Holy Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  HOLY CLASS

  Present Day

  THE DEFENDERS BEHIND Verity’s wall gave Nona free rein, which to her mind was a considerable lapse since she had come over from the Scithrowl side in the enemy’s uniform and the walls of the emperor’s own palace lay just two hundred yards farther on. It seemed that she was so smoke-blackened, muddy, and blood-spattered that others could no longer tell what she was wearing. In the general chaos at the base of the wall just not trying to kill anyone proved sufficient to identify her as not being Scithrowl.

  She picked her way through the injured, lying haphazard in the wall’s shadow among scattered equipment. Carts stood laden with all manner of things from barrels of tar and sheaves of arrows to tight-wrapped bandages and water tubs. One cart was a foot deep in scattered pieces of antique armour, as if the grand houses had turned out their spares, and another sported dozens of fresh army tabards in the emperor’s green and gold, unsullied by use, as if someone expected to recruit fresh conscripts while the veterans rained down from on high, arrow-shot or run through with Scithrowl steel.

  “I know you.” A young soldier bumped into her as his sergeant led the way to the nearest wall ladder.

  “Cage! From the Caltess!” The soldier’s companion stopped to stare. “You are her! You have her eyes. You beat Denam—”

  The man behind him pushed him on and the column passed Nona by, all of them staring, eager to distract themselves from the screams above and the zip of arrows sailing past.

  Nona turned towards the nearest buildings. The city had long ago flowed out to press against boundaries that had once seemed foolishly overgenerous. The houses of the great and the good stood cheek by jowl, crowding to find a place beside the emperor’s own. Close by, in the shadows of the city wall, nestled all the services that money likes to keep on hand. Bathhouses, stables, goldsmiths and silversmiths, jewellers, tailors, dressmakers, and establishments where a person of quality might throw their money after cards or dice, sample poisons that twist the mind in strange ways, buy the company of a young bed-partner, or satisfy less common urges proscribed by the laws of both State and Church.

  And all of it was burning.

  * * *

  • • •

  NONA GUESSED THAT the Path-mage she had killed might have been part of Adoma’s Fist. She still had hope that the battle-queen’s wars on her other border had kept the Fist in the east. The idea they might be here, among the horde, scared her in a way that mere numbers could not. She knew that their role was to crack open fortresses and cities that defied their queen, and the west held no bigger defiance than Verity.

  If the Fist was here, then probably they were holding their strength in reserve and waiting to see if the walls would fall to more conventional assault. That or just waiting for enough defenders to mass in one place so that when the Fist struck it would cause maximum carnage.

  In Nona’s brief period of contemplation two men fell from the wall, hammering into the cobbled street close enough that she felt the warm spatter of their blood across her face. She moved quickly out of the danger zone. The corpses of other casualties that had fallen since the last clear-up lay strewn around, Scithrowl among them. Farther back the buildings not yet aflame had been opened to the most badly injured. Their screams, as overworked healers bound wounds and set bones, rose to challenge the clamour from the walls above.

  Nona pushed on, past the wounded, the supplies, a skittish donkey standing in the stays of an empty wagon, past the reserves and into an alley leading between the first buildings.

  The stink of charring flesh pursued Nona towards the palace. She made her way towards the emperor’s spires, visible even above the roofs of mansions. In a street still a hundred yards shy of the palace walls a line of grim-faced men from Crucical’s elite palace guard turned Nona aside. Seeing the suspicion in their leader’s eyes as he tried to see past the mud on her tunic, she didn’t stay to argue.

  Nona’s goal now was to reunite with her friends. The smoke-haunted streets were hauntingly empty. Spent arrows lay here and there, curious in isolation, flames licked up amid the apple trees in a nearby garden where one of the Scithrowl fire-pots had landed. All the windows were shuttered as if the grand houses had closed their eyes to the day’s horrors.

  Nona hunted for her serenity and sought direction. Her thread-bonds with Kettle and with Ruli had been pulling her in different directions but now they started to converge. She followed their guide, jogging along broad streets between mansions with boarded windows. She worked her way around blocked and burning roads, seeking to join up with Abbess Wheel and the convent party.

