‘But the abbess would probably let her off. Whatever hold Sherzal has over her, it’s a strong one!’ Nona heaved a waterlogged habit out into the rinsing tub. ‘We need to do something about her ourselves.’
‘How? She’d kill us all in a fight!’ Ara wrung out her habit on the twisting loom, her face just a handful of glimmers where light from the distant scriptorium filtered from the laundry windows.
‘That one I’m still thinking about.’ And Nona bent to her rinsing.
They emerged, with sore hands and wrinkled fingers, just in time to meet the rest of the junior novices coming from the cloisters for lights out at the dormitory.
Nona was at the rear of the group by the time they reached the building, slowed by the sickness that had been returning all day. She climbed the steps to the door one at a time. Three things happened together. A fragment of ice sliced past her face, the beginning of a sharp cry rang out, and Ara’s foot hammered into Nona’s side. The impact was enough to send both girls flying in opposite directions. Before either novice hit the ground a chunk of rotten ice bigger than Nona’s head struck the spot in which she’d been standing. The explosion of shards peppered them both.
‘Ancestor!’ Ara gasped. ‘That was close!’
Nona lay on her back lacking the breath to reply, her gaze on the icicle-fringed edge of roof far above. Had there been a shadow there? Just for an instant? Or perhaps tired eyes and strained imagination put it there.
Nona and Ara picked themselves up, got under the door arch, and brushed each other down.
‘What a day.’ Ara led the way in.
Nona went to her bed, wrapped in thought. Had Yisht just tried to kill her? Did the woman suspect she’d been spied on in the caves? If so, it must be only suspicion or surely she would have taken more direct action …
She flopped down, exhausted and hungry, pushing Yisht from her mind. A whole day gone and not a moment of practice for the Academy visit. Except for Hessa of course, who hardly needed it. Nona could see the Academy school as she’d seen it in Hessa’s memories, all grandeur and gravitas set in stone, with the emperor’s Academics lined up, waiting to be impressed. And she saw herself before them, one small novice in a habit still damp and smelling faintly of blackroot who could, if she worked herself up into a frothing rage, shatter a few of their expensive flagstones.
34
On six-day the ice-wind blew again in earnest, for the first time since Zole’s arrival. In the fire-scorched practice pit where they had brewed the black cure Nona crouched, trying to find the rage she needed to reach the Path. It proved hard to find the heat she required, held there in the wind’s frozen teeth. Before her, away across the plateau, the convent huddled under a bleak sky like a beast marked for the slaughterhouse. At last, she abandoned her attempt and raced off towards the Academia Tower, hoping not to be late for the class.
It turned out that she was first, clattering up the stairs into a classroom occupied only by Sister Rule.
‘Good morning, novice.’ Sister Rule glanced up from behind the desk where she tended to settle her bulk and remain for the duration of any lesson, using her yardstick to point to the headings set out in chalk upon the board to her side.
‘Good morning, Mistress Academia.’ Nona found her seat at the back of the class.
‘Brisk out, is it?’
‘Yes, Mistress Academia.’ The curved sheet of ice that had formed across the side of Nona’s head chose that moment to fall away and shatter on the floor.
Hessa stumped in a moment later, looking surprised not to be the first.
‘What’s the convent’s most valuable treasure?’ Nona surprised herself by asking but Sister Rule always took kindly to questions and asking had become a habit.
‘The shipheart.’ No hesitation.
‘And it’s stored below Heart Hall?’
‘Yes indeed.’ Sister Rule closed the book she had been reading from and narrowed her eyes at Nona. ‘Planning on stealing it?’ She maintained the stare long enough for Nona to think she might be serious, then laughed.
The rest of Grey Class came in more or less together, Ara looking tired, Clera slumping dramatically over her desk, Jula setting her quill, scroll, and slate out with her usual precision, Darla hulking over her work and managing to spatter ink as she opened the pot. Head-girl Mally at the front. Alata and Leeni side by side, each finding the other’s fingers beneath the desk with accurate devotion. Zole took her customary seat at the middle of the room, looking serene, as if she never left the trance.
‘Today.’ Sister Rule slapped her yardstick down. ‘We will discuss the ice.’
The faintest of frowns creased Zole’s brow.
‘In Red Class we discussed the thickness of the ice, its advance, both historically and contemporaneously. And the cause – the waning of our own dying sun. Today we will address the peoples who make it their home.’ She turned her head towards Zole and gave a friendly smile. ‘Which is something Novice Zole knows far more about than anyone in the room. So perhaps she would like to tell us something of the ice-tribes?’
‘No.’ Zole’s lips barely moved but the word came out loud and clear.
Sister Rule pressed her own lips into a flat line that managed to convey surprise, amusement, and disapproval all at the same time. ‘And why might that be, novice?’
‘The ice must be experienced. You have no words in your books that capture it. Journeying the ice is the price for such knowledge.’
‘Well …’ Sister Rule rapped her yardstick against the desk. ‘We have our first observation – the tribes of the deep ice have their own codes of behaviour which can be quite at odds with our own. You would have to travel hundreds of miles east to Scithrowl or west across the sea to Durn to experience significant cultural differences in the Corridor, but a journey of less than thirty miles to the north or south will set you face to face with peoples whose ways are more alien to ours than those of any Durnishman.’ She looked around the class. ‘I’m sure you’ve been curious about your new companion and her guardian. Ask me some worthwhile questions and I’ll share what …’ her eyes flicked towards Zole ‘… meagre information I have.’
‘What do they eat?’ Nona’s hand shot up but she’d already blurted out the question.
‘Good!’ Sister Rule banged the desk. ‘To the heart of the matter. They eat fish.’
‘But how? The ice is miles thick!’ Nona had seen the walls of the Corridor and even there just behind the margins the ice lay hundreds of yards deep.
‘It is.’ Sister Rule reached for the glittering white globe on her desk with its belt of colour almost vanishingly thin, kept clear by the passing heat of the focus moon. ‘But there are places above the ocean where the sea lies open, the ice melted by warmer water upwelling from the ocean depths. In some cases the sea is accessible year round. Further north and south, where seasons rule, the ice only clears in high summer. In all cases the open water is limited to patches no more than a mile across but thick with ocean life. The ice-tribes either centre their existence on a permanent spot or range nomadically with the seasons from one temporary oasis to the next. In their travels they explore tunnel systems wherever they are to be found, looking for routes to the bedrock and any of the undercities abandoned by the Missing.’
Nona’s thoughts wandered to the stories her father told about the ice tunnels. The memories of him telling her had escaped, leaving just an impression of being bounced upon his knee, awed by the strangeness of his tales. The stories themselves she knew from her mother’s retelling of them when she was still very young.