‘Don’t be stupid,’ Clera hissed. ‘The emperor himself couldn’t take Arabella from Sweet Mercy. That’s why the Jotsis sent her here.’
The wind swirled cold about them, lifting habits and streaming hair. Abbess Glass bent into it, continuing her address. ‘… classes are suspended until our visitors’ departure. Sisters are encouraged to recruit novices to the necessary tasks of preparation. Girls that Sister Rule requires for choir duty are excused other labour. I’m sure that Sister Chrysanthemum will be happy to find work for any novices at a loose end: there’s always some part of the convent that needs scrubbing.
‘It goes without saying that we seek to present our best face tomorrow … but I will say it in any event. High Priest Nevis’s last visit was somewhat traumatic, so let us do our utmost to replace that memory with happier ones. And Sherzal of course honours us with her presence. Let us strive to deserve it.’
Abbess Glass waved to set the assembly free. Nona’s eyes tracked the abbess’s hand, still curled around the scar tissue from where the candle had burned her. Any visit that Bitel announced held the potential to prove more deadly than Noi-Guin arriving unheralded in the night.
‘Ancestor!’ Ruli glanced around. ‘Let’s run before Sister Mop has us cleaning out the Necessary!’
‘Run, peasants!’ Clera grinned. ‘I shall sing for my supper.’ And with that she started off towards Sister Rule who stood by the dome, yardstick waving above her head to summon the choir.
Nona tried to smile back, but behind her eyes she saw the scream on Abbess Glass’s face as she held her hand above that steady flame. Without warning the ice-wind howled, returning Nona to the present. It spoke again, its voice frost-laden, abrading flesh – as if in place of ice it carried a million tiny throwing stars – and everyone ran for shelter.
24
Nona staggered into the Grey Class dormitory brushing ice from the thick shock of her hair, hair that only minutes before had been steaming as she towelled it dry in the bathhouse. She had thought that Blade class exercised every muscle she owned but three hours of sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing under Sister Mop’s beady eye had helped her discover new ones. And they hurt.
‘I think I strained my voice.’ Clera lay on a bed close to the door, flat on her back staring at the ceiling, outer habit pooled on the floor, long legs stretched. Her silver penny gleamed on an open palm.
‘I think I strained everything but my voice.’ Nona looked around for an unused bed.
Ara came in behind her, hair caked with ice at the front, still steaming at the back. ‘I saw Sister Wheel telling Mop to put you on cleaning the privies …’
‘Fortunately Moppy has novices she really doesn’t like,’ Nona said. She knew the best way to earn the nun’s ire was to leave a mess in the refectory. The nun approved of anyone who left nothing on their plate, so Nona had become something of a favourite.
‘She likes you because you’re a peasant,’ Clera said. ‘Mop likes girls who aren’t scared of hard work. Me she would have had washing the cliff below the Necessary, while Sister Rule used it.’
Ara pushed on into the room and with a short sprint launched herself over two girls lying on their blankets, belly-flopping onto an unoccupied bed. Nona frowned, still hunting a bed to claim as her own. At the far end of the room Darla hulked, her back to them, hunched over something in her lap.
‘Who sleeps there?’ Nona pointed at an empty bed opposite Ara’s. It was quite neatly made but still perhaps a touch too untidy to be unclaimed.
‘Alata.’ Clera nodded to the bed behind her.
Nona blinked. Two feet protruded from the heap of blankets but it wasn’t the number of feet that drew her eye – just the fact that one was darkest brown, the other milky. At the top end she could see only a fan of red hair, spread across the pillow. They said in Red Class that some older novices kept the same beds but Nona had never seen it before.
The shutters rattled as the ice-wind peppered them with hail. Clera patted the blanket beside her. ‘Going to be cold tonight. You can share if you like.’ She said it lightly but the words carried a weight even so.
Nona’s eyes strayed to the two bare feet again, one rubbing the other now. She felt her cheeks blaze and looked away confused.
‘This one’s free!’ Ara waved, pointing at a bed a few further along from her.
‘I ache too much to share.’ Nona clutched her side. ‘Darla knows how to kick.’ She hobbled on down the aisle between the beds, not wanting to see if she’d put any hurt in Clera’s eyes.
Nona eased herself into her new bed like an old woman, the bruises from her beating starting to stiffen. She hoped that Darla’s injuries hurt more than hers did. The big girl shot her a dirty look but held her tongue. With her right hand and left foot both bandaged she probably had no appetite for further trouble. Either way, Nona lacked the energy to care. She rolled her head towards Ara. ‘What are threads?’ Sisters Flint, Wheel, and Kettle had been drawn to the assassin’s knife, all arriving at Blade Hall within minutes of each other. Quite how that happened had been nagging at Nona all the while she scrubbed and cleaned.
‘Threads are complicated,’ Ara said, her head on her pillow.
‘I’m too tired for complicated,’ Nona said.
‘They’re almost the Path, but not quite. Everything has its own threads and they tangle with each other. A trained quantal can weave one person’s threads with another’s, or with a thing. Or an untrained one can do it by accident – like Hessa did with you.
‘A Mystic Sister must have linked the threads from something left behind by the escaped assassin to some of our nuns. They probably used the twin to the dagger you got, which was why the link was so strong. And they did it so that they might be able to sense if she came back.’
‘Sister Pan did that?’
Ara snorted. ‘Pan? She’s too old. She hasn’t touched the Path in years. No, it must have been a proper Mystic. A Holy Witch!’
‘So … why didn’t they find the knife ages ago?’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘You don’t know?’
Ara laughed. ‘Not really, no. But I know there are threads to draw you to a thing that is still, and threads that will pull on you when a thing is moving. I guess they chose and tied threads that would pull on the sisters if the assassin was moving close to the convent – and that included her possessions which they assumed she would be carrying. They had one of her other two knives to work with. And then when you moved the first knife … they came!’
‘Ouch.’ Nona remembered Sister Kettle seemingly unwrapping herself from the shadows at the base of the wall and cannoning into her already beaten body. She frowned. ‘The nuns were there before I even touched the knife.’
‘They say a really strong bond can give a premonition. Some things bind better than others, but with time the threads always come loose.’
They lay without speaking for a while and the room quietened around them. Eventually another question floated to the surface of Nona’s sleepiness. She yawned hugely then asked it. ‘Why don’t the emperor’s sisters have titles? Shouldn’t they be Princess Sherzal and Princess Velera?’
‘You’ve listened to too many bards’ tales.’ Ara yawned her own yawn. ‘We haven’t had kings and queens, princes and princesses, for hundreds of years. Maybe they still have them somewhere if you follow the Corridor long enough.’
‘But they’re his sisters and he’s the emperor …’