Red Sister

by Mark Lawrence

  “Mistress Blade tells me not to fight.” A smile, then the abbess turned to begin the climb. “And Apple tells me not to steal . . .” Nona started to follow her. “You’re nuns. Show a little faith.”

  • • •

  A LAST EDGE of the sun clung to the horizon as Abbess Glass led the way towards a peculiar forest of stone pillars, their shadows reaching across hundreds of yards of rock towards the travellers’ approach. Nona followed, flanked by the two nuns, neither of them winded by the long climb that had set the abbess wheezing. The old one, Sister Tallow, looked as if she could climb all day. The younger, Sister Apple, at least had the decency to appear flushed. Nona, toughened by endless laps at the Caltess, felt the climb in her legs, and the dampness of her shift where sweat stuck it to her back, but made no complaint.

  The plateau, really one huge slab of rock, narrowed to a neck of land before widening into a promontory. The pillars stood across the neck, from cliff to cliff, dozens deep, scores across. Abbess Glass led the way through—finding her path seemingly at random. All about them the columns, taller than trees, stretched towards the darkening sky. The place held an odd silence, the wind finding nothing to sing its tune, only stirring the dust and grit among the towers of carved stone. Nona liked it.

  The pillars bounded Sweet Mercy Convent on one side, and on the other the edges of two cliffs marched towards a sharp convergence. The main dome rose black against the crimson sky, a dozen and more outbuildings visible to either side. Nona followed the nuns towards its arched entrance, the weight of the day on her shoulders now, fatigue wrapping her in its dull grip, making both her anger and her sorrow grow more distant, shaping them into things that might be set apart for a night of dreams.

  “You live in there?” As they drew closer Nona began to realize how large the dome was. The whole of the Caltess would fit inside several times over, stacked on top of itself.

  “That’s the Dome of the Ancestor, Nona. The Ancestor lives there, nobody else.”

  “Is he terribly big?” Nona asked. Behind her Sister Apple stifled a laugh.

  “The Ancestor occupies any space built in their honour. In Verity the Ancestor is present in ten thousand household shrines, some into which even you would find it hard to squeeze, others larger than most houses. Here on the plateau the church was able to give the Ancestor a grander home—a gift of Emperor Persus, third of his name.”

  Nona followed on in silence, her lips buttoned against the thought that the Ancestor seemed very greedy to be taking up so much room while the children at the Caltess wedged themselves into any nook or cranny that would take them.

  “This is my house.” Abbess Glass waved a hand at a blocky stone building looming out of the deepening shade. “At least for as long as I am abbess here. It’s also Malkin’s home.” A large grey cat lay coiled on the steps. The abbess turned to face Nona and the two sisters. “Sister Apple will find you somewhere to sleep and in the morning you’ll be introduced to your class, after which—”

  “Class?” Nona blinked. In the village Nana Even had held class every seven-day, teaching the older children their numbers and such. Nona had tried to listen in but bigs chased her away as if their stupid numbers were a secret too important for her ears.

  “You’re here to join the convent, Nona.” Shadow hid the abbess’s face but perhaps there was a smile there. “If you want to. And that means living here and learning all the things a sister needs to learn. There are classes every day except seven-day.” She turned and walked away.

  “Come, Nona.” Sister Apple held out her hand. Nona regarded it, uncertain whether the woman wanted something from her. After a moment Apple returned her hand to her side and continued on around the curve of the dome. Sister Tallow followed, her habit flapping about her legs.

  Darkness had swallowed the plateau behind them and the wind roamed there. Nona stared back along the path the nuns had brought her by, the pillars invisible now. The heat of the climb had left her and the Corridor wind ran sharp fingers through her Caltess shift, filching any remaining warmth. It carried a salt edge—perhaps the sea, though it lay so many miles away. Nona shivered, hugged herself, and followed the nuns.

  At the rear of the dome a long, low building extended like a tail on a huddled dormouse. Sister Apple stopped at a sturdy door beneath the peak of a tiled roof. A lantern swung on a hook, sparing enough light for the nun to match the iron key she drew from her habit to the keyhole in the door’s locking plate.

