Even without such immediately damning evidence, though, Nona didn’t think it would take long for Mistress Shade to establish her guilt. What Abbess Wheel would do in response didn’t bear thinking of, but Nona doubted a raid on the high priest’s vault would still be an option afterwards.
‘Nona!’ Ara now hung from the dormitory window on the third floor, shutters flung wide. ‘Are you sure? This is madness …’
Nona looked up at the friend she was asking to risk so much. Abbess Glass had told her to obtain the book by whatever means necessary. She had given Nona the instruction when her illness first bit, and she had repeated it on her deathbed, knowing that the empire’s armies were failing. Nona had promised the dying woman and she would hold to the promise with or without help, even if it meant defying the high priest and all his archons. She would do it even if she had to reduce the place to ruin and dig the book out of a pile of corpses.
‘Trust me.’ It was all the pleading she would do. And with a nod Ara withdrew.
At the scriptorium Nona sped to a rear window and jumped up, propelling herself with the window ledge to gain height so that she could check the library’s occupants. As was so often the case Jula sat alone at a desk, a number of yellowed scrolls around her. Nona dropped back to the ground and hurried in through the front entrance. Sister Scar was at her desk in the scriptorium’s main hall, illuminating a copy of the Book of the Ancestor. She favoured Nona with a narrow stare but said nothing.
‘Jula!’ Nona closed the library door behind her. ‘You—’ She swallowed her words at the sight of a tiny novice carrying a book from the shelves. The girl’s habit pooled around her feet. ‘We were never that small, were we?’
‘You were smaller than me when you arrived.’ Jula looked up from her work. ‘There was room for two Nonas in the habit they issued you.’ She turned her head towards the younger novice. ‘Yes, that’s the one. Thank you, Marta. Put it on the chair, if you will.’
‘We need to talk.’ Nona took Marta’s shoulders as she straightened from setting down the heavy book. ‘Alone.’ And steered the child towards the door.
Jula sighed. ‘Off you run, Marta. We’ll do some more on the seven-day.’
They both waited for the door to close.
‘What?’
‘I need the order,’ Nona said.
‘You need to get the abbess’s seal back to her somehow. I know it’s not used often but I’m amazed she hasn’t noticed it’s gone.’
‘That will have to wait.’ Nona held her hand out. ‘We’re doing this today.’
Jula reached into her habit and retrieved a leather tube, a parchment scroll inside. ‘Good.’
‘Good?’ Nona took the tube and checked the document. ‘I thought you’d be horrified.’
‘Come with me.’ Jula got up and walked towards the rear of the library. ‘I’ve something important to show you.’
Nona’s shoulders slumped as they always did when Jula tried to get her excited about some ageing book. She followed, frowning. Some of the writing was so old it almost seemed they used a different language, all thees and thous and words that had to be explained. Others still contained no single word known to her.
Jula squeezed past the rows of shelves stacked with scroll upon scroll and pushed right to the back. She shifted a board aside, sneezing at the dust. In the gloom and after the brightness of the reading room Nona could make out very little. Jula fiddled with a key. Nona hadn’t imagined there was space in the scriptorium for another chamber, some secret vault no doubt … The door cracked open and to Nona’s surprise daylight streamed in. Jula stepped through, beckoning her out, locking the door behind them. They stood behind the building with the barrel store and Sister Candle’s workshop before them. Nona must have passed the door they’d exited by a thousand times without ever noticing it.
Jula led on, out towards the end of the spur on which the convent sat. The cliffs to either side marched ever closer as the Rock of Faith’s plateaued top narrowed towards a point. Jula’s shadow leapt before them, as if it were eager to reach the edge first and leap off. Nona could imagine herself alone and that the shadow belonged to her. Shadows might seem simple things but somehow they pinned you to