a pair of round-topped doors guarded nun’s cells. Sister Apple walked in, stepping softly. Sister Tallow turned without a word as they passed the third pair and passed into the darkness of the cell to the left. The black door at the end drew Nona’s eyes. Something about it.
Eighteen doors in, about half the length of the corridor, Sister Apple stopped and pushed open the door to the right. She leaned in and took a candle from the box on the wall, lighting it from the lantern. ‘You’ll be in here. There’s linen and a blanket on the pallet. I’ll collect you in the morning.’ She handed the candle to Nona. ‘Don’t start any fires.’
Nona watched Sister Apple walk back towards the main door, the light diminishing with her departure. Finally the nun entered one of the cells close to Sister Tallow’s, leaving Nona in her own small and flickering pool of light. The silence that had rolled back with the shadows now returned, deeper and thicker than any Nona had known. She stood, held by its completeness. No sound. Not the wind’s moan. Not the creak of timbers or rustle of leaves. Not the skittering of rats or the distant complaint of owls. Nothing.
The door at the end of the corridor reclaimed her attention, although the darkness had hidden it. The memory of that door, black and polished, pressed like a finger between her eyes. Her feet wanted to take her there, her hands to set themselves flat against the smooth wood and to feel up close the vast and slumbering … fullness … that lay beyond.
Somewhere a few cells back a woman coughed in her sleep, breaking the silence and the strangeness. Freed from both paralysis and compulsion, Nona raised a hand to shield her candle’s flame and advanced into the narrow room that Sister Apple had led her to.
Even her cell at the Harriton had boasted a window, high and barred perhaps, but offering the condemned the sky. Nona’s new cell had a slit wide enough to reach her arm through, shuttered with a pine board. She made a circle. A sleeping pallet, a pillow, a chair, a desk. A pot to piss in. Last and strangest, a length of metal running along the outer wall at ground level. It emerged from the cell to the left and vanished through the wall to the right. Round as a branch and just a little too thick to close her hand around.
Nona sniffed. Dust, and the stale air of an unused room. She went to the pallet. Heat rising from the metal stick burned on her cheeks. The whole cell held the warmth of it. Nona pulled the pallet away from the hot metal, mistrusting it. She set the candle down, pulled the blanket over her, and laid her head on the pillow. One last look at the room and she blew out the flame. She stared at the darkness, her mind too full for sleep, certain that she would lie awake the whole night.
A moment later the clanging of an iron bell opened Nona’s eyes. The door swung open, banging against the wall. Nona levered herself up from the pallet and blinked towards the entrance, the darkness now a gloomy half-light. A groan escaped her, every limb stiff and aching though she only recalled straining her legs on the climb.
‘Up! Up! No slug-a-beds here! Up!’ A small, angular woman with a voice that sounded as if it were being forced violently through a narrow hole. She strode into the cell, reaching over Nona to throw back the shutter. ‘Let the light in! No hiding place for sin!’
Through fingers held up to defend against the daylight Nona found herself staring into a humourless face pinched tight around prominent cheekbones, eyes wide, watery and accusing. The woman’s head, which had seemed a most alarming shape in the gloom, sported a rising white headdress, rather like a funnel, and quite different to those the other nuns had worn the previous evening.
‘Up, girl! Up!’
‘Ah, I see you’ve met Sister Wheel.’ Sister Apple stepped through the open doorway holding a long habit, the outer garment grey felt, the inner white linen.
‘Sleeping after the morning bell, she was!’ The old woman raised her hands, seemingly unsure whether to strike Nona or to use them to better depict the enormity of her crime.
‘She’s new, Wheel, not even a novice yet.’ Sister Apple smiled and looked pointedly at the doorway.
‘A barefooted heathen is what she is!’
Sister Apple spread her fingers towards the exit, still smiling. ‘It was commendable of you to notice the cell had an occupant.’
The older nun scowled and ran her hands over her forehead, tucking a stray strand of colourless hair back into her headdress. ‘There’s nothing that goes on in these cells I don’t notice, sister.’ She narrowed her watery eyes at Sister Apple then sniffed hard and stalked back into the corridor. ‘The child stinks,’ she offered over her shoulder. ‘It needs washing.’
‘I brought you some clothes.’ Sister Apple lifted the habit. ‘But I forgot how dirty you are. Sister Wheel is correct …’ She folded her arms over her stomach. ‘Come with me.’
Nona followed Sister Apple out of the room, weaving around various nuns emerging from their cells or speaking in low tones in the corridor. A couple raised an eyebrow at her approach but none addressed her. At one point an angular nun brought Sister Apple to a halt by laying a hand upon her shoulder. She towered above the others, her height seemingly gained by stretching a regular woman far beyond her design, leaving her dangerously thin.
‘Mistress Blade reports armed men beyond the pillars. An emissary came before first light.’
‘Thank you, Flint,’ Sister Apple nodded.
Sister Flint tilted her head, her face so dark that in the gloom Nona could see only black eyes, glittering as they made a study of her. The nun took her hand from the smaller woman’s shoulder, releasing her to her task.
Sister Apple led the way out into the brittle light of morning. By daylight Nona could see that the convent comprised so many buildings that back in the Grey it would qualify as a village. She suspected it had more stone-built buildings than Flaystown, though she had only glimpsed that metropolis from Giljohn’s cage on the day he drove her from her home.
‘Sister Flint said men are coming. Are they here for me?’ Nona asked. She wondered what help a score of nuns would be if Thuran Tacsis had sent his warriors for her. She should have lost herself in the city when she had a chance.
‘Perhaps.’ Sister Apple glanced back at the great Dome of the Ancestor and frowned. ‘Perhaps not. In any case, it would be best if you joined our order sooner rather than later – and you can’t do that dirty, now can you?’ She led on at a brisk pace.
‘Scriptorium, refectory, bake-house, kitchens.’ Sister Apple reeled off names as they passed various buildings. Few of them meant much to Nona but bake-house she knew and the aroma of fresh bread when they passed the door filled her mouth with drool. ‘The Necessary.’ The nun pointed to a small building, flat-roofed and seemingly clinging to the edge of the cliff a hundred yards off.
‘Necessary?’ Nona asked.
‘You’ll go there when you need it.’ Sister Apple shook her head and smiled. ‘The smell will let you know it’s the right place.’
They passed a long range of buildings with many small square windows, all shuttered on the windward side. ‘Stores and dormitories.’
Nona found herself observed, a dozen pairs of eyes at various of the windows. Some of the girls called out, perhaps to each other. She caught snatches, carried by the wind.
‘… chosen … never!’
‘… that can’t be her …’
‘…
