Sister Pan paused and frowned at Clera, who dutifully faced front and centre. ‘Now, we have … Arabella.’ The nun focused on the Jotsis girl, whose shaved head was spattered with coloured light. ‘A bold stare she has. Hmmm. But what can she see?’ Sister Pan approached and leaned in close. ‘Don’t look away, dear. Keep your eyes on mine. In this place the world sings for us. Can you hear it?’ She took Arabella’s wrist in the gnarled claw of her hand. The nun’s skin was the black of a dusty slate, darker than her habit: Arabella’s fingers looked white as bone in that grip. ‘A three-part song. Life.’ She lifted their joined hands. ‘That which has never lived.’ She moved her stump into a pool of deep red light and followed the shaft of it up towards the window. ‘And death.’ A quick glance back towards the chest. ‘The notes of the song …’ Sister Pan intoned three notes, pure but somehow sad, the start of a melody that Nona wanted to hear more of. The nun released Arabella’s wrist and started to pace before the seated novices. ‘There’s a boundary between what lives and what does not. It runs through all things, and around them. It’s a path that is hard to follow but each step taken is a holy one. When you walk the Path you approach the divine. The Path flows from the Ancestor and the Ancestor waits at the end of it. At the end of all things.
‘We are mortal though. We are flawed. Poor vessels for divinity. Each step is harder than the last, the Path twists and turns, it is narrow and in motion, the power that it gives is … difficult to contain. Sooner rather than later everyone slips from the Path no matter what their heart desires, no matter how pure their faith.
‘Our knowledge of the Path is the gift of the fourth tribe – the last to beach their ships on Abeth. Among the stars the quantal built their lives around the Path, generation upon generation, until it lived in their veins. That blood was mixed to meet the challenges of a new world – but in some few it shows, even now after so many years have passed.
‘Have you seen the Path, child?’ Sister Pan, at Arabella’s shoulder once again, took the girl’s chin, angling her eyes back to her own.
‘I … Sometimes I see a bright line, like a crack running through my dreams …’
‘Have you touched it?’ Sister Pan asked.
‘A-almost. One time. I reached out for it …’ Arabella looked away, towards one of the glowing windows. ‘It felt as though I were running … my heart … and my head filled with angles. All sharp and wrong …’
‘And then what happened?’ Sister Pan released the girl’s chin.
‘I fell out of bed and woke up with a headache.’
Laughter rippled, half amused, half nervous.
‘And what about …’ Sister Pan blinked and looked around until she found Nona, sitting on the far side of the class. ‘… our other new girl?’
‘She’s hunska, Mistress Path!’ Clera called out, slapping Nona on the shoulder. ‘One of us reds!’
‘Hmmm …’ Sister Pan turned her gaze back to Arabella and started to ask more questions.
‘She’ll leave you alone now,’ Clera said in an undertone. ‘Only cares about the mystics.’
‘The what?’ Nona whispered.
‘Mystics. If Empress Arabella isn’t lying then she’ll be the second quantal in the class, the other being your friend hop-along. Only our bald friend is also hunska-fast which makes her oh-so-special, which is why all the nuns are wetting themselves over her – the Chosen One.’ Clera raised her hands in mock worship. ‘At the end of our studies, if we’re judged fit, we take holy orders and join the convent as nuns. Girls who follow the Path take their orders as Mystic Sisters – everyone calls them Holy Witches. I told you before. You and I, we’ll focus on Blade and take our orders as Martial Sisters, which everyone calls Red Sisters. Most who come here end up as Holy Sisters … and everyone calls them Holy Sisters … or if they’re being fancy, Brides of the Ancestor. That sounds creepy to me … And some take Shade in the last year. Those are Sisters of Discretion. Grey Sisters. There are lots of other names people use for those, none of them nice. But—’
‘Novice Clera!’ Deaf or not, Sister Pan had good enough eyesight to spot two novices with heads so bowed in conversation, they nearly touched.
‘I was telling Nona about the blade-Path, Mistress! Can I show her? Please!’
