but in the dark places of this world it’s the gods that the Missing left behind who matter.’
There was no laughter at this, only the silence of held breath, waiting for the hammer to fall.
Abbess Glass pursed her lips as if she had tasted something particularly sour. She studied Nona a moment, raising one hand towards Sister Wheel as the nun seemed about to get her first word out around her outrage. The abbess relaxed her face into a smile.
‘The emperor has forbidden worship of false idols, Nona. Much of our own history – ten thousand years and more of it – lies buried beneath the ice. A record of triumphs, follies, and a slow defeat beneath a dying sun. There are enough heresies and heathen gods of our own devising without pursuing the mysteries of creatures less like you and me than a dog is like a fish.’
The same anger that had boiled out of some red place within Nona when Raymel hurt Saida began to bubble through her again. She stood up so fast that her chair would have fallen but for Clera’s quick hands. ‘My father—’ The words, hard and angular, stuck in her throat. She bit down on them – anger had lost Nona her place in the village, then the Caltess …
‘I am here to address the why.’ Abbess Glass continued smoothly as if a small girl weren’t standing in defiance before her, fists balled at her sides. ‘We venerate the Ancestor because in doing so we connect with what is holy in the human spirit, what is holy in us—’
‘You’re not holy!’ Nona couldn’t stop the words. Warm beds and good food were too great a treasure to be sacrificed, but with them came knives in the dark and laughter behind hands and this woman calling herself holy. ‘You watched Saida die! You watched her strangle and choke!’
‘Sister Wheel!’ The abbess raised her voice to a shout, drowning whatever the nun had to say. ‘Bring me a wire-cane from the Blade stores.’
A sharp intake of breath sounded all around the room. Sister Wheel’s face split with an uncustomary grin. ‘Yes, Abbess Glass, yes indeed. A good choice. A fine choice for a beating.’ And she hurried from the room, her speed surprising.
The abbess waited for the door to close. She pulled up one of the chairs from an unused desk and sat on it, presenting a slightly comical image, portly abbess perched on child’s seat. ‘I’m not holy? What is holy? Nona? Anyone?’ Silence. Nona would have answered but found that she didn’t know. ‘I believe in the Ancestor – in the spirit of the Ancestor.’
‘Believe? Like Sister Wheel believes?’ Nona couldn’t keep the venom from her words – when she looked at Wheel it seemed that something had been left out in the making of the woman. Nona felt the same way about herself most of the time – as if some part had been omitted in her construction, so wholly absent that she couldn’t even say what it was, only that a void lay where it should be. ‘I hate Sister Wheel.’ It’s harder to forgive someone else your own sins than those uniquely theirs. Much harder.
‘You don’t know Sister Wheel, Nona. You’ve only just met her.’
Nona scowled. ‘I know plenty. I’ve seen plenty. More than you can see from up here in your nice warm convent, paid for by all the people working down there in the city and out in the Corridor growing your food from the mud. What good is holy if it can’t feed and clothe itself? This is a place to turn children into old women, praying for the sins of the world and never seeing them.’ Some of the words were her father’s but she owned all the anger. ‘What good is holy if it watches my friend die – not because she did something wrong but because her blood wasn’t good enough?’
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