You’ll have to leave the tree for class. They’ll spot you then anyway.
Nona said nothing, only curled her lip, but the devil had it right. She hadn’t imagined she would get so far and her plans had extended no further than securing and replacing the box.
Nona turned the box in her hands, seeking a lock that looked easier than the rest. Across the rooftops Bray sounded, calling out from the Academia Tower. “Blood!”
Nona started to climb down. If the guards left the cloister before she did then the contest was over. More than over, her achievements so far might no longer count. She paused for a moment low among the branches, struggling with the box one last time. In the next moment rather than be caught trying to creep out, she stuffed the box into her habit and dropped from the tree, landing in a crouch some yards from the trunk.
“Ancestor!” A handful of novices were still making their way out and the cordon of Mystic Class guards were beginning their retreat towards the exits. “It’s her!” The first girl to speak wasn’t even one of the guards.
“You got me.” Nona straightened and stepped towards the little novice. “Elsie, isn’t it? Red Class?”
“Challenge!” Joeli shrieked it, shoving Mally and Meesha aside as she stormed towards Nona.
“Too late.” Nona turned to face her. “I’ve finished.”
“Challenge!” Joeli looked ugly with her face twisted and red. She had both hands raised as if about to strike her enemy.
“Finished?” Sister Apple stepped out from behind the tree. Quite how she could have been there unseen Nona couldn’t fathom. True, her range-coat was bark-patterned, but you couldn’t hold a feather over your head and expect people to believe you were a hen.
“She’s lying!” Joeli shrugged off Elani who sought to calm her. “She’s a lying peasant bitch!” Her arm, raised in accusation, swung to point at the puzzle-box nestled in the fork of the tree. Nona peered up at it. From down below it did look quite convincing.
“That’s not the box,” Sister Apple said. “But to be finished you would have to have opened the real one, Nona. And that does sound unlikely.”
Mystic Class crowded round now, Darla and Zole joining them.
Nona drew the puzzle-box from her habit, holding it carefully. It sat across her cupped palms.
“Still locked!” Joeli spat.
“It’s a difficult box to open.” Sister Apple smiled. “It was a marvellous effort to retrieve it.”
Nona flattened her palms out a fraction and the puzzle-box fell into four sections along the lines that her flaw-blades had cut through it. The thing was a solid block of bone with no space inside.
“Is that open enough?”
17
THE LAST DAYS leading up to seven-day proved rather tense ones. No one in Mystic Class save Nona, Darla, and Zole got to eat. Mistress Shade totalled the failures of the Shade Trial guards at seven days without meals. The abbess decreed that seven-day be an exception, presumably concerned that an unbroken fast of such duration might do physical harm to some of the leanest novices. The class did not take their punishment with good humour.
Sister Wheel devoted a lesson to the sin of pride. “We are none of us more than a twig in the great tree of the Ancestor. The gifts the Ancestor has given us are for the benefit of all, not the aggrandisement of the individual. Pride is a poison that corrupts.” She turned her watery eyes on Nona. Nona resisted asking if the Chosen One was just another twig.
Sister Rail directed Academia lessons back towards algebra as if knowing how much Nona hated it. Of those without rumbling stomachs Zole was the only one able to cope with the scrawl of letters and symbols the nun covered her board in.
Sister Apple devoted two lessons to a dissection of Nona’s tactics in the trial, keeping the resentful focus of the class on the origin of their distress.
“If you can’t disguise yourself as someone else, then disguising others as you is sometimes an option. Keep this fact in mind. If you’re set to trailing a target you might be tempted to fixate on one marker they can’t discard. Perhaps their height. Perhaps they’ve lost an arm. These can be reliable when the target doesn’t suspect they are being followed—but if they are suspicious then these seemingly unique markers can be the very thing they use to make you fail. You might find yourself pursuing another very tall man, another one-armed woman, offered up to take advantage of your laziness.” She concluded with the box. “The box is there to teach a lesson. Its secret is revealed when sisters take the Grey. We will need a new way to teach that lesson now. At least for enough years to outlast the convent’s memory. It’s there to teach Sisters of Discretion that whilst there is a time to be subtle, a time for stealth, deception, and the lightest touch, there is also always when the seconds are running out and we come to the sharp end of things the possible need for violent and direct action. Never be so focused on picking a lock that you forget kicking down the door is also an option.”
In Blade sword training continued but Sister Tallow took half a lesson to talk about the upcoming Ice Trial. “Sister Egg will be staying with us for four weeks to instruct you on surviving the ice. You’ll need more than range-coats and convent shoes out there. You’ll need to learn the nine basic types of snow, how to spot and traverse a crevasse, how to build shelters, cook food . . . four weeks will just scratch the surface. More novices have died on the Ice Trial than any other, so pay attention! Even if you take the ordeal of the Shield you will have Sister Rose on hand to try to fix whatever holes might get put through you. On the ice you will be alone, no matter how many novices are with you.”
Nona’s days rolled by: lessons amid the sullen regard of her classmates, nights in a dormitory full of rumbling stomachs, breaks in the cloister where her victory was replayed by Ara and the others over and over. And through it all Joeli Namsis watched her, with just the hint of a mocking smile on her lips. She didn’t have to say it. Hessa. Nona could triumph in as many convent games as she liked. The real world lay outside, and on the one occasion that world had reached into Sweet Mercy Nona’s friend had died. Yisht walked free out there. Sherzal had the shipheart. Nona’s success meant nothing.
* * *
? ? ?
WHEN THE SUMMONS came to present herself before Abbess Glass Nona had no idea what to expect. She took herself to the door of the abbess’s house and her knock was answered by Sister Pail who led her to Glass’s office.
The abbess sat behind her desk with a welcoming smile and eyes that took Nona’s measure. In a convent full of women honed into athletes by Blade training, and deadly with their hands, it often surprised Nona that ultimate authority rested in the palm of a motherly woman, somewhat overweight, hair streaked with grey, who wouldn’t last more than moments against the youngest hunska half-blood. But then Nona would remember how that old lady’s palm came to bear such a mass of burn scars and her question would be answered.
“Nona, have a seat.”
Nona sat and waited.
“Your performance in the Shade Trial was a triumph.”
Nona waited for the “but.”
“But I want you to think about what role awaits you in the wider world, however narrow it might be when you leave our convent. Out there you can’t always win. No one person, no matter what amount of physical skill they might have, can change the tide of a war, or deflect the uprising of a political movement. Not even the most famed of Mystic Sisters, with the power of the Path running through their veins, were single-handedly responsible for defeating nations or able to steer the populace.