Sister Pan lifted her eyes to the heavens and signed her faith, laying her index finger over her heart, pointing upward. ‘The child has only been here a few moments!’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Today we will be meditating. Continuing to develop the serenity that helps to bring us to the Path. And, Nona, whilst it is true that for many of you girls no amount of quiet contemplation will bring the complexity and beauty of the Path into focus within your mind’s eye there are many other benefits, both spiritual and physical, to achieving the mental states we seek to unlock in this class. In a girl’s first year I endeavour to teach her, through meditation, mantras and the control of breathing, the three-fold mind. The necessary states of clarity, patience, and serenity. When you have the basics of the trio my seal will be on your scroll for advancement to Grey Class.’
Sister Pan left Arabella’s side and hobbled towards Nona and Clera. ‘Whilst it is essential that a Mystic Sister be the mistress of these techniques, all three are of benefit to any novice. The Holy Sister will find her communion with the Ancestor deepened by reaching clarity. The Sister of Discretion will carry out her duties with greater efficiency if she attains patience. And, ironically, the Martial Sister will be all the more deadly if before combat she has reached the peace of serenity. However, as this is Nona’s first day and I have a number of tests to go over with Arabella any novice who wishes to practise their blade-path may do so.’
The scraping of half a dozen chairs immediately followed this pronouncement as girls leapt to their feet all around the room and started to head for the stairwell at the centre.
‘Clera!’ Sister Pan called after them, her voice resonating down the stairs with surprising volume. ‘You can ask for the key to Blade Hall at the sanatorium!’
The six girls burst laughing from the base of the Tower of the Path and ran off towards the plateau’s narrowing point. The four hunska girls outdistanced Ruli and Kariss, but their natural speed counted for less in a race than it did in a fight: hunska blood gave whip-crack reflexes and a startling twitch that could move a hand from one place to another seemingly without the tedium of having to occupy any of the spaces in between, but it couldn’t, for example, move a full body-weight faster than a horse over four hundred yards.
The sanatorium sat at the compound’s outermost edge, built from limestone blocks hewn from the plateau itself, hunkered down against the wind, with a long and pillared gallery on the lee side. Clera ran on into the office while the other novices came to a halt by the door. ‘Why did we have to come here?’ Ketti frowned, hunched over to make herself a height with the other girls.
‘I saw Sister Tallow limping this morning,’ Ghena said. ‘She must be hurt.’
‘How?’ Ruli asked.
Ghena shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Nona tried to imagine Sister Tallow slipping and coming to grief on a flight of stairs. She couldn’t do it. She had yet to see Mistress Blade fight but everything about the way the woman moved said she would not be taken unawares by the inanimate. Which left …
‘Maybe someone sent assassins after Arabella,’ Ketti said.
‘Assassins? Why?’ Nona had only heard of assassins in the old stories. The Noi-Guin, trained in secret, deployed to end wars, or start them, or to cut away any life that might constitute an offence to someone with enough money to pay fees that even old nobility found staggering.
Ghena grunted at Nona’s obvious stupidity. Ketti raised both eyebrows and did something with her lips that signalled supreme surprise at the depths of Nona’s ignorance. ‘She’s the Chosen One. The Ancestor’s gift. You think there aren’t people fighting over who owns her? Or, if it’s clear that the person who owns her isn’t going to be them, you think they’re not ready to kill her just to stop someone else gaining the benefit?’
‘I heard Sherzal tried to take her from the Jotsis estate,’ Ruli said.
Even in the village the names of Emperor Crucical’s two sisters were known. Sherzal was said to be the worst of them, a plotter that the emperor had had to banish almost to the Scithrowl border before he felt safe behind his walls.
Clera interrupted Nona’s questions by hurrying out of the office, a grin on her face, a large iron key swinging from her hand. Behind her the bulky form of Sister Rose waddled to the door, her cone-like headdress just like Sister Wheel’s. ‘Careful on the line, novices. I mean it, Ketti! Make sure the new girls don’t end up on my doorstep this afternoon …’
Clera led the race back to Blade Hall and hurried them on across the training floor, along the corridor beneath the stands and straight on to the door at the end.
‘Shouldn’t we change?’ Ruli, turning left towards the changing room.