‘This is the novice?’ he asked as she drew near.
The abbess nodded. ‘She’s a small thing to bring the high priest and all four archons up such a steep and winding path, is she not?’
‘This was not well done, Shella.’ The high priest frowned. Behind him the bearers opened the box and began to remove something heavy and clanking.
‘Is this necessary, Jacob?’ Abbess Glass glanced at the box with distaste.
‘Do you truly not understand who Thuran Tacsis is?’ High Priest Jacob shook his head. ‘I thought you were clever, Shella, devious even. This makes … no sense.’ He waved and the bearers stepped forward, heavy iron yokes in their arms, trailing lengths of chain. ‘Abbess Glass, Novice Nona, you are both to be placed under church arrest pending trial at sunrise.’
The larger of the two men opened the iron yoke in his hands and stepped forward to place it over the abbess’s head. Nona heard gasps and cries from behind her. The other man stepped towards her and she backed away.
‘Let him do it, Nona dear.’ Abbess Glass smiled, then winced as the weight of her yoke settled on her shoulders. ‘The high priest has spoken. The Ancestor will watch over us.’
Nona willed herself to stop. She didn’t much care if the Ancestor watched or not, but she knew the abbess stood before her humbled and in chains because she had taken her from the very shadow of the gallows, moments before they tried to set the rope about her neck. Nona didn’t understand why the abbess had done that but she understood the debt upon her.
‘I would kill him again.’ Nona stood straight as the yoke descended upon her. ‘I would kill his brother too, and his father if they think this is right.’
‘She condemns herself.’ The high priest spread his hands. ‘Do we even need a trial?’
‘She’s a child, Jacob.’ The abbess stumbled as she stepped towards him, her features strained.
As the weight settled on Nona her legs gave way and she fell to her knees on the rock. One bearer supported her while the other man tried to lock the yoke in place, encompassing her neck and both wrists. It took the use of a spanner to tighten the yoke sufficiently that her hands wouldn’t simply slip out.
‘Give her up now and there may still be a place in the church for you, Shella. It isn’t like you to get sentimental over a child. And why this child?’
‘My name is Glass. We will have a trial and see what that name is worth.’
The high priest sighed. He removed his hat, smoothed his hair into place and resettled it before the wind could undo his work. ‘Take them to the recluse.’
And so with the convent watching on and the welcome meal cooling on the long tables, Abbess Glass and Nona were led off to wait upon their trial. Nona looked towards her classmates as she staggered by, partly supported by one of the church-guards. Some looked away or at their feet, Clera among them. Others stared in horror. Even Arabella Jotsis looked stricken, though Nona couldn’t imagine why.
Sister Apple had to lead the high priest’s men to the recluse – every convent had one but the location varied from site to site. Sweet Mercy’s recluse was a cavern at the end of the tunnel that led past the Shade classroom. Sister Apple took them more than a hundred yards further into the bedrock of the plateau, holding her lantern high. In the depths the darkness moved aside before the nun’s intrusions only with reluctance. She navigated past half a dozen junctions where the tunnel forked into smaller or larger ways and eventually the corridor ended in a small cave where the walls had been smoothed by waters that had long since found a swifter course, leaving an almost spherical chamber. Iron bars blocked the corridor and the smaller entry path of the vanished stream. Sister Apple unlocked a gate in the bars and the abbess walked through with as much dignity as she could manage. Nona’s guardsmen helped her in. Sister Apple locked the gate.
‘I shall pray for you both.’ She offered a narrow smile and walked away, leading the four guardsmen. She left nothing but an echo of her lantern light, soon consumed by a night so ancient that it never truly left such places.
‘She didn’t seem very upset.’ Nona’s voice surprised her. She hadn’t meant to speak but darkness gives the tongue licence – like a mask – or a judge’s crown.
‘Apple is a Grey Sister,’ the abbess said. Nona heard her sit down. ‘She wears many guises, and she herself would tell you to trust none of them. Only remember that she is your sister, as true to you as you are to the Ancestor.’
‘What will they do with us?’ Nona asked. The ground was damp, uneven, and hard and the place held a lingering scent of the sewer, perhaps remembering the last nun or novice sent down here to reflect upon their sins.
‘Find us innocent, I hope.’
‘And if they don’t?’
‘Ah, well, then we will be subject to church justice, which sadly rests upon some very old and rather barbaric laws. I will have my tongue split and be scourged before being driven out of the convent. And you will be put to death.’
‘Oh.’
‘You did ask. And you were on the gallows steps when I found you …’
‘I thought you liked to lie.’ Nona wriggled her hands in the yoke’s grip. It hurt.
‘I said lies can be very useful. Even children deserve honesty in the dark, though.’
‘How?’
‘How?’
‘How will I be put to death?’
‘Ah.’ The abbess sucked in her breath. ‘Each convent has its own method. Silent Patience and Chaste Devotion burn, but in different ways; Gerran’s Crag opts for crushing with stones. We drown. Not in my time, but they say the bottom of the sinkhole is thick with bones …’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Nona might only be ten but she knew that adults were supposed to comfort children, even if all they had to offer was false comfort.
‘So that tomorrow you hold your tongue and let me do what needs to be done without your temper digging us deeper.’
Nona bit her lip at that and drew her knees to her chest, resting part of the yoke’s weight against the cave wall. She kept silent for what felt like an age, remembering her classmates’ faces as they watched her being led away.
Finally, ‘Why are you helping me?’
Abbess Glass didn’t speak for the longest time, and when she did all she said was, ‘Perhaps because I really do know who Thuran Tacsis is.’
16
Church-guards brought Nona and the abbess blinking into the light of day and led them past the scriptorium and Blade Hall to Heart Hall. Nuns and novices lined the final fifty yards to the steps and pillars of Heart Hall’s grand entrance. The sisters and older novices muttered the Ancestor’s first prayer. Nona didn’t know the words by heart but had heard enough of it to recognize it when it was spoken.
‘Ancestor watch our journey. Ancestor guide us in the from and in the to. Ancestor help us to carry the weight of our years, and evening—’
‘Don’t they say that at funerals?’ Nona asked, stumbling as she tried to keep step with the abbess.