‘Yes, but yours I felt.’ Once Hessa had shared with Nona the memory of her last day with Giljohn and somehow her inexperience had led to the forging of a more permanent bond. Perhaps once a month they would share a nightmare. Never a good dream, always something traumatic. And in moments of true panic or pain Hessa’s thoughts would reach out and overwhelm Nona’s. It happened in the other direction to a lesser degree. When Nona had taken the arrow Hessa had collapsed from more than shock. The pain had echoed in her too. When Darla had knocked Hessa to the floor and set her foot to Hessa’s face, Nona had in that same moment shared her skin – the mixture bubbling before her in Shade class forgotten and unseen – had felt the weight of Darla’s shoe, the agony in Hessa’s hip, the humiliation of many eyes watching as she squirmed. She’d known all of it and been unable to act. ‘I’m not going to get beaten twice and not bite back.’
Hessa offered a shy grin. ‘Well. She’s certainly been bitten.’ And with that she took herself off across the hall, the swing of her leg leaving a dashed line alongside each of her single footprints.
Out on the sands Sister Tallow waited for them, in her hand a naked blade, the long thin sword favoured by the sisterhood, a strip of Ark-steel, carrying a slight curve and an edge that could cut the truth from a lie. Nona jogged after the others, uncomfortable in the blade-habit assigned to her, a heavy tunic of padded leather, bleached to a pale beige. The long sleeves overlapped awkward gauntlets, all designed to minimize the potential for novices gutting each other. She went to stand beside Clera and Ketti.
Sister Tallow always had a stillness about her. Often in blade-fist Nona would start and finish a bout only to find the nun in the same position, watching, as if her flesh was inanimate and she had been carved from it rather than grown. Today though, she paced, glancing up at the windows. Long, swift strides, impatient, spinning to turn and pace again.
Before the novices were gathered and arrayed in their lines the main doors opened and Sister Wheel slipped through, the cone of her headdress scraping the wood. She stayed by the doors, seeming to glare at everyone in the hall.
‘Some of you will have seen this before, most will not.’ Sister Tallow held her sword up as they hastened into their lines. ‘You won’t hold one unless you graduate this class – and all your other Grey classes – and come to me again in Mystic Class. But if you do become Martial Sisters it will be through such a weapon that you may need to direct the Ancestor’s will. Pray that you are never called upon to use it, but know that there have been few sisters who took the red and kept their blade unsullied.’
‘Sullied?’ Clera bit back on the question but it escaped even so.
‘Blood is always a failure.’ Sister Tallow’s glance flickered to Nona. ‘Often the failure of the sister who holds the sword. Sometimes of those who send her into conflict. Or sometimes the failure lies years back, in the hands of someone who missed an opportunity for peace, who saw a chance to avert a distant violence and did not take it … or who failed to see that chance.’ She returned the sword to the scabbard at her hip. ‘I spend Red Class, that’s two years for most of you, on unarmed combat. One reason I make you dangerous without a weapon – and will continue to reinforce that training – is so that you have an alternative to this.’ She slapped her hip. ‘You may be called upon to enforce the authority and the will of the church. It would be better if you did so in a manner that allows the transgressor to see the error of their ways rather than the contents of their body. The sword is a final solution.’ Sister Tallow looked along their lines as if considering fruit at market and finding none to her standard. ‘Knives today – training blades. Equip yourselves. Run, but remember where your blade is and what it will cut if you fall.’
The novices took off running, sand scattering beneath bare feet. Nona brought up the rear, limping to spare tender flesh already turning to bruise. Darla had been a lesson in herself. Take a giant by surprise and you could fell Raymel Tacsis with a blow. Let a giant take you by surprise and your options might dwindle to nothing.
As she turned where the corridor split, changing room to the left, storeroom to the right, Nona caught sight of a figure in the dark corridor that continued to the blade-path chamber. It almost looked like Kettle, but the hard-eyed stare held nothing of the nun’s humour.
‘She’ll shave your head!’ Clera raced from the storeroom holding a long knife as Nona approached the door.
By the time Nona had fought her way through the novices bundling from the doorway, all with daggers in hand, the room lay empty. It wasn’t clear where the girls had taken their knives from: at the far end of the chamber a bewildering array of weapons lined the shelves, hilts out ready for the taking. Nona passed by the racks. Swords of various lengths and weights, long-hafted axes, climbing picks, hook knives, throwing knives, poniards, killing spikes … She hurried to the furthest corner. Kneeling, she reached up beneath the lowest shelf, stretching. Craw-spiders sometimes lurked in such places but she hadn’t time for caution. Her fingers found only space and for a moment she thought it had been discovered at last. One more stretch, cheek hard against the shelf’s edge, and she found the hilt. A tug brought it free.
Nona ran back, knife in hand, the one Ara had sunk into her pillow on her first night. Back before they were … almost … friends. The knife had stood between them for two years now, between the Chosen and her Shield, never spoken of, never mentioned, and all the sharper for it. She ran as fast as her injuries allowed, chased down the dark corridor by the ghosts of that distant night, footsteps at her heels.
The others were lined up and ready, Sister Tallow watching the tunnel as Nona ran from it and came to a halt with a wince.
‘I repeat this lesson for every novice to join Grey Class. Before you leave you will have heard it a dozen times and still it will not have been enough.’ Sister Tallow motioned for Nona to take her place at the rear of the group.
‘Yes, Mistress Blade.’ Nona joined in the chorus.
‘This.’ Sister Tallow raised her own knife. ‘Is a great leveller. With your bare hands it is hard to disable an opponent – harder still to kill them. Despite all that I have taught you, unarmed you could be defeated by an opponent of considerably less skill if that opponent happens to weigh twice what you weigh, if they happen to be slabbed over with muscle, four times your strength. I am talking here of your average city guardsman. Do not overestimate how much your training will count for in an unequal contest. In such circumstances it may be only your willingness to move swiftly to the most savage of tactics that preserves you. The eyes, the groin, the throat.’
Sister Wheel moved from the doorway, making a slow gangling advance along the far wall, staring at the novices, glancing to the windows and the doors. Sister Tallow continued as if she were not there. ‘The sharp edge, however, removes a great deal of an opponent’s advantages in strength and size. No muscle, however hard or thick, will stop a sword thrust. A sharp edge applied to the neck will end any contest, and swiftly. A sharp edge applied to an arm or leg will open it to the bone with grievous and crippling injury. Be in no doubt that even a light slash can destroy a limb. Skin, muscle, blood vessels, nerves, all yield to steel with frightening ease.
‘Nona – you will find time to visit Sister Rock in the kitchens and accompany her when she next slaughters a pig. The time after that you will make the cut and apply your blade further to the warm carcass to see how easily flesh opens before a honed knife and what lies within.’
Sister Flint appeared from the shadows of the corridor beneath the seating, looking around the hall as if searching for something, though what might be hiding among the rafters Nona couldn’t guess. The other novices had noticed Sisters Flint and Wheel, and exchanged glances.
‘Pair up. Colour your blades and spar – alpha through delta cuts only.’
Clera and Ara both stepped towards Nona but Sister Tallow saved her from having to choose between them. ‘Nona, you’ll be with me.’
‘Yes, sister.’ It was for the best, she had no idea what an alpha cut was, and still less how to pair with Clera without upsetting Ara. Life had been easier in that respect since Clera joined Grey Class six months earlier.