Below her, struggling through the moment, the novices from Red Class tried to evade the Mystic guards. Perhaps more challenges rang out in the chaos, Nona couldn’t tell. Sister Apple would know. Nobody had seen Apple but they knew she was there, watching.
With their attention on the running novices at the far side of the cloister none of those in the square looked up to see Nona’s flight. The green wall of the centre-oak’s foliage rushed up to greet her, along with a hundred opportunities for being impaled. “I’ve missed! I’ve missed!” Nona could see nothing but leaves. “Ancestor protect me!” She had no time to say the words but they ran behind her lips.
In the next moment Nona was crashing through twigs and greenery. Perhaps she added her screaming to the mix in the cloister. She was too scared to know. The net took her by surprise even though she had been trying to aim for it the whole time. Her arms shot through the holes. The ropes lashed her face. The branches to which she had secured the corners the night before now creaked and groaned in protest, swaying all around her.
For what seemed an age Nona lay entangled in the net’s embrace, panting out the panic that had filled her during the plunge. Gradually she became aware of the shouts and screams in the surrounding cloister, dying away now. Somewhere close at hand Joeli was cursing.
“. . . the bitch. Four wasted challenges.”
“Watch everything! She’ll try again.”
“She’ll be in the next wave!”
“This is cheating!” Joeli again. “She’s supposed to be disguised as other people, not have other people disguised as her!”
Nona lay high in the arms of the great oak, cocooned in green.
This is a stupid game.
Shut up, Keot.
Well it is.
Very slowly, Nona began to untangle herself. The puzzle-box lay where Sister Apple had placed it that morning, low down in a fork of major branches. The leaves that close to the ground were not thick enough to hide her. It sat there, taunting her. A cubic box maybe six inches on a side, a thing of black and white, perhaps a bone body inlaid with ebony, a handful of small locks and catches on each side.
Even if you could get it unnoticed they would see it gone before you had time to open it and then they would just challenge the tree.
I thought you weren’t interested in my silly game?
Keot didn’t reply. But clearly he hadn’t been paying as close attention to Nona’s doings this week as she had imagined. She wondered what else he had to occupy his time.
Nona fished from her habit the box Ruli had fashioned for her. “Damnation.” The impact with the net had splintered one side, breaking away some of the fire-blackened washers that Ruli had used in place of locks. The body was bleached boxwood, the black design painted on with a tarry mix. It bore only a passing resemblance to the puzzle-box below, but if Sister Apple had taught them anything about disguise it was that people saw what they expected to see.
Nona looped her string around the hook at the corner of her fake box then clambered through the branches, keeping high. It took a while and she was thankful for the wind, for without it her passage through the branches would have been betrayed by the localized motion of the leaves.
At last she reached a position five yards above the box where the foliage was still thick enough to conceal her. Anchored by one hand, she used the other to dangle her second string. This one ended in a noose, with a lead fishing weight hung just above the loop; something from the endless mystery of Ruli’s pockets, suggested to stop the string fluttering to the wind’s tune.
Without the unrelenting grapple-tossing on their caving expedition Nona would have lost heart, believing that if you didn’t manage to snag something on the tenth attempt you weren’t ever going to do it. It took an age before the loop encompassed the box and didn’t slip away when she pulled.
Go on!
If it slides out and falls it’s all over.
Do it!
Before she could raise the string Nona felt a familiar tickle at the back of her nose. No! She screwed her eyes tight, bit down hard, concentrated the formidable power of her will so hard on not sneezing that her face hurt with the twisting of it. Still the tickle grew. No! Damnation! Keot! Do something!
What will you give me? He burned along the veins of her neck, stretching out across her cheek.
Anything, just stop the sneeze!
Anything? You’ll kill for me?
What? No!
Keot retreated. The sneeze rose, unstoppable, coming to summon a barrage of challenges.
All right! I’ll kill. But I choose who!
Keot hesitated then burned into her nose and down her throat. It hurt, but when he surfaced the sneeze had gone.
You should kill the one called Jula.
Yisht. I’ll kill Yisht.
Keot made no reply but she could feel his disapproval. Even so as he retreated across her shoulders the devil felt more deeply bedded in her flesh, and it wasn’t a good feeling.
Nona pursed her lips then returned her attention to the box, still lassoed despite how much her hand had trembled when she fought the sneeze. She pulled gently, then with more force. The box shifted, twisted, lifted. “Yes!”
As it rose the box began to spin, the kind of motion that would draw the eye. Ara had been waiting for this moment, Ruli too. Ruli, lounging inside the cloister, stood and ran across the main entrance. Ara, waiting outside, charged in once more, head covered.
“Just stop her!” Joeli yelled. They weren’t supposed to lay a finger on anyone, only to challenge. The person on trial had to stop when challenged. They would all lose another meal over it, probably, to be added to the two hungry days they had yet to find out about, earned when Nona reached the tree.
Nona lifted the box. “Three more days, not two, Joeli.” And began to lower the substitute.
By the time the novices had wrested Ara’s headscarf from her in a struggle that put several of them on the ground, Nona had lowered the fake box into place and slipped the doubled string free of the hook. It looked deeply unconvincing to her and she turned her attention to the real item, certain that she would have only moments before a challenge rang out, aimed at the tree.
“Keep hold of her!” Jolie was presumably tired of catching the same imposters over again. “And the other one—Rula is she?”
The box was surprisingly heavy. It didn’t rattle, and didn’t even seem to have hinges. Each of the six faces bore three locks. Nona clambered to a more secure position where she could sit with both hands free, secured by her legs. She called on her clarity and defocused her vision to bring her thread-sight to the fore. A billion green threads laced the tree itself, every branch and twig joined to every other, every leaf, every part of every leaf, interlocked in a web of life, joined with slow, sure, vegetable certainty.
Nona focused on the first lock, a keyhole set into a disk of black iron not that dissimilar to Ruli’s charred washers. “Locks I can do.” Novices were introduced to locks in Shade during their Mystic Class years, though younger novices often acquired sets of picks and practised around the convent. Nona had never had the money for picks or the inclination to spend time on the fiddly business, but she knew a few thread tricks.
The first lock surrendered quickly. Finding its thread took a little hunting and a lot of concentration but once pulled the satisfying click followed immediately. The second lock proved a nightmare. It had two threads, connected in some complex way Nona couldn’t fathom. Pulling one unlocked something, pulling the other unlocked a different thing and locked the first thing . . . Eventually she managed to pull both together in a way that sounded as if it did the job.
“Only sixteen left to go.” Nona looked out into the leaves seething around her. Down below the cloister sounded almost deserted. How long did she have before Bray rang out for Shade class? She could only work on the box between breakfast and dinner, and outside class time. The prospect of another blind leap into the tree did not appeal, even if the distractions could be made to work again.