  A body lay by the gates of one pillared manse, a white-haired old lady whose broken string of Marn pearls was scattered across the flagstones. An arrow protruded from her chest. Nona found it hard not to believe all this a dream. The mighty Verity, rich, powerful, untouched by war for generations. Before nightfall Scithrowl warriors would prowl where the nobility promenaded the evening before. Only days ago Nona had met Lano Tacsis in these very streets. Much as she wanted the man dead she wanted his soldiers lined up in the defence of the city more. It would have been a poor time for her to have killed their leader. Even so, she hoped the Scithrowl would catch him and give him a cruel death.

  Nona turned onto another wide, tree-lined avenue where but for the drifting smoke everything could have been normal. The wind gusted, clearing the air, and there out of nowhere was Abbess Wheel, crozier held aloft as a golden beacon, half of Sweet Mercy hard on her heels.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE CHAOS of the defence Abbess Wheel found nobody of sufficient authority and interest to allocate Sweet Mercy’s strength with any direction or goal. Rather than commit her force blind, Wheel had sent Kettle and Bhenta back out to scout for any Scithrowl forces already at work within the walls. She kept Nona close to monitor Kettle’s observations through her thread-bond.

  In the meantime the abbess gathered her flock in the shelter of a high-walled garden where no stray arrow would find either novice or nun, and set up her own command post. Nona hugged Ruli and Jula quickly, deflecting their questions as she hurriedly changed back into the old Red Sister habit that she had been issued and tossed away the filthy clothes that had come from a dead Scithrowl on the Vinery Stair. Kettle and Bhenta rejoined the group as Nona finished changing. The ease with which they had scaled the wall underlined the fact that Scithrowl assassins were almost certainly at work within the city. Apple pushed through the novices to take Kettle into her arms, careless of Wheel’s disapproval. They held tight for a moment, then parted. Apple kept any recriminations for their risk-taking behind tight and worried lips.

  “Sister Kettle, Sister Cauldron, report!” Abbess Wheel’s crow-screech demanded their attention.

  Kettle pushed a stray strand of red hair back into Apple’s headdress and hurried to the abbess. Nona followed.

  To her credit Abbess Wheel listened in grim silence and had only praise for their efforts. Minutes later Kettle and Bhenta were leaving again on Wheel’s orders, this time to scout for any sign of a breach where reinforcements were needed. Nona was to monitor Kettle’s progress despite her protestations that Apple could do that almost as well.

  Nona stood, watching through Kettle’s eyes while describing what she saw with her own mouth. There were no breaches yet but in half a dozen places the battle atop the walls was slowly being lost.

  “Those siege towers are the primary threat.” Sister Tallow addressed the assembly as if they were standing on the sands of Blade Hall. “The emperor has doubtless massed his forces at the Amber Gate, but you will have observed that the soldiers here stand too thin to withstand the flow of Scithrowl up those towers for long.”

  “A Mystic Sister could reduce one to kindling . . . We’ve seen what a Holy Sister can do!” Wheel cast an approving glance at Nona, having been apprised of her efforts on t
he way into the city. “Though we have precious little to work with here.”

  The Mystic Sisters ordained at Sweet Mercy were under Wheel’s orders on behalf of High Priest Nevis, but they had long ago been dispatched to the eastern front or the western one. Whether any still survived was unclear. Sister Pan had been able to confirm the deaths of the three most powerful of her former pupils.

  Wheel’s gaze flickered across the nuns in front of her. Sister Pan was looking around with a slightly confused smile as if she thought they were on a trip for seven-day. Joeli had hunched down, perhaps worried she might catch an arrow even here. Her thread-work was remarkable but she wouldn’t be exploding a siege tower with it. Nona had already walked the Path, and a second walk, even if it were tomorrow, would be a huge risk. Wheel beckoned Sheryl and Haluma, novices from Mystic Class. “Sister Pan tells me that you girls have walked the Path . . .”

  A monk hastened past, his habit splashed with crimson, a longsword in hand. “Grey brothers have fired the towers!” He ran on.

