Kitabı oku: «Grey Sister», sayfa 3
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‘I hear you’ve been making friends in your new class.’ Ara sat herself down beside Nona, golden hair frothing around her shoulders.
‘How—’
‘Ruli told me. You know there’s nothing happens at Sweet Mercy without Ruli knowing minutes later. I think it’s her secret marjal talent. You have your claws, Ruli has gossip-magic.’ Ara nodded at Ruli, crossing the novice cloister to join them.
‘I heard you put Joeli in the sanatorium!’ Ruli sat heavily on Nona’s other side, habit billowing around her, cheeks red with excitement.
‘I hardly touched her.’ Nona frowned. Joeli had come to the Academia Tower with a shawl around her neck. In the corridor outside the lesson she came up to Nona and held her gaze for a long moment, pale green eyes fixed upon Nona’s black orbs without a flicker of fear. ‘Hessa’s name is so important to you? And yet you’ve never even visited the spot where she died. If you really thought Yisht killed Hessa … wouldn’t you want to find her murderer?’ She turned away then with just a hint of a smile, her words echoing in Nona’s head.
A minute later Sister Rail had called the novices into the classroom. Inevitably she spotted Joeli’s neck scarf and asked about this departure from the novice uniform. Joeli had, in a croaking whisper wholly absent in the corridor, related a lurid tale of being throttled. Sister Rail had sent her to the sanatorium to be checked over and had fixed Nona with a steely eye. Sister Rule had been huge, straining every seam of her habit. Her replacement, Rail, was a short, painfully thin woman whose habit flapped around her. Both nuns controlled their class with a very firm hand, but Rule’s had at least been fair and she had welcomed questions, valuing cleverness of any kind. Although she’d endured just a handful of lessons so far it seemed clear to Nona that Sister Rail most valued the ability to recite what the mistress said. She appeared to consider questions to be a form of stupidity and contrary ideas tantamount to mutiny.
Nona looked around at her friends on the cloister bench. ‘Really. I had a hand on Joeli’s neck but I held back. I didn’t choke her.’
The pause, just a beat of silence, reminded Nona that even friends needed a moment to swallow unlikely statements, true or not.
‘Rosie won’t be taken in by a pretend croak,’ Ruli said. ‘She’ll send Joeli on her way soon enough.’
But Joeli hadn’t returned to class. She wasn’t in the cloister either, and Joeli loved to hold court beneath the centre oak during breaks. Nona glanced at her friends. They had seen her rages, back before she started to master Keot, and those hadn’t been pretty scenes. Fortunately Zole had suffered the worst of them, mostly out on the sands of Blade Hall, and had never complained … probably because she usually won the fight. And even when Keot had his hooks set deep into the meat of her emotions Nona had never used her flaw-blades or raised her hand against a novice not training for the Red.
‘So, senior novice!’ Jula hailed. She bent over Nona’s shoulder, lowering her voice. ‘Are you too grand to come “below” with us now?’ She cropped her mousey hair short these days. It tickled Nona’s ear.
‘Try to stop me.’ Nona grinned. Jula had always been the most bookish and law-abiding of novices but since her discovery, close by the Seren Way, of a hidden entrance into the caves there had been no end to her enthusiasm for clandestine exploration.
Darla came to join them, shouldering her way through the building crowd. ‘Oh Ancestor, that Sister Rail will kill me with those lessons. I don’t care which emperor annexed what territory.’
‘You should!’ Ruli said. ‘Your father’s promotion is any day now, and generals are always annexing something.’
Darla scowled, sitting heavily on the bench. ‘And I don’t care which tax caused what revolt. The only good thing to happen in that lesson was Joeli leaving.’
‘Seriously, though.’ Ruli pushed aside the long pale fall of her hair and turned back to Nona. ‘Keep a lid on that temper. Sister Wheel would happily push you off the cliff and have Ara as Shield. And what would you do out there in the world if the abbess had to throw you out?’