  Sister Apple lifted the lantern down from its hook, adjusting its cowl. “These are the nun’s cells.” She kept her voice low.

  “Cells!” Nona took a step back.

  “Not like prison cells.” Sister Apple smiled, then frowned. “Well, quite similar truth be told, but they’re clean and there are no locks on the doors.” She stepped through the doorway. “You’ll sleep here tonight. If you study hard and do well you might get to come back for another night in about ten years.”

  The door gave onto a long corridor. The beam of Sister Apple’s lantern revealed the passage extended all the way to a black door where it reached the dome. Left and right, repeating every few yards, a pair of round-topped doors guarded nun’s cells. Sister Apple walked in, stepping softly. Sister Tallow turned without a word as they passed the third pair and passed into the darkness of the cell to the left. The black door at the end drew Nona’s eyes. Something about it.

  Eighteen doors in, about half the length of the corridor, Sister Apple stopped and pushed open the door to the right. She leaned in and took a candle from the box on the wall, lighting it from the lantern. “You’ll be in here. There’s linen and a blanket on the pallet. I’ll collect you in the morning.” She handed the candle to Nona. “Don’t start any fires.”

  Nona watched Sister Apple walk back towards the main door, the light diminishing with her departure. Finally the nun entered one of the cells close to Sister Tallow’s, leaving Nona in her own small and flickering pool of light. The silence that had rolled back with the shadows now returned, deeper and thicker than any Nona had known. She stood, held by its completeness. No sound. Not the wind’s moan. Not the creak of timbers or rustle of leaves. Not the skittering of rats or the distant complaint of owls. Nothing.

  The door at the end of the corridor reclaimed her attention, although the darkness had hidden it. The memory of that door, black and polished, pressed like a finger between her eyes. Her feet wanted to take her there, her hands to set themselves flat against the smooth wood and to feel up close the vast and slumbering . . . fullness . . . that lay beyond.

  Somewhere a few cells back a woman coughed in her sleep, breaking the silence and the strangeness. Freed from both paralysis and compulsion, Nona raised a hand to shield her candle’s flame and advanced into the narrow room that Sister Apple had led her to.

  Even her cell at the Harriton had boasted a window, high and barred perhaps, but offering the condemned the sky. Nona’s new cell had a slit wide enough to reach her arm through, shuttered with a pine board. She made a circle. A sleeping pallet, a pillow, a chair, a desk. A pot to piss in. Last and strangest, a length of metal running along the outer wall at ground level. It emerged from the cell to the left and vanished through the wall to the right. Round as a branch and just a little too thick to close her hand around.

  Nona sniffed. Dust, and the stale air of an unused room. She went to the pallet. Heat rising from the metal stick burned on her cheeks. The whole cell held the warmth of it. Nona pulled the pallet away from the hot metal, mistrusting it. She set the candle down, pulled the blanket over her, and laid her head on the pillow. One last look at the room and she blew out the flame. She stared at the darkness, her mind too full for sleep, certain that she would lie awake the whole night.

  A moment later the clanging of an iron bell opened Nona’s eyes. The door swung open, banging against the wall. Nona levered herself up from the pallet and blinked to
wards the entrance, the darkness now a gloomy half-light. A groan escaped her, every limb stiff and aching though she only recalled straining her legs on the climb.

  “Up! Up! No slug-a-beds here! Up!” A small, angular woman with a voice that sounded as if it were being forced violently through a narrow hole. She strode into the cell, reaching over Nona to throw back the shutter. “Let the light in! No hiding place for sin!”

  Through fingers held up to defend against the daylight Nona found herself staring into a humourless face pinched tight around prominent cheekbones, eyes wide, watery and accusing. The woman’s head, which had seemed a most alarming shape in the gloom, sported a rising white headdress, rather like a funnel, and quite different to those the other nuns had worn the previous evening.

  “Up, girl! Up!”

  “Ah, I see you’ve met Sister Wheel.” Sister Apple stepped through the open doorway holding a long habit, the outer garment grey felt, the inner white linen.