  Nona hurried out into the road for a view of the wall, past the novices who were risking quick looks around the corner of the street. The slanting, hide-covered roofs of the five surviving siege towers punctuated the battlements of the city wall. White smoke vomited from the chain-screened doorways, spilling out over the drawbridges anchored to the walls. It swirled around desperate Scithrowl charging out, more scared of what was behind them than the bloody steel of those waiting outside.

  Nona called back her observations to Sister Apple, then returned to shelter beside her and the abbess.

  “How could Greys set things like that afire? And unseen?” Nona shook her head in wonder.

  “A structure like that?” Sister Tallow frowned. “To fire that with what a man could carry, and carry undetected . . .”

  “I hope they got away,” said Nona.

  “No,” replied Apple. “They did not.”

  “They would have had to infiltrate the Scithrowl,” Apple said. “They would have naphtha oil hidden all across them in waterskins beneath their clothes. Then, Ancestor take them and love them, they must have lit themselves up inside the structure. Somewhere near the bottom, but not too close to the entrance.”

  It took half an hour to clear the walls of Scithrowl. By that time the siege towers were pillars of flame, starting to collapse in on themselves. Kettle reported that the besieging Scithrowl had retreated to join the greater body of the horde, abandoning their ladders and scaling chains before the walls among the heaped bodies of the fallen. Nona watched the retreat through Kettle’s eyes, invited in as the Grey Sister took a place on a wall tower.

  “Look!” Ruli tugged at Nona’s arm, pulling her from her visions.

  Approaching along the broad, paved expanse of King’s Road, named in a time before the empire, came a strange band, each wearing robes of a single pale colour, no two shades the same. Their advance was slow, almost reluctant. At their head walked a white-haired man, his eyes milky, skin thick with old burns. Nona knew him. “Rexxus Degon!” The Chief Academic who had watched Nona when Sister Pan had brought her with Hessa and Ara to compete at the Academy. Beside him was a woman with long grey hair, her robe almost white. They looked to have come direct from the Academy building, huddled up against the emperor’s walls on the far side of the palace. Many of their following were no older than the novices around Nona.

  “Academics!” Jula said. “I thought there were more of them.”

  “There were,” Apple replied.

  “And now there are not,” Sister Iron said.

  “There are Mystic Sisters with them!” Nona spotted the sky-blue habits at the back. Sister Pan always wore the common black of the Holies and the sight of the blue was a rarity, even at Sweet Mercy. Two Mystic Sisters that she didn’t recognise, a pair of Mystic Brothers too, twins to look at them. “What are they doing here?”

  Whatever answer might have been forthcoming went unheard as an urgent tug from Kettle stole Nona away. She stood within Kettle’s skin once more, alongside the ragged defenders waiting on the wall tower. The elevation afforded a view of the Scithrowl’s endless horde arrayed across Verity’s garden-lands, an ugly scar where fields green with jump-corn had once swayed. Something was coming. Nona couldn’t see what Kettle was looking at, just that a great number of Scithrowl were on the move, swirling around, pushing.

  “They’re getting out of the way of something,” Kettle said.

  A space opened around a group of perhaps two dozen people. Flames leapt from nowhere, winding up into the air around those approaching the wall, a bright fire torn on swiftly cycling winds that seemed to centre on the newcomers.

  “Adoma’s Fist!” Kettle raised the bow she had acquired and lofted an arrow towards the Scithrowl mages.

  Others on the wall followed her example and soon scores of arrows had taken flight. None of them seemed to reach their targets. Perhaps the winds had turned them from their path.

  As the Scithrowl drew closer Nona could see individuals. A group of five, two men and three women, nearly naked, dancing at the base of the rising firestorm; three more in white cloaks, advancing with their arms raised. Workers of flame and air, weaving a protection against arrows. Three heavyset men, in bronze armour, walked at the fore, the fires overhead reflecting on the scales of their mail and the oiled thickness of muscle on huge arms. Rock-workers perhaps, come to tumble the walls. And behind them, a dozen individuals, some tall, some short, some old, some young, clad in all manner of styles, some in the loud colours favoured by their people, others in black cloaks; one in a leather dress set with silver plates; a painfully thin man in antique armour lacquered with red enamel. This last one was their leader. Nona remembered him and many of the others from the memories Kettle had shared of her time in Adoma’s court. One thing only united them amid their variety. Sigils. Even at this distance they scratched at Nona’s mind. All of them wore at least a couple of sigil wards. Like the Path-mage had . . .

