She made to head back into the warm glow of her entrance hall, then turned, remembering. “I have with me the renowned warrior and tracker Tarkax, also known as the Ice-Spear. Tarkax will be acting as Novice Zole’s bodyguard in Yisht’s unexpected absence. He will not be aiding her on the ranging unless in exceptional circumstances.” She turned and went back into her house, shutting the door with a thump that had an air of finality about it.
“The Ice-Spear!” Jula almost squeaked. “I’ve read about him!”
“You have not!” Darla, hulking above the scribe’s daughter.
“I have too!” Jula looked up at Darla through the tunnel of her hood. “He’s famous! He’s in the story-sheets they sell in Verity on seven-day outside the Abon Library. The ice-tribes have songs about him!”
Nona turned and leaned into Ara. “He works for Partnis Reeve, I’m sure of it.”
“Which makes him a Tacsis man,” said Ara.
On Nona’s other side Clera leaned in. “Don’t Thuran Tacsis and Sherzal hate each other?”
“They certainly haven’t been friends these past few years. Zole must be horrified.” Ara didn’t sound displeased and although Nona couldn’t see her face she knew the Chosen One would be smiling. Ara didn’t bear grudges, but the emperor’s sister and everything associated with her was the exception to that rule.
Clera pulled at Nona’s arm. “If he’s Tacsis then you might reconsider how you feel about Zole . . . The enemy of my enemy may be my friend.” She shrugged. “Of course the friend of my friend is often a jerk.” She jabbed a black-gloved thumb surreptitiously in Ara’s direction.
Sister Tallow came down the steps, raising her hand for the novices to gather around her. Nona came to stand by Tarkax and he looked down at her and grinned. “My friend from the Caltess.”
“You told me you were a ring-fighter,” Nona said.
Tarkax raised his hands, one to the east, one to the west. “And what is the Corridor if not a ring?”
“You lied to me.” Nona scowled.
“Pay attention to your nun.” Tarkax slapped her around the back of the head without malice.
“. . . from where we will journey to the starting station on the margins of the Harran Fens. After that you’ll be on your own.” Sister Tallow looked around the group then led off along the Cart Way.
Nona followed, rubbing the back of her head and wondering how Tarkax got a name as silly as the Ice-Spear.
• • •
“I DON’T KNOW how any of us is going to survive this,” Jula said.
The Grey Class novices had been trudging along behind Sister Tallow for several hours and Jula had expressed the same thought in at least eight different ways since they came down off the Rock of Faith.
“Grey Class goes ranging every year, Jula. Croy has been three times! She’d been in the class a week the first time.” Ruli seemed happy to be out and on the move, her cheeks red, her eyes bright.
“But we’ve had no training!” Jula limped on, complaining that her shoes were rubbing.
“We’ve had some,” Ara said. “And this is training!”
“Stop whining, Jula.” Clera trudged on without looking left or right. “It’s quite unusual for anyone to die on a ranging.”
They came into the open from a small valley and the ice-wind caught them by surprise, howling across an expanse of barren fields. Nona staggered before leaning into the blast. Two novices ahead of her were driven to their knees. Tarkax just bent his head and went strolling along behind Zole as if it were nothing more than a stiff breeze.
Midday saw them huddled in the lee of a cattle barn with the sun dominating the sky above them, huge and crimson, but offering little heat, and what it did give, the wind snatched away the moment it arrived. Nona munched her bread and cheese, staring at nothing, her mind on Raymel Tacsis. Had it been his hand behind the shadow-worker’s attack at the Academy? Or had the senior Academic’s protest been genuine—had some enemy within the church itself set Markus or his friend to drive the girl mad with rage? She couldn’t think it was Markus, but perhaps for him Giljohn’s cage was just a memory, a dry fact that could be taken out and studied without emotion.
Thuran Tacsis had sworn in court, sworn before the emperor’s throne, that the matter was finished. Her name, Nona Grey, had been spoken in the emperor’s hearing: her mother would be . . . Nona shook the thought away. She’d been covered in blood when she’d left the village, and though the blood had long since been washed away, the stains would never be gone.
“They say there’s trouble on the coast.” Darla broke across Nona’s thoughts.
“Trouble?” Nona recalled the pirate raids. Without them Sherzal wouldn’t have dared come to Verity and risk her brother’s displeasure.
“The Durnish have come in force. Regular troops on the pirate barges, just not in uniform. And Crucical’s summoned General Cathrad from the Scithrowl border.”
Nona looked up at Darla. “How do you know this stuff?” It was normally Ara who knew things about the world.
“My father’s an officer on Cathrad’s staff. He’s come ahead of the general to gather intelligence.” Darla nodded. “He says corsairs have come ashore and sent raiding parties along the northern ice while the emperor and Velera are tied up around Honisport.”
“So . . . don’t go too close to the ice then?”
“Not unless you want to join in the war,” Darla said.
“We’re at war?” Nona hadn’t realized it was that bad.
“We’re always at war.” Darla shrugged. “As long as the ice is closing we’ll always have war—that’s what my father says. The only difference is what they call it. Right now they’re calling it raids. The church will have to play its part. What did you think has been keeping the abbess so busy? They say she’s even been to court!”
