kicked Hellan away and scooped Nona up with one arm. “Come on, you.” She strode through the main door into the rain-laced wind, Nona over her shoulder. Behind them someone was screaming in pain. Joeli probably. Or Elani. Or both.
After two corners and a hundred yards Darla set Nona down against the back wall of the scriptorium. “Let’s have a look.”
“I’m all right.” Nona didn’t feel all right. Her arm wouldn’t talk to her and her mind was red with Keot howling for murder.
“You don’t look all right. You’re covered in blood.” Darla poked at Nona’s face, blunt-fingered. “I should take you to Rosie.”
“No.” Once in the sanatorium it took forever to get out. “It’s not my blood.”
“This stuff is.” Darla pulled splinters from Nona’s calf. “They jumped you, huh?”
Nona let her head flop to her chest. Her ribs hurt at each breath. “Don’t think any of them will be jumping anyone again in a hurry.”
“What should we do?” Darla glanced to the corners for approaching trouble.
“Nothing.” Nona tried to rise and failed. “Get me to the bathhouse. I’ll see what will wash off.”
“But . . . Joeli and the others? You made a mess in there.”
Nona laid her head back against the wall, smelling only blood rather than the usual sharpness of hides from the scriptorium’s back room where they cured them for book binding.
Darla tried again. “If I hadn’t—”
“If you hadn’t come back I’d have killed at least one of them.” Nona spoke the words slowly. “And they probably would have killed me to stop me getting a second.” She drew another painful breath and stood with the help of the wall. “They’ll go to the sanatorium with tales of falling down steps. Joeli doesn’t want to go up before the convent table again. She thought her lot would give me a beating—not so bad as this one—and escape without a scratch. She’s too used to people rolling over for her.”
With an arm over Darla’s shoulder Nona limped to the bathhouse.
Tonight we will slice their throats as they sleep.
We won’t.
You said you were born of war!
You said that with my tongue. And war is a longer game than battle. For now we wait.
Nona realized she was using “we” and shuddered. Keot might be under her skin but she wanted him no deeper than that.
Two novices were leaving as they arrived, their hair steaming. Both offered wondering looks but said nothing. In the hot moistness of the changing room the warmth enfolded them, shot through with the shouts, splashes, and laughter of girls crowding the pool. Darla sat Nona on a bench and stripped her own habit with a few quick motions. Every inch of her lay thick with muscle, as if it wanted to burst free.
“Don’t drown.” And Darla walked off towards the water.
Nona sighed and began the slow process of disrobing. The fingers of her left hand were too clumsy for her ties, and she winced at every stretch or lift. At last she stepped from her smallclothes and limped after Darla into the mist, too tired to weave it around her.
10
ABBESS GLASS
“COME IN, SISTER.” Abbess Glass motioned Sister Kettle from the doorway and pointed to the chair before her desk.
The nun flashed a nervous smile and hurried across. Glass had never truly fathomed the girl. Even if she hadn’t summoned her she would have known it was Kettle at the door by the tentative knock, the hesitation. Was this the disguise she wore at convent, or the real girl? It was the Kettle she remembered from classes, a lithe girl, sharp-featured, with an impish smile, Novice Mai Tanner, middle daughter of a cobbler who plied his trade on the steps of Leather Street in Verity. Given over to the convent when her mother was taken. Mai had told the other novices it was the weeping sickness, but in truth a sailor had taken her mother: new love and new horizons. Abandonment of one’s sons and daughters was perhaps a sadder tale than the random cruelty of disease. Little wonder the child tied herself so tightly to the Ancestor in whom all bonds of blood are bound and drawn tight.
“Sit.”
Sister Kettle took her seat, hands folded in her lap, shoulders hunched although a fire burned in the hearth. Outside the convent Kettle’s deeds had earned her a reputation for deadly efficiency that few Sisters of Discretion could surpass. Inside she appeared the same friendly, awkward girl Glass had watched grow. Was one an act and the other truth, or were both masks she chose to wear? Glass’s instincts rarely failed her but here they gave her nothing.
“I’m sorry that this is the first chance for us to speak properly since your return from the ice,” Glass said. “The last few weeks have been busy. You’ve seen some of it yourself at the convent table, and in Verity . . .” She wondered how deeply Kettle had been affected by meeting Safira at the Mensis house. To Glass’s mind a knife was a very effective way to cut off any relationship but the bonds of affection Kettle formed were resilient ones and she had been very close to Safira for years. In that respect she shared much with Nona. Whilst the novice condemned the actions of her friend Clera Ghomal, actions that included personal treachery, she would still not condemn the girl herself. Loyalty of that degree seemed like a way to get yourself killed . . . but then what was the Ancestor’s creed if not about bonds? The importance of them and the strength that outlasted years and deeds.
“Before we get to your mission report . . . this business with Safira.”
Kettle flinched. The abbess doubted she would have reacted at all if she were outside the convent, if she had her Grey-face on, but here in her home, here she let her guard down, allowed herself both to be vulnerable and to be loved.
Glass started again. “You said Safira knew Zole was coming. Who took the message to Lord Mensis?”
“Sister Pail.”
“Hmmm.” As Novice Suleri, Sister Pail had been somewhat impetuous and hot-tempered but never someone Glass would have considered easily corrupted. The abbess wasn’t na?ve enough to think that anyone was incorruptible, but Sister Pail wouldn’t be her choice as the weakest link in the convent’s chain. “Someone let the news slip, and not many of us knew. Look into it when you’ve time.”
Kettle nodded. “If Sherzal has an ear in Sweet Mercy I’ll cut it off.”