In the dormitory Nona shared two more dreams with Hessa, both nightmares. Hessa said they must be echoing down the remnants of the connection through which she had shared her memory. The phenomenon would fade away, she said. Also, Ketti had a fight with Ghena and both were put on laundry for a week. And, to Clera’s delight, the abbess’s cat urinated on Arabella’s habit on three-day night.
In Shade they brewed two more poisons, one to cause blindness, another confusion, learning the nature of the ingredients, the antidotes, where such existed, and the means by which the resulting pastes might be introduced to victims or avoided by novices. Sister Apple proved as unpleasant within her cave as she was sweet while outside it. Ketti spent a day without sight after failing to prevent the Poisoner from duping her with the same trick she had just described on the chalkboard. Ruli spent a day in the Necessary after whispering too loudly with Ghena at the back of the class. Nobody knew how the Poisoner got to her, but she was vomiting by the time she reached the top of the stairs on the way out. And Jula caught the sharp edge of Apple’s tongue for a moment’s daydreaming – reduced to tears by a critique of her alchemical failings that had the rest of the class laughing despite themselves.
Path proved to be Nona’s least favourite class, worse even than the tedium of Spirit where Wheel led them through the endless small ceremonies that seemed to occupy every Holy Sister’s day. She soon came to dread Sister Pan’s room, alight with colour and harmony. She stared at the patterns until she thought her eyes would bleed but nothing the old woman said to do made the mystic Path open up before her. There was none of the strange and alarming energy that Arabella had spoken of during her first Path class, just a boredom so profound it made her want to scratch her eyes out. The visualizations for serenity made Nona angry; the ones for quiet filled her head with clamouring for something different.
By the time the seven-day came around again Nona was starting to consider the convent her home. Memories of the Caltess seemed distant, those of Giljohn and his cart a dream, and recollections of the village a story told about someone else.
On the walk to Academia Tower Nona paused to make a slow turn on the spot, taking in the buildings that had so quickly grown familiar: Heart Hall and Blade Hall, with the Dome of the Ancestor looming behind them, the dormitories and the refectory, the nuns’ cloisters and the wide courtyard before the bathhouse. A lone chicken strutted in the shadow of the scriptorium, pausing to scrape and peck as if looking for any dropped punctuation. Between the laundry and the sanatorium Nona could see a wagon parked outside the winery, loaded with barrels of the latest vintage to be released. The novices in Holy Class were allowed a glass of the convent wine with their evening meal on any seven-day that happened to also be a holy holiday, which most of them seemed to be. Ruli claimed the convent earned far more of its income from shipping barrels of Sweet Mercy around the Corridor than from educating and training novices.
‘Of course, if any of them had met the Poisoner they’d all be emptying their wine jugs down the sewer.’
Clera was waiting in the dormitory when Nona returned from her next lesson with Sister Kettle, hand cramped, white with chalk, and ink-stained about the fingers. Sister Kettle’s parting words had been about Clera and Nona had crossed the windswept courtyards frowning under the weight of them.
‘A word to the wise.’ Kettle had set her hand over Nona’s as she reached for her slate. ‘The hardest lesson I ever learned was that every bad thing you see a friend do to someone else they will some day do to you. Some people in this world are users and some givers. When two such form a bond it often ends poorly. Find more friends, Nona. Clera Ghomal spends enough time thinking about herself without you to help her do it. Don’t—’
Nona had pulled free and hurried from the tower, but she could still feel the sister’s fingers on the back of her hand, still hear her speaking. She rubbed hand against habit and tried to shake off the foul mood that had risen in her. She had had few friends in her life and the bonds that bound her to them were more sacred to her than the Ancestor was to any nun. Friendship wasn’t something you gave up on or let slip: it wasn’t something to be done in small measure or cut in half.
She had still been angry when she thrust the dormitory door open.
Most of the novices had yet to return from their various diversions but Jula lay across her own bed, head hanging over the edge as she studied a scroll, and Ghena lay sleeping – the girl always seemed to be rushing about or sleeping, with no real pause between one and the other. Ketti raged past in her smallclothes holding her habit before her, nose wrinkling. ‘Someone let that damned cat in here! He’s peed on my underskirts! Sister Rule should drown the thing!’
‘Malkin’s nice,’ Jula said, not looking up. ‘Just a bit old and confused.’
‘Needs drowning!’ Shouted back through the door as Ketti vanished in the direction of the laundry.
‘The only male in the convent and he spends his time pissing on everything.’ Clera from her bed.
‘There’s the roosters too.’ Jula still not looking up.
‘Who spend their time crowing and strutting about,’ Clera said.
‘And the pigs.’
‘Who eat and shit,’ Clera said. ‘I rest my case.’
Nona crossed to her bed.
‘Is Sister Kettle getting those letters to stick in your head, Nona?’ Clera looked up from the silver crown she’d been walking across her knuckles. Her tone held something distant in it: perhaps her day at the prison had given her bad news this time.
‘She’s having more luck with it than Sister Pan is with her stupid Path.’ Nona flomped down on her bed, stretching her hand out and sighing. ‘We need to get her to let us off to practise blade-path next time.’
‘We do.’ Clera nodded. She studied Nona as if she were something new to her. ‘Anyway, hurry up and learn to read. You don’t want to take up too many of Kettle’s seven-days or the Poisoner will not be a happy little Poisoner.’
‘Why?’ Nona frowned.
‘You don’t know? Really? Oh come on—’
The ringing of a bell cut across Clera. A bell Nona hadn’t heard before, sharp and very loud. Three rings, a pause, three more. A steel bell.
‘Ancestor bleed me!’ Clera looked shocked. ‘That’s Bitel! We have to get out, now!’
Moments later the Red Class girls were crowding out through the dormitories’ main door, along with a dozen or so older novices. Outside in the growing gloom nuns and novices were on the move, streaming from all directions, some running, others striding briskly, all headed towards the abbess’s house.
Bitel found its tongue again. Clang. Rooks broke for the sky from behind Heart Hall. Clang. Clera and Nona broke into a run. Clang. Somewhere in the distance a woman started to shout.
The entire convent gathered before Abbess Glass’s doors. Nona and Clera pushed in among the novices, some still wet and steaming from bathhouse. The senior nuns arranged themselves around the perimeter of the crowd, several carrying lanterns.
‘It’s a fire?’ Jula elbowing through behind them.
‘I heard it was a collapse in the Shade caverns …’ Ruli, her long hair in a bathhouse towel.
‘Ssshh!’ Ghena pointed towards the abbess’s doors.
Sister Tallow and Sister Apple preceded the abbess, Sister Tallow with her arm in a sling. Abbess Glass followed, crozier in hand, and halted on the steps from where she commanded a view over her gathered flock.
‘Sisters.’ Abbess Glass smiled for them though it lacked joy. ‘Novices. Word has just arrived that High Priest Jacob and the four archons are approaching. They will be with us within the hour. This visit is a great honour for us and for Sweet Mercy. I expect you all to be on your best behaviour.