and hauled herself up by the strength of her arms. Each lunge risked a chunk of the limestone fracturing away and taking her with it, but the blood was boiling in her veins, a sense of being wronged drove her, and she fought her way towards the heights, screaming with effort at first, then grunting as she saved her breath.
She climbed much faster than Ara who had to rely on fingers and toes, but would it be enough to close the gap? Rather than crab across the cliff aiming for the edge where Ara had pulled herself over at the back of Heart Hall Nona made a direct ascent. This brought her to the sheer southern wall of Blade Hall at a point where it stood flush with the edge of the Rock. Further to her left a ledge started that would allow her to track around the building, ducking and climbing a series of buttresses. This obstacle course was what had forced Ara across the rock-face towards Heart Hall. Nona just kept going up, plunging her blades into the stone blocks as she climbed Blade Hall. She hoped Sister Tallow never saw the damage.
On reaching the roof, Nona flipped herself up onto the sloping tiles using her core strength, and ran. She vaulted the roof ridge then slid down the far side. A leap from a height of twenty feet brought her to the ground amid a small barrage of dislodged tiles. She tucked into a roll to share the force of impact on feet and legs with shoulder, hip, and back. The roll brought her to her toes and she was sprinting as only a hunska can, straight across the plaza to where Sister Apple would emerge.
Nona could see the steps, the iron gate set further back, but no sign of Sister Apple or of Ara. Then she saw the nun, one hand reaching for the bars, the other thrusting a key at the lock. Ara came tearing around the corner, bare feet slipping from under her on flagstones still wet from the last rain. She rolled rather than try to right herself, and as Sister Apple pulled open the gate to ascend the last half a dozen steps, Ara reached the uppermost one on all fours.
The Poisoner reached the top step a few moments later, novices behind her, all heads turned the way that Ara had come, looking for Nona’s arrival in her wake. ‘One,’ the nun called out.
Nona rushed in from the other side, nearly knocking Ara down as she got to her feet.
‘Two …’ Nona heaved in a lungful of air. ‘Two novices … reporting as ordered.’
‘She must have cut the wire,’ Leenie said. Ketti and Alata, just behind Sister Apple, stared open-mouthed. The nun herself though fell to her knees, her hands reaching for Nona’s leg with a roll of bandage. ‘You’re bleeding, girl.’
Nona looked down at her crimson leg and the red footprints leading back behind her. A sudden vertigo, wholly absent when she clung above a drop of hundreds of yards, seized her and without a cry she fell into a darkness all her own.
10
Holy Class
Two days in the sanatorium proved sufficient for the patience trance to justify all the effort Nona had put into mastering it over so many years. The wire had sliced her shallowly but managed to open some large veins in her calf. Sister Rose sewed the wound closed and said that Nona would need a week of bed rest to recover from the loss of so much blood. After two days of staring from the depths of her trance out at the small garden cloistered beyond the sanatorium windows Nona felt herself ready to leave.
‘I should try walking.’ Nona sat up.
‘You’re a patient. The clue’s in the name.’ Ruli pushed her back down.
‘I’m an impatient patient.’ Nona wriggled up again.
Ruli tried to distract her with gossip. She had come to visit on her own and now looked as if she wished she had Ara to back her up should restraint prove necessary to keep Nona in bed. ‘Kettle’s home! They say she assassinated three Durn war-chiefs.’
‘They?’ Nona had already sensed Kettle’s approach through their thread-bond.
‘You know.’ Ruli waved the question away. Nona had never got to the bottom of who exactly the mysterious ‘they’ were. ‘I heard she went aboard a battle-barge to get the last one. Killed him out at sea. I hope it hurt.’ Ruli put her head down for a moment, the long, fair