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One of the Academics in particular drew Nona’s eye. A sky-blue robe covered his painful thinness, though the ridging of his spine could be seen in the length of his neck, and the small head atop it held a skull’s grin. He watched her, eyes pale and without expression. She had seen him before: at the Caltess beside Raymel Tacsis. Perhaps the Academic’s magic had saved her enemy’s life, or maybe it had been the demons hiding beneath the gerant’s skin. Had it been the Academic who poisoned her in the moment she tried to take Raymel’s life? Was he here today under Tacsis orders to finish the job? Nona froze, feeling the jaws of a trap around her. She could tell Sister Pan, but what offence would the Academy take? Besides, the nun would just repeat the abbess, reminding her what Thuran Tacsis had pledged to the emperor himself. That the matter was closed. Nona ground her teeth as the nausea rose again.
The oldest of the Academics got to his feet, a white-haired man whose skin looked to have been terribly burned long ago and whose eyes held a milky blindness. ‘We welcome the last of our guests – Sister Pan of Sweet Mercy Convent, and three novices of an age with our year three students.’ He paused as a polite smattering of applause ran its course through the galleries above. ‘My apologies, Mistress Path, but time presses. If you are prepared we will commence immediately.’ He gestured to the stools beside the door and Sister Pan motioned for the novices to sit.
Five of the eight stools were occupied. Three Academy students sat in grey tunics, an intense blonde girl closest, then Chara and Willum. Chara looked as severe as Nona remembered her, black hair cropped so close to her skull you could see the darkness of her skin beneath. Willum seemed perhaps a touch less nondescript than he had been, two years leaving his chin more defined and his eyes brighter. Two novices in the brown robes of the Ancestor brotherhood occupied the last two stools: a large sandy-haired boy with red cheeks, and Markus, offering a twitch of a smile. Nona staggered to a free stool without waiting for permission and fell onto it, setting her back to the wall. Hessa settled beside her.
The Academic cleared his throat. ‘We will begin with …’ He bent to set his ear by the mouth of the angular woman seated to his right. ‘With Novice Hessa and Proxim Chara.’ He clapped his hands.
Sister Pan got to her feet with a sigh and walked across to a door in the left wall, beckoning Hessa. The Academic seated to the right got up and accompanied Chara through a door in the right-hand wall. Sister Pan had promised to explain what would be expected of each of them before the bouts, and Nona supposed that this was it. Her own chances of doing anything more than collapsing seemed remote.
While both Hessa and Chara were ensconced in the side rooms the black-robed Academic returned to set an iron basket of burning coals midway between the two doors. He retreated and a minute or so later a gong struck.
‘Chara’s a fire-worker then.’ Markus, two places along from Nona. She turned to look at him, managing to echo his nervous smile through her pain. ‘Students need an easy source.’
The gong sounded again and both doors opened to reveal the contestants. Chara hurried across to the coal basket and hunched over it, so close that Nona thought her hair must be sizzling. Hessa limped out on her crutch, frowning in concentration as she stared at Chara. Nona had expected Hessa to emerge deep in serenity. Hessa might not be able to manage a step unaided in the common world but on the Path she had more nimble feet than Ara, and both of them far outdid Nona, who was still unable to make more than glancing contact.
‘What’s she doing?’ Nona’s pain made the words a gasp.
‘Thread-work,’ Ara said.
Chara stood and the fire was in her eyes. She shaped her hands and flames flared among the coals, not dying back but coiling and rising until they became a serpent that wrapped around her. Somehow the snake’s heat failed to reach Chara, her skin remaining unblistered, her tunic not even singed. But Nona’s pain built from bad to worse, ringing through her bones. She hunted the inner pockets of her habit with fingers curled around her distress. After an ecstasy of fumbling she brought out the vial containing the black cure.
‘Concede, novice?’ Chara asked, her scorn evident. She raised an arm towards Hessa, the serpent coiling along it, raising its head to strike.
Hessa’s frown smoothed away as if she had in that moment solved a puzzle. ‘There’s a thread that binds your fire to the coals.’ While she spoke her hand moved, finger and thumb pinched together as if tugging on some invisible string. She stood there, her fingers working, the wisps of her hair lifted on a breeze that wasn’t there.
‘What?’ Chara’s turn to frown. Faster than it rose, the serpent spiralled back down her arm, back around her body, back into the fire-basket.
‘They’re still bound together,’ Hessa said.
Chara curled her lips, raised both hands in fists. Once again flames guttered up from the glowing coals, less fiercely than before, reaching for her tentatively.
‘And all the parts of the coal are still connected …’ There was wonder in Hessa’s voice, as if the proximity of the Ark were revealing in astonishing detail something she had only glimpsed before. ‘So many …’ She leaned on her crutch and raised both hands, cupped, fingers parted, as if sieving strands from the air. The flames above the fire-basket sucked back into the glowing coals, smoke swirled, faster than was natural, and downwards, gathering itself from the heights above. And in the space of moments, despite Chara’s snarling resistance, the glow faded, the coals darkened, the fire vanished as if it had never been.
Chara fell to the floor, gasping, as though she had been holding her breath all this time and only now could breathe. Hessa stumped forward to offer a hand up, a genuine smile on her face. ‘Thank you for the lessons, proxim.’
Chara shrugged her off and returned scowling to her seat. Hessa returned to sit between Ara and Nona. Behind the table the Academics set to a whispered discussion and in the galleries above onlookers murmured their own observations to each other.
‘Sister Pan tells you what to expect,’ Hessa said. ‘We’re matched so that we don’t end up hurting each other.’
Nona sat as still as she could, the black cure held so tight in her knotted fist that she feared the flask might break. ‘What was Chara doing?’ she gasped past gritted teeth, wanting to distract herself.
‘A lot of marjals work the elements. Air most commonly. It’s easiest with something light. Then fire. Water is rarer. Earth very rare.’ Hessa frowned. ‘Do you think she didn’t remember me? She looked like she didn’t know me … Are you all right, Nona? You look terrible.’
Nona waved the questions away. ‘How do you know this stuff? Sister Pan never taught us that. Did she?’
Hessa shrugged. ‘She covered some of it before you joined Red Class. Most of it I read in the library while you lot were punching and kicking each other.’
The senior Academic took to his feet again. ‘The next pairing is Novice Arabella and Proxim Willum.’
As before, Sister Pan went into one room with Ara, and an Academic took Willum into the opposite room. The fire-basket was removed and nothing put in its place. The two contestants emerged at the sound of the gong, Ara golden and glorious, Willum pasty and nervous. His student tunic had been replaced by a long-sleeved robe reaching to his feet and set all about with sigils stitched in gold thread. It looked to weigh as much as he did.
