Clera shrugged. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. Besides, it’s not something anyone wants to talk about over lunch.’ They joined the elbowing crowd struggling to leave through the main arch. ‘She poisoned the soup for Grey Class once. Got all of them, just because none of them passed an exam.’
They got to Shade breathless. The lessons were held in the natural caves that riddled the thickness of the plateau. Mistress Academia had been explaining something about their formation in the previous class … rainwater dissolving paths through the rock, if Nona remembered right … it didn’t sound right …
‘We’re not last!’ Clera slapped Nona’s arm. ‘You never want to be last to this class.’
They came up short at the steps down into the caves, a narrow flight sealed with an iron gate just a few yards in. The steps lay behind Heart Hall and were so close to the plateau’s edge that Nona wondered if the caves might not reach the cliffs and open out like hungry mouths.
A tall, slender novice with dead white skin and dark hair stood at the top step, marking off the girls’ names on a slate as they arrived. She glanced Nona’s way with blue eyes of an unnatural and alarming shade.
‘That’s Bhenta,’ Clera whispered, ‘from Holy Class. She’s the Poisoner’s assistant in the laboratories. Don’t mess with her.’
A minute later Bhenta looked up from her slate and took a hefty iron key from a pocket inside her habit. ‘All here, then. Novice Hessa, good to see you’ve graced us with your presence this time. Novice Jula, you appear to have had a close shave since our last lesson.’
‘She tries to be snarky like the Poisoner,’ Clera whispered. ‘But she can’t really do it.’
‘Novice Clera, get your tongue out of that new girl’s ear and pay attention to the steps.’ Bhenta clipped Clera around the head as they passed her.
The steps led steeply down, the limestone in places oozing and thick with slime. In some spots Nona thought that Bhenta, bringing up the rear, would have to duck in order to avoid scraping her head. Within a few steps a faint stink began to wrap them: the sting of lye, sour wine, and other components Nona couldn’t name. She wrinkled her nose as the smell grew stronger.
The daylight followed them further than Nona had imagined, and just as it grew so dim that she started to have difficulty seeing the steps another source of illumination took over. The new light turned out to be a fat candle positioned in a niche at a bend in the descent. Its light carried them down to a section of hand-hewn tunnel with a wooden door to one side, before which the girls started to queue.
Bhenta came down, snuffing the candle then squeezing past the line to push into the room beyond. The girls followed her.
This chamber was also hand-hewn, though perhaps from a smaller natural cave as some areas on the soot-stained ceiling looked irregular and didn’t show any pick-marks. Light entered by several horizontal shafts in the far wall, each five or six foot long and showing patches of sky. Nona guessed they must open on the cliffs.
Three long tables ran the length of the room with benches to either side, and all manner of jars, pots, glass bottles, and sealed gourds arranged along the middle of each. At the far end a nun stood with her back to the door, writing on a chalkboard. The novices seated themselves at the tables without the usual fuss of who sat by who.
The woman at the board was neither tall nor short, shapely certainly, but Nona couldn’t guess at her age other than to say, ‘not old’.
Bhenta closed the door, and Mistress Shade, the Poisoner, turned around with a warm smile for the class. ‘Ah, Nona dear, do come up here. And you, Arabella. I always like to take a good look at the new girls.’
Nona blinked and stood. The Poisoner had had a pretty good look at her already in the bathhouse. ‘Yes, Sister Apple,’ she said.
They came to stand before Sister Apple, Nona shooting a sideways glance at the Jotsis girl, apparently serene despite just two nights ago sinking a knife into the spot where Nona had been sleeping. The idea that Arabella could hide her murderous instincts so deep that not a trace showed on the surface unnerved Nona more than the act itself. She knew her own emotions were written across her face the moment she felt them, possibly even before.
‘I do believe you’re less skinny already, Nona. Another year of convent meals and we might have a decent amount of meat on those bones. And Arabella Jotsis … a pleasure to have you join us. What is it like to be part of prophecy?’ Sister Apple raised her hand as Arabella opened her mouth. ‘Best not to answer that one, dear.’ She took an embossed tin, enamelled in black and white, from her habit and opened it with a squeeze that sent the lid springing back. Inside were a dozen translucent yellow balls, each no larger than a thumbnail. ‘A sweetmeat to welcome you to Shade Class. We’re going to have such a good time.’ She smiled that same slow and easy smile she first greeted Nona with on the way to the convent.
‘I’ve stuffed myself.’ Nona held her stomach. She had in fact stuffed herself as she did at every meal, but the sweetmeats did look enticing, glowing like the stained glass in Path Tower.
‘A pity.’ Sister Apple turned to Arabella and held the box out.
‘Thank you.’ Arabella reached out and took one daintily between thumb and forefinger. Nona noticed that both digits had a waxy sheen to them. ‘I’ll save it for after class.’
Sister Apple closed the box and tucked it away. ‘To your seats then, girls. We’ve a lot to learn today!’
Nona followed Arabella back to the nearest of the three long tables. The older girl returned to her place first, wincing as she sat, then shifting position with a frown. Nona found her place and lowered herself towards the bench before pausing, held by a sudden suspicion with her backside just an inch or two from the polished wood. She shifted and turned, narrowing her eyes as she made a quick study of the area beneath her. Something glinted. A short pin held upright on a tiny dark base. She flicked it to the floor and sat. Bhenta must have placed the thing while Nona was up at the front of the class.
‘Well done, Nona!’ Sister Apple clapped her hands. ‘Arabella … less well done.’
Nona looked across at Arabella. The girl’s face had a peculiarly stiff look to it, just her furious eyes and twitching grimace to indicate she wasn’t simply concentrating on Mistress Shade’s words. She jerked her body minutely to the left but seemed incapable of more movement.
‘You passed the test, Nona.’ Sister Apple smiled. ‘I won’t try to trick you again.’ She turned back to the chalkboard, where she tapped her chalk against a leaf-shape then underlined the word beside it. ‘Today we will be learning how to brew catweed to potency, a close cousin to segren root from which I made the tincture that was on the pin-trap Nona so cleverly avoided and Arabella did not. Commonly we call the tincture lock-up. The first—’
A tap-tap-tap on the door turned Sister Apple back towards the class. ‘Come.’
Sister Kettle poked her head into the classroom, a mischievous grin on her face. ‘I’ve just come from the scriptorium to give Nona her writing supplies.’ She pushed fully through the half-open door, a dark slate in one hand and chalk sticks in the other. ‘For our lessons together.’
‘Go on then.’ Sister Apple smiled tolerantly and waved Sister Kettle in.
The younger nun – Nona thought Kettle might be twenty-something to Apple’s thirty – tiptoed over in exaggerated fashion and placed the slate and chalks before Nona on the table. She removed a folded wiping cloth from her habit and set that down between them before mouthing ‘sorry’ at Mistress Shade and tiptoeing out, waving to the novices from the doorway once out of sight from the board.