‘Then our visitors have either flown here on the backs of eagles or taken a very long walk in order to come upon us unannounced …’
‘Eagles?’ Nona asked.
‘A joke, dear.’ The abbess frowned and looked up at Sister Flint. ‘When will they arrive?’
‘A few minutes.’
‘Hmmm.’ Abbess Glass lowered herself, with a little difficulty, to sit upon the steps of her official residence. ‘Fetch my crozier, Nona, will you? Just behind the front door. It’s open.’
Nona hurried up the steps and pushed through the panelled door into a dim hallway tiled in black and white. Her footsteps echoed in the vaulted space above her as she entered. A rack of five identical croziers stood against the wall a little way in, hefty staves bound with iron hoops, the top coiling like a shepherd’s crook, the flat spiral covered in plates of very thinly beaten gold, each one embossed with scenes from the book of the Ancestor. She took the first, surprised at its weight, and hurried back to the abbess.
‘Thank you.’ Abbess Glass took the crozier and patted the step beside her. ‘Sit.’
Nona sat, and Malkin stalked away. Sister Flint waited at the bottom of the steps, the wind wrapping her habit tight about her painful thinness.
Before too long they saw the visitors making their way through the pillars, ill at ease among the forest of stone. ‘Did you know, Nona, that the stone from which those pillars are made can’t be found anywhere in the Corridor? It’s all beneath the ice now. Lost to us.’
Nona started to reply then let the words fall. Abbess Glass knew she knew nothing.
The approaching men wore long red cloaks and breastplates of burnished steel, their helms gleaming and ornate. They flanked a grey-haired man in a thick black robe riding an enormous horse, one built for endurance rather than speed. A second man, also in a black robe, but a thinner one, tossed by the wind, followed, leading a mule with laden saddlebags.
By now half a dozen nuns watched from the doorway of the Ancestor’s dome, Sister Wheel among them, having paused on her return to Spirit class with wire-cane in hand.
The nine guardsmen arrayed themselves before Abbess Glass’s steps and the old man dismounted from his giant horse. He held himself with a degree of confidence and dignity that would put Grey Stephen to shame. Nona wondered if he were a lord or some close relation to the emperor. A thick circlet of twisted gold strands held a white mane from his patrician’s face. He regarded the abbess from beneath neatly trimmed eyebrows, channelling a slight air of distaste down either side of a prominent and angular nose.
‘Those are quite the grandest city guardsmen I’ve ever seen,’ Abbess Glass murmured. ‘I smell money here, and lots of it.’
The younger man came forward clutching a heavy book bound in black leather. Nona had watched him tugging it from the mule’s saddlebag.
‘Judge Irvone Galamsis offers the Abbess of Sweet Mercy Convent his greetings and felicitations on this the birthday of Emperor Hedral Antsis, fourth of his name.’
Abbess Glass bent towards Nona, her voice low and carrying a smile. ‘Almost every day is the birthday of some emperor or other if you dig deep enough.’ With a grunt she got to her feet, using her crozier to lever herself up. ‘Irvone, a delight to see you again. Will you be staying to dinner? The novices would be so excited! A judge visiting us, and not just some common sort but one third of the highest jury in the land!’
‘I’ve come for the girl, abbess. I don’t plan to stay long.’
‘Girl? We have lots of those here, Irvone. I’m charged to look after them, body and soul.’
‘The convicted murderer that you helped abscond from Harriton prison two days ago.’
‘Convicted?’ The abbess rubbed her chin. ‘There was a trial? Or was a rope merely purchased for her?’
Judge Irvone snapped his fingers and the young man hefted up his book, opening it to a page marked with a silk ribbon. He read from it, his voice precisely measured. ‘In the ruling of Judge Maker, esteemed of the high court: Within the sound of the palace bells a stateless person may be convicted by any prison official of more than three years’ service on the evidence of five or more eyewitnesses of good standing. YoM 3417.’
The golden head of the abbess’s staff made slow revolutions. ‘Such a new cover for such an old book, judge. Year of the Moon 3417? Your law predates this convent. It predates most of Verity! And I doubt if it has been used in the time these buildings have stood here.’
‘Even so, Warden James passed sentence upon the girl when she arrived at Harriton.’ The judge looked towards the convent. ‘If you would be so good as to have the child brought out – that would be preferable to a search of the premises.’
Nona realized with a start that none of the men knew that she was the one they were looking for.
‘Of course.’ The abbess nodded. ‘Of course, I would be glad to help. But it seems to me that even in these modern times, and even with a law so old … would one not require someone to have been murdered in order to hang another person for murder? Or has poor Raymel gone to his accounting with the Ancestor?’
The judge waved a bored hand at his assistant who turned to another page marked with a length of silk. ‘YoM 3702, Judge Arc Leensis rules that in cases of attempted murder the perpetrator may hang for murder if the original conviction were based upon the reasonable belief that the victim would die.’
‘Thuran Tacsis must have paid out a considerable weight of gold to have your clerks scouring the law books with such diligence, Irvone.’
‘What man would not want justice for his son?’ The judge inclined his head, apparently solemn and thoughtful. Nona wondered if he had ever met Raymel Tacsis. ‘Lord Tacsis is prepared to overlook your interference with the due execution of the law, Abbess Glass, and out of respect for the church I do not propose to press the case on behalf of the city. However, you would be well advised to place the murderer known as Nona Reeve into my custody without delay.’
Nona ground her teeth tight against the urge to spit. Partnis Reeve had given her nothing she wanted to keep, his name least of all.
‘I would never disobey the high court, Irvone.’ Abbess Glass stopped turning her crozier. The judge snorted. Abbess Glass waited a moment then continued. ‘But—’
‘Ha!’ The judge shook his head.
‘But Nona is now a novice at the convent and as such any and all misdemeanours, past and present, fall under the jurisdiction of church law. As do mine. I’m sorry that you’ve had a wasted trip. You really should stay for dinner, the girls would be delighted—’
The big black book of laws hit the ground with a resounding thump. ‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ The young assistant advanced towards the steps, finger pointing at Nona. ‘That’s the little bitch who did it!’
‘Lano …’ The judge shook his head, more in resignation than anger. ‘I told you you should not have come.’
Nona stared at him, seeing the man for the first time and finding something familiar in the narrow cast of his features, perhaps the pale fury in his eyes or the slant of his lips.
‘He would have killed Saida!’ The anger of that moment in the Caltess returned to Nona in an instant, as if it had never left. ‘He deser—’
Lano Tacsis moved faster than anyone Nona had ever seen, a blur of dark robes, twisting past Sister Flint even as she reached for him with reflexes to shame a cave viper. Nona barely had time to throw up her hands in front of the fingers reaching to seize her by the throat. A moment later Lano was being hauled backward, a scream of anger choked off by Sister Flint’s slim arm fastened about his neck.
‘What?’ Abbess Glass, locked into the moment of the attack, now found her voice, only realizing there had been an assault as the perpetrator was pulled away. ‘Nona! Are you hurt?’
Nona stared up at the abbess’s concern. ‘No.’
‘Your hands!’