her own shadow loose. The day she launched it at Yisht to try to save Hessa. She had failed. She had lost both her friend and her shadow, and Yisht had escaped with the shipheart. Sleep came slowly as it always did, fighting to overcome the anger. She finally fell asleep wondering where her shadow might be now, and dreamed of being lost in dark places.
‘In Mystic we use edged steel.’ Sister Tallow spoke to Zole and Nona above the clash of swordplay as the other novices sparred in widely spaced pairs across the sand of Blade Hall. She held two naked blades, forge-iron rather than the Ark-steel of a Red Sister’s weapon, but visibly sharp. Each had the same curve as a sister-blade and each was the same length, about as long as a man’s arm from shoulder to fingertips. ‘There are some lessons that must be written in scars.’
Sister Tallow offered the hilts. Nona took hers, clumsy in her new gauntlets. Like her new blade-habit the gloves were reinforced with strips of iron sewn into the padding. They wouldn’t stop every hit but they would lessen the chances of blood being spilled.
‘It’s a good sword.’ Zole swung hers then circled the point in front of her.
Nona lifted her own, finding it heavier than the blunted Grey Class blades. She felt awkward in her blade-habit, as if she were wading in the bath-pool. Red Sisters wore black-skin but that had been scavenged from the hulls of the ships that carried the four tribes to Abeth and was worth more than its weight in gold. Far more. An experienced Red Sister had to die or become a Holy Sister before a new one could get her armour.
‘You two spar. I’ll watch.’ Sister Tallow pointed to a clear patch of sand. ‘No showing off. We have serious and dangerous work ahead of us, and I would rather send you on to Holy Class with the same number of fingers and eyes you had when you arrived in Mystic.’
Nona squared up to Zole. The ice-triber stood as tall as Sister Tallow now, her gerant blood perhaps starting to show. Nona remained a head shorter. She supposed she was around fifteen but when she came from the village she had scarcely realized there were dates and certainly hadn’t known on which one she had been born.
‘What are the rules?’ Nona asked. Behind her thoughts Keot yammered for blood and made his opinions on rules quite clear.
‘No killing thrusts.’ Sister Tallow stepped back.
‘That’s it?’ Nona had no more time for inquiry. Zole pulled the mesh-mask over her face and moved to attack. Nona pulled her own down and lifted her sword.
Zole came in fast as she always did, offering no quarter. Sister Tallow never had to lecture the girl on controlling her temper. Nona wasn’t sure Zole had one. Ara said if they cut the Chosen One open they’d find ice at her core.
Nona’s world narrowed to the flickering of blades and the clash of iron. With her speed matched Nona had to rely on training, on the memory that Sister Tallow had imprinted on her muscles. Deeper than that even – on her bones. She mounted a desperate defence against the stronger girl, acutely aware that the edge she met with her own could open ruinous wounds, even slice a limb off, gone in the blink of an eye, beyond repair. Zole would hardly care if she took all four fingers from Nona’s sword hand at the knuckle.
‘Stop!’ Sister Tallow raised an arm.
Nona put up her blade, relieved.
‘Your fear is beating you.’ Sister Tallow pinned Nona with narrow eyes. ‘Zole doesn’t even have to try.’
‘I’m not afraid!’ A snarl. And a lie. Blade-work held a fear for Nona that was absent when she fought empty-handed. Perhaps it had started with Raymel Tacsis swinging his sword at her as exhaustion robbed her of her speed. Perhaps before. Against most novices blade-work was just a game, but facing hunska primes and full-bloods her control slipped away and slaughterhouse images crept in.
‘Find your centre, novice. Wear your serenity like a second skin.’ Tallow motioned for them to continue.
Nona scowled and raised her blade. Serenity had never helped her find the Path. It had been passion that led her there. Rage. On the blade-path, suspended high above the ground in the chamber behind the changing room, it had been the discovery that she needed to slide rather than stick that made her stop falling. Where the other novices stepped with ever greater caution Nona had raced in.
Zole came at her again, efficient, relentless, cold. Their blades clashed and clashed again. Serenity would wrap up the fear that hampered her, but it would also keep away the anger that she needed. Nona had to have her heart in the battle or it wasn’t a battle at all, just some game. What she required was the right balance.
Nona swung at Zole’s side. The ice-triber stepped inside the blow, trapping Nona’s wrist against her ribs and laying her own blade along the thick collar around Nona’s neck.
‘Break!’ Tallow raised her hand. ‘Work through the standard thrust and parry routines. And think on my instruction, novice. They don’t call me Mistress Blade for nothing …’
After the lesson there was time for half an hour at blade-path before hitting the bathhouse. Nona changed into the lightest of her combat habits and joined the other Mystic novices who had chosen to practise.
She found that most of the class were there, half on the platform high above the net, half below staring up at the show. Even Darla, who Nona almost never saw in the chamber, had turned up. Joeli too, at the doorway down below, watching with her three closest cronies. The blonde girl, Meesha, stood at her side, and before them the hunska half-bloods Elani and Crocey, solid and sly, so similar they might be twins. A novice from Holy Class joined them. One Nona often saw walking with Joeli.
Nona found a spot on the platform’s edge beside Zole and sat, dangling her legs over the drop. ‘Now you’re in Mystic you’ll get to go on the ice-ranging.’
Zole grunted.
‘You notice how they put us up a class on the same day?’ Nona watched Alata on the blade-path. She moved well and had covered half the distance.
‘That’s Wheel’s doing. She wants Argatha and Shield together. She has been sitting on my merit certificate until they were ready to let you up,’ Zole said.
Nona narrowed her gaze and, as if her stare had become a weapon, Alata faltered, slipped, and fell with an oath.
‘It is your temper that held you where you were,’ Zole continued, gazing into space.
‘I—’ Nona bit off a sharp reply. It was true. Mostly true. Keot had returned with her from the Corridor ranging. She had lost a shadow, lost two friends, and gained a devil. Nona supposed she had never been the mildest of novices but with a devil beneath her skin she had turned wild. It had taken the best part of two years to get the upper hand, to slowly regain control and concentration, and even more slowly to regain the trust and respect of the sisters who taught her. ‘I wasn’t holding you back, if that’s what you think.’
Zole shrugged. Everyone knew she’d been ready for Mystic Class for an age, but the abbess didn’t want her ice-ranging. Abbess Glass didn’t think Zole would come back. More importantly Sherzal didn’t want her to go. Her opinion counted in the matter. Despite very obviously being behind the theft of the convent’s shipheart the emperor’s sister remained free, unpunished, and a power in the land.