Ara nodded. ‘Joeli’s trouble. She’s got half the mistresses on her side and a lot more friends inside the convent than you do. Then you have to think about how many friends she has outside. Just because they like her family’s money rather than her doesn’t stop them being dangerous. The Namsis are as well placed as my family, plus if you’re discharged from the order they’d happily murder you just to earn favour with the Tacsis.’
‘Sometimes I think I’d like to go out there and let them try.’
‘Nona!’ Ruli looked shocked.
‘What? It’s the only way I’m ever going to find Yisht. She’s not going to come back here and let me kill her.’ Nona scowled up at the grey sky, darkening by the moment. The cloister roofs opposite lay white, plastered by the ice-wind. The centre oak’s branches tossed randomly as the wind sought its direction, the Corridor wind trying to reassert itself. The tree’s leaves were wrapped so tightly against the cold that the branches seemed bare. ‘Joeli said bad things about Hessa. That’s what got to me.’
‘That’s how she is. Pulling strings, even if it’s not thread-work,’ Ara said. ‘She’s even got on the Poisoner’s good side because she’s so good at brewing up nastiness in a pot. So watch what you touch around her! And she poisons minds just as easily. The girl’s got a tongue on her. It wasn’t bad luck you fell foul of her straight off. She made it happen. Perhaps she even had it hot for Raymel Tacsis. She wouldn’t be the first Namsis matched to a Tacsis.’
Nona stared at the novices out on the gravelled yard, jaw clenched. Ara was right and the truth of it burned her. She’d been manipulated, moulded to the Namsis girl’s desire. Her eyes found Zole, alone as usual, sitting with her back to the centre oak, knees drawn up. Joeli could never sway Zole. The ice-triber gave out nothing for anyone to take a hold of. Since the bloodshed at the Devil’s Spine all those years ago Zole had perhaps spoken a hundred words to Nona. Most of them singular and days apart.
‘So, are we cave hunting tonight?’ Ruli asked.
‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ Darla was distinctly less keen than the rest of them when it came to exploring the tunnels riddling the Rock of Faith.
Ruli stuck her tongue out. ‘So, are we?’
‘It’s dangerous.’ Ara closed her fingers, signing that Ruli should lower her voice.
Ara didn’t just mean the chance of getting lost or injured. After the theft of the shipheart Abbess Glass had made clear that any novices exploring the convent’s undercaves would find themselves stripped of the habit, too untrustworthy to marry the Ancestor. And it seemed that all the rules were being more strictly enforced these days. Sister Wheel’s determination to root out wrong-doing more zealous from one day to the next.
‘It’s the only exciting thing we do outside Blade class.’ Ruli pouted. Jula had discovered the fissure hidden just past one of the many turns of the Seren Way, but it had been Ruli who convinced the novices that the caves it led to were just caves, not directly under the convent and so not the convent’s undercaves. On that basis they had begun their explorations. Discovery would undoubtedly bring punishment, but wouldn’t see them turned out into the world. Besides … they weren’t going to be discovered!
‘I …’ An uneasiness ran through Nona. Having no world outside Sweet Mercy to return to she had always been the one of them with most to lose. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t …’ Across the cloister she saw a face at a window, above the galleried walkway. Joeli? Watching her? Smiling with the mouth that had sullied Hessa’s name. Nona knew she wouldn’t find any clues to Yisht’s whereabouts on top of the Rock. And Joeli had been right. Nona had failed her friend. For three long years Nona’s struggles with mastering Keot and the enormity of the challenge in finding justice for Hessa had kept her from action. Perhaps there really was something in the caves that might help. Maybe they could find a passage to the convent undercaves. She owed it to her friend to visit the place where she had died. Maybe Hessa had left some clue for Nona that might lead to her killer. Even at twelve Hessa had had few equals when it came to thread-work and bathed in the power of the shipheart she might have accomplished miracles. ‘Oh hells, let’s do it!’
