Abbess Glass shrugged then shivered. “The Durns are landing again, in force, spreading along the southern margins. The Scithrowl armies are at both their borders, though more of them at the one we care about. The ice has advanced another mile since last year’s ranging, on both fronts. The emperor is squeezed on all sides. Our options are running out at a startling rate, old friend. All we need now, as they say, is for the moon to fall!”
“And Sister Kettle?” Sister Tallow moved to the window. She stood, staring across the convent. “She’s not safe here. Pelter will snap her up. I’m surprised he hasn’t already. And what Apple might do then I couldn’t say. Only that it would not be pretty.”
“I need Kettle here.”
“But—”
“Too many of the Greys are on missions. The things I’ve set in motion . . . The uncertainties . . . Sister Kettle is my reserve. Her skills are too valuable to waste, her condition a good excuse to keep her close.”
“It’s her condition that will see Pelter take her off to the Tower of Inquiry in chains, abbess!”
“The operative word there is ‘see,’ Tallow dear. He will not see her. She will remain hidden but close.”
“And this business with Nona? Shade Trial in the cloister?”
“Nona is Red to her core. She was never going to pass the trial, not in Thaybur Square, not here. It will do her no harm to fail at something. We all have to get used to that. Even me.”
A knock at the door.
“Come.”
Sister Spoon leaned in through the doorway, the Ancestor’s tree dangling from her neck in the form of a silver pendant, branches above, a single taproot reaching below. “Sister Rock says there are pilgrims massing on the Vinery Stair, calling for the Argatha.”
“I’m sure Novice Zole will be delighted. What do you mean by ‘massing,’ sister?” Abbess Glass waved to Sister Tallow, letting her go; there would be a class of girls wanting instruction on how better to beat each other senseless.
“Hundreds, abbess.” Sister Spoon stepped aside to let Sister Tallow leave. “There are said to be food riots in the Verity slums. People want reassurance. They want the Argatha!”
“Unfortunately we have Zole.” Abbess Glass folded her arms across her stomach. “Have Sister Wheel go down and preach at the crowd. An hour or two of that should clear them.” She chewed her lip. “Send some bread down to feed any that are in real need. Children first. Take it along the Cart Way and serve it out on the Verity Road. That way the food’s associated with leaving rather than with waiting on our doorstep.”
“Yes, abbess.” Sister Spoon withdrew. Malkin slinked out at her heels. An appointment with a rat somewhere, no doubt.
The door closed and Abbess Glass found herself looking at the portrait that she had for a moment imagined Sister Tallow might be part of. “Abbess Mace.” She hadn’t seen the faces of any of the portraits in this room for a long time. Years maybe. They had become part of a fixed background, something for the eye to slide across. There were lessons to be learned there. Though little time remained for lessons. She had told Sister Tallow that all they needed was for the moon to fall. Of course the secret whispered in the corridors of power was that it had been falling all her lifetime and that fall was only getting faster. “What we need from you now, Abbess Mace, is another miracle.” She made a slow turn, taking in the dozen former abbesses whose faces watched her from the walls. “Anyone?”
Abbess Glass returned to her post at the window. Brother Pelter stood at the doorway to the Ancestor’s dome, letting the ice-wind gust past him into the foyer while he stared up at the abbess’s house.
“Come along, brother.” Abbess Glass set her fingers to the cold panes before her in their leaded diamonds. “Play your part.”
15
“WHAT ARE YOU reading?”
“Kettle! I didn’t hear you come in.” Nona turned from the heavy tome, grinning. She’d worried that Kettle had gone off on another mission without saying goodbye. There had been no sign of her around the convent for days.
“I can be light on my feet when I need to be.” Kettle leaned over Nona’s shoulder. “Saint Devid?”
“It says here that he travelled the whole circle of the Corridor.” Nona placed her bookmark on the page. “That was five hundred years ago. It was over two hundred miles from the northern ice to the southern ice back then!”
“Not one I’ve heard of.” Kettle raised her eyebrows. “Impressive though!”
“He visited three cities left abandoned by the Missing too! The ice has swallowed them now though . . .”
“Sister Wheel will hate him.” Kettle grinned. “She can’t abide stories about the Missing. She says they were animals, nothing more. The Church’s official position is that they had no links to the Ancestor’s tree. Which makes them animals in a technical sense. But you don’t find many horses building themselves a city!”
“Saint Devid came from the Grey too, like me. I don’t mean like a Grey Sister . . . the same place as me. And it wasn’t the Grey back then either, it was some of the best farmland in the empire and they had a city there—a big town anyway called . . .” Nona started to turn back in search of the name.
“Have you thought about how you’re going to pass the Shade Trial, Nona Grey?” Sister Kettle rolled Nona’s last name around her mouth as if savouring it.
Nona snorted. “You know it’s happening in the cloister, yes? I’ve got to sneak past Joeli and the rest of Mystic Class unchallenged. Perhaps if I wear a hat and cape . . . And then climb the centre oak, unchallenged, and reach the puzzle-box. After that all I have to do is hide in the branches with every leaf tight-wrapped against the ice wind, and sit there long enough to open it. Unchallenged.”
“Sounds difficult.”
“Sounds impossible. Even if I could still work the shadows.”
“There’s more to the Grey than wrapping yourself in shadow. Apply yourself to the problem, novice.” Kettle smiled and patted Nona’s shoulder. “I have faith.”
* * *
? ? ?
NONA STAYED AT the library taking notes on Saint Devid, absorbed by the tales of his wandering. Somehow Bray’s voice contrived to wash over her without breaking her concentration. As a result she arrived at Blade inky-fingered and late.
“Novice, nice of you to join us.” Sister Tallow looked around as Nona creaked the doors open, icy-gusts lifting her habit around her. The rest of the class were paired on the sands, swords at the ready. “Novice Joeli can shave your head after the bell. I feel she should get to wield a blade this lesson.” She nodded to where Joeli sat on the sidelines, her cane to one side, golden hair boiling around her shoulders, brushed to a high shine.
Nona gritted her teeth and ran for the stores to get a weapon.
The rest of the lesson passed in a flickering blur of swordplay, Alata gratefully surrendering her place opposite Zole to Nona. The pair of them fought with dedication, Zole precise, relentless and without mercy just as usual, Nona finding her instinctive fear of sharpened steel pushed out by anger at the humiliation waiting for her under Joeli’s hands. With the prospect of the Namsis girl holding a cut-throat razor inches from her face, Nona found Zole armed with a sword a less intimidating prospect.
“Good.” Sister Tallow’s voice inserted itself into a gap in their sparring.
Zole and Nona paused, both panting. Mistress Blade used the g-word so rarely that the moment required witnessing. Nona realized she was dripping with sweat and saw that Zole’s blade-habit was stained red around the site of her last thrust, the blunted point of her blade having penetrated deep enough to make the ice-triber bleed. Looking down, Nona saw she sported two similar injuries.
“Hah!” Zole launched another attack.
Nona dived into the space between heartbeats, deep as she had ever been. Even so the fight seemed blindingly fast, swords clashing, parrying, twisting, the sharp adjustment of feet, the stuttering advances and retreats. Their blades met perhaps twenty times before Zole dropped into an unexpected leg-swipe. Nona jumped it, almost. They crashed together, snarling, blades crossed between them, both pressing close. And leapt apart, feet bracing to rush in once again, sand piling up behind them.
“Break!” Sister Tallow called.