Any weapon begs use. The blade itself incites to violence. And those who mistake the red children of Sweet Mercy for anything other than a weapon are fools of their own breed.
Flicked wrists, arms cracked like whips, and throwing stars take flight, possessed of their own fierce rotation, bound on twisted parabolas. No mother gave her child so much direction, or set them spinning along their course through the world with such care. Governed only by the forces that steer the true stars through dark heavens, Thorn’s bright offspring wing their way: deterministic, to known targets, trusted and independent, requiring no more of her attention.
Spears are thrown in surprise, arrows released in confusion. She is among them and gone, a fleeting target in black and tattered red. Spears fly high, hit pillars, find the flesh of allies rather than foe. One Pelarthi, ice-blooded, hawk-eyed, looses at the flickering of her enemy, leading her mark. The arrow glances from Thorn’s shoulder as she turns, the blackskin stiffening to resist the missile’s speed. The temporary rigidity of her armour hampers Thorn’s reply. Her star tears skin at the corner of the archer’s eye, rips her ear, and hurtles on into the chest of the man behind.
And at last Thorn’s hands are empty, her bandolier slack, two dozen of the Pelarthi in possession of her steel, some lying sprawled, trampled by their kin as they choke on blood; others still standing, hunched about their wound, the fight gone from them, replaced by hurt, the sorrow of steel, tears of blood.
She draws her sword. The blade is long, thin, describing a slight curve, its edge cruel enough to bite through steel. Though it whispers from the scabbard somehow it is loud enough to cut a moment’s silence. This. This is where the Red Sister’s heart beats – on the edge. With her other hand she pulls the knife from her belt.
Pelarthi surround Thorn on three sides, bathing her in the light of their torches, stepping over their dead, their footprints crimson on the limestone. Many and more. A human tide, scores hurrying to flank her, glimpsed between the pillars. The foremost of them are slow now, watching, eyes upon the brightness of her blade, on the cutting edge upon which the fire’s light is divided.
Thorn stands savagely still but she walks the Path and with each step she gathers to herself the raw and fundamental power that both divides and joins creation. She is still, but the energies that build within tremble across her, making the air shake and the light dance.
The Pelarthi watch her – the tall and the short, the wiry and the strong, bearers of axe and sword, of spear and bow. Paint-faced women, lips snarled about their teeth, pant for violence, hair wild or in braids, some spattered with the blood of friends. Grim-eyed men, clutching their sharpened iron before them, grind their jaws, muscles twitching beneath chain and leathers, waiting, waiting for the moment.
They expect her to run. They know she will run. And she does. But at them.
There is a joy in destruction and when Thorn raises her head to regard the ruin all about her there is a white smile among the scarlet dripping of her sweat. The blood is not hers, not all of it. The speed of a hunska, the stark efficiency of the sisterhood’s blade-lore, and the channelled power of the Path have combined in one young woman to make a slaughter such has never been seen upon the Rock of Faith. She stands panting, both blades crimson from point to hilt, weary enough to fall, but with close on a hundred mercenaries dead about her. In places they are heaped.
Thorn straightens, snarling against the pain of broken ribs. She is cut, her cheek opened, a puncture wound high on her thigh. Her speed is diminished: the Path has thrown her and lies now beyond reach, but her foe have known terror and will not approach. The remainder watch her from back amongst the pillars. Jackals stalking a wounded lion, too timid for attack, too hungry to run.
The spear takes her between the shoulders. She should have heard it being thrown, sensed its approach, known it was coming. But it came too swiftly – hunska-fast. Blackskin turns iron hard, moulded about the spear point, driven half an inch into her flesh but arresting the missile, denying it her life. She turns as she falls, sprawling amid the gore.
Someone is leaving the Pelarthi ranks. A woman.
‘S-sister?’ Thorn’s vision is blurred with blood, with sweat, with exhaustion. The woman is not Pelarthi – but she holds a second spear. Thorn blinks and in that moment recognizes one who was once her sister.
It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient skill.
The dark-haired woman hoists her spear.
‘Don’t!’ Thorn raises her hand, not asking for mercy but in protest. This is wrong. ‘Don’t do it, C—’
The spear is thrown.
21
‘Welcome to Grey Class.’ Sister Flint rose from her desk to take Nona’s merit scroll, set with the seals of the five mistresses in acknowledgement of her satisfactory performance in Blade, Spirit, Academia, Shade, and Path. ‘You will be sitting by Alata, over here.’ The class mistress steered Nona from the door to her own seat. By dint of being considerably over six foot tall, though nowhere much more than one foot wide, Sister Flint managed to make Nona feel smaller at twelve than Sister Oak had when she first arrived in Red Class not having reached her tenth birthday.
Clera, Ara, Hessa, and Ketti grinned at her from their desks, while the remaining eight novices favoured her with the stony looks reserved for any new meat. Clera had been the first of them to move up and let nobody forget the fact. It had been Academia that held Nona back the longest – though she loved both the subject and Sister Rule. Nona had even mastered the much-hated saint’s days, ceremonies, and catechism in Spirit under Sister Wheel’s unforgiving eye before she passed her Academia finals. It had been the writing more than the reading that defeated her for so long, the business of wrestling her thoughts into a wriggling white scrawl of lines across the test slate.
Sister Flint returned to her desk but didn’t take her seat. ‘Grey Class meet here on the morning of every first-day for general instruction. I also provide individual tuition in subjects you may be experiencing difficulty with.’ The sister paused and glanced out of the window. Grey Class met in a room at the back of Blade Hall that offered views out across to the Glasswater sinkhole and beyond the narrowing point of the plateau to the farmlands north of Verity. Presently the rock lay sun-spattered with just a fleeting shadow here and there where the wind chased a cloud from the sky. ‘Today, however, we will finish a quarter-hour early. I shall leave you to introduce yourself to new classmates and gossip with old ones.’ Sister Flint closed the heavy book on her desk, letting the leather cover fall with a thump. She said nothing more as she left the room, perhaps eager to catch a moment in the all-too-rare sunshine.
Conversation erupted along with the scraping of chairs as the door closed behind the nun. Clera reached Nona’s side first, elbowing her way through the bigger girls. The eldest of the novices were around fourteen and some looked older than their years.
‘Thank the Ancestor, Nona! You saved us. Flint was on about girls getting their blood. It was vile. She just wouldn’t stop with the detail. I’ve decided I’m not doing it.’
Ara ducked around a couple of older novices and sat on Nona’s desk. ‘I’ve been having mine since the last ice-wind. It’s not so bad. The cramps are—’
‘Will you just stop?’ Clera made a face. ‘Anyway, I’m safe. Flint said they come later if you’re thin.’ She eyed Ara’s curves.
Ketti, taller and still more slender than Clera raised a brow at the suggestion. ‘She said that?’