  “Sleeping after the morning bell, she was!” The old woman raised her hands, seemingly unsure whether to strike Nona or to use them to better depict the enormity of her crime.

  “She’s new, Wheel, not even a novice yet.” Sister Apple smiled and looked pointedly at the doorway.

  “A barefooted heathen is what she is!”

  Sister Apple spread her fingers towards the exit, still smiling. “It was commendable of you to notice the cell had an occupant.”

  The older nun scowled and ran her hands over her forehead, tucking a stray strand of colourless hair back into her headdress. “There’s nothing that goes on in these cells I don’t notice, sister.” She narrowed her watery eyes at Sister Apple then sniffed hard and stalked back into the corridor. “The child stinks,” she offered over her shoulder. “It needs washing.”

  “I brought you some clothes.” Sister Apple lifted the habit. “But I forgot how dirty you are. Sister Wheel is correct . . .” She folded her arms over her stomach. “Come with me.”

  Nona followed Sister Apple out of the room, weaving around various nuns emerging from their cells or speaking in low tones in the corridor. A couple raised an eyebrow at her approach but none addressed her. At one point an angular nun brought Sister Apple to a halt by laying a hand upon her shoulder. She towered above the others, her height seemingly gained by stretching a regular woman far beyond her design, leaving her dangerously thin.

  “Mistress Blade reports armed men beyond the pillars. An emissary came before first light.”

  “Thank you, Flint.” Sister Apple nodded.

  Sister Flint tilted her head, her face so dark that in the gloom Nona could see only black eyes, glittering as they made a study of her. The nun took her hand from the smaller woman’s shoulder, releasing her to her task.

  Sister Apple led the way out into the brittle light of morning. By daylight Nona could see that the convent comprised so many buildings that back in the Grey it would qualify as a village. She suspected it had more stone-built buildings than Flaystown, though she had only glimpsed that metropolis from Giljohn’s cage on the day he drove her from her home.

  “Sister Flint said men are coming. Are they here for me?” Nona asked. She wondered what help a score of nuns would be if Thuran Tacsis had sent his warriors for her. She should have lost herself in the city when she had a chance.

  “Perhaps.” Sister Apple glanced back at the great Dome of the Ancestor and frowned. “Perhaps not. In any case, it would be best if you joined our order sooner rather than later—and you can’t do that dirty, now can you?” She led on at a brisk pace.

  “Scriptorium, refectory, bake-house, kitchens.” Sister Apple reeled off names as they passed various buildings. Few of them meant much to Nona but bake-house she knew and the aroma of fresh bread when they passed the door filled her mouth with drool. “The Necessary.” The nun pointed to a small building, flat-roofed and seemingly clinging to the edge of the cliff a hundred yards off.

  “Necessary?” Nona asked.

  “You’ll go there when you need it.” Sister Apple shook her head and smiled. “The smell will let you know it’s the right place.”

  They passed a long range of buildings with many small square windows, all shuttered on the windward side. “Stores and dormitories.”

  Nona found herself observed, a dozen pairs of eyes at various of the windows. Some of the girls called out, perhaps to each other. She caught snatches, carried by the wind.

  “. . . chosen . . . never!”

  “. . . that can’t be her . . .”

  “. . . peasant . . .”

  “. . . she’s not the . . .”

  “Chosen?”

  The voices followed them, words lost in the distance but the tone still hanging in the air. Nona knew it well enough, sharp and unkind.

  “Bathhouse.” Sister Apple pointed to a squat building built of unadorned black stone, steam escaping from a row of narrow windows, only to be stripped away by the wind. The Corridor wind scoured the plateau, and crossing the gap between the dormitories and the bathhouse Nona found herself exposed to its teeth. She’d spent a lifetime learning to ignore it—just another hard edge of a hard life—but one warm night had left her soft and shivering.

  They reached the shelter of the bathhouse walls. The nun unlocked the heavy door and ushered Nona in. Hot wet air wrapped her immediately, the steam reducing her vision to a few yards. Wooden benches lined the foyer and a tall arch gave onto what might be a rectangular pool, its surface offered only in glimpses.