“And they’re sending us out ranging? In a war?” Nona asked.
Darla shrugged again. “Technically we’ll be fleeing a war. The Kring is in the opposite direction. That’s probably why they picked it this year. Last year we had to get to Hern’s Island off the coast. And anyway, the ranging is one of the oldest parts of a nun’s training. They say the training fits the times. If it’s open war ahead of us then it’s not so surprising they send us out in this . . .”
• • •
MARCHING DOWN THE tracks and lanes of the empire’s heartland brought back memories of travelling with Giljohn, though the roads he had chosen were more obscure and there had been far less walking involved. Even so, when the ice-wind blew everywhere took on that same bleak look. It wasn’t without a certain beauty to it. A thin screed of icy snow covered the fields, hiding the crops. Most would recover—farmers grew the breeds that would—but some would always gamble on a long enough stretch of Corridor wind to sow and harvest something more valuable and vulnerable. The hedgerows stood thick with ice, coating every twig, blunting the thorns, glistening, gleaming, surreal, holding everything behind glass, for observation, not to be touched, put in storage . . . for a while. One day it would be forever.
In the woods screw-pine and frost-oak stood hung with icicles, a multitude of them, hanging thickly from every limb, some longer than Nona’s arm. At the height of the ice-wind the focus couldn’t wholly melt the ice and every night the icicles would grow and multiply, until the wind finally relented or the great weight of the ice tore the tree apart. Men had died passing through forests in the ice-wind. When the focus came every branch of every tree could shed a man’s weight and more in yard-long icicles in minutes, turning any wood into a nightmare of plunging ice-spears.
• • •
BY EVENING THEY’D passed the town of Averine and come over a low range of hills to a ridge from where they could see the River Rattle snaking its way towards the Marn. Sister Tallow found them lodging for the night in a hay barn close to the river and the unimaginat
ively named village of Bridge that sat on both sides of a long stone-built bridge spanning the Rattle.
“You know why they call it the Rattle?” Jula asked as Nona worked herself in amongst the hay.
“No.” Two years ago a hay bed would have felt like luxury. Now it was sharp and itchy and the barn an ice-box. Sweet Mercy might have armed Nona with many of the arts of war but it’d made her soft in other ways. The ranging was an overdue lesson—one that she intended to pay close attention to.
“When the melt-surge comes down—that’s just before dawn here—the waters run so fast that all the stones in the riverbed rattle over each other. I read it in Hennan’s Geographical History of the Quantal See.” Jula wriggled against a hay bale, frowning. “I’m not going to be able to sleep here . . .”
“Try,” said Nona. “You’re unlikely to get a better bed tomorrow night.”
• • •
THE CONVENT HAD chartered a boat to bear the ranging party to Harran Fens. It looked to Nona like the rowing boats the fishermen used on the White River, only ten times as long. It had a tall mast folded into the length of its hull and a sail wrapped tight; both would be raised for the return journey upstream, but to bear the novices to the fens the Rattle’s current was all that was required.
Nona, Ara, and Clera sat together in the prow, braving the weather. The wind’s blasts raised flurries of ripples across the river, driving them forward before overwhelming them and beating them flat again.
“I’m going to be something,” Clera said, not looking at either of them.
“You are something,” Nona said.
“I wasn’t born to be a high Sis. I’m not a two-blood with prophecies hanging off my shoulders. But I’m going to be something. Whatever it takes.”
“You sound as if you think we’re in your way,” Ara said.
Clera looked around as if noticing them for the first time. “We’re a new generation in an old world. It’s all ours for the taking.” She returned her gaze to the water. “It just requires that you pay the price. That’s how the world works. Trade and loss. Supply, demand, prices to be paid. At least that’s how it works for those of us who aren’t born with fortune written in our blood. You do things you don’t want to do, for people you don’t like, and you keep on doing them, because you know that one day things will change and you’ll be the one doing the telling.
“I’ve got a plan. I can’t see how all the pieces fit yet, or even what all the pieces are yet.” She held a gloved hand out as if the components lay there in her palm. “They’re bright and sparkling and complex—but somehow I’ll fit them all together, and on that day I’ll break the world and make another.”
Ara snorted. “Are you practising a part for a play, Clera? Or have you been sniffing what’s left of the stores Nona stole from the Poisoner?”
Clera put her head down. “I’m just saying what’s on my mind. What’s been on my mind for a long time. The ranging’s a dangerous thing, whatever they tell you. Not everyone makes it back. So if you’ve got something to say, the boat’s a good place to say it.”
Nona discovered that she didn’t have anything to say and they sat in silence.
The boat dropped anchor alongside an icy stretch of beach, the bank behind rising in an earth cliff to overhanging sod and ice-rimed bushes beyond. Jula was the first ordered ashore, jumping from the prow into the shallows. She looked a small and lonely figure, black against the shingle, waiting for the other novices as the boatmen struggled to keep their craft steady in the current.
Ruli was next off, followed by a stream of her classmates. Nona followed Ara. The shingle gave onto earth before reaching the six-foot bank. She scrambled up, muddy-handed. Before her the land stretched out towards a desolate expanse of frozen mire, spotted with bulrushes in brittle stands.
