Nona said nothing, but took out her scroll, watching Kettle’s dark eyes.
‘Sister Tallow said you took the warrior’s route. She said most take nothing with them on the path except the fear of that fall. Even when they no longer care about the height of the drop they fear the possibility of failure – just as the fear of death weighs so many down when they fight. The warrior, though, hates the fear: it’s an attack like any other and must be fought. She throws herself at it, all or nothing, she dares it and disdains it. Death claims us all in the end, but the warrior chooses the ground on which she meets it, and the manner, she makes death run to catch up.’ Kettle smoothed out her own scroll. ‘So there!’
‘How did Mistress Blade get hurt?’ Nona asked.
Sister Kettle dipped her quill and wrote a letter on her scroll. ‘This is the letter A. I brought the slate and chalks so you can practise copying it.’
Nona peered at the glistening letter. Hessa had told her the basics. A is for apple, and so on. The wet ink reminded her of blood in the dark. ‘A is for assassin,’ Nona said. ‘They say the emperor’s sisters Sherzal and Vel … Vel …’
‘Velera.’
‘Velera. They say they would rather see Arabella dead than in the emperor’s hands.’
‘Well, she’s neither is she?’ Kettle said.
‘I know stories about the Noi-Guin.’ In Giljohn’s cage Hessa had told about Noi-Guin, singular hunters of men, invisible in the night, insinuating themselves past any defence and taking lives with impunity. Markus had always asked for tales of the assassins, the bloodier the better. ‘Did Sister Tallow fight one of them?’
Sister Kettle gave Nona a measured stare. ‘It would take more than one Noi-Guin to injure Mistress Blade.’ She sniffed. ‘Now. B is for blade.’ Her quill flowed across the parchment leaving a glistening black trail.
‘It looks like a P,’ Nona said, squinting, trying to remember the shapes Hessa had drawn for her over and over. She drew one on her slate and turned it upside-down. ‘There.’
Sister Kettle grinned. ‘B is for blade, P is for path. It’s a little-known thing but blade and path are two sides of the same coin. The blade-path isn’t just a game to occupy the pathless: one really does help the other. Also, what you have there is a Q if it’s anything …’
‘You’re the best at blade-path,’ Nona said. ‘Does that mean you’re quantal too?’
Sister Kettle’s grin became a laugh. ‘Ancestor, no! But I am very good at the Path-drawn mindsets Sister Pan teaches. I can be as serene as all hell! And nobody does quiet like me! Except Appy of course. I mean Mistress Shade.’
Nona tried to imagine Sister Kettle serene … or even quiet. She failed. ‘I thought the Path-trances were clarity, serenity, and patience?’
Kettle shrugged. ‘Patience, quiet, another coin with two sides. And you need to know all the sides of a coin before you can earn it and spend it. Sister Pan will teach you that.’
‘The novices say that Sister Pan’s just an old woman who talks a lot. They say she hasn’t got any magic left.’ Actually, when she thought about it, Nona found it easier to picture Sister Pan working magic than Sister Kettle’s chat and humour replaced by quantal-serenity. Sister Pan at least looked the part: as ancient and haggard as any tree-witch in the stories whispered around the village fireside.
‘This is a C. I want you to write A, B, C. Over and over, until your hand remembers them.’ Sister Kettle gestured to Nona’s slate.
Nona drew the letters out, following the line of each in her mind.
‘Good. Do it again.’
Nona did it seven more times before filling the slate.
‘Good. And no, I don’t know if Sister Pan can touch the Path any more. She was old when the abbess was a novice. But what I can tell you is that she was once one of the great Holy Witches and she followed the Path that runs through all things. High priests came to see her. Emperor Xtal, the third of his name, and his son, the fourth, summoned her to court. And when the Durnish sailed against us more than fifty years ago, so many of them in their sick-wood barges that they almost made a bridge across the Corridor, it was Sister Pan and Sister Rain of Gerran’s Crag that met their storm-weavers and swept them from the sea … So don’t bury the old girl yet. And don’t call her “old girl”. Or tell her I told you that story … Let’s draw some Ds, shall we?’
The best part of the day passed before Nona escaped the horrors of the alphabet and hurried from the Academia tower too exhausted to go in search of her friends. Overhead a rook fluttered, black against the sky, descending towards the many-windowed spire of the convent rookery. They came and went together normally, a clamour of them raucous and wheeling. A single bird meant a message. Nona wondered what words those dark wings brought and from how far. She also wondered if they’d been as much of a pain to write as her endless letters.
Nona lay relaxing in the dormitory, nursing a cramped hand, when Clera returned. The sun had already started to sink, its red light painted in bars across the ceiling now.
‘You’re supposed to put the ink on the parchment.’ Clera nodded towards Nona’s fingers before slinging herself down on her bed.
Nona spread the ink-stained digits of her right hand before her. At Nona’s insistence Sister Kettle had let her try with quill and lowest grade paper after hours with chalk and slate. It had been more difficult than Nona expected, the result a scratchy mess of jerky lines and ink pools.
‘How was your father?’ Nona asked.
Clera rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Where is everyone? Did they all drown while swimming?’
Nona shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I saw Ruli going into Blade Hall. Some of them must be practising blade-path.’ Clera looked worn out. Sad too, flipping her penny up high, catching it, flipping it. ‘How was—’
‘He’s fine. He has an appeal hearing in a month. It looks promising.’
‘That’s good?’ Nona wasn’t sure what an appeal hearing was.
‘Yes.’ Clera caught her penny in her palm and closed her hand about it. In the dying light it looked silver. ‘Did you ever consider just running away, Nona? Just running and running and losing yourself somewhere?’
‘Where?’ Nona had considered it, but running to was better than running from.
‘Just anywhere. Making a new life.’
‘It’s hard out there.’ Nona gazed towards the windows. ‘Running’s all right, but when you stop there’s the freezing and the starving and the dying. If you had money then—’
‘Yes.’ Clera sat up suddenly. ‘Yes, money makes it better. Money fixes everything.’ She stood. ‘Let’s go find them. Have some fun, make trouble, make a noise. Classes tomorrow. Classes forever. Let’s—’
‘That’s a silver crown!’ Nona pointed to it in Clera’s fingers.
‘I made one become many.’ Clera tucked the coin into her pocket. It dropped with a faint chink. ‘I had some luck.’ She smiled but she looked sad.
‘How—’ But the door flew open and Ruli raced in shrieking and wrapped in towels, Jula and Ketti hard on her heels.
‘Catch her!’
‘Get her!’
And Clera leapt into the chase, her grin both wide and wild.
14
Nona’s first full week in the convent passed in a blur, exhausting herself in Blade’s endless repetition of punches, throws, and holds, straining her brain in Academia against topics like glaciation, erosion, and the formation of rocks, gorging herself at meals, still unable to truly believe they would keep coming three times a day.