  Metal shafts ran beneath the benches in profusion. “One of those was in my room!” Nona pointed.

  “Pipes, child. They’re hollow—mineral oil runs through them. Very hot.” Sister Apple nodded at the arch. “Let’s get the prison filth off you.”

  Nona started uncertainly towards the pool, wondering how deep it was, and how hot. The streams around the village never reached much past your knees and quickly stole the feeling from everything below that point.

  “You’re not going in wearing clothes.” Sister Apple’s voice held a mixture of amusement and exasperation.

  Nona turned to stare defiantly up at the nun, her lips pressed together in a puckered scowl. Sister Apple stood with her arms folded. One silent second followed the next and at last Nona started to tug off her Caltess smock, stiff with Raymel Tacsis’s dried blood. She made a slow and awkward job of it: in the village even the littlest of the littles rarely ran around naked; the ice stood too close for that. Only around the harvest fires or in the all-too-brief kiss of the focus moon had Nona ever been as warm as there in the convent bathhouse.

  “Hurry along. I doubt you’re hiding anything unusual under there,” Sister Apple said, pulling back her headdress as the heat got to her too. She had long hair, red and curling in the wet air.

  Nona stepped out of her smock, arms folded about herself, with only the steam for modesty. She made a dart for the pool.

  “Wait!” Sister Apple raised a hand. “You can’t go in filthy. You’ll turn the water black.” She took a leather bucket from one of the many pegs lining the walls above the benches. “Stand over there.” She pointed to an alcove between the benches on the left.

  Nona did as directed, her whole body clenched. The alcove was wide enough for two or three people. The floor, tiled and perforated by finger-width holes, felt strange beneath her feet.

  “What—” An explosion of hot water stole the rest of the question. Nona wiped her eyes clear in time to see the misty outline of the nun at the poolside having refilled the bucket.

  “There’s a brush on the floor. Use it.” Another wave of hot water broke across Nona’s chest.

  Nona reached, dripping, for the brush. She’d never felt anything quite as wonderful as a bucketful of hot water. Not even fresh bread and butter came close. Not even eggs, or the bacon she had smelled cooking at the Caltess. If scrubbing herself with a bri
stly brush was the price she had to pay to get into a whole pool of it, she would scrub.

  Two buckets later Sister Apple declared her clean enough for the pool. Nona ran to the edge and lowered herself in, toes questing for the bottom. “How deep is it?” The rising steam blinded her, the heat delicious.

  “This end is shallow. On you . . . to your shoulders?”

  The water reached her neck before Nona’s feet found a smooth floor and she released her death-grip on the side. She stood, arms floating at her sides, sure that she had never been truly warm before.

  Time skipped a beat. It skipped an untold number of beats. Nona hung in the blind heat of the pool. A sharp clap brought her attention back to the world.

  “Out you get. You’re clean . . . well, cleaner.” Sister Apple stood at the water’s edge. In concession to the heat she had hung the outer cloak of her habit up on the pegs. She clapped again. “Out! We’ve both got things to do.” She pointed to the corner of the pool. “There are steps there.”

  Nona went to the steps, too limp to want to struggle back over the edge. At the top she found the nun holding out a large rectangle of thick cloth towards her. It didn’t seem to have any armholes or ties. “How do I . . .”

  Sister Apple snorted. “It’s a towel.” She thrust the thing into Nona’s hands. “Dry yourself with it.”

  Nona wrapped herself in the towel, finding it thick and luxurious. If it had arms she would have worn it.

  “Dry your hair too.”

  When Nona finished rubbing at her hair she was alarmed to see Sister Apple had sprung a second head, this one young and impish with short black hair, chin resting on the sister’s shoulder, cheek next to hers.

  “What is it?” the new head asked.

  “It’s a Nona,” Sister Apple replied.

  “A what?”

  “A ring-fighter from the Caltess.”

  The new head frowned. Two slim hands slid into view holding the tops of Sister Apple’s arms. “It looks rather small and skinny for that. Someone should feed it. It looks more like a farm-girl.” The second nun slipped away from Sister Apple. “Are you a farm-girl, Nona?”