“I saw all kinds of horrible things.” Ara pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead. “They couldn’t all be true. So maybe none of them were?”
Nona nodded. Even if the thing was as big as a bear and had teeth like swords she needed to see where Hessa died. With the shipheart so close Hessa might have worked miracles. There could be a clue. Missed by the nuns but waiting for one who was thread-bound to her. And with thread-work you start at the beginning. “We’re going then?”
Ara and Ruli nodded. Jula frowned then nodded too.
“I hear you’re up for the Shade Trial,” Ara said, breaking the mood with a grin.
“Yes.” Nona glanced back towards Joeli’s clique with narrowed eyes.
“No chance.” Ruli shook her head.
“What?” Nona turned her stare on Ruli.
The girl held her hands up. “I’m just the messenger.”
“She’s right, Nona. There’s no way Joeli will let you get to that tree.” Jula shook her head. “Even if they liked you they wouldn’t go hungry just to let you pass. And you’re not hard to spot.”
“I can put on a headscarf or something!” Nona found her voice raised and struggled to push her outrage back. “I’m not useless.”
“Can you put a shadow on too?” Ara offered an apologetic smile. “And it’ll take more than a headscarf. Suleri went in with a long white beard, warts, and a cast in one eye. They challenged her before she got halfway to the tree.”
“She overdid it.” Nona sniffed. “Less is more.”
“Well.” Ruli grinned. “You’ve certainly got a lot of that!” She rolled back under the swinging slap Nona aimed her way and ran off shrieking with laughter.
Nona stood to give chase, then stopped, reminded by a dozen bruises that perhaps sitting back down would be better. She tried to imagine crossing Thaybur Square with all of Mystic Class on the watch for her. She let her gaze rest on the skeletal forest of the centre oak’s branches, leaves tight-wrapped against the ice. “I’m lost, aren’t I?”
Ara nodded. “It’s not like you wanted the Grey. Just punch your way to the pine and claim it as a spoil of war.”
13
NONA BUTTONED HER range-coat tight and hurried from the refectory, still chewing on a heel of bread. Ara, Ruli, and Jula were waiting for her to join them on the Seren Way, ready to dare the holothour’s cave once more. And she was already late!
“Novice!” A nun, black against the sun where it rose between Blade and Heart Halls, called to her. “Walk with me.” Sister Apple’s voice.
Shielding her eyes, Nona hurried over. “Mistress Shade?”
Sister Apple motioned with her head and led off across the square. Nona followed, bowed against the ice-wind and hoping she wouldn’t be kept too long.
On reaching the shelter of the steps down to the Shade classroom, Sister Apple turned and beckoned Nona closer so she too would be out of the wind. “Your Shade Trial will be next week, Nona.”
“Next week? I’m not ready!” Nona’s mind started to race. She could get a Mensis house-guard uniform from Terra . . .
“And it has been decided that it will be held here in the convent.”
“But . . . Thaybur Square is . . .”
“Too dangerous. We will use the novice cloister and put the puzzle-box up the centre oak. I’m sorry, Nona.”
“The cloister?” Nona tried to picture it. “That’s madness. Everyone there is in a habit. We all know each other! The defenders would just challenge any stranger . . . not that I can make myself look like a stranger in a habit!”
“Even so—”
“I’ve no chance! This was Wheel wasn’t it? She’s always hated me.” Nona hardly felt Keot burn across her tongue, rising with her rage. “Wheel and that bitch Rail. Revenge for Joeli! Namsis money bought and paid for this—”
Sister Apple’s slap rocked Nona on her heels, setting the side of her face aflame. She had been too deep in her outrage to see the blow coming. Which, even as she raised her hand to her cheek, Nona realized was a good thing. If she had seen the blow and blocked it some unwritten rule would have been shattered, and Nona’s exit from the convent would have been a likely consequence.
“I made the decision.” Sister Apple fixed Nona with a hard stare. “Safira told you the Noi-Guin still want their revenge. Do you want Kettle and the other sisters out in Verity risking themselves so you can take the trial?” Her voice turned from angry to bitter. “It’s not as if you stand a chance. You cut off your shadow, Nona. You cut yourself off from the shade. The Grey isn’t for you.”
Sister Apple turned and unlocked the gate. She locked it behind her and a moment later descended into the caves, leaving Nona standing before the steps, too full of conflicting thoughts and emotion to do anything but stand some more.
* * *
? ? ?
“THOUGHT YOU WEREN’T coming!” Ruli stepped out into the track from where she had been sheltering with Ara and Jula.
“It’s hard to slip away with inquisitors all over the convent.” Nona had crept out quite easily, but that had been quick feet and luck. Mainly luck.
Ruli nodded. “I walked the shadows with Ara.” The other two emerged behind her. Ruli only had a touch of marjal, half-blood at most, but she showed a talent for shadow-work. “Jula just strolled out. The Inquisition know how holy she is and don’t bother with her.”
Jula snorted at that. “Did you bring a weapon?”
Nona pulled out the knife they’d discovered on their last exploration.
Ara frowned at it. “That’s the same as before . . . you know, the one they tried to assassinate you with. It’s Noi-Guin!”
“It’s the same as the shadow-poisoned one that got stuck in Kettle,” Nona said. “One very persistent assassin, three knives. I must have hurt their pride by surviving.”
“Do you think the . . . monster . . . scared the Noi-Guin away too?” Ruli shivered, then hugged herself as if to show it was just the wind.
“I’m guessing so.” Nona put the knife back inside her habit. “What did you bring?”
“Half a quarterstaff!” Ara reached back into the crevice they’d been waiting in. “I guess that’s an eighth-staff?”
Nona grinned: she recognized it as one she’d broken when Joeli’s friends caught her.
“I got a hammer from the cooper’s stores.” Ruli let it slip from her sleeve into her hand.
“This.” Jula sheepishly produced a frying pan. “It’s all I could get.”
“And Sister Coal won’t beat you as hard if she catches you stealing from the kitchen as Sister Tallow would if she caught you stealing from Blade stores!” Nona nodded.
“Are we being stupid here?” Ara frowned at her broken staff. “There’s a monster down there we know nothing about, and Jula has a frying pan.”
“Maybe.” Nona put her knife in Jula’s other hand and folded her fingers around the hilt. “But they’re going to send us out into the world soon enough and we’ll be expected to deal with whatever we find. If we can’t even face up to something on our own doorstep . . . under our own doorstep . . . what use are we?” She flexed her hands and brought the flaw-blades into existence shimmering briefly. “And I brought my own weapons.”
* * *
? ? ?
THE FISSURE WAITED for them as it had always waited, hidden before there were people to hide from. Ara led the way into the corridor, lantern held high. The entrance held that faint rankness of old bones, damp stone, and rotting vegetation. A few dozen yards took them past the point where even the most shade-loving plant could cling to survival using whatever light bled through the entrance and soon the only smell was that of wetness on rock. They retraced their steps, a familiar route now, none of them speaking. Nona felt the weight of stone above her, the walls pressing in, the heavy silence. In places their footsteps echoed, elsewhere an emptiness, like that of the Ancestor’s dome, swallowed the sound.
“I’ve worked out why I like this place so much,” Jula said.
Nona looked back from her inspection of the long scramble up towards the chamber with the three exits. “Yes?”
“It’s the wind.”
“There isn’t any.”