As Wheel’s assistant, Sister Ice, opened the door Sister Pan came up the steps to join Apple and Iron. She cast a grim eye over the assembled novices.
‘Ancestor …’ Jula muttered a prayer.
‘She doesn’t look happy,’ Ruli hissed. ‘Is she there to own up to the forbidden book?’
If she was it would be the last nail in their coffin. Who else could have stolen Pan’s book but Ara or Nona? And Sister Pan never joined the abbess on the steps, not even when it had been Glass, someone she liked, rather than Wheel, someone she did not.
Wheel emerged and scanned the crowd with her customary glower. Nona’s fingers closed about the abbess’s seal in the depths of her habit pocket. It was hard to tell from the old woman’s face whether she had discovered it missing. She looked close to fury most of the time anyway.
The abbess thumped her crozier for attention. It put Nona in mind of High Priest Jacob stamping his staff at Abbess Glass’s trial.
‘Novice Nona, approach.’ Wheel glared in her direction.
Nona’s heart sank. She didn’t know if she would try to fight her way past nuns she had known for years, or surrender to injustice. She couldn’t take her friends with her. Certainly Jula wouldn’t come. The knowledge paralysed her.
Her cheeks prickled with shame or shock. Nona wasn’t sure which. Half-dazed, she walked towards the abbess’s steps. After Zole the old woman had abandoned all talk of the Argatha prophecy. There had never been a moment following Nona’s return when Wheel had indicated that she might be the Chosen One. The abbess had shown no interest in the interpretation that said four shiphearts rather than four bloods were the key to the Ark. With Zole gone the whole matter was over as far as Sweet Mercy was concerned.
Abbess Wheel scanned the assembly with a sour eye. ‘These proceedings are highly irregular but we live in pressing times and haste is required.’ She gestured imperiously with her crozier to a spot before the lowest step. ‘Stand there.’
Nona stood, summoned by the steel bell, the focus of the whole convent upon her, head bowed.
‘Well, Sister Pan?’ Wheel said. ‘Get on with it.’
Pan frowned and hunched her shoulders. She raised her voice. ‘Novice Nona has entered the Third Room of Path Tower. She is judged …’
Nona readied herself to run.
‘… to have passed the Path test. And I offer her the Blue of a Mystic Sister.’
Sister Iron coughed. ‘The novice has passed the Blade-test and is acceptable to wear the Red. I offer her a place as a Martial Sister.’
Nona looked up. Bewildered.
Sister Apple fixed her with a narrow stare. ‘Novice Nona has passed the wire-test and I can find no legitimate reason for her not to be offered the Grey of a Sister of Discretion.’
‘There you have it,’ Abbess Wheel snapped. ‘Choose. And hurry up. You’re not the last to take her orders today. There’s war on our doorstep.’
Nona glanced past Wheel, past the roof of the abbess’s house. Smoke streaked the sky as if Verity’s chimneys had crept to the foot of the plateau overnight. She opened her mouth then closed it. How close must Adoma’s troops be now?
‘Well girl?’ Abbess Wheel stamped her crozier again. ‘You have what you wanted. Take it.’
Nona returned her gaze to the steps, to Sister Pan, bowed beneath her years, dark eyes watching from a dark face, to Sister Iron’s level stare, to Apple, pale in the morning light, her headdress as ever unequal to the task, a red coil escaping.
Abbess Glass had said this day would come. She had said it on her deathbed and Nona had nodded and said that she believed it and felt guilty because she did not.
‘I …’ Nona looked from one sister to the next. Unexpectedly she thought of Zole, the girl from the ice-tribes with her quest to achieve perfection in this life rather than in the embrace of the Ancestor in the time beyond.
‘Well?’
‘A Holy Sister,’ Nona said. ‘I want to be a Holy Sister.’
A burst of exclamation rose behind her, a swell of muttered questions, quickly silenced as the abbess came down from her steps, pushing past the sister superiors.
‘A Holy Sister? You wish to be a Bride of the Ancestor?’ The old woman raised her hand and Nona resisted the urge to block the blow.
‘I do, abbess.’
Wheel clasped her bony fingers to Nona’s cheek. ‘A Holy Sister!’ She raised her voice. ‘A Holy Sister! For faith is what is needed in