A raindrop hit the back of Nona’s hand. A fat raindrop, close to freezing. A heartbeat later a salvo scattered down around them. As one the novices joined the rush for the shelter of the galleries, and behind them the black sky opened, hurling down the rain as if each drop were intended to be fatal. By the time Nona looked again for the window where Joeli had been the rain had drawn a curtain across it.
Sister Pail found Nona with her friends as they huddled together watching the downpour. ‘You’re to appear before the convent table tonight at eighth bell, that’s Ferra, not Bray.’ She stood regarding Nona with mild distaste, her habit beaded with water.
‘Why? What’s she done?’ Ghena, small and dark, working her way out of a clump of Red Class novices.
Sister Pail kept her gaze on Nona. ‘The abbess doesn’t approve of novices trying to murder other novices.’
5
Abbess Glass
‘Any other business before we invite the judge to make his petition?’ Abbess Glass looked up from her notes. Along both sides of the long table nuns returned her gaze. All except Sister Kettle, still recording the minutes of the last item in the ledger of record. A chamber beneath the scriptorium held piles of such ledgers, filled with minutes, stacked to the ceiling in columns that marched off into the mildewed gloom. Enough minutes to constitute hours, weeks, decades. Never to be read. But authority must leave a trail or how else will it be held to account, and without checks, or at least the potential for them, authority, like any power, corrupts. ‘Other business?’
‘Nona Grey.’ Sister Rail laid a hand upon the table. It was, like the rest of her, little more than skin and bones, the long nails jagged at the ends.
‘Again?’ Abbess Glass sighed and flexed her own hand. The burn scar across her palm had remained stiff despite all of Sister Rose’s oils and unguents, allowing only limited movement. At times like these she let the echo of that old pain remind her that it had been Nona who saved her from the fire.
‘Again.’ Sister Rail inclined her head. On the table her nails dug at the wood.
‘Really?’ Abbess Glass had disliked Sister Rail within moments of her arrival from the Convent of Silent Devotion, but by that point Sister Rule had already departed on her sabbatical and nobody else could teach Academia to all four classes. Besides, Rail had other qualifications Glass required, and one did not have to like one’s pieces in order to play them. ‘Tell me.’
‘She attacked and very nearly maimed Novice Joeli within hours of joining Mystic Class.’ The bony hand on the table became a bony fist. The candle flames jumped as if Sister Rail had struck the wood and set the candlesticks shuddering.
‘I wonder that Sister Spire hasn’t brought this to my attention.’ Abbess Glass looked to the nun in question. Nona’s new class mistress was another recent addition to the convent, a young Holy Sister returned from three years’ ministering to the sick on the far borders of Archon Anasta’s see.
‘Sister Spire didn’t know anything about it.’ Sister Spire raised an eyebrow and turned her gaze on Sister Rail.
‘The girl came to me in confidence.’ Sister Rail made a sour pucker of her mouth. Rail’s family were a very minor branch of the Namsis tree and she had petitioned the abbess before on Novice Joeli’s behalf.
The abbess frowned, wondering what ‘almost maiming’ the novice had entailed. ‘And what do you propose we do?’ She could see her breath before her. White hands pulled her robes tighter. The cold never left the hall, the heating pipes lay freezing since the shipheart had been taken. ‘Do you have a punishment in mind, sister?’
‘Reduce the girl to convent helper,’ Sister Rail replied without hesitation. ‘That’s what she deserves. At the very least she must be returned to Grey Class and whipped before the Ancestor’s dome.’
‘I vote she be whipped and then reduced to helper.’ Sister Wheel leaned forward, elbows on the table. ‘Or banished.’
‘Perhaps we could hear some evidence first, sister? Before moving to sentencing.’ The abbess raised her hand to forestall Wheel’s reply. ‘Did someone think to summon the girls?’ She drank from the cup beside her, wishing the water were wine.
