‘Yes, yes …’ He rallied as a new thought struck him. ‘But the child could hardly defend someone as tall as you, Mistress Blade. She barely reaches past your hip. We must pair her with someone close to her own stature, no? For a fair test.’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘We need a novice. If there are no volunteers then that lack of faith speaks for itself – she can hardly be the Shield if no one believes in her. As well as defend, the Shield must represent and carry our belief.’ The high priest looked around, his gaze running across the crowded seating. ‘A novice! A girl from her own class would be most suitable. Who is ready to put their lives in this criminal’s hands?’
Nona wondered how many of those present had seen the ordeal of the Shield undertaken. None of the novices, if Sister Kettle had been the last to take it. Perhaps there were demonstrations, or maybe just stories, and sometimes the story of a thing created more fear than the reality. Either way, none of Red Class were leaping to their feet. Clera had her eyes down, staring at the back of someone’s head. Beside her, Ruli was at least looking at Nona but with a wide and hopeless stare. She spotted Ketti and Ghena together, the former pale, her mouth half-open, the latter scowling furiously as if she’d just been insulted. Behind them and to the right two shaved heads. Jula seemed to be crying, Arabella about to open her mouth, perhaps to laugh.
‘No one?’ High Priest Jacob pressed his lips into a thin smile. ‘The matter is settle—’
‘I will.’ Hessa had been bending down for her crutch. Now she used it to get to her feet.
Nona’s eyes misted. The story running wild through the convent was of how she’d failed to save Saida. How she’d let her friend die. She hadn’t expected any of them to trust her to protect them. She looked down at her hands, made fists of them, and squeezed until it hurt.
Hessa made her way down from the seating with agonizing slowness, awkward on the steps, all eyes upon her. The high priest leaned forward to the tier below him and tapped Sister Wheel on the shoulder. In the hush as Hessa descended the last steps High Priest Jacob’s voice carried further than perhaps he intended.
‘—not chosen to be a Red Sister. She’s not quantal?’
Sister Wheel muttered something in reply. Nona heard the word ‘waste’ in the high priest’s answer. Maybe he thought quantal blood too precious to spill in such an exercise, but Sister Wheel seemed unconcerned, perhaps willing to pay that price to rid the convent of a peasant. And a crippled one at that.
Hessa stumped across the sand to join Nona and Sister Rose, swinging her withered leg, the foot leaving shallow scuff-marks behind her. She offered Nona an uncertain smile, the blue of her eyes darker than Nona had ever seen it.
‘You shouldn’t do this,’ Nona said.
‘I’m your friend,’ Hessa said. ‘Besides, you’ll protect me.’
Nona’s eyes widened. ‘Friend?’
‘Of course, silly. You don’t think Clera’s your only friend, do you? People can be friends without saying so.’
Nona opened her mouth and found that she had run out of words. She had vowed that she would never let a friend down, that she would do anything, anything at all, to protect them. A vow more sacred to her than the Ancestor, more holy than the church from tallest spire to lowest crypt. The idea that someone might count her as a friend without her knowledge or agreement suddenly complicated things.
Sister Rose set her hands to their shoulders. ‘Do you both understand the trial?’
Nona shook her head but Hessa replied, ‘I have to stand still and Nona has to defend me from a thrown spear and a throwing star, and … are there four stages in the full trial or three?’
‘There are—’
‘Sister Rose!’ The high priest calling down from the back of the stands. ‘Get them ready if you will. And provide Captain Rogan with a spear.’ At his words one of the church-guards standing at the main doorway stepped forward, not a gerant but well over six foot and solid in chest and limb. He removed his helm and brushed back short brown hair sprinkled, like his short brown beard, with grey. A pallid scar pulled his mouth into a sneer. His eyes, though, were neither cruel nor kind, only incurious, as if throwing a spear at little girls was just another of the day’s duties.
Sister Rose steered the two girls towards a part of the wall covered by a splintered wooden hoarding. Nona felt a tremble in the woman’s hand. ‘Do your best, Nona.’ Her voice wavered. ‘Oh dear. And Hessa, don’t be scared. Sister Tallow says Nona is very fast … and … I’m sure the abbess is right … She had a vision, and …’ The nun choked on the next word, instead taking them into her arms, pressing them both against her fatness. Nona was surprised to find herself not wanting to be let go of. The ordeal hadn’t scared her until the high priest had put a person’s life in her hands – and now that person was Hessa. Her friend, Hessa.
‘Sister Rose!’ The high priest’s voice, not well pleased by the delay.
The nun struggled, weeping, to her feet and let Sister Flint lead her off. Flint glanced back once, dark eyes finding Nona’s. A curt nod and she looked away, helping Sister Rose to the back of the hall.
Nona turned and stepped closer to Hessa, so close their noses almost touched. ‘Don’t move. I won’t have time to look at you. I have to know you’re where I put you.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ Hessa gave a weak smile, very pale now, glancing towards Captain Rogan, now being presented with a spear from the stores. ‘In any case, it takes me ages to get anywhere.’
The captain hefted his weapon, a plain ash shaft nearly two yards long, iron shod, the blade narrow, designed to penetrate armour. ‘You have anything heavier? Broad-leaf?’
Sister Tallow narrowed her eyes at the man. ‘Nothing heavier. We have blade-headed spears, if your desire is to cut as much flesh as possible, captain.’
The man shrugged and waved away the suggestion with no apparent embarrassment. ‘This will serve.’
The high priest stamped staff to floor. ‘Let’s get this nonsense over with.’
Nona looked towards Abbess Glass and the abbess gave her the same calculating look she’d given that day at the prison, tossing hoare-apples at her. Nona turned, set her hands to Hessa’s shoulders, positioned her, then faced the captain, taking five paces forward. Less time to see the spear coming – more time for any slight deflection to grow.
‘Sister Wheel, if you will adjudicate.’ The high priest opened his palms in a gentle shoving motion, and taking the hint, the nun descended to the sands, moving in that strange gangling way of hers that seemed as if it should belong to something not born of a woman.
Nona spent the wait studying the captain, watching the gleam of his breastplate, the sway of the iron-studded leather tongues of the undershirt as it divided into a skirt to protect his upper legs. The bright point of his spear. The thickness of his arm.
At last Sister Wheel took her place at the middle of the hall and raised her hand. ‘Ancestor witness this our trial of faith and swiftness, the Argatha’s Shield.’ She looked left, right. ‘Ready?’ She let her arm fall.
Nona lengthened her heartbeats and watched. The captain’s arm hooked back, launched forward, sliding through the air, a wordless roar on his lips. Fingers opened at the full extension of his arm, releasing the spear’s shaft. Nona wrapped the world about her, watching the bright steel point of the blade pulse slightly up and down as the spear’s shaft flexed with the power of the throw.
Captain Rogan aimed his throw at Nona’s heart. She began to twist to the side. Swiftness depends on reaction, on the speed with which the mind understands what the eyes show it, and with which it sends its orders to the body. No matter how fast those messages though, there are limits to what muscles can do. Nona knew that a finger can be moved more swiftly than a hand, a hand quicker than an arm, an arm faster than a body. She worked to move her torso from the path of the spear’s flight, her thin body suddenly heavier than iron, sullenly resisting her strength as she strove to shove it aside.