I open the door and step inside.
The maids in my village talked of falling in love with a man at first sight. That has always seemed naught but foolishness to me. Until I enter Sister Serafina’s workshop. It is unlike anything I have ever seen, full of strange sights and smells, and I tumble headlong into love.
The ceiling is high, and the room has many windows. Two small clay ovens sit on the floor. In front of the fireplace is a range of kettles, from one big enough to cook a goat whole all the way down to one so small it could belong to the fey folk of hearth tales. A large wooden press takes up an entire corner of the room. Fragile glass containers and globes sit beside squat earthenware jars and silver flasks. The most striking thing in the room — a writhing mass of glass vessels and copper tubes — sits alone on one of the worktables. Two flames burn beneath it, and the whole thing hisses and bubbles and steams like a large, deadly viper getting ready to strike.
“My still,” Sister Serafina says with great pride. “I use it to boil and reduce substances to their essence, removing all the extra matter until nothing but the poison remains.” She motions me over to the table, and I come eagerly, ducking under a lowhanging clutch of roots drying in the rafters. A strange and pungent combination of smells reaches my nose, rich, earthy notes combined with a cloying, sickly sweetness, and a strong acrid smell lurking underneath.
On the table is a bowl of withered black seeds and a pile of shiny red ones. Large round pods the size of rosary beads are scattered next to drying tubers that look like a man’s organ. Seeing those brings Sybella’s question of last night back to me.
Sister Serafina studies me closely. “How are you feeling?”
I start to tell her that I can hardly feel my injuries any longer, then I realize she means how am I feeling among all the poisons. “Fine,” I say. To my surprise, I am smiling.
“Then let’s get to work.” She shoves a bowl of round green pods in front of me. They are misshapen lumps covered in soft, flexible prickles. She takes up a small pointed knife. “Cut them open and extract the seeds, thus.” with a deft flick of the blade, she guts one of the pods, and three fuzzy seeds spill out. She pinches one between her fingers and holds it up to me. “One of these will make a man so sick, he will wish to die. Three of these will kill him.” Then she hands me the knife, places the seed back on the table, and returns to her distillery.
The knife handle is smooth and well balanced, a thing of beauty, but the seed pod is tough and fibrous, and my hand is not as skilled as the nun’s. It takes a long time before the point of my knife pierces the hard shell and breaks it open. I glance up to find Sister Serafina watching me. Unable to help myself, I flash a smile of victory at her.
She gives me a toothy grin, and then she turns back to her work and I turn back to mine.
That night, I attend dinner in the refectory with the others. It is a large stone chamber with arched doorways and long wooden tables. I see there are less than a dozen girls in all. At thirteen and fourteen, Annith and I appear to be the oldest. The youngest looks to be no more than five, although Annith assures me they do not learn anything of the killing arts until they are older. All of them bear a fair measure of beauty. Perhaps Mortain sires only comely daughters.
“There are even more of us,” Annith tells me. "We have half a dozen full initiates of Mortain, but they are all away, carrying out His wishes.”
Eight nuns file in and head for a large table set apart on a dais. As we eat our dinner, Annith tells me of the nuns I have not yet met. There is the horse mistress and the weapons mistress and the mistress of martial arts, as well as an ancient nun whose only duty is to tend the crows in the rookery. Another nun is charged with teaching history and politics. The last one, a woman who may have been pretty once but now reminds me of a peahen, instructs us in courtly manners and dancing. “And,” Annith adds, her eyes growing bright and her cheeks pink, "Womanly arts.”
I turn to stare at her in surprise. "Womanly arts? why do we need instruction in that?” I hope the small flicker of panic I feel does not come through in my voice.
She shrugs. “So we may get close to our victims. How else are we to see if they have a marque? Besides, all our talents and skills must be well honed so we may serve Mortain fully.” It sounds like a lesson she has been made to memorize.
“Is that all of them, then?” I ask.