Nona shrugged. She and Clera were the only acknowledged hunska full-bloods in the lower classes, though Ara might also be, and she was certainly very fast for a prime. Full-bloods always got jealousy and awe in equal measures but Nona’s showing at the ordeal had pushed the reaction to greater extremes.
It took a moment to brush the sand from her feet and apply resin. Ara had made her a gift of a small tub of the stickiest blend Nona had seen. The tub itself was silver, embossed and worked, by far the most valuable thing Nona had touched, and yet passed to her as if it were no more than an apple-core.
‘Remember, take your time, think!’ Ara spoke as Nona set foot on the pipe, arms out for balance. ‘You always go too fast.’ Ara’s first completion was less than a month old and her enthusiasm for giving advice had yet to wane. She had taken a little over four hundred beats compared to Clera’s best of two hundred and ninety, and failed to improve on it in her two completions since.
Nona edged out, having to pull to free each foot from the traction that would prove vital in the steeper sections. She still had yet to pass the halfway point. Something never felt quite right, as if the whole shifting shape of the blade-path had been designed just to throw her, Nona Grey, into the net below, as a personal insult. Some elusive part of the puzzle escaped her every time, a sour note in the song, the wrongness of someone else’s shoe on her foot.
‘You’re doing well!’ Ara from the platform, already far above Nona’s head as she finished the long slow curve of the initial descent and approached the sharp rise of the spiral’s first turn.
‘The net wants you, little girl.’ The pale novice.
‘Darla wants you too!’ Alata called.
Laughter and hoots rose from below where other novices watched at the doorway.
Nona started the climb, making sure that her back foot held a better position than Clera’s had. She rose with slow steps, stuttered corrections here and there as she made the difficult transfer from the inner surface of the spiral to the outer. The structure rocked and swayed on its supporting cables. She drew a slow breath and crossed the vertex of the first loop.
Click. The pendulum swung past its midpoint and the dial advanced another notch, counting out Nona’s sloth. The leap to the top of the next spiral tempted her, but the rules of the game said the whole blade-path must be walked. She started her descent, relying on the resin to stop her slipping. Click.
Some yards ahead a heavy section of the blade-path rotated on a joint, reacting to the shifting of Nona’s weight on the spiral. Every part of the blade-path levered some other part: the smallest step could set some section in motion, the whole path flexing and reconfiguring.
Nona dropped into the moment, slowing the world to a crawl, the novices’ laughter crashing through the registers until it reached the deep rumble of a mud-ox. She reached for support, shifting her own weight to counter the motion beneath her feet. A slow hunt for balance in the space between heartbeats.
Somehow it ended as it so often ended, with Nona understanding that she had passed the point of no return, knowing that no lunge could save her now, and letting gravity take her. She fell without sound, just a silent snarl across her lips. The impact with the net, the bounce, the scramble to the side, all passed without notice: she knew she could walk the blade-path, knew it blood to bone, and yet … and yet …
‘Bad luck!’ Clera wrapped an arm around Nona. ‘You’re getting better, though.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Let’s watch Ara fall.’ Clera grinned. ‘Or just get old watching her finishing it.’
A novice, nearly as tall as Darla but half her width, pulled the lever on the wall, trapping the pendulum at the end of a swing and setting the dial back to zero.
23
‘Touching the Path is the second most dangerous thing a person can do.’ Sister Pan stalked the classroom with an energy wholly at odds with her ancient frame. ‘These games you play with swords and knives, poisons and acids … you think this is danger? You girls don’t even know the hurt that a sharp edge can do – a slip of the wrist and you’re opened to the world, blood, bone, nerves, guts, all the soft wonder of a body cut through. If you live the pain can last a lifetime, the loss … if you live.’ She raised her right arm and gazed at the stump where her hand should be, tilting her head as if perhaps she could still see the missing fingers moving to her will. A moment later the old woman spun on her heel to face Nona. ‘I’ve told these girls a hundred times – it doesn’t stick. It’s small matter if they haven’t the blood for it. But you … you, little Nona, you might yet do it. This ill-advised connection Novice Hessa forged with you is a possible sign. Not a proper thread-bond, but an echo of one.’ Sister Pan leaned in and tapped Nona’s forehead with a finger as dry and dark as a charcoal stick. ‘There might be a touch of quantal locked in there … and all we need to do is find a way to set it free.’
‘What’s the most dangerous thing?’ Nona asked.
‘Huh?’ Sister Pan blinked as if the path of her own thoughts had slipped away from beneath her feet. She stood dark against the magnificence of the stained-glass windows.
‘You said that touching the Path was the second most dangerous thing a person could do,’ Nona said. ‘What’s the most dangerous?’
‘Leaving the Path, of course,’ Sister Pan replied, her focus back and razor-sharp. ‘And why is that, Novice Hessa?’ She pointed at Hessa behind her without turning her gaze from Nona.
‘Because when you step from the Path you have to take great care to return to yourself and not to some other place,’ Hessa said.
‘Some other place,’ Sister Pan repeated. ‘Some terrible place from which you may never return. A dark place where demons whisper unseen. A hot place where your mind will burn. A place so cold that we who remain will see the hint of its frost in your vacant eyes. A silent place where time does not venture and from which no thing ever leaves … You must return to yourself. What else? What else makes it dangerous, Novice Arabella?’ She pointed to Ara.
‘You must own what you hold,’ Ara said.
‘Correct.’ A nod. ‘Every step along the true Path of the Ancestor – a path that runs through all creation – is a gift and a burden. Every step taken is a gift of the raw power of creation, every step increases the potential within you. Sounds good, no?’
Nona nodded. The stories spoke of Holy Witches filling their hands with magics that could blow the strongest door asunder, reduce rock to powder. They said Sister Cloud could throw lightning like a thunderstorm. Sister Owl could scatter men as if they were nine-pins with a wave of her hand.
‘Imagine a stream of your favourite drink. Girls like honey-wine don’t they? Imagine that.’
Nona had never tasted honey-wine, or wine, or honey, but she nodded again.
‘Now imagine it is being poured into your mouth. You like the taste, you swallow and swallow, it’s good. But the jug keeps pouring – it’s endless – it’s too fast – but all you can do is swallow it. Your belly is swelling, your stomach bursting. You can take no more. You break away.
‘The Path is like that. You return overflowing with the gift, burning with it, bursting with it. And you must own and shape what you’ve been given. Fail, and it will tear you apart – never the same way twice. It’s not a quick death either. The gift sustains. Even as it destroys you it will keep you there. Even as you burn, whatever pieces of you remain will know suffering sharp enough to make the emperor’s torturers weep with jealousy.’ Sister Pan frowned as if she’d had more to say, then looked at Nona expectantly.
‘I’ll stick to swords and poison then,’ Nona said.