‘I saw them waiting in the corridor.’ Sister Apple had arrived late and sat at the far end of the table.
Abbess Glass gestured towards the door. The ice had been surging for three years straight, all the nations of the Corridor squeezed tight against their borders, bursting for war, and here she sat arbitrating the disputes of children.
Sister Apple’s footsteps echoed in the bare hall. She spoke a word to the junior nun outside and moments later Joeli Namsis limped in, one hand at her throat, blonde hair in disarray. Nona Grey stalked in behind her. She looked twice the size of the painfully thin stray the abbess had brought from Verity more than five years earlier. Her unnerving all-black eyes seemed to challenge each nun in turn. She stood as tall as several at the table now, still slim, but Abbess Glass knew the body beneath that habit was corded with muscle. The abbess frowned at the state of Nona’s hair, a short and spiky shock as consumingly black as her eyes. Efforts to tame it over the years had singularly failed.
Abbess Glass nodded to Sister Spire.
‘If you could outline your grievance, Novice Joeli?’
Joeli looked as if nothing but determination kept her upright, sagging around her unspecified injuries. She dragged her bad leg a step closer to the table and spoke in a cracked whisper, holding her neck. ‘I was watching the class at blade-path. The new girl fell and seemed to think it was my fault. She beat me to the ground and tried to kill me.’
‘Novice Nona?’ Sister Spire gave her an inquiring look.
‘I did knock her down. If I had tried to kill her she would be dead.’
Sister Spire frowned. She had blunt features, not unkindly arranged, marred by a burn that ran across her forehead and down the side of her face. ‘Novice Joeli, how did Novice Nona try to kill you?’
‘She …’ Joeli stifled a sob. ‘She strangled me. She said she would kill me. She said it before she even chose her bed! And … and then she wrapped her hands around my throat and …’ Another sob. ‘They had to pull her off me.’
‘Is this true, Novice Nona?’ Sister Spire asked.
‘It was one hand. And for a few seconds. But yes.’ Nona furrowed her brow, looking furiously at the ground.
‘And how long would you say you were throttled for, Novice Joeli?’
‘I … it could be minutes. I blacked out after a while.’
Sister Wheel banged her fist to the table and the shadows danced. ‘Any period of time one novice spends strangling another is too long. What are we even discussing? Take her habit. She’ll never be fit for her vows. Novice Arabella can take the Ordeal of the Shield and serve the Argatha in her place.’
High above them the shutters rattled as the ice-wind picked up strength. It always seemed to be an ice-wind these days.
Abbess Glass stared at the two novices. She knew Joeli to be manipulative and spiteful, unable to forget her family’s privilege. On the other hand she was a quantal prime with rare skill at thread-work and was an accomplished poisoner to boot. Nona of course was too precious to be lost to the Church, a three-blood, fast as a devil and with a temper to match. The abbess would not lose sight of the girl – but Nona might just have made keeping her in the order impossible. If she had deliberately injured another novice Nona had done about the only thing that could get Sister Rose to agree with Sister Wheel on something. Sister Rose spent too much time repairing bodies to forgive deliberate and unwarranted harm caused in anger. She wouldn’t let a training blade be put in any hand that might seek the life of another novice. Together both sister superiors could overrule the abbess.
Sister Spire frowned. ‘Have you anything to say in your defence, Novice Nona?’
‘I didn’t try to kill her. I barely squeezed her neck.’
Joeli straightened, lowering the hand from beneath her chin and pulling down the collar of her habit. Along both sides of her throat livid bruises told the story of fingers pressed deep, the black imprints surrounded by a halo of yellowing flesh. Sister Wheel drew in a sharp breath. Sister Rail thumped the table in outrage. ‘This! This is the work of someone who has no place within our order.’
