took hold of the hilt – leather-bound, the pommel a ball of iron the size of an eye – and tugged. It took most of her strength to free the point from the boards, and when she saw the gleaming blade start to slide out from the slot it had put in her blankets she quickly covered it. Only Arabella noticed, her eyes moving from Nona’s hand on the hilt to Nona’s face as their eyes met.
‘Get back in bed! It’s the middle of the night.’ Ketti closed the lantern’s cowl until just a glow remained.
Arabella hurried towards Ketti and moments later left the room holding the lantern.
‘Shut the window. It’s cold in here.’ Clera from her bed, the words all running together. Nobody replied.
Nona lay back, pulling the blankets over her. It had grown cooler – the wind must have caught the window and pulled it wide – even so, if Clera called this cold then she had never known what it was to face the ice-wind, hungry and with only wattle walls for shelter.
She drew out the knife from under the covers. The blade reached for about two widths of her hand, narrow as two fingers, all of it cold steel. Nona could only think that Arabella must have stolen it from the stores at the training hall. The real question though, was had she meant to stab Nona to death or just to leave her a pointed warning? At the core of her something red and primal snarled at the blade’s challenge, demanding blood, demanding the weapon be returned with a hard lesson. Nona fought the impulse to go after Arabella. She could catch her before she reached the Necessary hunkering on the edge of the cliff. How would that encounter end? Nona with a sharp knife in her hand and blunt accusations in her mouth? Anger had its place, it was a weapon not to be neglected, but so did patience, and Nona decided that control lay in deciding which to use and when.
She stayed in her bed. It was cold outside and dangerous in all manner of ways. The knife must have been meant to scare her. Even someone as high-born as Arabella Jotsis couldn’t expect to murder people in their sleep in a crowded dormitory and get away with it … Unless she really did think a village girl was no more than a cow or pig compared to someone who had been invited to the emperor’s palace?
At some point, with one thought chasing the next in endless circles, Nona fell asleep and though she tossed and turned she didn’t wake until Bray spoke the waking hour and all across the dormitory grey shapes started to move beneath their covers, grumbling at the day.
‘Path and Spirit today,’ Clera groaned. ‘Worst of the lot.’
‘Breakfast first!’ Ruli with a grin, pulling off her nightcap and shaking down her hair.
‘Spirit is what we’re all here for.’ Jula gave a sniff, patting her head and finding her hair hadn’t returned overnight.
‘I’m here because I was sent here,’ Clera said. ‘When I’m a Red Sister if anyone asks me to repeat the catechism I’ll stab them in the eye.’
‘If you paid closer attention in Spirit, you would know that stabbing people in the eye is frowned upon.’ Jula straightened her habit and started to make her bed. ‘Anyway, it’s Path first.’
‘Yawn!’ Clera tugged her habit over her underskirts. ‘I hope Pan lets us pathless go play again.’
Nona slid from her covers and started to dress. She reached beneath her pillow, to touch the knife one more time to reassure herself it hadn’t been a dream. Still there, warm from her body now, a hard, sharp, and undeniable truth. She wanted to take it with her, strapped to her body, the blade wrapped in a strip of linen, but she lacked both time and privacy. She would have to leave the weapon in her bed and hope that Arabella had no chance to reclaim it.
Nona found herself one of the last out of the dormitory, hurrying with Clera to the refectory for breakfast. The pair of them clattered down the front steps, finding an unusually still day, a cloudless sky, and a rare warmth on offer.
By the dormitory wall a plump, red-faced sister attacked an area of the flagstones with a stiff brush, pausing to slosh down more water from her bucket. She glanced up at the girls. ‘Hurry!’ And returned to her task, scrubbing furiously at a dark stain. ‘Away with you.’
Clera stuck her tongue out at the woman’s back and ran off towards the refectory, giggling. ‘That’s Sister Mop. She thinks novices only have two aims in life: to get stuff dirty and to get in her way.’
‘She called herself Mop?’ Nona running behind.
‘No, but everyone else calls her that. She chose some flower name, Crysanthe-something, but nobody can pronounce it or remember it.’
A hundred yards on they passed Sister Tallow, coming from the abbess’s house. She looked away towards the eastern sky as they ran by but not before Nona saw the abrasion across the left side of her face and the bruise darkening around it.
Nona waited until they were out of earshot around the corner of the refectory. ‘What happened?’
‘Don’t know. Can’t imagine anyone getting the best of old Blade,’ Clera panted. ‘Maybe the abbess slapped her!’ She laughed, then more serious, ‘Did you see she had her arm hidden inside her habit?’
Nona hadn’t and once through the doors the sight of food bowls, full and steaming, pushed any questions from her mind. Breakfast was a hasty affair but Nona still made a valiant attempt at leaving nothing edible behind by the time she left the table.
‘Come on!’ Clera turned and beckoned as Nona jogged to keep up, one arm over her over-full stomach. Fortunately the Path cloisters came into view soon enough, past the beehives lined in the lee of the abbess’s house. Four arms of the building reached towards the compass points from a round central tower. Each arm was a framework of ornately-worked stone, open to the elements, with delicate corner pillars and trellised masonry reaching between them to complete the structure. The central tower stood dark against the sky, defying the years with the arrogance of stone, seeming in one moment foreboding and in the next beautiful. Four doors gave onto the ground floor, one for each arm of the surrounding structure.
Ahead of Nona and Clera a novice laboured towards the tower in limping steps, a crutch under her left armpit.
‘Someone must have got kicked a bit hard in Blade yesterday!’ Nona slowed her pace as they caught the girl up. No one had been limping in the dormitory, and yet there was something familiar about the novice.
‘Ha!’ Clera shouted, ‘That’s just Stumpy!’ She raced past, jostling the girl enough to make her stagger.
Nona came to a halt, almost level with the novice, reaching to catch her, then pulling back her hands as she saw it wasn’t needed. The girl was hardly taller than her, hair the colour of straw set about her head in a hundred tight curls. ‘Nona,’ she said, without turning.
Nona knew the voice. ‘Hessa?’
Hessa pivoted on her crutch. The length of the habit hid her withered leg, but only the tip of her shoe touched the ground on that side. ‘We’ve come a long way from Giljohn’s cage.’
Nona had her arms about her before she had time to blink. ‘They killed Saida.’
‘I’m sorry for it.’ Hessa lifted a hand uncertainly to pat Nona between the shoulders.
‘How are you here? Why haven’t I seen you?’ Nona released her and stepped back.
‘I’ve
