Arabella herself didnt appear to notice their departure. She looked, to Nona, like a different kind of creature, set apart from the dull and dirty humans who scurried about the world. Her hair seemed to glow golden in the light that reached through the still-open doors. Her travelling clothes were a wonder of brushed suede and fur-edged leather, with a magnificent dark red cape across her shoulders secured by a gold chain. Where others might be described by their collection of flaws Arabella Jotsiss only identifying feature seemed to be that she was without blemish. Perhaps the Ancestor looked like this, but people didnt.
Your table is at the end, Arabella. Im sure Red Class will welcome you into their ranks. Nona too. The abbess nodded towards the end of the room and took her guiding hand from the girls shoulder.
Best behaviour! Sister Tallow added, running a hard stare across the room. And with that, Abbess Glass led the nuns from the refectory.
Arabella Jotsis surveyed her new classmates with a sort of serene confidence and stepped forward as if not only had she lived here all her life, but also as if she owned the place and paid the wages of everyone around her. As she drew near the table an older girl from table three hurried up behind her with a spare chair.
The girl whose knife Nona had snatched stood up the moment the doors closed behind the departing nuns. Tall, slim and pale, her hair a black and wild tangle of curls, she seemed less impressed with the golden newcomer than the rest of the novices. Youll find that the Ancestor doesnt order any special treatment for royalty here, Arabella. Minor or otherwise. Your fathers title might let him crush honest men down in Verity, but up here fights are one on one and its skill that counts, not rank.
Arabella hardly deigned to glance at the girl. Your father put himself in prison, Clera Ghomal. He made a poor merchant. She sat, like a princess, in the offered chair. And a worse thief. Her accent was new to Nona, rich and precise, words clipped, the emphasis on odd syllables.
Clera balled her hands into fists. Be careful what you say
Oh please. You come from a family of money-grubbers who have lost their money which makes them just grubbers. Let it lie. From what I understand we will all have plenty of opportunity for hitting each other later. So do be quiet and let me eat. Arabella took a roll of crusty bread and broke it onto her plate.
Thank you for making it so clear. Clera sneered. How terrible for you to have to endure the company of people who dont own their bodyweight in jewellery. How can you stand to mix with us? She reached out and took Nonas hand. I suppose you hate Nona here most of all. Imagine, a peasant girl dining at the same table as a daughter of the Jotsis!
Arabella spread butter onto the halves of her roll. Im not in the least interested in you or your skinny hunska peasant, Ghomal. Now do sit down, you both look ridiculous.
Clera dropped Nonas hand and took a step towards Arabella. I
Clera! Suleris voice cut across her from the far end of the room. Sit down. Shut up. Save it for Sister Tallows class or youll find yourself working in the laundry for a month.
Clera sat down, mouth set in a vicious line. A heartbeat later she grinned, leaned back and pulled across a chair just vacated by a novice leaving the next table. Nona. Take a seat. You look hungry.
6
On his wagon Giljohn had fed Nona far better than her mother had ever been able to. At the Caltess the food had been better still and Nonas bones had begun to sink from sight like a city childs. The refectory at Sweet Mercy Convent put the Caltess meals to shame. Nona ate meat in whole pieces for the first time she could remember, not just a shred here or there but thick slices of bacon still hot from the pan. She wrapped them in crusty bread and chewed with dedication, scattering crumbs everywhere, while Clera chatted easily at her side.
The merchants daughter made no further mention of Arabella, not even glancing down the table in her direction. Instead she rattled on cheerfully about what could be expected from the day, requiring little from Nona in return save the occasional grunt or yes in the brief gaps when her mouth wasnt full.
Ghenas the youngest in the class, shes still nine. Me and Ruli are eleven. Well probably move into Grey soon thats Class Two. Class One is Red. Sister Oak is our mistress but we dont see a lot of her. Clera paused to watch Nona eat. You really were hungry!
Mgmmmm.
Our first class is Academia with Sister Rule thats everything from numbers and reading to history and geometry. Right now were doing geography.
A full mouth saved Nona from having to admit that she didnt know what geometry or geography were.