  “They’re all quantals!”

  Nona realised she was back with the abbess and had spoken aloud.

  “Tell me!” It wasn’t Wheel who was shaking Nona. Sister Pan had her arm in an iron grip. “What did you see?”

  “Adoma’s Fist,” Nona said. “Adoma’s Fist is coming.”

  Rexxus Degon and his allies had reached the convent party. Ahead of them, beyond the walls, the windstorm had twisted the day’s smoke into strange patterns. The remnants of the siege towers collapsed before the strengthening gale, sparks and embers filling the air.

  “Kettle showed me. Adoma’s Fist is coming,” Nona repeated. She hadn’t thought there would be so many quantals. If the marjals were full-bloods specializing in fire, air, and stone-work they alone could threaten the walls, but with two dozen Path-mages at their backs there was no chance of resisting them. On Scithrowl’s distant border with King Ald’s lands it was said that Adoma’s Fist had struck down great castles and laid waste to armies. They had never been seen within the empire, though. Not by any that lived to tell of it. The hope that they would remain in the east, occupied with the war against Ald, had always been a vain one, but now as it shattered Nona realised how hard she and many others had clung to it.

  “Well, it’s too late to save the wall now.” Sister Pan released Nona’s arm and shuffled out to intercept the Academics.

  Nona followed to ensure that no stray arrows found the old woman since she seemed wholly oblivious to the threat.

  * * *

  • • •

  “MISTRESS PATH.” REXXUS Degon favoured Sister Pan with a low bow. “If you will excuse us. Duty calls. I’m sure you will have sensed the presence of our enemy beyond the walls.” Even as he spoke Nona sensed it too. Vibrations rippling out through the thread-scape. Trembling in the spiderweb. Footsteps were being taken along the Path. Many footsteps, as if an army were marching along it.

 
Sister Pan made no move to get out of the old man’s way.

  “We really must hurry.” He looked far from enthusiastic about the prospect. Nona wasn’t sure how much the man saw with those blind eyes of his, but it was clearly enough to know that he would much rather be somewhere else. “Duty calls . . .”

  “Duty . . .” Sister Pan held her hand out, palm up, and a charred flake settled into it from the air. Others were descending all around like a black rain, some still glowing. “It’s too late to save the wall.” The black flake became lost against the darkness of her palm.

  “We’ll save it!” Rexxus leaned on his staff, his voice lowering. “Or die trying.”

  “I remember you as a little boy, Rexxus.” Pan shook her head. “You had the bluest eyes. And your nose was always running. You should stay here with your friends.”

  Rexxus bowed his head. “I wish I could, Mistress Path. Even so, the strength of the empire is not wholly spent. My fellow mages and I may not have reputations for murder and carnage, but Adoma’s creatures will find that we know a few tricks of our own. If we must sell our lives the price will be a dear one, and far fewer of our enemy than they expect will live to see what they have purchased. Now, if you will excuse me, dear lady.” He raised his staff and turned to those gathered behind him. “Onwards!”

  “Wait here. I’ll deal with this.” Sister Pan began to walk towards the city wall. Above it black clouds swirled, shot through with streaks of fire. The defenders cowered now, crouched behind their battlements.

  “Nonsense!” Rexxus hurried to overtake Sister Pan. The Academics followed him, the Mystic Brothers too. Only the pair of Holy Witches kept their place.

  “Wait here.”

  Sister Pan never moved her fingers when thread-working. She said it was a habit you grew out of. Like moving your lips when reading. Even so, Nona saw the moment when she pulled the Chief Academic’s thread.

  “Yes!” Rexxus turned to his followers with new conviction. “We should wait here!” He announced it as if it had been his plan all along. On his neck the mendant sigil that should have kept him from such manipulation, even if his mind did not, glittered impotently.