Abbess Glass felt the tide turn. She presided over a convent where a score of novices could do the miraculous, some moving faster than thought, some weaving shadows, or fire, and some few walking the Ancestor’s Path, returning from it echoing with the power of the divine. And yet given a choice she would never once consider exchanging for any of that the gift the Ancestor had given to her. People were a magic and a mystery, no matter whether they were low-born or high, no matter whether it was soil or spells they turned their hands to, whether they were geniuses or fools. There were few who saw past faces, past status, past what people said to what they meant. Abbess Glass knew she didn’t see far into the puzzle, but she saw further than most, and it gave her an edge. An edge so sharp that most of those she cut didn’t even know it until it was far too late. Right now though, all her gift told her was that the room had shifted and Nona stood on the brink.
Across the table from Sister Wheel Sister Rose lowered her head, lips pressed tight, brow furrowed.
‘Are there no witnesses?’ Sister Kettle asked, looking up from her recording. Surprise registered on several faces. Sister Kettle never spoke up at convent table – it wasn’t her place to – less than ten years into her vows. She came to record, not to speak, but so soon returned from a long and arduous mission she might be forgiven her lapse.
‘There are many witnesses!’ Sister Rail brightened, showing narrow teeth in a narrow smile. ‘Let me—’
‘Joeli is a very popular novice.’ Abbess Glass spoke over Mistress Academia. ‘Many of the girls may be swayed by personal loyalties, turning suspicion into fact.’
‘Would you summon the accused’s friends instead?’ Sister Rail demanded.
‘We need a witness who would satisfy all of us as impartial and true.’ The abbess studied the grain of the table between her spread hands as if such a hope were impossible.
Sister Wheel took the bait. ‘The Chosen One was there!’ She looked up in triumph.
Sisters Tallow and Apple suppressed long-suffering sighs.
‘Let it be Novice Zole then.’ The abbess nodded to Kettle who hurried to the door. ‘At least nobody can accuse her of being friends with either party. Or anyone else. Nona and Joeli can wait outside.’
Kettle led the pair to the door and returned to the table having sent for Zole. The shadows clung to the nun as she walked, like cobwebs. They mottled her face as if they were stains running across her skin. When Apple had brought Kettle back, injured and changed, there hadn’t been one person at the table who had thought the convent still held a place for her, not now she walked in darkness as the Noi-Guin do. That had been a long debate. A long night and a longer morning. But at length Glass had steered the sisters to the decision she wanted.
‘You know there is no safe place for Nona if she were to leave this convent.’ Sister Apple spoke to the table in general, her gaze avoiding Sister Wheel and Sister Spire. We’ve waited more than a generation for a three-blood novice and now you want to send her out to our enemies because of a fight with a girl who’s never forgotten she was born Sis. Joeli’s two parts spite, one part privilege.’
‘She is a member of our sisterhood!’ Wheel glared across the table. ‘And she was nearly killed whilst under the protection of the Ancestor.’
‘Attempted murder is punishable by the oven. She would be of no danger to us then.’ Sister Rail spoke lightly as if the matter were of little consequence. ‘She would fall into nobody else’s hands.’
‘In Sweet Mercy we drown rather than cook,’ said the abbess, without humour. ‘And we have managed to avoid capital punishment for several decades. I do not intend to start again today.’
Raised voices in the corridor drew their eyes to the doorway. Abbess Glass prayed the novices weren’t fighting again. The argument drew closer and she relaxed, hearing a man’s complaint. A brief knocking and the heated debate outside continued.
‘Come!’
Sister Pail burst in. ‘He won’t listen! I told him to stay!’ She still looked like a child to Abbess Glass, just two years in the habit. It took an effort not to call her Novice Suleri. Behind her came Zole, ice-spattered and glowering at the world with impartial dislike. Behind Zole a tall white-haired man encompassed by the thickest of velvet robes.
‘Irvone!’ Abbess Glass rose to greet the judge. The other nuns followed suit, Sister Rose struggling to rise having sat too long and weighing three times what was healthy.
A young man, burdened under books of law, hastened around the judge to introduce him.