We have Blade this afternoon were doing unarmed, but later we learn knives and stars, the older ones learn swords, and tactics and strategy too. In Red Class everyone studies everything. Later on the Holy Sisters do more Academia and Spirit classes. Martial Sisters do mostly Blade. Sisters of Discretion concentrate on Shade. Mystic Sisters spend their time learning Path. Everyone calls the Martial Sisters the Red Sisters, and the Mystic Sisters are Holy Witches but dont let a nun hear you call them witches!
Nona kept eating, letting the confusion of names wash over her. It would sink in given time. She finished the bacon, struggled through the scrambled egg, but the bread bowl defeated her, sitting before her with three crusty rolls still nestled at the bottom. She had never stopped eating while food remained before her: to do so seemed desperately wrong.
Come on! Clera put a hand on her shoulder. Well be really late.
Looking up, Nona saw that they were the last two at the table. She glanced behind her and saw that only three other novices remained in the hall.
Clera hurried towards the main doors. Come on!
Nona followed, hands folded over her aching belly, so full it hurt to walk, let alone run. Clera led the way back past the dormitory building and across a quadrangle, cloisters to one side, a rectangular pool and fountain in the middle. Above the range forming the western end the sails of a windmill could just be seen passing through the top of their cycle. Clera hurried Nona out through a corridor penetrating the north range.
Thats the Academia. She pointed ahead to an ornate tower close to the cliffs on the plateaus north side. Together they half walked, half ran to the archway at its base. A rapid ascent by the stone steps of a spiral staircase brought them to an oak door, the steps continuing up. Clera stopped at the door and pushed on through to the room beyond.
Theres no one here. Nona felt stupid the moment the words left her, a peasant girl stating the obvious. The classroom lay in shadow. A large, elderly cat watched from its grey curl in the far corner: Malkin, the abbesss beast. Four rows of empty desks faced a polished table in front of a chalk-marked board. A confusion of maps and charts decorated the wall behind that, so many that pieced together they might show the whole world.
Damnation! Clera ran to one of the windows and threw open the shutters. Diamonds of glass, leaded together into a continuous sheet, ensured that only the light came in while the cold stayed out. She pressed her face to the panes, turning one way then the other. Shes taken them out somewhere cant see them
Nona advanced towards the desk. It held all manner of fascinating objects, not least three leather-bound books and a large ledger beside a quill and inkpot. The objects that drew her though were a dogs skull, a clear crystal nearly a foot long and too wide to close her hand about, and a glistening white ball in a brass stand. This last held her attention until she found herself beside it, knees bumping against the desk.
What is it? Nona set a finger to the enamelled whiteness of the ball, finding it rough beneath her touch, tiny ridges catching the light. It was a little larger than her head and perfectly round. A stand held it top and bottom so that it could rotate. And around its middle, like a belt, a very thin strand of colour no thicker than a piece of string.
Dont touch! Mistress Academia would have a fit! Clera elbowed Nona out of the way and immediately ignored her own instruction by setting the thing spinning on its pivots. Its the world, silly.
The world? That made no sense at all.
Abeth. Clera huffed her breath out as if Nonas stupidity had hit her in the stomach. A model of it.
Nona blinked. Her world had been the village, the forests, the fields, and in the distance the northern ice forming one wall of the Corridor. She hadnt ever considered that it might have a shape and if she had she would not have guessed at a ball, white or otherwise.
Its a globe. Clera reached out to stop it spinning. We live here. She put her finger on the line around the middle.
We do? Nona leaned in to look more closely.
Want to see something special? Clera grinned. Without waiting for an answer she set one hand to the top of the globe and the other to the bottom then, with a little effort, rotated each in opposite directions. Smoothly and without noise the lower part of the white surface began to retreat. Nona saw that it was not one piece as she had imagined but comprised many bladed parts that shuffled beneath each other like the feathers of a folding wing. In consequence the cord-thin strip of colour girdling the globe widened, first to a fingers width, then wider and wider still until Nonas whole hand couldnt cover it. The pattern of jewel-enamelled blues and greens and browns fascinated her eye.
What
Thats the world fifty thousand years ago, long before the tribes even came. Clera rotated the halves back slowly and the ice advanced. All the people that lived across all these lands, pushed back. She returned the ice sheets to their original position. Pushed into this tiny corridor as the sun got old and weak.
