LITMIR.BIZ

       9

      On seven-day they heated the pool water. With the shipheart gone it now required that coal be burned in a chamber beneath the laundry where the pipes lay exposed. Black smoke belched from the new chimney and the Corridor wind stripped it away. Come evening, after four hours, the water steamed. On some six-days during the freeze Nona had to break a film of ice in the bathhouse, so the seven-day was a blessing. After four hours burning coal the pool was as hot as it would get and almost as hot as in the year she had joined Sweet Mercy.

      Nona and Ara had returned from lunch with Terra Mensis in Verity in good time to bathe but Nona left the dormitories late, deep in her considerations. She hadn’t spoken to Zole and remained undecided about what to do with Safira’s message. Probably she should let the abbess decide.

      Kettle had been quiet on the journey back, locked in her thoughts. The best thing to come out of the visit had been when, as they were leaving, Ara had asked Terra to let Nona borrow some clothes the next time she was in town.

      ‘It’s a convent thing,’ she had said. ‘A sort of fancy dress. I don’t know what she’ll want.’

      ‘Of course …’ Terra had seemed uncertain, perhaps imagining her finest dress walking out the door along with borrowed jewellery.

      ‘Servant’s uniform perhaps. Or a wig if you still have some?’ Ara had said.

      Terra brightened considerably at that. ‘Arabella! I have so many wigs! Velera wore that silver one three years ago and … well, you know … but now? Nobody wears them. You can have six if you want, Nona!’

      The other novices had rushed off to enjoy the heat as soon as the message went out that Sister Mop had opened the bathhouse doors, Ara with them. Nona had lain on her bed staring at the ceiling, ignoring Keot’s urgings. He loved the pool.

      The holothour filled her thoughts. The memory of that consuming fear. The anger she felt at the shame of it. The creature’s mark on her friends. Of all the novices who came with Nona from the caves that day only Ara would even acknowledge they existed. The others grew irritated if she talked about them and would try to change the subject, and failing that just walk away. Even Ara, though she agreed there were caves, and that a hidden entrance existed, was vague and evasive when it came to talking about what might be down there and whether they had ever explored together.

       Take me to the bathhouse!

       You just want to see the novices naked.

       I am older than your civilization and find your bodies no more attractive than those of spiders.

       It’s no big thing to be centuries old if you can’t remember anything further back than a few years.

      Keot seemed to know very little. He didn’t even know what he was or where he came from. Or if he did he wasn’t telling. He claimed to enjoy the heat of the water, but every time Nona’s attention wandered she would find him trying to creep into one of her eyes to see better.

      At last Nona rolled off her bed and left the dormitory. She needed to be free of the day’s grime, not least the sweat of that remembered fear. She also wanted an end to Keot’s moaning. The dorms lay silent. Her feet echoed on the stairs. Nobody stayed long when the pool was steaming.

      ‘I thought you were never coming.’ Joeli Namsis stepped into her path in the entrance hall, emerging from the Red dorm. Nona had been too deep in thought to see her until the last moment. Apart from her air of cruelty her appearance – tall, with golden hair cascading around her shoulders – was very similar to Ara’s. ‘I suppose it must be true. Peasants do like being dirty.’

      Two girls, so alike they might be true sisters, came out behind her: Elani and Crocey, Joeli’s constant companions, both hunska half-bloods. Two more exited from Grey dorm. These two, on her right, were from Holy Class, both of them marked for Red Sisters. Elani and Crocey stepped past Joeli, both holding quarterstaffs. Not from the Blade Hall stores but rough pieces of timber that looked to have been looted from the cooper’s yard.

      Joeli smiled. ‘I don’t think you’ll report us however badly we beat you. But I’m quite eager to get into the world and put my skills to use, so being thrown out would be a price I’m willing to pay to see you crawl, Nona.’

      ‘My price is higher.’ Keot got into Nona’s tongue. ‘But holding your guts in my hands will cover it.’

      Nona bit down on further threats and the air around her fingers shimmered as flaw-blades sprang into being. She wouldn’t cut a novice except to save her life – but the quarterstaffs would get no mercy and dicing them would put fear into Joeli’s friends. The convent knew her secret now, but knowing and seeing were different things. Nona let the planet spin to a near halt and stepped forward, offering no defence. She snapped out an arm at the nearest staff. The half-bloods were fast by normal standards but her speed made them seem slow. Her hand swung past the staff close to where the girl gripped it. The wood, that should have been sliced into sections, remained untouched.

      Nona glanced down at her fingers. The flaw-shimmer had gone from them. Just the tingling in her bones remained as it so often did when she withdrew their sharpness from the world.

      Nona stepped away quickly. A look up revealed both the older hunska novices coming at her around the sides of the other two. Joeli was falling back behind the staff-bearers, her hands still raised in a plucking motion.

       She pulled your claws back in.

       Why didn’t you stop her? You stopped the holothour drawing my threads!

       Then she would know I exist. But if you want to kill her …

      Nona snarled and twisted into the first of the empty-handed novices, a lean girl named Meera, a prime with several years’ advantage. Nona’s anger pushed her speed towards its limits. She hammered her forearm into Meera’s throat and caught the girl’s shoulder to vault over her reaching arm, bringing both feet into the middle of the staff held by Elani behind her. The half-blood stood mired in the moment, her face contorted in a roar. The staff splintered and Nona’s momentum carried her through Meera’s grasp, both heels thudding into Elani’s stomach, bringing her down.

      Nona came out of her roll beside Joeli. Kicking the girl’s knee resulted in a satisfying crunch but she should have focused on Hellan, the other hunska, a full-blood, taller and more heavily built than Meera. Hellan thundered into Nona, barrelling her to the ground even as Joeli began to scream.

      They fought as they fell, battling for holds. Hellan had the weight and strength advantage, Nona an edge on speed. Nona’s struggle to free her arms from where Hellan had pinned them to her sides only succeeded in moving the girl further up her body so they fell face to face. Unable to break free, Nona settled for bending her leg and turning her heel to the ground so the impact with the floor would power her knee into Hellan’s thigh. In addition, to prevent the back of her head crashing against the flagstones Nona drove forward at the last instant, hammering her forehead into Hellan’s nose.

      The ground knocked the wind from Nona’s lungs and she lay for a moment, her vision full of strange lights, and Hellan’s blood. A large, fast something drove through the confusion of flashes. The heel of a quarterstaff hammering down towards her face. Nona turned her head and the wood grazed her ear before cracking against the stone beside her.

      With a roar Nona forced Hellan off her and rolled clear, a slow

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