The slope of the path pulled at Nona, her feet on the point of slipping at every moment. The pipe swayed treacherously. She came to the curve, her shallow breaths drawn in time to the motion of her body as she struggled to stay upright. Her arms ached already as if she were hanging by them not merely balancing. Somehow she made it around the first long and descending curve!
The steep rise of the corkscrew seemed an impossible barrier, lifting above her head in the space of a few strides. Nona took it in tiny steps, hearing nothing but the rasp of her breath and the pounding of her heart. To her surprise she found herself at the top of the spiral’s first turn, staring down at the impossibly steep descent to the bottom of the next turn. She knew her feet would slip there with the path running away from her.
‘Go on!’ Shouted from the platform, almost angry.
Nona held for a moment, with the drop to every side screaming for her to fall, the tension in her legs unbearable. Then she jumped.
Her lead foot caught the top of the next loop of the spiral and, swinging her trailing leg, thrusting up with both arms, she carried on to the top of the third and final loop. Where, with arms pinwheeling, she caught herself with one foot. She had in two leaps carried herself to a point a little over a quarter of the way along the blade-path.
Nona brought her other foot onto the pipe and, with the exaggerated care of a drunkard, turned to the side. In that movement she saw the other novices crowded onto the platform staring at her, mouths open. It was a look she knew: the same shock had registered on Amondo’s face when she had learned too quickly to do his tricks. It was the start of a look that ended in hurt and anger.
Nona’s heel slipped from the iron pipe. She let out a yelp and fell backwards. By the time she hit the net she was screaming.
She bounced twice and rolled over, wheezing as she tried to draw the air back into her lungs. An awkward scramble brought her to the edge of the net and strong hands helped her down. She found herself looking up into the impish eyes of Sister Kettle who had last appeared behind Sister Apple in the steams of the bathhouse.
‘Well that was … unorthodox.’ Sister Kettle smiled. ‘Not strictly what I would call following the path, but an impressive piece of acrobatics even so!’
‘H-how long—’ Nona heaved in a breath.
‘Did you take?’ Sister Kettle looked up at the platform. ‘Ghena? How long before she fell?’
‘One and twenty!’
‘One cycle and twenty,’ Sister Kettle repeated. ‘That’s eighty counts. Do you know what your class record is for completion, Nona?’
‘No.’
‘Guess.’
Nona tried to imagine it. ‘Three hundred counts?’
‘Ketti?’ Sister Kettle asked.
‘Nobody currently in Red has completed the blade-path. Suleri was the last to finish it while still in Red. Her count was two hundred and ninety.’ Ketti was standing by the door. Her eyes flitted to the path above them. ‘I’ve almost made it to the end though. Almost.’
‘Suleri can do it faster now,’ Sister Kettle said, turning for the door. ‘She’s the fastest novice still at the convent. Her record is one hundred and eighteen.’
‘What’s the fastest it was ever done?’ Nona asked.
Sister Kettle paused, the door half open. ‘Our records say that a little over two hundred years ago a certain Sister Owl – yes, the one in the stories, the Black Fort and all that – the ledgers record her setting a time in Holy Class of twenty-six counts. It does seem hard to credit though. Perhaps the timing mechanism has been adjusted over the years …’
‘Twenty-six!’ Nona blinked. It didn’t sound even vaguely possible.
‘Something to aim for.’ Sister Kettle went through the door with a slight limp, leaving Nona and Ketti to stare at each other. Way above them Ruli started out on the path.
‘Why was Sister Kettle here?’ Nona asked, to break the silence more than anything.
‘To watch the new girl, of course,’ Ketti said. ‘She’ll be reporting back to Sister Tallow. That’s what she does. Watches and reports. She’d be Mistress Shade if we didn’t already have the Poisoner! I expect—’ She paused as Ruli plummeted down into the net with a shriek of frustration. ‘I expect she’d have come anyway to size up the competition. Kettle holds the convent record for the blade-path – the record for anyone still living here – sixty-nine counts.’
Nona tried the path half a dozen more times, moving less quickly and falling, not to stay part of the group but because gravity seemed to have got its hooks into her. Quite how she had got so far before she couldn’t say, for now the path swayed beneath her like a foreign sea, its ways alien to her feet. Even so she got further along than Ruli, Ghena and poor Kariss, who barely made the first yard and never the third.
The sixth impact with the net left her ears ringing.
‘Bray!’ Clera shouted. ‘Oh hells!’ She dropped off the platform, habit swirling about her head, long legs out before her.
Nona hung on tight to the ropes. The only rule they’d told her was not to try the path while someone is still in the net, as you could bounce them out.
Clera scrambled for the edge. ‘We’ll be late for Spirit!’
Nona glanced up at the platform. Empty. She and Clera had been so deep in their competition they hadn’t seen the others leave.
‘Come on!’ Clera tossed Nona her shoes and dropped to the floor. ‘Mistress Spirit is the worst!’
‘I thought you said the Poisoner was the worst!’
‘They’re all the worst when you’re late!’ And Clera was running.
9
Racing around the Dome of the Ancestor Nona started to think that the place had no door, her breath came ragged and Clera’s longer legs were opening a lead. The pain of a stitch stabbed beneath her lungs and she slowed, grabbing her side. Fortunately a few more paces brought sight of the great doors that she had seen on her first night. The line of Red Class was already filing in through the narrow gap where a hand held the leftmost door ajar. Clera and Nona joined the end of the line, sweaty and breathless, just as Ketti and Ruli slipped through ahead of them. Ketti had to duck below the hand which turned out to be attached to Sister Wheel. Nona scowled, having yet to forgive the nun for turfing her from her bed with such holy zeal on her first morning at the convent.
‘Quickly! Quietly!’ Sister Wheel ushered them on.
At first the dim light yielded only an impression of great columns and a polished floor, with some brighter space beyond. Nona followed Clera’s back, blinking to help her eyes adjust. They were in a grand foyer that itself was bigger than all but the richest houses in Verity. Sister Wheel led them along the wall to the left towards a small door at the side of the foyer, as if allowing novices to venture any further in would sully so holy a place. From the view of the interior, glimpsed between sleek columns of black marble, Nona understood the space to be both singular and vast, lit by scores of long and narrow windows radiating from the dome’s apex, with a statue gleaming at the centre, tiny in such a space but far bigger than a man.
The pull that Nona had felt that first night in the nuns’ cells was here too. Not so strong as it had been when she stood just yards from the black door that entered the rear of the dome … but there even so. The huge and echoing space, the sunlight shafting in through many windows, the golden statue, they were grand things, impressive, perhaps even holy, but they were not the source. Something filled that dome, almost to bursting, but its centre lay deeper …
‘Nona!’ Clera at the open side door, beckoning. ‘Stop dawdling!’
Nona hurried on into a small classroom dimly lit by three of the high porthole windows that formed a ring perforating the wall of the great dome.
‘Late to class but never late to dinner!’ Sister Wheel’s fingernails-on-slate voice reached a surprising volume as she pointed Nona and Clera out in the doorway.
This seemed a harsh judgement to Nona, who had attended just one convent dinner so far.