‘The abbess told us Thuran Tacsis pledged to the emperor himself that it was over!’ Ara spoke up from the side, perhaps to stop Tallow brooding over Nona’s story. She offered everyone a bright smile. ‘My father saw him say so, before the whole court. Why should we still be worried about assassins?’
Tallow and Wheel exchanged a glance at that. Sister Tallow answered. ‘It pays to be cautious, novice. The Noi-Guin do not like to fail and they are patient. Besides, now Thuran Tacsis has sworn on this matter Nona is a liability to him and his enemies might have an interest in seeing her harmed, thinking to bring the emperor’s wrath on the House of Tacsis. And so this blade …’
‘How did you all come to be here?’ Nona asked, not wanting the conversation to return to her silence on the matter of the knife and to reveal the strong suspicions she’d held regarding Ara’s part. ‘And …’ She turned around to look up at Kettle. ‘How did you … you just came from nowhere!’
‘I’m a Sister of Discretion.’ Kettle offered a tiny grin, just enough to show the whiteness of her teeth. ‘You see me when I want you to.’
‘Threads brought us here, Nona.’ Sister Flint, peering down from her grave heights. ‘Mistress Path will teach you about threads soon enough, now you’re in Grey Class.’
22
Sister Tallow set Ara to instructing Nona in the basics of knife-work. With the other novices all busy at blade-path the pair of them had Mistress Blade’s full attention: never a comfortable thing. They circled, working in a silence cut by the sharpness of drawn breath and punctuated by the distant wails of girls falling from the blade-path.
‘No.’ Sister Tallow took Nona’s wrist and shoulder, moving her arm into the block she had been shown.
After thirty more repetitions of the same block and same cut Nona tried another variation.
‘No.’ Sister Tallow adjusted Nona’s arm again. ‘The muscles need to learn it, not the mind. There need to be patterns your body can fall back on when there’s no time for thinking. Once those are bedded into you then you start to improvise.’
Nona fell back into the rhythm: circle, cut, block, circle. From the frequency of the distant cries even the novices with most practice were finding the blade-path particularly difficult in their heavy blade-habits. Of the girls who trained on the path in their free time the majority were hunska, half-bloods and primes. Though given that just getting to the end of the blade-path proved a major challenge, speed really wasn’t a requirement. Nona guessed that the competitive element just appealed more strongly to those with their eyes on the martial habit; though of late the studious Jula had demonstrated quite a talent for it, completing the whole path, albeit achingly slowly, a feat that of the recent graduates from Red Class only Clera had managed before moving up.
A moment’s lapse of concentration and Ara had slashed a black line across the pale leather of Nona’s blade-habit.
‘Again!’ Sister Tallow barked.
Circle, slash, block, circle, slash. Block.
‘When you stab you may find the opportunity to mortally injure your opponent, but to sink your blade you must come in closer than to cut with it. When you stab and find flesh your blade may become trapped by the bones of a twisting opponent. Both the necessity of stepping closer and the danger of a trapped blade open you to retaliation. There is almost no stab you can make that is so swiftly fatal that it will prevent the counter-blow.’
Circle. Slash, block. Circle, slash. Block.
‘Even the whisper of a well-honed knife can cut through cloth, skin, and the muscle beneath. Knife fights are a war of attrition. Your foe is brought down by the combination of blood loss and the lost mobility due to various wounds, allowing an eventual coup de grace.’
Nona’s blade slipped past Ara’s block and wrote a black line across her stomach. An immediate flood of guilt washed through her. She had spent two years thinking her friend could have stabbed her in her sleep, or at the least threatened to do so.
‘Of course, against untrained opponents combat may often be concluded within moments. A slash to the throat and swift advance to the next target is recommended, though a stab to the heart, the eye, or up under the jaw are possibilities if the opponent’s blade is controlled.’
Circle-slash-block. Circle-slash-block.
‘Break! You can join the others for ten minutes before next bell.’
Nona straightened, blinking sweat from her eyes. Time had escaped her, but the blisters on her knife hand and the circle of floor kicked free of sand had kept a more accurate measure than her mind.
‘Yes, Mistress Blade.’ Ara nodded and hurried off towards the changing room.
Nona pushed her wet hair back across her forehead, blinked again, and gave chase.
‘It’s great you came up.’ Ara finished with the last tie and stripped off her blade-habit in one fluid motion. ‘I was getting worried we wouldn’t range together.’
‘We’ve still got three months for that.’ Nona wriggled into her day-habit and brushed her hands through her hair, a short thick shock of it. She wanted to grow it long but it went wild if she let it get past a hand span and brushing wouldn’t tame it. When it got long Sister Wheel stopped calling her peasant and called her harlot instead – which made it almost worth it, but not quite.
‘I hope more of the others make it up before then too.’ Ara picked up her stockings and shoes, ready to go.
‘We need Ruli and Jula at least.’ Nona nodded. Grey Class went on the ranging every year, the novices sent on a long journey across open country. It was an important part of the year’s lessons. Without resources they had to live off the land and pass several convent challenges on the way. On the previous ranging two girls had been injured, one failing to reach the target in the allotted time. The abbess wouldn’t throw novices out for failing on the ranging – though her predecessor had – but it was certain that nobody who failed a ranging would ever take the grey or the red. ‘It’ll be the first time I’ve got off this rock in … since I arrived here.’
‘Come on!’ Ara pulled Nona’s arm, shaking her out of her contemplation of the fact that she hadn’t ever passed back through the pillars outside the convent. ‘Race you.’
Nona and Ara scrambled barefoot up the stairs to the platform in the blade-path chamber, Ara bursting through well in the lead and almost knocking a girl over the edge. About half the novices had already abandoned practice in favour of an early bath, but they still had some competition. Ketti sat with her back to them, legs dangling out into space and two older novices stood waiting their turns. Taller of the two, who Ara had nearly pitched into the net below, was Alata. Her dark eyes narrowed in disapproval at Nona’s arrival. The girl had ink-black hair so tightly curled it seemed to float about her head, her dark skin had been patterned with darker scars, their raised bumps looking as if they spelled out a message whose meaning lay just beyond comprehension. The other novice was Leeni, a red-haired girl with skin so pale that her veins showed in blue webs across her bare legs and arms.
Out on the path itself Clera, still in her blade-habit, wobbled dangerously as she attempted the first rise of the spiral.
‘Watch your back foot!’ Ara called out.
Clera twitched, flailed at the air, and fell with a furious shriek, dark hair streaming up to shroud her face. Ara turned to Nona with a guilty look, raising her hands. ‘Well, she did have it placed wrongly.’
Nona said nothing, though to be fair, Clera had been poorly positioned.
Alata gestured to the pipe with a broad hand. ‘See what you got, new girl.’
‘You.’ The pale girl pointed at Nona. ‘I want to see if the Shield drops faster than the rest of us.’