The slow, cold passing of an hour found both novices and nuns numb-fingered, shivering in their lines before Abbess Glass’s steps, watching the pillars for any sign of the royal party’s approach. Hessa saw them first. Nona, following the line of Hessa’s finger, had to squint for several moments before she too saw the flicker of motion between the pillars.
The soldiers came into view first: five ranks of five, all in scarlet and silver. The sight of them gave her a sense of unease, something tugging at her memory … The troop wasn’t matched in height as the high priest’s church-guards had been, but cut from many cloths with varying degrees of generosity. As the soldiers drew closer Nona could see that they all shared two things: none were young and none looked as though crossing them would be a good idea.
Nona had been expecting the emperor’s sister to arrive in a sedan chair larger and more grand than the high priest’s, but both came mounted, despite the ice-wind. Sherzal cut an impressive figure in the furs of a white bear, astride a huge white horse. High Priest Nevis, on the other hand, looked uncomfortable and ill at ease, huddled in a hooded robe on the back of a grey mare.
Behind the two riders straggled a long train of priests, attendants, and baggage porters, many bent against the wind like ridge-top trees.
The choir started up with the first high notes of Concordiance as the soldiers began to form lines before the steps. Poor Sister Rule had only a moment of song to glory in though before the ice-wind raised its own voice and drowned the novices out, scouring the plateau with shards straight from the northern sheets. Decorum blew away too as Abbess Glass led the charge for the Dome of the Ancestor.
Within minutes the visitors and the whole population of the convent stood packed together in a chaotic and ice-spattered mix, spilling out beyond the foyer’s pillared space into the main dome, an unearned privilege for any novices in Red Class who happened to be swept in amid the crush.
Sherzal of course stood in her own space, at the centre of a tight ring of soldiers who had no qualms about knocking young girls or old nuns aside to make room. Nona slipped and twisted ahead of them to enter the echoing space beneath the dome for the first time. Being in Grey Class now she was entitled to stand beneath the dome, though it wouldn’t have been untypical of Sister Wheel to delay her introduction by weeks or even months just to keep her in her place. Nona looked up, dwarfed by great walls curving away towards a distant, golden vertex. The enclosed space swallowed the intruders, making them seem few and tiny, enfolding their conversation and complaint in its silence. Nona stood, rooted to the spot, the walls seeming to rotate around her as she gazed at the distant heights. Her habit steamed and fat drops of water fell from the hem.
The underside of the dome lay black and seeded with stars in blood crystal. Here and there the stars took on a paler shade and near the highest point the Hope lay in sparkling white quartz. The skyscape held Nona’s gaze a while but the statue at the centre soon captured her attention: a human figure, perhaps twenty feet of gleaming gold. Even if it were gold leaf over stone the wealth it wore could purchase a lifetime’s luxury. The figure lacked detail. Was it a man? A woman? This was the Ancestor that Sister Wheel had described as a joining of everyone who had ever lived, an ideal in which the best parts of humanity fused into a joyous whole.
As the voices stilled behind her Nona found that, although she was still staring towards the statue, she was not staring at it, but past it. What drew her, and had pulled at her ever so faintly since her first night at the convent, sleeping in a nun’s cell, was the foyer at the far side, opposite the one she had entered by. Something there – something beyond the dark marble pillars – demanded her attention, just as it had that first night when Sister Apple led her along the corridor between the convent’s sleeping nuns. A fullness. An otherness. A something.
‘Hey!’ Clera jabbed Nona’s ribs then pulled her arm to turn her round. ‘You’re missing it!’
The soldiers stood in a larger perimeter centred on Sherzal, now joined by High Priest Nevis, the abbess, and a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen. The emperor’s sister had shed her bearskin to reveal a flowing crimson gown edged with silver. The girl, dark-haired and with the flat cheekbones of the ice-tribes, wore a close approximation of the blade-habit, though it too was crimson with silver worked about the collar and had a belt of silver links.
‘Who does she think she is?’ Clera whispered. ‘A Red Sister?’
On Clera’s far side Ghena snorted.
‘She’s whoever Sherzal says she is,’ Ara hissed. ‘You don’t want to cross any Lansis, but Sherzal’s the worst of them. Three years ago she had Seema Bresis burned alive as a heretic because the woman made a joke about her hair at the Tacsis’s grand ball. They say she owns half the inquisition.’
‘… welcome the emperor’s sister, honourable Sherzal, to Sweet Mercy …’ The high priest droned out his introduction. ‘… for Abbess Glass to say a few words.’ He turned with apparent relief to the abbess.
Abbess Glass made her speech well with ample thanks for the opportunity to show such a high personage around the convent temporarily in her humble charge. She spoke of the famed piety and generosity of the Lancis line and of how the empire had bloomed under Crucical’s reign. She spoke until the novices began to shuffle from one foot to the other, and even the nuns’ patient smiles grew fixed.
‘I would just ask her what she wants,’ Nona whispered.
‘Which is why you’ll be a warrior rather than an abbess,’ Ara replied.
‘Why won’t she shut up?’ Clera hugged her belly. ‘Breakfast will think I don’t love it any more.’
Jula shushed everyone: Abbess Glass was coming to the bit where there was nothing left but for the person to say what they wanted.
‘… let us know how we can be of service to you, honourable Sherzal.’
‘Thank you, abbess.’ Sherzal offered a broad smile, all red painted lips and a bright line that looked too white to be teeth. ‘High Priest.’ She nodded to Nevis, the mass of dark red curls bouncing slightly about her head. She looked to be in her thirties, perhaps of an age with Sister Apple, almost beautiful but with each feature slightly too exaggerated. An animated face, full of vicious good humour. ‘I don’t intend to remain long. I’ll say a prayer of course. It would be rude not to. After all my great-great-grand-uncle built the place, did he not? Or was it great-great-great? One of the Persuses, anyway.
‘You’ll take me around, won’t you, Nevis?’ She slipped a bare white arm through the high priest’s. ‘I must confess first that I did have an ulterior motive for my visit … Not being blessed by the Ancestor with children I have taken young Zole here under my wing.’ Sherzal indicated the girl in the red habit and leaned her head in towards the high priest’s. She lowered her voice but by accident of the dome’s acoustics or by her own design she remained audible. ‘The child was the only survivor from the town of Ytis after the Scithrowl incursion back in ’09. I’ve taken her on as my ward.’ She rotated the high priest to face Abbess Glass and continued at more regal volume. ‘I’ve had Zole tutored and trained extensively by a wide range of experts, including Safira, who benefited from eight years of study at this very convent. I think though that the only place where she can truly finish her education to the highest of standards is right here. I’m told that Grey Class would be best suited to her current skills.’
Abbess Glass’s smile twitched, just for a fraction of a moment, but Nona saw it. ‘I’m so sorry but that is of course quite imposs—’
‘Abbess.’ High Priest Nevis tilted his head back towards the foyer. ‘I’m sure these are matters best discussed in your study, with perhaps a glass of Sweet Mercy’s finest vintage to fight the day’s chill. It has been a long and … bracing … journey up from Verity.’