‘I’ve got to. What if I get one of you hurt, just trying to save myself?’
Hessa gave her a weak smile and made no attempt to talk her out of it. Nona turned and walked away, wondering just how much she might be leaving behind.
It wasn’t far to the abbess’s steps but it felt as if it were the longest journey of her life. The abbess would have to banish her from the convent at the very least. If Sister Wheel got involved then the punishment might be considerably worse.
The house loomed closer, foreboding, the end to her dreams.
‘Where are you going, Nona?’ Sister Rock came up behind her.
‘To see the abbess.’ Nona thought that much should be obvious.
‘You’ll have a long wait. She’s been called to the palace. Sister Apple and Sister Tallow have gone with her. I’ll be taking Blade class tomorrow. What did you want her for?’
‘I … It’s not important.’ Gone? How could she be gone? ‘When will she be back?’
Sister Rock went up the steps, taking a large key from her pocket. ‘A day? Maybe two. Hopefully before Grey Class goes ranging if that’s what you’re worried about. Something I can help you with?’
‘No.’ Nona turned to go, not knowing quite how to feel. ‘Thank you.’ She didn’t know who else to tell. The sister superiors were in charge now, Wheel and Rose. Sister Wheel Nona mistrusted almost as much as she mistrusted Yisht. Sister Rose had a good heart but she was timid with it and Nona couldn’t imagine her being much help.
Nona walked a wandering path back to the dormitories. Her choices seemed to have dwindled to none. They would have to deal with the thief themselves.
At the night bell Clera had yet to return. Nona sat on her bed with Ara and Ruli to either side. They had identified a suitable empty barrel and put the export mark on it. Ruli had adjusted the ledgers and Ara had ‘borrowed’ the cooper’s tools necessary for removing and replacing the barrel lid. Quite how to use them was an outstanding issue, but Ruli said she’d seen Sister Scar do it a dozen times and it didn’t look that difficult.
‘Where is she?’ Ruli twisted Nona’s blanket in her hands.
‘If she doesn’t come soon Mally will want to turn the lantern down.’ Ara’s eyes were on the high windows, all shut and opaque with layered ice.
‘Mally’ll probably report her too.’ Hessa from her bed across the width of the dormitory.
Ruli nodded. The head-girl didn’t like Clera.
‘You should go and look for her.’ Jula on her bed next to Hessa’s gave a sad smile, still concerned despite the fact that Clera said something awful to her every day.
Nona was about to agree when the door banged open and Clera staggered in, ice-caked and dripping. ‘I think I’m dying.’
Ara reached for her towel. ‘Get over here and stop milking it.’
Clera’s face was red with cold and she did look to have been in the wars.
‘Poo, you stink.’ Ara wrinkled her nose.
‘Malkin pissed on my spare habit and I didn’t have time to change it.’ Clera sat down heavily, making the bed bounce. Ara only got the towel under her just in time.
‘Malkin peed on your spare habit … and so you … changed into it?’ Ara made a face and looked to the others. Nona frowned. The abbess’s cat was a liability for certain – but the rest didn’t make sense.
‘Of course.’ Clera rolled her eyes and lowered her voice to a hiss. ‘I got out of Spirit and was going to spend the next Ancestor knows how many hours doing unlicensed alchemy. What do you think the first thing I would want to do when I got back was?’
‘Change into a clean … oh! I get you.’ Ruli smiled. ‘So you had to take off your clean one, and put on the one Malkin had “blessed” so that you’d have a clean one for now.’
Clera nodded. ‘I was planning on visiting the bathhouse of course, but it took so damn long!’
It did seem to have taken an age, but in the wind and ice … Nona shrugged. ‘So you have it?’
‘Of course! I’m Clera!’ She took out a small, waxed gourd with its stopper sealed in place. ‘Boneless syrup. Guaranteed to make a strong man go weak at the knees almost as fast as I can.’
‘You know if this doesn’t work she’ll kill us?’ Ara said, reaching for the gourd.
‘Us?’ Clera let her take it. ‘I thought Nona was doing it.’
‘Us. Ara nodded. ‘Once Yisht is down it will take four of us to move her. At least.’
‘And if it goes wrong the abbess will kill us,’ Ruli said.
‘Metaphorically,’ Ara said.
‘And Yisht will kill us,’ Nona said.
‘Literally.’ Ara pressed her lips into a worried line.
38
‘We should have tested it!’ Clera hissed.
‘We did test it. And anyway – you made it – are you saying it’s no good?’ Ara replied.
Nona edged past them both at the corner of the laundry, checking the courtyard beyond for any nuns. The wind wrapped her habit about her legs, biting through, and her hands were already numb. She hated to think what the ranging would be like.
‘It worked on Hessa,’ Ruli muttered, and at Nona’s signal she sprinted across the yard to crouch by the wall of the scriptorium opposite.
‘It did.’ Nona replied to the night. Hessa had collapsed bonelessly and they’d left her safe on her side in her bed. Would a full-grown woman go down so swiftly though? Were the ice-tribes a different breed?
Nona waved Clera across and sent Ara on her heels.
A minute later they were all four gathered in the shelter of the entrance to the tunnel that led down to Shade.
‘You’ve got this?’ Clera asked.
‘I’ve got it.’ Ara grunted. ‘Now shut up.’ She was on her knees, face level with the lock. Hessa had spent hours trying to teach her the thread trick with locks.
‘But Shade has a different lock!’ Ara had protested when she had finally worked the lock on the supply cupboard in the dormitory entrance hall.
‘You’re missing the whole point!’ Hessa had thrown up her hands and nearly lost her crutch. ‘One lock, another lock, complicated or simple, tumblers or latches … they’re all either locked or unlocked. You just need to find the thread for the lock and pull it.
‘Like this?’
‘That’s the thread for the oak that the planks came from.’
‘This?’
‘You just rotated one of the anchor screws …’
Out in the icy wind and darkness the trick of unthreading a lock was proving no easier than it had in the dorm.
‘Hurry up!’ Clera stamped in impatience.
‘Shut up!’ Ara pressed her eye to the keyhole as if the lock’s secret might reveal itself to her more easily that way.
Ruli came into sight, rolling the barrel across the open plateau between Academia Tower and the entrance to the undercaves. At one point the wind nearly stole it from her. Nona pictured Ruli chasing the barrel as the ice-wind pitched it over the edge towards the vineyards far below.
‘We’ll meet Yisht at this rate.’ Clera hugged herself while Ara continued to work on the lock.
‘She has a tunnel down from her room. I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’ Nona gripped the freezing bars of the gate, feeling more vulnerable with each passing second spent out in the open.
Ruli arrived with the barrel, which offered a degree of shelter from the wind. ‘She couldn’t dig down from there. Someone would have heard her.’
Nona shrugged. ‘It’s the only way. She must have explored the route I took but not followed it to the end.’ Yisht had a room in the guest wing attached to Heart Hall. By Nona’s reckoning the tunnel that led on from the Shade cavern would pass below the hall. She had always been thankful that Yisht hadn’t been permitted to fill her role as Zole’s bodyguard by sleeping with them in Grey dormitory, but it seemed perhaps that it would have been better if she had been allowed.
‘You’ll have to blast it, Nona!’ Clera said.
‘Blast it,’ Ruli agreed, blowing into her hands.
‘I’ll blast you if you don’t SHUT UP!’ Ara didn’t sound as serene as perhaps she might.
‘I think someone’s coming,’ Clera said, staring into the dark and open plateau to the east.
click
Ara stood up and pushed the gate open.