‘Judge Irvone Galamsis offers the Abbess of Sweet Mercy Convent his greetings and felicitations on this the ninety- seventh anniversary of Emperor Royan Anstsis’s victory over the Pelarthi insurrection.’
‘Ah, that. How could we forget?’ Abbess Glass broadened her smile into the most genuine imitation at her disposal. ‘Irvone! How nice to have the pleasure of your company again. It’s been what … three years?’
‘Forgive the intrusion, dear abbess.’ Irvone inclined his head towards a bow. ‘But on seeing the arrival of the young lady about whom I’ve come all this way to petition you I felt I must be heard.’
Abbess Glass considered having the judge escorted from the hall, perhaps even from the convent, but it would be an expensive pleasure. Better to hand over the small victory of a seat at the convent table in order to compensate the loss awaiting him. She gestured to a vacant chair and the judge’s assistant pulled it out for him.
‘Stand at the end of the table, Novice Zole.’ Abbess Glass indicated the spot before glancing towards Sister Pail. ‘Bring Nona and Joeli back, sister.’
Accused and accuser re-entered the hall a moment after the junior nun exited. Sister Apple craned her neck to watch Joeli with particular attention, her eyes narrow. Further along the table Sister Pan coughed and muttered about the cold.
‘Novice Zole, what can you tell us about this morning’s incident at blade-path?’ Abbess Glass favoured the girl with a warm smile, knowing that it would not be returned.
‘Novice Joeli accused Novice Hessa of helping Yisht to steal the shipheart,’ Zole said. ‘Nona knocked her down.’
‘I would have wanted to knock her down myself,’ Abbess Glass said.
‘I would have.’ Sister Tallow kept a flinty gaze on Joeli. ‘No “wanted” about it.’
‘And then Nona strangled her!’ Sister Rail said.
Zole shook her head. ‘She held Joeli’s neck. There was no strangling.’
Sister Wheel harrumphed in irritation but couldn’t bring herself to contradict the Chosen One. Beside her Sister Rail looked daggers at Nona then raised a hand towards Joeli. ‘Of course she was strangled! You can see it!’
‘No.’ Zole shook her head again. ‘It did not happen.’
‘But the bruises!’ Sister Rail banged the table. ‘You think we’re blind?’
‘The evidence does seem compelling.’ Irvone nodded, candlelight glinting on the gold circlet around his hair.
Zole shrugged.
‘This is nonsense.’ Rail looked around the table. ‘We should vote and then the abbess will decide.’
Abbess Glass puffed out her cheeks. There were only two votes that mattered, the rest she could overrule, but if the convent’s two sister superiors united against her the matter would have to go to the archons or the high priest. Such public dissent would weaken her position and Nona would likely be found guilty in any case. ‘Let us vote then.’
‘Guilty.’ Sister Rail folded her arms.
‘Innocent.’ Sister Apple frowned, still watching the novices.
‘I abstain.’ Sister Pan huddled within the range-coat she never removed these days.
‘Innocent,’ Sister Tallow said. ‘If Nona wanted the girl dead she would have cut her head off.’
As Mistress Spirit Sister Wheel could vote first with the other mistresses, but as a sister superior she could also vote last. She waved for the class nuns to vote.
‘Guilty.’ Sister Oak, Red Class mistress, looked down.
‘Guilty.’ Sister Hearth had replaced Sister Flint as Grey Class mistress and had witnessed the worst of Nona’s rages while she struggled to control Keot.
Sister Spire seemed unwilling to speak but at last spoke in a small voice. ‘Guilty.’
‘Innocent.’ Sister Fork of Holy Class smiled encouragingly at Nona.
‘Sister Wheel?’ Abbess Glass inquired.
‘I …’ The older nun goggled at her, jaw clenching and unclenching. ‘I am sure the Chosen One had told us what she saw … but …’ The words seemed to hurt her. ‘She may not have seen everything. And this novice is guilty of many crimes. So I say, guilty.’
