Clera, Ara, Hessa, and Ketti grinned at her from their desks, while the remaining eight novices favoured her with the stony looks reserved for any new meat. Clera had been the first of them to move up and let nobody forget the fact. It had been Academia that held Nona back the longest – though she loved both the subject and Sister Rule. Nona had even mastered the much-hated saint’s days, ceremonies, and catechism in Spirit under Sister Wheel’s unforgiving eye before she passed her Academia finals. It had been the writing more than the reading that defeated her for so long, the business of wrestling her thoughts into a wriggling white scrawl of lines across the test slate.

Sister Flint returned to her desk but didn’t take her seat. ‘Grey Class meet here on the morning of every first-day for general instruction. I also provide individual tuition in subjects you may be experiencing difficulty with.’ The sister paused and glanced out of the window. Grey Class met in a room at the back of Blade Hall that offered views out across to the Glasswater sinkhole and beyond the narrowing point of the plateau to the farmlands north of Verity. Presently the rock lay sun-spattered with just a fleeting shadow here and there where the wind chased a cloud from the sky. ‘Today, however, we will finish a quarter-hour early. I shall leave you to introduce yourself to new classmates and gossip with old ones.’ Sister Flint closed the heavy book on her desk, letting the leather cover fall with a thump. She said nothing more as she left the room, perhaps eager to catch a moment in the all-too-rare sunshine.

Conversation erupted along with the scraping of chairs as the door closed behind the nun. Clera reached Nona’s side first, elbowing her way through the bigger girls. The eldest of the novices were around fourteen and some looked older than their years.

‘Thank the Ancestor, Nona! You saved us. Flint was on about girls getting their blood. It was vile. She just wouldn’t stop with the detail. I’ve decided I’m not doing it.’

Ara ducked around a couple of older novices and sat on Nona’s desk. ‘I’ve been having mine since the last ice-wind. It’s not so bad. The cramps are—’

‘Will you just stop?’ Clera made a face. ‘Anyway, I’m safe. Flint said they come later if you’re thin.’ She eyed Ara’s curves.

Ketti, taller and still more slender than Clera raised a brow at the suggestion. ‘She said that?’

‘If that were true then Flint would never have got hers,’ Ara said, raising her eyes to the ceiling. She tolerated Clera to about the same degree that Clera tolerated her, but the claws were never wholly sheathed when the two spoke.

‘Perhaps that’s why she likes talking about it so much.’ Clera waved the topic away. ‘Anyway – little Nona … in Grey Class! It’s going to be great. Jula and Ruli will come through soon. I know they will. Ruli’s just got to get her stamp from Mistress Blade …’

Nona opened her mouth to say that Jula just needed her Shade stamp and the test was scheduled for next four-day, but a shadow fell across her and the words stayed where they were. A hand, seeming the size of a dinner plate, reached for her. She grabbed one large, outstretched finger as the rest fastened on her shoulder and heaved her painfully from her chair.

‘I’m Darla.’ The novice lifted her from the ground, her grip so tight that Nona felt sure the fingers digging into her must have punched through her skin.

‘Nona,’ she gasped. The girl had looked big when hunched over her desk. In the refectory she stood taller than most of the novices in Holy Class, most of the nuns too. But close up she was enormous.

‘You’re the Shield, eh?’ Darla had a blunt face that looked as if it had been put to hard use scrubbing floors. Her head had been shaved perhaps a week earlier and a pale seam of scar curved from just above her left eyebrow back across forehead and scalp, visible among the coarse brown stubble. She carried Nona, one-armed, pressing her to the wall. ‘Don’t look so much to me.’

‘You saw her in the test!’ Ara, loud and angry.

‘Put her down!’ Ketti reaching towards Darla’s arm.

Darla grunted, increasing the pressure on Nona’s shoulder until the joint creaked. ‘There’s more to winning than speed. Don’t care what Tallow says.’ With her spare hand she poked Nona in the gut, hard enough to make her writhe. ‘What you gonna do now, fast girl?’

Another of the older novices pulled Ketti’s arm from Darla’s and sent Clera staggering back with a bump of her hip.

‘This is the first lesson you learn in Grey Class – that it’s not all about ratty little hunskas. Least not while I’m in it.’ Darla poked again. ‘It’s not a lesson that gets written in ink either! I’ll leave you a few bruises so you can study it again tonight. Your friends all got theirs first day. ’Cept the princess. I let her off.’ She drew back her fist.

Nona met the girl’s flat brown eyes. The grip on her shoulder was iron. Her feet, dangling above the floor might just touch Darla’s stomach if she ignored the pain and thrashed to reach – but she could kick a tree trunk for all the good it would do.

‘Nothing to say?’ Darla grinned. An ugly thing.

Nona untwisted her mouth and grinned back past the pain. She reached across to grab with her other hand the single finger she had managed to secure a hold on as Darla seized her. And yanked with all her strength.

Darla’s scream, the crack of bone, and the thunk of one meaty fist into Nona’s face, all joined into a single sound. After that came a fall to the floor, screaming, a torrent of kicks, more screaming. Though dazed and half-blinded with the pain Nona tried to twist to minimize the impacts, folding herself around the heaviest of the kicks. Forged into a tough strip of muscle, gristle and bone by more than two years of training in blade-fist Nona knew how to take punishment. Finally a kick made solid contact and lifted her from the ground, slamming her back against the base of the wall. Even with the breath gone from her lungs she managed to arch out of the way of the next, allowing Darla to kick the wall. The novice howled. She hopped away, scattering desks and screaming curses, clutching at her foot. The other novices leapt clear of Darla’s erratic path, leaving her to find herself face to face with Sister Tallow at the doorway.

‘Darla. You appear to have broken your finger,’ Sister Tallow said without heat.

Darla looked down at her hand, the finger jutting at an alarming angle. She paled, almost to green and straightened, putting her foot down, only to grimace and whimper another curse.

‘And some toes.’ Sister Tallow frowned. ‘Get to the sanatorium. We will speak of this later.’

Darla hobbled out, hissing with every second step. Clera and Ara helped Nona up, and although every part of her wanted to stay there on the floor, coiled about the pain in her ribs and stomach, she let them lift her to her feet. Hessa stood close by, leaning on her crutch looking concerned but also puzzled.

‘Nona too – you look to have had the worst of it.’ Sister Tallow waved her towards the door.

Nona straightened with a wince, shaking the hands from her. ‘I feel fine, mistress.’ She spat a crimson mess to the floor and showed Mistress Blade a fierce and bloody grin. ‘I’ve waited two years to have you show me blade-lore. I’m ready now.’