Sherzal echoed the abbess’s smile. ‘I would like to see this Nona of yours against my girl.’
Beside the emperor’s sister High Priest Nevis lifted a hand. ‘The Shield still has to guard the Argatha, bad week or not. This should be good training for that duty.’ He waved proceedings on.
Abbess Glass started to rise from her seat then fell back, returning the hard line of her mouth to the smile she had momentarily misplaced. ‘Of course.’
‘Nona.’ Sister Tallow beckoned her forward. ‘Show our guest how we fight at Sweet Mercy.’
Nona stepped forward, meeting Zole’s stare. She felt a heat rise, somewhere deep, just beneath her ribs. The girl’s eyes held a challenge – the sort she’d not sensed since she first saw Raymel Tacsis. A killer’s confidence. And something inside her burned in answer. Nona had yet to fight within Blade Hall. For two years she had learned and learned, practised until her muscles tore and her bones creaked. Sister Tallow had pitted the novices against each other constantly, and yet to Nona those were not fights. They were contests. Contests between friends, or at least classmates. Even when Darla came against her on the previous morning Nona hadn’t, in the marrow of her bones, considered it a fight.
‘Mark the corners.’ Sister Tallow pointed to the practice dummies and the novices hastened to drag four of them to mark out a square, two girls struggling with each dummy – rough man-shapes of leather stuffed with horsehair, set on wooden posts that bedded in heavy and rounded bases so they would rock rather than fall.
Nona let the others do the work and stayed beside Ara, stretching, trying to squeeze the weary ache from her muscles.
‘The princess doesn’t want to work up an honest sweat with royalty looking on?’ Clera stared in Ara’s direction, grunting with effort as she and Ketti heaved a dummy to the nearest corner.
Ara said nothing, just kept staring at the tall windows opposite, the ghost of some rhyme on her lips.
Within a minute the novices stood once more in their lines before Mistress Blade and the four dummies stood at the corners of a square ten yards on a side. At Sister Tallow’s nod Nona stepped into the combat area. She rolled her head to one side then the other, stretching her neck, then ran her hands up through the close-cropped thickness of her hair.
Zole entered the square from the other side. She stood a head taller than Nona. ‘I will make you bleed,’ she said, her accent clipped. ‘Regardless of how swiftly you submit.’
Nona turned side on, one leg forward, crouching in the blade-fist stance, hands raised. ‘I’m ready.’
‘Fight.’ Sister Tallow stepped back.
Zole came forward, unhurried but without hesitation. Nona stood her ground and retreated into the space between moments, freezing the dust motes in place within the shafting sunlight. It took an age for Zole to enter arm’s reach, and as she did she snapped a punch at Nona’s throat. The girl’s fist came so fast that only instinct saved Nona, her arm deflecting the punch into her collarbone. The force of the blow threatened to snap the bone and sent Nona reeling backwards.
Balance lost, Nona let herself fall, narrowly evading a second punch. She kicked as she dropped, aiming for Zole’s jaw. The tribe-girl stopped Nona’s rising foot on her triceps and came on, lifting into a flying kick aimed at Nona’s chest. Nona lacked the balance and time to block. Accepting the impact on her bruised ribs she drove her forearm in hard, just below the girl’s knee, using her other arm to break her fall. She hit the ground with a thump, the impact sending up a lazy spray of sand.
Zole continued her advance at exactly the same pace she had maintained from the start, stamping at Nona’s hands and head as she rolled away. Nona rolled, contorting to avoid Zole’s feet. One heel, aimed at her head, came down on her shoulder, the shock of the blow pulsing into the bone, rippling away through the muscle. Nona hooked an elbow behind the foot and let her rotation drag it along. Rather than fight the motion Zole accelerated into it, then out of it, lifting into a backflip. As Nona’s arms came beneath her torso she shoved with all her strength, providing enough momentum to spin back to a standing position in an awkward swirl just as Zole’s flip came full cycle. The girl landed on the balls of her feet, crouched and ready.
Most of the audience would have seen a quick flurry of blows, Nona hitting the ground, Zole unbalanced, and both girls gaining their feet with acrobatics – all over in a moment. Nona and Zole however had both learned a considerable amount in that thin slice of time. They stood for a heartbeat, each watching the other.
Nona attacked, seeking the initiative, a red anger welling up through her, hot enough to burn away both weariness and pain. She came forward, arms raised in defence, in short, high steps that kept a leg ready to block or kick. Zole let her come close, let her punch, punch, and punch again, deflecting each strike with forms Clera had shown in the blade-fist kata. Zole’s counter-punch came lightning-fast but Nona caught it in her hand, moving her other hand in to help stress the girl’s wrist. Somehow, in moves unknown to Nona, the girl was climbing her, using the trapped fist as an anchor and setting her feet to Nona’s knee and hip. The leverage exploited gravity to launch Nona skyward. She had to release Zole’s hand to deflect kicks coming up as the girl fell towards the sand.
This time when Nona landed it was all she could do to pull her limbs in to brace for the impact. She rolled to the side to see Zole already coming towards her with the same unhurried pace. Nona reached to slow the world’s progress but her grip on time’s current was failing, her exhaustion ran bone-deep, and every part of her hurt. Anger flared again. Nona pushed herself up, rising as Zole arrived. She flung herself forward, accepting an agonizing punch to the gut and slipping Zole’s blow towards her head, the girl’s knuckles sliding across her lips. The move brought them together, Nona’s hand on Zole’s chest, her fingers tented above the small swell of her breast.
For some fragment of a second they held like that, both looking down at Nona’s hand – Nona snarling with the effort it took to hold back the invisible blades that had opened Raymel Tacsis’s throat. She could slice through flesh and ribs, cut out the bitch’s heart and hold it dripping above her. She could stand panting above the ruin of her foe and howl her victory. The pain in her gut, the blood in her mouth, the rage pulsing through every vein – all these things demanded it.
‘What?’ Zole’s surprise turned to contempt, the moment’s hesitation gone. She drove her forehead into Nona’s face and threw her to the ground.
Nona lay where she fell. Zole’s kicks and stamps rained around her. She blocked the worst of them, but even the ones that got through had more violence behind them than Darla’s. It was a combination of power and accuracy that couldn’t help but break things.
‘No!’
The voice wasn’t Nona’s or Zole’s. It wasn’t Sister Tallow’s. It hardly sounded human. It made the stone floor buzz and the sand dance in a golden haze shot through with strange patterns. It made the air brittle. It made Zole stop attacking and Nona stop defending.
Nona let her head flop to the side. One eye wouldn’t open but through the slit of the other she saw that a space had cleared around Ara. Something was wrong with her. She looked the same but different, as if she were fashioned from something not of the world, a piece of stained glass cut and coloured to resemble Arabella Jotsis but lit from within, bleeding light in hues that the Ancestor had never intended men to see.