Tarkax came last, clearing the shallows with a leap from the side of the boat. He strode up the beach grinning. “I’m here to watch over that girl.” A loud declaration, finger pointed squarely at Zole. “You, you, and you.” He jabbed at the cluster of novices atop the bank. “I won’t lift a finger for. Nuns’ orders. Run into trouble and I’ll watch you die. So pretend I’m not here.” He sprang up the bank in two bounds and ambled off to inspect the ground.
• • •
SISTER TALLOW ADDRESSED the novices from the boat’s prow. “You’ll need to get to the Kring within four days, novices.” Behind her the boatmen busied themselves with the matter of turning their vessel about. “The countryside will be dangerous. It’s possible there will be Durnish raiding parties, but worse than them by far will be our own people. There’s not much that’s less predictable than a frightened peasant. They’ll be on edge, suspicious, ready to strike first and without warning. Our people may also be your salvation: the kindness of strangers is often all that sustains us. If your groups are too large you will be unlikely to find anyone to take you in. If they are too small you will be vulnerable to the ill-intentioned.”
The keel ground against the riverbed and two crewmen with long poles worked to turn the boat as it nosed out into the current. Sister Tallow raised her hand in farewell. “Ancestor go with you, girls.”
“I hope the Ancestor is bringing sacks of food and a warm tent.” Nona managed a grin she didn’t feel. Seeing Darla struggling to climb the wet bank, she jumped down to help, only to find herself ankle-deep in freezing slime. “Bleed on it. I hate mud.”
Darla snorted a laugh and got up the bank by herself with a lunge.
The crewmen leaned on their poles, the boatman turned the rudder, and with a shifting of shingle the boat pulled forward into deeper water. The raised sail filled with the ice-wind and within the space of a minute Nona could cover Sister Tallow, the crew, then the whole boat all with one raised thumb at the end of an outstretched arm.
Suddenly very alone, despite her classmates grumbling on the bank, Nona looked down to see the mud starting to close over the tops of her shoes. “Damn.”
40
WHILE THE DOZEN novices argued over how many groups they should divide into and which of them would be in which group Nona took herself to the side and watched the river. She knew the direction they had to head in. East, down the Corridor. In the warmth of the convent it had sounded simple enough.
“You’ll find your way easy—you grew up in the wild.” Alata had mixed scorn with jealousy.
Nona hadn’t bothered to explain that when you lived in the Grey on the sharp edge of starvation you didn’t spend your days trekking through the wild, you spent it trying to scrape a living from the mean soil. The village had its hunters who took to the wild in search of game, but for every hunter with their forest-craft there were ten farmers who knew how the winds turned and what to plant where who had never gone more than five miles from the earth-floored hut where their mothers had brought them squalling into the world.
When your path lay between two mile-high walls of ice it sounded hard to get lost. But on the ground with a forest rising about you it was easy to wander a random spider’s crawl, lost in the space of a few dozen acres, despite your best efforts to steer a straight course. The Corridor might be a scant fifty miles wide, but walking it, with your view hemmed in by tree and hill, it might as well be ten thousand miles wide. Nona thought of the globe in Sister Rule’s classroom: Abeth in white with its narrow girdle of colour, so thin you might miss it at first glance. So many things depended on perspective—on where you stood, and when.
In her class Sister Pan had shown the novices those drawings that the mind could see two ways, or three, or even four. Serenity, clarity, patience were all like that. Nothing changed except the way you looked at the world. One minute you saw it as you had always seen it, but with a mental step to the left, and with the right perspective, everything could flip, everything could find a new interpretation, and in a moment the whole world would change.
Nona wondered if the same
were true with the wider mysteries of the world. Could Abbess Glass look upon the tangled mess of church and court politics, on the complex web of favour and obligation, and with a small change in the way she saw it, a new emphasis on some seemingly unimportant interaction, suddenly perceive it with new clarity? See it as some simple engine that applying pressure here, pressure there, could drive in the direction of her desires?
Were friendships like that? Could Nona step outside the mystery of her entanglements with Ara and with Clera and see from some new vantage something simple and understandable?
Behind her it sounded as if things were being resolved. She would be with Ara, Clera, and Ruli. Jula with Alata, Leeni, and Zole; with the others in a third group. Argument resurged over the initial routes for each group. Nobody wanted to head through the fens. All three groups wanted to trek upstream to the pine forest they’d passed on the way, hoping to find sheltered paths through. The dispute took an hour to resolve and Nona suspected that in good weather they would have wrangled for days.
“That looks bad!” Darla raised an arm to the west. A dark bank of cloud had been advancing on them for a while but now they saw the white wall trailing beneath it.
“Ice-storm.” Zole scowled. “We should make for the woods.” She turned to go, ignoring protests that they couldn’t all go that way.
“That looks worse!” Nona squinted. There were figures, perhaps a dozen of them, advancing along the banks further downstream, running ahead of the storm, chesting through bushes.
“Durns?” Ara joined Nona on the highest point of the bank. “Are those spears?”