to Nona’s bed, trying to get her foot into her shoe.
‘You should be ready to run,’ Nona said.
Ara stood, frowning, her foot half in the shoe. ‘Where’s Jula going to run to? My father lives in a castle … Jula’s has rooms above an ink shop in Verity. And Ruli would have to cross fifty miles under Durnish occupation.’
Nona didn’t have an answer. She could have pointed out that Ara would have to cross more than twice that distance under Scithrowl occupation to reach her father’s holdings. And would likely find it smoking ruins, or home to one of Adoma’s royal cousins. If Lano Tacsis had spoken the truth the main Jotsis stronghold had already fallen.
Ruli joined Ara, white-faced at Nona’s bedside, and all the while Joeli smiled. Nona laced her shoes and wondered yet again if Joeli, with her key to Sister Apple’s stores, could really have been poisoning the abbess’s medicines. Or had Glass’s death, like so many evils in the world, been a simple matter of blind chance? Certainly the abbess had thought so. I’ll meet my son again in the Ancestor, so don’t cry, Nona Grey. She had taken Nona’s hand in the withered claw of her own, still scarred by the flame of that candle long ago. The fight matters. But in the end it is never truly won or lost, and victory lies in discovering that we are bigger than it is.
‘Where’s Jula?’ Nona could see no sign of her, and her bed lay empty.
‘An hour after we got back last night she took a lantern and went off to read that book.’ As Ara answered Jula appeared at the doorway, dark circles around her eyes, hair in disarray, and a look of mild panic on her face.
The opening of the door sparked a mass exodus, with Alata first out, pushing past a confused Jula. Within moments Nona and the rest of them were hurrying down the stairs, joining the stream of younger novices and the crush at the main door as everyone spilled out into the day.
Bitel’s harsh chimes ceased almost as soon as Nona left the dormitories. In the east the sun still occupied the notch that the Corridor put in the horizon and every shadow pointed to the abbess’s house.
Nuns and novices had begun to line up, organized by class, as Nona arrived. Bitel had rung out only a handful of times in her decade at the convent and on no occasion had the bell heralded anything good. Nona watched for church guards or the soldiers from last night. Finding none, she studied the disposition of the Red Sisters. If Abbess Wheel meant to detain them then given her low opinion of Nona’s piety she wouldn’t expect mere obedience to hold her in place while the yokes were brought out. Her heart sank as she saw that the Red Sisters were arrayed around the novices in a loose circle. Sister Tallow stood close at hand.
‘It looks like a trap,’ Ruli hissed.
‘Ruli, the abbess doesn’t need to trap us if she thinks we’ve done wrong.’ Jula sounded bone-tired, as if she had been reading the whole night. ‘Abbess Wheel speaks for the Church, and we obey.’
Nona understood then that breaking the rules once to get the book was as far down the road to damnation as Jula was prepared to go. If Abbess Wheel ordered her surrender, she would not be running. It spoke volumes that Jula had been prepared to come with her when she said she couldn’t find the book alone. Of all of Nona’s friends perhaps Jula was the only one with true faith, not only in the Ancestor but in the Church as an institution. Something she intended to devote her life to in the black habit of a Holy Sister.
‘All the Reds are here. Even the ones who should be on patrol.’ Ara kept her voice low, shuffling into the line beside Nona. ‘The Greys are positioned too, from what I can see.’ She motioned upwards with her eyes towards the big house. ‘Bhenta’s on the roof.’
Abbess Wheel did not emerge until all the novices were gathered and in order. Sisters Superior Rose and Rule stood one step below the abbess’s doorway, Sister Apple a step below them and with her, Sister Iron. It hurt Nona to see the woman in Sister Tallow’s place and she looked again for the older woman in the crowd, finding her still close, beside Sister