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A noise like the end of the world shoved Nona, rolling her over and over. She closed her eyes, pulling her limbs in tight, and all around sand and debris began to rain down about her.
‘Nona?’
A cold wet something returned Nona to the hall and the sharp angles of her pain. She had been sinking into the endless comfort of deep dark cushions and the transition was not a welcome one.
‘What?’ She tried to push the wetness away.
‘Open your eyes.’
Nona opened them and found herself staring up at Clera, dripping rag in hand. Hessa stood at Clera’s shoulder, frowning her concern.
‘Are you all right? Anything broken?’
Nona groaned a wordless reply and moved a hand to her ribs.
‘Ara’s in so much trouble!’ Clera sounded awed. Her half-grin echoed conflicting emotions.
‘W-what happened?’
‘Didn’t you see? She went into the serenity trance and walked the Path!’ Clera leaned over to brush bits of the practice dummy from Nona’s hair. Behind her a wall of backs – novices facing the stands at the end of the hall. ‘Ara must have taken three steps at least, maybe more! Did you see what she did?’
Nona struggled to rise, clutching her side. Clera held her down for a moment then decided to help. Ducking under Nona’s arm she levered her into a standing position. Hessa tried to help but mostly got in the way.
‘Your head?’ Nona saw that the left side of Hessa’s face lay grazed and bleeding.
‘I felt her beating you.’ Hessa shrugged, acknowledging the link between them. ‘… and I fell over.’
Together they edged to the end of the line of Grey Class novices. Nona spotted Zole two places down, her tunic torn, small splinter wounds peppering her face.
Ara stood before the seating stand, Sister Tallow beside her, hand on her shoulder. Sister Wheel had arrived from somewhere and stood at the base of the steps to the seating. The high priest, flanked by Sherzal and Abbess Glass, had come to the front and was staring down at the novice in judgement.
Sherzal wore a broad smile as she leaned out over the rail. ‘An impressive display, young Jotsis,’ she called down. ‘It appears to have broken all manner of convent rules, though.’
Ara stared up at the emperor’s sister, making no reply.
The high priest made a curt gesture. ‘Novice Arabella, you have used the Path without sanction, without full training, and endangered one of my personal guests. It is my judgement that you be given twenty strokes of the cane, sentence to be carried out immediately.’ The high priest nodded to Sister Tallow. ‘Mistress Blade to deliver punishment.’
Sister Tallow steered Ara back into the hall, pushing her ahead, and Ara made no protest, still dazed perhaps.
‘Maybe …’ Sherzal drew the word out, her voice somehow stopping everyone, despite appearing conversational. ‘Maybe, as young Arabella is rumoured to be the Argatha, it would be fitting for her Shield to take the beating for her? After all, it was her Shield’s failure that prompted the poor girl’s indiscretion.’
‘Surely that would set entirely the wrong example. And besides, Zole—’ Abbess Glass had more to say but the high priest overrode her.
‘It would be unusual in the context of our convents, honoured Sherzal, though I quite understand that these practices are common among the highest families. Arabella herself may well have been raised with a whipping girl to receive her punishments for her.’
‘I know I was.’ Sherzal smiled. ‘How my tutors used to beat poor Susi. I never did seem to learn my lesson though.’
‘It would perhaps be inappropriate here, honoured Sherzal.’ High Priest Nevis almost cringed, as if it hurt his mouth to utter any form of contradiction aimed at the emperor’s sister. ‘Even when the novice is of royal ancestry. Our recruits leave worldly attachments behind them when they join us.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Nona raised her voice and took a step forward.
‘What?’ The high priest turned from Sherzal, blinking.
‘I will do it,’ Nona said.
‘See,’ Sherzal gestured with an open hand. ‘The girl is ready to be punished for her mistakes.’ Her smile broadened. ‘If only all peasants were so obliging.’
‘Well …’ Nevis frowned. ‘If the novice is willing …’ He glanced towards Abbess Glass but too quickly to allow her a response.
Sister Wheel advanced from the steps, producing a long cane from the folds of her habit, a black strip of wire-willow, thin enough to cut with each blow.
‘I told you.’ Zole spoke quietly behind Nona. ‘That I would make you bleed.’
26
‘Bite on this.’
Sister Tallow offered Nona a leather strap.
‘Why?’ Nona asked.
‘It will give you something to do.’
Nona shook her head, keeping her eyes on Sister Tallow’s. The old woman returned her gaze. She had the kind of face that was hard to imagine showing any emotion, a mask of leathery skin, small, tight wrinkles, seams of old scars, cheekbones making sharp angles, her mouth a short and bitter line. Nona always thought of Mistress Blade as old, though no age showed in the way she moved. Sister Rose had said hunskas race through their days: perhaps Mistress Blade and the Poisoner had shared a class once, Sister Apple still sweet, ambling through a long life while Sister Tallow’s candle burned at both ends and lighted her way to dusty death.
Nona’s thoughts occupied her as Sister Tallow checked the straps securing her wrists above her head. The leather bound her to the lowest of five iron rings set into the wall. Sister Tallow stepped away, leaving Nona facing the stonework, naked. Her habit had been removed to let the lash land; her skirts and smalls taken to save them from the blood. Many of her classmates had gasped as she stripped and they saw for the first time the dark and mottled patchwork of bruising all across her back, ribs, and thighs. Not Zole’s work – though that would show soon enough – but Darla’s from the day before.
‘Ready?’ Sister Tallow asked.
‘Yes.’ Nona hadn’t forgotten the Grey: two years of convent living hadn’t taken it from her. Sister Wheel called her a peasant still, and if peasants knew anything, it was how to suffer and how to endure.
The wire-willow struck. Left shoulder to right hip, not a crushing blow like the ones High Priest Jacob had struck against Four-Foot, but a cutting one, a shockingly painful line, like acid, burned in and bleeding out into muscle and bone. Nona screamed. She hadn’t set her mind to silence – she put no stock in sullen defiance. She screamed out the agony as a wordless curse, a promise of violent retribution, a vow that if Zole or any other came against her outside the rules of the hall she would cut their heart out.
The next lash struck across the first, and Nona roared her defiance, not a girl’s shriek but something deep and guttural, a noise she hadn’t known herself capable of. Another lash and another. Nona saw all four blows as bright and intersecting lines across the backs of her eyes. A fifth. She roared again, pure threat, animal and free of complication. A hesitation before the sixth, as if she’d given even Mistress Blade pause.
A seventh. Nona’s hands tore at the stone, jolting the straps about her wrists and the iron ring above. Eight. The bright lines wove tight into a single writhing cord of light burning crimson and gold across her vision. Nine. Ten. Nona could no longer tell if she were shouting: each new line the wire-willow scored into her flowed into the blazing path before her, becoming a single rope twisted from the whole. It hung before her mind’s eye, wrapping about itself, twisting, loops of bright thread seen here and there as when wool is woven into yarn. Eleven. Twelve. Nona’s back felt molten: she could feel the blood trickle across her buttocks, down her thighs, feel each drop as if it were burning metal, liquid from the inhuman heat of furnace and forge. But what burned more were the eyes of her enemies upon her: Zole and Sherzal. Nothing else mattered, not novice, or nun, not the high priest, or Mistress Blade striking the blows … just the eyes of her enemies, heavy upon her with the weight of their satisfaction.
