‘The high priest and his retinue will be accommodated in Heart Hall, which will be off limits until further notice. Novices will be expected to stay up to greet High Priest Jacob, after which they will retire to their dormitories. Sister Rule will lead the choir in Aethsan’s Hymn to the Ancestor, and Saint Jula’s Requiem.
‘The high priest will undoubtedly wish to lead a service in the dome, and all sisters will be expected to attend.’ Abbess Glass clapped her hands. ‘We have an hour! Get the lanterns lit, food and wine prepared, the choir properly attired … Go! Go!’
Nona looked around for a direction in which to go, only to find a broad, brown hand descending upon her shoulder.
‘Red Class,’ Sister Oak called from her considerable elevation. ‘With me to the refectory. We will be carrying out tables and chairs to set before the Dome of the Ancestor for the welcoming ceremony.’
Waving a fleshy arm, Sister Oak led off and the Red Class novices filed after her. Clera should have joined the choir but instead she stuck with the class, perhaps not ready to perform for such a high audience. Nona glanced back as they left. The abbess descended her steps, the golden curl of her crozier stealing the lanterns’ brightness. Her lips made a grim line in the gloom beneath.
15
Lights blinking in and out of view among the pillars gave the first visible sign of the high priest’s arrival. Nona imagined the churchmen dwarfed among the hugeness of the columns, their small patches of illumination in all that darkness, shadows swinging around them. She wondered how many had come and to what purpose. Raymel Tacsis’s brother, Lano, had said his father knew High Priest Jacob. How far did Thuran Tacsis’s influence reach? Abbess Glass must know the high priest too – surely that would count for more?
‘They’re here for you. You know that, right?’
Nona turned to look up at Clera, standing behind her a little to her left in the second row of novices. Each class stood in two lines, the shortest to the fore.
‘It was all over town, Nona. You should have told me.’ Clera kept her gaze on the approaching lights. To either side of her Ruli and Ketti turned to stare.
‘Told you what?’ Jula asked, beside Nona.
‘Nona half-killed Raymel Tacsis, Thuran Tacsis’s son – the ring-fighter. And when Lano Tacsis came up here with a high court judge the other day—’
‘He didn’t!’ Ghena from Nona’s right. ‘Did he?’
‘He did, and Nona nearly cut off two of his fingers. It took a marjal wizard from the Academy to save them. Raymel’s still under the care of four other Academy mages.’
‘Where did you get a knife?’ Ghena hissed.
Nona glanced along the line and saw Arabella staring at her with startling intensity.
‘Why did you attack him?’ Jula whispered.
Nona made no reply. She looked down into her empty hands and wondered why Clera hadn’t asked her questions back in the dormitory. She must have been angry at being misled by Nona’s story of Amondo in the forest. Though that story held more truth in it than the first one Nona had told her … Had she learned about Raymel last seven-day or just today? Clera had held her anger so well, kept it cold and close, then used it like a blade. Nona hadn’t understood that about her friend – but then she understood so little about people. She expected them all to be like her and found instead that each of them was a mystery, from Clera with her copper penny that became a silver crown, Ruli so easy in her skin, kindness without ambition, to Jula and her faith, Hessa and her magics, even Ghena’s anger, so close to her own, never yielded to explanation or prediction.
The churchmen came into view, picked out in the guttering light of the bonfire the nuns had set burning in the fire-pit before the convent. Under Sister Rule’s direction the choir gave voice to Aethsan’s Hymn, the younger novices first, piercing the night with high, sweet notes, singular and wind-torn, hanging a moment before the sisters underwrote it with more strength, the words flowing together into melody. Sister Mop stood to the fore, dumpy, her face plain and careworn, but her voice a marvel, sending chills along the backs of Nona’s arms.
First came a dozen church-guards in polished steel breastplates, the visors of their helms smooth, reflecting the world. Four drummers behind their armoured ranks started up a grim beat that drowned out the voices of nun and novice, the beat at odds with the metre of the hymn. Behind the drummers, eight priests holding aloft the standards of the four archons and of the four states of the empire. Each standard fluttered beneath a short crossbar on the bearer’s long pole, a boss of silver and brass gleaming at the very top.
The archons came on horseback, their stallions similar enough to be brothers from the same sire and mare. Two clerics attended each archon, riding smaller ponies. Even these attendants wore silver chains of office and plush robes, trimmed with the fur of ice lynx. A dozen men bore the high priest’s sedan chair between them on two poles.
The drummers ceased their beat only when the high priest’s bearers set down the sedan chair. The choir had fallen silent and nobody spoke as a lone bearer hurried from his position to open the door to the closed sedan.
A young man, blond and handsome in black velvets, ducked out through the open door, a leather-bound book clutched to his chest. Nona wondered at priests and judges: did they also carry a book to the Necessary with them to tell them what to do?
High Priest Jacob followed after a dignified pause, a small man almost swallowed by the robe of his office, a thing of deep purple folds, embroidered with enough golden thread to weight him down should a gust try to make him take flight. Short grey hair escaped beneath a black headpiece rising in scrolls. He stood thirty yards from Nona, lit by flickers, but even so there was something familiar about the man. Something that made her lip curl.
The high priest looked around, sharp-eyed, ignoring the hand his bearer offered to help him down. His assistant reached into the sedan and brought out a long straight staff, a couple of feet taller than him and made of wood so dark it might be black, the end of it stamped in gold with the interlocked alpha and omega of the Ancestor. The high priest took the staff and cast a disapproving eye over the welcoming committee.
Sister Knife approached with a bow. With eyes lowered, she gestured towards the steps where the abbess waited. The abbess stood flanked not by Sisters Apple and Tallow as so often before but by Sister Wheel and by Sister Rose from the sanatorium, their funnelled headdresses now seeming to indicate some kind of church seniority.
Taking his cue, the high priest approached the abbess. He walked with a pronounced limp, leaning on his staff. Behind him the four archons dismounted and the bearers began to remove luggage from the sedan.
‘High Priest Jacob! Welcome to Sweet Mercy.’ Abbess Glass nodded towards the choir to begin the requiem.
The high priest raised his hand to forestall them. ‘This is not a visit that I am happy to be making. If you would join me, abbess …’ He beckoned her to his side.
‘I know him …’ Nona hadn’t meant to say the words but they emerged as a whisper.
‘You do not!’ Ghena hissed to her right. ‘That’s High Priest Jacob, primate of the faith. Not some wandering preacher a peasant might have seen.’
‘Abbess?’ The high priest beckoned again.
Abbess Glass pursed her lips, eyeing the two bearers approaching from the sedan, carrying an iron-cornered box between them on rope handles. With a sigh she descended between Wheel and Rose to join the high priest out before the fire-pit.
‘The girl too.’ High Priest Jacob scanned the Red Class line, the fire glinting in his eyes. The light and shadow made something skull-like of his face. Nona knew him then. The man from Hessa’s memories. The man who had beaten Four-Foot to death.
The abbess looked puzzled. ‘What g—’
‘Do not,’ the high priest said.
‘Nona!’ Abbess Glass waved her over, and without thinking of escape Nona came. She shot a narrow look up at the high priest, meeting his pale eyes and registering the surprise there. For a moment she imagined leaping for his throat. The image pleased her.