‘Sister Rose?’
Sister Rose shifted her bulk unhappily in her chair. ‘I wish you had come to me, Joeli. I have salves that would have helped your poor throat.’ She looked at the abbess, brown eyes glistening. ‘I’m sorry … but I can’t sanction this level of violence against fellow novices, especially in one so talented in battle. What will come next? I—’
‘Joeli didn’t come to you?’ Abbess Glass asked. That didn’t sound like Joeli Namsis at all. The girl would go to the sanatorium with a splinter and try to stay for a week. Especially if she could lay the blame for the splinter at someone else’s feet.
‘No.’ Sister Rose shot the novice a sympathetic look. ‘That was unreasonable of me. She couldn’t be expected to brave an ice-wind in her condition. But if she had sent word I would have come. Sister Rail really should have told me.’
‘Why would you not seek Sister Rose’s attention?’ Sister Apple stood from her chair and advanced on Joeli.
‘I didn’t want to bother—’
‘You’re bothering all of us now, Joeli. You bothered Mistress Academia before lunch. And yet you didn’t present yourself to our own sweet Rosie to ease your suffering?’ She stalked around the novice, peering at her neck. ‘Show me your hands.’
Joeli instinctively hid them in the pockets of her habit. Apple reached out and took the closest one, pulling it towards her face, palm up. ‘Come.’ She led the novice to the table, holding the hand towards the candles. ‘See?’
‘I see four fingers and a thumb.’ Judge Irvone covered a yawn.
Sister Apple ignored him. ‘This yellow staining here. Do you see it?’
Abbess Glass leaned forward. The girl’s fingers were faintly yellow here and there, the colour of an old bruise almost faded from sight.
‘Wodewort and burn-cotton. Careful preparation with an alkali base gives you Ulhen’s ointment.’ Sister Apple released Joeli’s hand.
Sister Rose scraped her chair back and came to see. ‘It has a role in the treatment of some chronic skin conditions but you have to be pretty desperate to use it. The main side-effect is severe bruising.’ She stepped back and looked Joeli in the face. The novice bowed her head. ‘Oh, Joeli! You didn’t?’
‘She choked me.’ Joeli spoke softly and without conviction, staring down at her hands.
‘I’ve a pill that will get the truth out of you soon enough!’ Sister Apple turned to make for the door.
‘Stay.’ The abbess raised her hand. ‘Potions and pills have no role at convent table. We have no evidence of their accuracy nor Church sanction to rely on such.’ She ignored Apple’s raised eyebrows. Sometimes the nun’s enthusiasm for her own works overrode common sense. Such cards were not to be revealed or played over novices and before an audience like Irvone Galamsis. ‘I will say, however, that it seems impossible that we condemn Novice Nona to any harsh punishment on the basis of what we have seen and heard. Both of you girls are confined to convent this seven-day, and the next, and neither of you will eat lunch until the seven-day after that. If there is any more fighting between you I shall be asking Sister Tallow to break out the wire-willow. Now go. And count yourselves lucky! Run!’
The novices hastened to the door. ‘Not you, Zole.’
Zole turned as the other two vanished through the doorway. For a moment she seemed to be considering whether to obey. Then with a shrug she closed the door and returned to the table.
‘So, to your business, Irvone,’ Abbess Glass said. ‘You came with a petition concerning Novice Zole.’
‘Indeed. Once more I come seeking the return of a novice.’ He inclined his head, full of gravitas, consulting the notes his assistant had set before him. It had always amused Glass quite how closely the judge resembled the statues and images the heretic Scithrowl made of the Ancestor. The mane of his white hair and blade of his nose making him seem wisdom incarnate rather than the most corruptible of Verity’s three high court judges. Irvone cleared his throat. ‘Fortunately on this occasion the novice is to be returned to the bosom of her loving family rather than to her appointment with the gallows.’
‘And the loving family in question would be …’
