Sister Rail devoted the morning’s Academic class to a history of Durnish invasions and the occasional ripostes from past emperors. Although she lined up a host of complex political reasons behind each act of aggression it seemed to Nona that the root cause was the same in every case. The ice kept advancing. If you squeezed any nation north and south it must expand east and west, or spend so many lives trying that the land remaining to it is sufficient.
“Atishoo!” Nona tried to hold the next sneeze in, she focused her will, reached for her serenity, gritted her teeth. “Atishoo!”
“Cover your mouth, girl!” Sister Rail stalked towards her.
Nona lowered the hand she’d had covering her mouth, biting back both her retort and the desire to wipe that hand down the front of the approaching nun.
“How many battle-barges were beached in the Durnish invasion at Songra Beach?” Sister Rail peered down at her.
Carry her to the window and throw her out!
Nona couldn’t help but smirk at Keot’s suggestion.
“You find this amusing, novice?”
“No, Mistress Academic. I was trying not to sneeze.” Nona pressed her lips together. “And it was three hundred.”
“When?”
“Uh . . . the thirtieth year of Emperor Tristan?”
“Nonsense.” Sister Rail turned and stalked back towards her desk. “It was the thirty-first year.”
When Bray tolled the class made for the door with indecent haste. Only Zole, Darla and Nona took their time. On each day of the Shade Trial two novices were allowed a day’s respite from guard duty. Four-day was Zole and Darla’s day off and no penalties incurred by the guards on post would fall upon their shoulders.
Zole walked out after the others. “Good luck today.”
“What have you heard?” Nona fought back a rising panic.
“Heard?” Zole turned. “Nothing but footsteps in the night. But it is enough to know you. You will make your move today. You would not strike against a friend, Nona Grey.” She shrugged and left.
“Better get on with it,” Darla said. “This is insane, though. I did mention that?”
“You did.” And Nona led off after Zole.
They went directly to the novice cloisters, the icy gusts swirling around them as the Corridor wind struggled to reassert itself. Mystic Class would be arrayed within the cloister now, ready to challenge Nona the moment she set foot inside. Darla followed Nona into the laundry wing, ignoring the main archway into the cloister. They went through the washroom, past Sister Mop and Sister Spear, one scrubbing, the other at work with the mangle.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sister Spear looked up as Nona started to climb the wooden stairs to the second storey.
Nona paused and met the woman’s sharp stare. “I’m on Shade Trial, sister.”
“And the big girl?” Sister Spear had recently joined from Gerran’s Crag in the west and struggled with names.
She’s old. Beat her and leave her bleeding.
“She’s my prisoner,” Nona said.
“Prisoner?” Sister Spear frowned.
Nona nodded. “Mistress Shade has instructed us at length on the value of hostages. I can’t afford to let her out of my sight.”
Sister Spear waved them away, shook her head and returned to her mangle work. “Novices . . .”
The floor above had been given over to the storage of linens, salt for the wash, and unspecified crates of the type that looked too important to throw away but too boring to open. Nona ignored it all and went to one of the outer windows. The shutters protested with a squeal of rusty hinges.
“I don’t like this bit.” Darla peered out at the drop.
“I won’t let you down.” Nona patted the rope at her hip then slipped out onto the window ledge. A quick jump and scramble saw her onto the roof, one flaw-blade skewering a roof tile to gain purchase. Crouching low, Nona hurried towards the chimney above the boiling room. She kept below the roof ridge and looped her rope around the narrow smokestack. Returning to the roof’s edge, she dangled the rope for Darla.
“Come on.” She sneezed and swore.
Darla made a meal of the climb, sending more than a few tiles crashing to the flagstones below. If the Mystic Class guards had truly believed Nona stood even a small chance of success they would have recruited eyes among the other classes and stationed them outside. But Nona had chosen the least overlooked side of the building and the ice-wind kept novices from lingering outside; and neither Joeli nor her friends seemed to consider her a threat.
Darla came to lie beside Nona, peering around the chimney and over the roof ridge into the cloister yard.
“How in creation . . .” Darla’s mouth hung open. “The tree . . .”
The centre oak stood decked in green, the thick multitude of its leaves tossed this way and that by the blustery wind. The evening before it had been a stark cluster of sticks, every leaf wrapped tight against the cold.
“It’s called horticulture,” Nona said. “A smelly business.”
“So. When do we do it?”
“Wait.”
They held at the roof ridge, waiting.
“How long for?”
“Not long. Look.” Nona nodded across to the less-used west entrance.
A novice came running through, hair covered by a nun’s headdress, face down, weaving past the first girl in her way.
“Challenge!” Mally gave chase. The novice kept running. “Challenge!”
Crocey surged into the girl’s path and seized her shoulders, shaking her. “She said ‘challenge’ you stupid—” The headdress fell away revealing Jula, nervous and flushed.
“Incorrect challenge. They all miss a meal,” Nona said.
A second novice came in at a run, through the main entrance this time, steering all eyes from Nona’s side of the cloister. Darla started to rise. “Shouldn’t we?”
“Wait.” Nona pulled her down.
Down below Joeli’s shriek cut the air. “It’s a trick!” She raced towards the new intruder. “Check her eyes! Check the eyes!”
The new girl wore a headdress and a scarf bound around her face. She moved like lightning.
“It’s her! It’s her!” Meesha cried as the girl dodged past.
“Challenge! Challenge!” Joeli reached them. “Got you!”
Her triumph proved short-lived. Ruli pulled her scarf aside, grinning beneath eyes that showed no white.
“How?” Darla whispered.
“Blackwort drops. It lasts a day or two,” Nona said. “They all lose another meal.”
A third girl burst from a window in the east range, headdress in place, scarf across her face.
“Wait! Wait!” Joeli screamed. “Let her get in the sun.”
Mystic Class novices closed from all sides. “Watch for a shadow!”
As the new girl broke from the shade of the gallery half a dozen challenges went up as one. “No shadow!” “Challenge!” The girl skidded to a halt. Elani snatched the headdress from her. Golden hair spilled out.
“Lose a meal,” Nona whispered.
“How?” Darla sounded exasperated even though it wasn’t her meals being cut.
“Ara’s great at shadow-work,” Nona said. “She just sucked it up into her eyes making them like mine.” Nona rolled to the side and started to retreat down the slope of the roof. “Get ready.”
Screams went up. It would be the four Red Class novices Nona had recruited. With heads and faces covered they were to rush in after Ara was caught, one from the west entrance, one from the main entrance, one from Ara’s window and the last ten yards behind the first, all of them screaming like banshees and weaving to avoid capture. In the chaos the defenders might not notice how short the decoys were.
Darla stood up and bent over with her back to the chimney and hands cupped almost a yard above the tiles. “This is still insane. You’ll die.”
“In service to the Ancestor, death is but a kiss.” Nona quoted Sister Wheel with a grin, and from the edge of the roof she began to run at Darla with all the speed she could muster.
Nona let the world slow around her even as she accelerated up the slope. The high screaming of the little novices tumbled down the registers. She leapt for Darla, lead foot aimed at her cupped hands. Shoe met fingers and Darla heaved upwards as they’d practised, lifting with all the power of her back, shoulders and arms. Nona bit down on the terrified yell that so badly wanted to escape her and flew through the air, arms pinwheeling.