How could they fit? Nona imagined them running before the ice.
Clera shrugged. Mistress Blade says people need room. You can squash them in only so far, then the bleeding starts, and when its done theres just about enough room again.
Its good to see that some of your lessons stick, Novice Clera.
Both girls turned to see the doorway behind them now almost entirely full of Sister Rule, the convents Mistress Academia, a woman of considerable height and still more considerable girth, all wrapped in the dark grey of a nuns habit. Sister Rule pushed on into the classroom, the rest of Red Class filing in behind her, diverging towards their allotted desks. Arabella already had three girls pressed around her and they took seats beside each other, all of them smirking behind their hands.
Explain yourselves, novices. The nun fixed them with dark and beady eyes.
We were Clera searched for an explanation and could find nothing better than the truth, which she settled on with a sigh of defeat. Nona was very hungry!
A scatter of laughter went up at that, cut off sharply as Sister Rules yardstick cracked across a desktop. She reached the table, looming over both girls. Well, Nona does appear to need some feeding up. Do not be late to my class again, Nona. Today you missed a quick observation of the layered structure of this plateau where the Glasswater sinkhole exposes it. Next time you could miss considerably more than that dinner included.
Clera slipped away to her desk near the door. Nona stayed by the table. She looked up at Sister Rules face, which was at once both fleshy and severe, then let her eyes slip to the globe again.
You can take either of those two desks at the back, Nona. Mistress Academia laid her yardstick against her table and let out a sigh. I do hope youre not going to slow us down too much, child. The abbess casts her nets very wide sometimes
Nona dropped her gaze to the floor and took a step in the direction the nun had waved at. A mixture of anger and defiance boiled behind her eyes but stronger than that, more than that, was the desire to know. Besides, she was too full to be properly angry.
I dont know what geography is.
Sister Rules yardstick killed the laughter before it started. Good. Youre clever enough to ask questions. Thats better than many Ive had through these doors. She took her seat behind the desk, straightened her habit, then looked up. Geography is like history. History is the story of mankind since we first started to record it. The story and the understanding of that story. Geography is the history of the world beneath our feet. The mountains and the ice, rivers, oceans, land, all of it recorded in the very rocks themselves for those with the wit to read whats set there. Consider this slab of rock our convent rests upon, for example. The history of this plateau is written in the limestone layers that can be seen in the sinkhole two hundred yards west of this tower. She sent Nona on towards her desk with a gentle poke of her stick. Our history is wide and we are narrow, so perhaps its lessons no longer fit. Cut your cloth to your measure, some say. But the history of the land has lessons more important than those of kings and dynasties. The history of the ice is written there. The tale of our dying sun, etched into rock and glacier. These are the lessons we all live by. And when the moon fails we will die by them too.
7
Nona resolved to make it to Blade on time. Over lunch in the refectory Clera explained the meaning of the various bells that sounded throughout the day.
There are three bells. Thats the iron bell, Ferra, which just rang. Its got a hollow sound and dies off quickly. Thats for the sisters, to tell them about prayers mainly. It hangs in the little belfry up on the Dome of the Ancestor. The one that looks like a nipple.
Clera! Jula scolded. She had taken the chair on Nonas other side and now turned to join the conversation. Bray is the brass bell that hangs in the Academia, at the top of the tower. It sounds the hours, and thats what you have to listen to for class and meals.
And lights out and getting up. Clera cut back in. Bray has a deep voice that hangs. She made her own deep and sonorous, a singers voice, Nona thought. Afternoon class is sixth bell, lunch is fifth, dinner is seventh.
Blade this afternoon. Jula rolled her eyes. I hate Blade.
Holies always do. Clera smirked.
Nona considered Jula for a moment. The girl had a studious look about her, slender despite more than a year eating at the convent table. She had mousey hair, cut at neck length. Nothing about her suggested that hunska or gerant blood might show in years to come. Almost nobody showed up quantal or marjal, however good the signs, so Jula would almost certainly be a Holy Sister. Nona knew very little about the Church of the Ancestor but the idea of a life spent in prayer and contemplation held no appeal at all. If the life in question didnt also include being well fed and having a warm safe place to live then Nona might have felt sorry for the girl.