‘Ha!’ Ruli often spoke her amusement and rarely laughed. ‘The sea is huge.’
‘I know that. I’m not stupid.’ Nona had seen the maps. Sister Rule’s charts reached all the way around the Corridor, though those of the most distant lands were centuries old. ‘I meant as deep.’
Ruli shook her head and Clera snorted, though Nona knew she had never been to the shore. ‘Deeper,’ Ruli said. ‘My father used to say something he took from a book.’ She frowned, trying to remember. ‘Whatever befalls it the sea will close upon itself and keep its secrets, erasing with a curtain of waves all that has passed. The deep sea waits. Patient, hungry depths unknown to those who skid over its surface and think they know the whole. There are empty miles, dark places where light has never been, and man’s eyes will never know them. What wonders there … I forget the rest.’ She pushed her hair back over her shoulders and leaned forward to stare down past her toes. ‘He wants me to come back, when I’ve finished here. He says there’s more in Abeth than the Church of the Ancestor. But I think I’ll stay. If I can’t be a Grey Sister then I’ll be a Holy.’
‘You don’t think there’s more out there to see?’ Hessa asked from her perch on a nearby rock – she didn’t ever sit on the edge, perhaps shy of her withered leg, or knowing that if she fell she would drown.
‘Oh I do,’ Ruli said. ‘More than I could ever know. But there’s more than I could ever know here too.’ She pulled her nightdress tighter around her, the wind warmed by the approaching focus but still too cold for comfort.
‘That’s how they get you,’ Clera said. ‘They say you’re free to leave and families pay the fees year after year, but how many do leave? There’s always something – the faith, the mysteries, pride – this place always seems to manage to hook them.’ She put her head back. ‘Not me though. As soon as I’m offered the red I’m out of here.’
‘You see Yisht watching us?’ Ara hissed. ‘Don’t look!’ As Ruli started to swivel.
‘She’s always watching us,’ Hessa said. ‘Well, watching you and Nona anyway.’
‘Isn’t she supposed to be watching Zole?’ Clera threw a loose stone, arcing down into the water.
‘Ghena said she saw her climbing on the dome,’ Ruli said. ‘She said she told Abbess Glass and she wouldn’t listen.’
‘Wouldn’t listen?’ Nona asked.
‘It’s all the sisters.’ Ruli nodded. ‘They’re all terrified that Sherzal will take Zole back. That’s what I’ve heard. Though why they care I don’t know. Maybe the high priest would be angry? Anyway, Zole’s getting private lessons from Sister Pan, did you know that? And from the Poisoner!’ She crossed her arms. ‘And that’s why they won’t do anything about Yisht. They think if they throw Yisht out then Zole will go too. So Yisht can climb all over the Dome of the Ancestor if she wants.’
‘Ghena’s always making up stories.’ Clera shook her head. ‘I hope I’m out of Grey Class before she leaves Red. But she’s right about one thing: Yisht is up to something. She is always prying.’
‘I think she’s hunting for something,’ Hessa said.
‘You think Yisht will tell the abbess about this?’ Ruli asked. ‘Us being here?’ Sneaking out of the dormitories at night wasn’t unheard of but it certainly wasn’t allowed.
‘Well, if she does it’ll be your fault,’ Clera said. ‘You could have shown us in the bathhouse, there’s plenty of steam there.’
‘I can’t do it in the bathhouse. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the air’s always moving.’
‘The air’s moving here too – or didn’t you notice the wind?’
‘Not down there!’ Ruli pointed to the water. ‘Well, not so much. I don’t know … maybe—’
‘Maybe you just can’t do it anywhere,’ Clera said.
‘We’ll find out in a moment,’ Ara said. ‘So there’s no need to argue.’
She was right. The focus was approaching, the moon nearly overhead, the sinkhole’s shadows slinking away, hugging the near wall. Beneath their feet a second moon, a red rectangle, danced in the water.
The warmth built on Nona’s shoulders, and became heat. She narrowed her eyes. Clera and Ara lay back, eyes closed, arms spread, embracing the brilliant light.
Nona watched as the water began to steam, caught between two burning moons. Within a few minutes the whole of the sinkhole had filled with mist, a new surface billowing below her feet and rising swiftly. She was glad not to be in her habit now: the plateau was hotter than the bathhouse and sweat beaded on her arms, trickling across her ribs beneath the thin material of her nightdress.
When the steam reached the lip it rolled out like a hot wet blanket before being stripped away by the wind, swirling and confused in the focus. Ara and Clera sat up.
‘Go on then,’ Clera said.
‘I’m … trying.’ Ruli lifted her hands, the mist streaming about them, rising steadily in the void of the sinkhole, shredding around the novices where the wind took it. Ruli’s pale brow furrowed and grew more pale, sweat running down the sides of her face.
‘I don’t see anything,’ Clera said.
Nona didn’t either, but she could feel something, a tingling in her fingertips, spreading to her palms, an itching across the back of her mind. Her stomach chose the moment to knot itself into a ball of agony, nearly doubling her up and almost pitching her into the sinkhole.
‘There!’ Ara pointed. Just below them the mist had clotted into a shape … a something.
‘It’s a person.’ Nona gasped it past gritted teeth.
The figure drew closer, a more solid whiteness amid the rising steam. Featureless, perhaps a man, perhaps a woman, it reminded Nona of the Ancestor’s statue in the dome.
‘I … told … you!’ Ruli grinned, the strain evident.
‘Do a horse now!’ Clera said. ‘No! Do Sister Wheel … No! Kettle and Apple. Kissing!’
The figure broke apart and Ruli released a breath.
‘That’s great, Ruli.’ Ara leaned past Nona and put a hand to Ruli’s shoulder. ‘You’re a marjal touch at the least, a half-blood maybe!’
‘You’ll have no problems with shadow-weaving,’ Hessa said from behind them. ‘You’ll be a Grey Sister for sure if you want to be.’
‘I want to see more.’ Clera lay back, an arm over her eyes. The focus was approaching its peak, soon the light would be moving on. On the ice margins the thaw would be in full swing, the tribes at the lakes, busy gathering the moon’s bounty before the freeze set in again. ‘What else can you do?’
‘Just that.’ Ruli lay back. ‘And even that gives me a headache.’
‘You should tell the abbess,’ Hessa said.
Ruli snorted. ‘The abbess only cares about the Path. The whole convent only cares about the Path.’ She shrugged. ‘The Poisoner will know soon enough if I can work shadow, and she’ll help me.’ A smile. ‘Kettle and Bhenta will too. Us Greys stick together!’
They crept back to the dormitory in the last of the moon’s warmth, already shivering as the wind regained its voice and moulded their damp shifts around them.
It took an age for Nona to sleep, coiled around her sickness. Raymel had poisoned her somehow, and somehow she needed to fight back.
The next day Nona found herself yawning in Path. She often did, even without the excuse of lost sleep. Serenity proved elusive and the Path always beyond reach. Sister Pan had told her a hundred times that she tried too hard: ‘Serenity isn’t something that can be seized, taken, snatched up by force of will. It is a gift that you must be open to.’
Even so, however hard Nona tried not to want it, serenity had yet to reach out, take her in its arms and set her gently upon the Path.