Mark Lawrence - Grey Sister

‘Nonsense. The moon is not a weapon of war. There’s no reason to believe the focus can be narrowed to that degree even if someone wanted to do it.’ Sister Rail waved the suggestion away with a bony hand.

‘If it can be tilted it could be steered from the Corridor entirely then returned,’ Nona said, staring at the glistening white of the globe on Rail’s desk. ‘Whole nations could be denied the focus and the ice would swallow them. It could melt vast lakes on the ice then connect them to the Corridor, washing away armies and cities …’

‘We were discussing the formula for a circle.’ Sister Rail banged a heel to the floorboards and the lesson sank back into a confusion of letters and symbols.

Nona had let the nun’s words slide past her and sat gazing at the distorted sky offered through puddle-glass windows. Memory filled her vision. Yisht stumbling away chased by shadow, the shipheart in her hand. Four shiphearts to open the Ark? One Ark to control the moon. One moon to own the world?

By the seven-day nothing had changed in the others’ reaction to talk of returning to the caves. Not ready to explore alone, Nona agreed to accompany Ara on a visit to Terra Mensis, a distant cousin of hers.

‘It’ll be great to get you off the Rock for once!’ Ara grinned, hugging her range-coat around her.

‘I don’t think the abbess plans to let me out on my own even when I’ve got the Red.’ Nona peered around the pillar, squinting against the ice-wind. The Mensis escort was late. They were sending a dozen of their house guard, enough to satisfy Abbess Glass that neither Ara nor Nona would be at risk from kidnap or assassination.

‘There is no point to strength if it is never tested.’ Zole stood in the open before the pillar forest, scowling at the world. Nona had been surprised when Ara extended the invitation to the ice-triber, more surprised when she accepted, and astounded when Abbess Glass permitted it. Nona supposed that Zole felt as trapped as she did on the Rock. Perhaps if the abbess worried that if Zole felt too trapped, she would simply run away.

Sister Kettle leaned against the pillar beside Nona and rolled her eyes, grinning. When Nona had heard the abbess was demanding an escort of her own in addition to the house troops she had worried they might get stuck with Sister Scar, Sister Rock or someone equally joyless. Perhaps even Sister Tallow. Nona respected Tallow but didn’t imagine she would be a particularly lenient chaperone in Verity. The arrival of Sister Kettle to watch over them had been a pleasant surprise. She still looked too young to be a nun. In the bathhouse with the black shock of her hair shaved to her scalp she could easily pass as a novice.

‘They’re coming.’ Kettle kept her back to the pillar.

Nona leaned out again. ‘Don’t see them.’ She spat an ice-flake. ‘Zole?’

Zole stood silent, leaning into the wind. Then, just as Nona was about to repeat herself, ‘I see something.’

A few minutes later the twelve guards swaddled in black furs that now hung with ice gathered around the nun and three novices. Sister Kettle cast an eye over each of them in turn then nodded and allowed them to lead the way, back towards the Vinery Stair.

‘Your cousin won’t be pleased to see me and Zole with you.’ Nona knew that any Sis would spot her peasant roots no matter how many years of convent education she might be carrying on top of them. ‘Well, she might be pleased to see Zole.’ The Argatha was a novelty. The rich could overlook low breeding in a novelty.

‘The Chosen One can hardly travel without her Shield.’ Ara grinned, face red from the wind. ‘And besides, Terra will like what I tell her to like. The Mensis have been scions to the Jotsis for generations.’ At Nona’s frown she elaborated. ‘We get to boss them about.’

The Vinery Stair led down from the Rock of Faith along a gradient gentle enough for cart and horse, though Nona would not want to be that horse. Below them the vineyards huddled against the base of the Rock, sheltered from the worst of the wind. The vines had their leaves folded tight. They wouldn’t open until the ice-wind relented, although Sister Hoe – who had charge of the wine-making – had told Nona that a heavy dose of fertilizer would coax most plants to open their leaves whatever the weather.

‘They can’t abide to lose the chance,’ the old woman had said. ‘Worried some other plant will thieve it first. They’re not so different from people really. There’s not much most wouldn’t risk to stop a rival having the benefit of something they want.’

At the bottom of the Vinery Stair a turnpike gate offered token resistance to any without proper business up at the convent and it was here that a crowd of perhaps two dozen pilgrims waited.

‘That must be her!’ A shout from the crowd.

Zole lowered her head, pulling the hood of her range-coat down across her face. The opposite of what Sister Apple had been teaching them all week. And rather than inconspicuous she just looked guilty.

‘It must be!’

‘All those guards!’

‘She’s here!’

‘Be watchful.’ Sister Kettle stepped to the front, tapping the lead guardsman’s shoulder. ‘Clear a path. Don’t hurt anyone.’

As the guardsmen approached to pull the pike aside the crowd parted letting a man emerge with his burden. Hulking in his sheepskins he must have had a touch or more of gerant, and in his arms he carried a child, limp and pale.

‘He’s sick. The Argatha can heal him.’ The boy he offered up showed no signs of life. He looked to have no more than six years, seven at most. ‘Please.’ Somehow the plea from so big a man in so deep a voice tore at Nona, making her eyes prickle.

A few of the guardsmen turned to stare at Zole. Nobody had named her to them but perhaps the red of her ice-tribe skin was enough.

‘It’s her!’ Figures around the man with the child pointed Zole out, following the guardsmen’s looks.

‘Bless me, Argatha!’

‘I just need to touch her.’

The mass of people began to surge forward. With an oath Zole turned and ran back along the Vinery Stair.

‘Zole! You don’t have to—’ Kettle turned, hand raised, but Zole had quick feet and was gone. The pilgrims sighed with a single voice, disappointment rising.

‘It wasn’t her.’

‘The Argatha wouldn’t run.’

Ara caught Nona’s gaze, biting her lip, a small shake of her head. ‘You’re lucky to have her. I’m lucky to have you. Neither of us would want this.’

Kettle went to examine the child in the man’s arms. He stepped back at her approach, as if sensing the shadow in her, but the crowd held him.

‘I’m sorry.’ Kettle lifted her fingers from the boy’s neck. ‘The Ancestor has your son. He is a link in a chain without end, still joined to you, still joined to everyone who has ever cared for him. We will all be one in the Ancestor. Nothing passes from this world that is not remembered.’

They left then, walking towards the distant city.

Ara moved to walk beside Kettle. ‘Well spoken, sister.’

Kettle shook her head. ‘A parent’s grief runs deeper than words can reach, novice. We speak them to help ourselves.’

The Mensis escort forged a passage through the tight-packed streets of Verity with practised ease. They seemed more confident within the city walls, and in their midst Nona thought she had a taste of what it must be like to be born of money and name.

She watched the colour and variety of the crowd, the density and energy of it. With no shadow, wholly black eyes, and no apparent talent for disguise, Nona had begun to despair of passing the Shade Trial. But, reminded of the city’s chaos, the prospect of crossing Thaybur Square unchallenged seemed to inch from totally impossible towards merely very unlikely.