‘Jula’s father is working at the palace now!’ Ruli chipped in with a bright smile.

Jula, rule-follower to her core just made a quick and agitated shake of her head then looked down.

The chatter bubbled along taking Nona’s mind from her discomfort until Bray spoke, the bell’s deep voice resonating across the convent, and the three visitors jumped up to go.

‘Spirit next! You’re better off here!’ Clera called over her shoulder.

‘Hurry up and get better!’ Ruli followed her.

‘I’ll pray for your recovery.’ Jula laid her hand on Nona’s then ran to catch the others.

Hours later and the light slanted crimson into the room, the sun’s edge burning above the rooftop. Nona thought it would drop away and the day would end before Ara came to see her, but the door opened and there she was.

‘I’m sorry!’

‘What in the world for? And, that was my line.’ Ara hurried across to sit in the chair beside Nona’s bed.

‘I didn’t beat her,’ Nona said.

‘You can’t beat everyone! And besides, you were already hurt.’ Ara studied Nona with concern, her gaze flitting here and there, looking for evidence of injuries. ‘How are you now?’

Nona shrugged, and wished she hadn’t. ‘Sister Rose will let me go soon.’

‘At least you got through the blood-war at the same time as you got beaten. That’s not fun either.’

‘Blood-war?’ Nona frowned. She felt pretty sure that whatever it was it was a blessing compared to twenty strokes of a wire-willow cane.

‘When I started to be able to get close to the Path – when my quantal blood started to assert itself – I felt awful. I thought I was dying. Well, not dying, but I felt sick for a week. Sister Pan says it’s called the blood-war. But you got pushed through the transition so quickly you missed it!’

‘—’ Nona shut her mouth. It might be a small blessing but she supposed it was a blessing.

‘Zole is very fast.’ Ara looked at her hands, resting in her lap, fingers knotted. ‘I should have let Sister Tallow end the fight.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘She was taking so long and Zole was hurting you …’

Nona pursed her lips and watched Ara’s downturned eyes. Her friend’s hair hung about her face, as long and golden as it had been on the day she arrived. ‘You were in a serenity trance, Ara. You could have watched her kill me without losing control of yourself. You were getting ready even before the fight started. I saw you.’ Doubt struck, cold and hard. ‘You didn’t think I had a chance, did you?’

Ara looked up sharply. ‘It wasn’t that at all! It was Sherzal. I wanted her to be afraid of me!’

‘Afraid?’ The emperor’s sister hadn’t looked like a woman who knew how to be afraid.

‘She would have stolen me from my family – she did steal me from my family, only to the convent rather than into her clutches. And now she’s trying to reach in here to get at me. So I wanted to show her that the very reason she wants me is the reason she should fear me. I wanted her to know that if she tried to hold me in her palace I’d bring the walls down around her ears … Only now she’s seen that you’re what she wants too – and you haven’t got family connections for her to worry about like I have …’

‘Is that how you feel? Stolen? You want to be back with your family and your servants? Leave us all behind?’ The word ‘us’ stumbled out at the last moment in place of ‘me’.

‘I’d like to feel safe to visit them. To see my mother and father. I miss my little sister too. Even Sonella, a little bit … perhaps she’s not so much of a cow now.’

Nona smirked. Ara had a hundred stories about her older sister, none of them flattering, some that made you laugh hard enough to wet yourself. ‘Well – maybe we both scared her off, or perhaps we both put ourselves on her wanted list. Either way, we’re in it together, which is as it should be, the Chosen One and her Shield.’

‘You know that stuff’s nonsense don’t you?’ Ara looked serious for a moment. ‘Sherzal doesn’t want us because the prophecy’s real – she wants us because people believe the prophecy.’

Nona nodded. ‘Even if I believed in prophecies then Sister Wheel wanting this one to be true so badly would be enough to stop me believing it.’

28

‘Who’s that?’ Nona asked.

A short woman was approaching Path Tower, a black coat flapping about her legs, her dark hair drawn up behind her head in a severe bun, her skin sharing the same reddish hint as Zole’s. She carried a sword at each hip.

‘Yisht,’ Ara said. They had been the first to arrive, coming directly from the sanatorium. Sister Rose had told Nona the night before that she could return to the dormitory the next day and resume all her lessons excepting Blade – which given that Blade was the only class Nona really cared about had been a disappointment.

‘Yisht?’ Nona frowned. ‘That’s a real name?’

‘As real as Zole,’ Darla said, glowering at the approaching woman. Jula and Darla had joined them at the eastern door, waiting for Sister Pan to unlock it.

As Darla said her name Nona spotted Zole, walking in Yisht’s shadow.

‘She’s Zole’s bodyguard, if you can believe that,’ Ara said. ‘Sherzal wanted to station sixteen of her guards to watch over her precious heir. The abbess argued her down to one. She knew they’d be doing more than just watching over Zole.’

Jula nodded. ‘I think the high priest has Abbess Glass under orders not to interfere with her, though. Alata came running around the corner and Yisht slammed her into a wall, nearly broke her arm. Said it looked as if she were rushing at Zole … as if Zole can’t defend herself!’

‘What did the abbess do?’

‘That’s just it. The abbess didn’t do anything. Sister Rose must have told her because she called Yisht a whole bunch of names that I would have sworn she didn’t know. And Sister Rose never gets angry!’

‘Anyway.’ Ara took the lead back. ‘Sister Pan won’t let her in the tower. She has to stand guard out here.’ She shot a dirty look at Zole and her protector as they closed the last few yards. ‘I hope the ice-wind picks up again.’

‘Yisht is from the ice, like me,’ Zole said, coming to stand beside Jula. ‘On the ice the wind roars. Here, you hear a whisper and think you know cold.’ She shook her head, amused.

Ara carried on as if the girl hadn’t spoken. ‘Sherzal wanted Safira to lead the sixteen! Safira! An expelled novice who’s betrayed the convent and the church, teaching blade-lore outside these walls for money.’

Nona remembered Ara mentioning Zole’s teacher on the day the emperor’s sister visited. ‘She stabbed someone here? Another novice?’

‘She stabbed Sister Kettle. She was lucky they didn’t drown her. They should have.’

‘Kettle?’ Nona’s mind raced. She’d spent a year having Sister Kettle teach her to read and write, the young nun always full of chatter and gossip, but being stabbed had never come up. Now Nona thought about Kettle’s slight limp, and how no one at the convent had come close to her blade-path time and yet she’d never walked it in the two years since Nona arrived. ‘You said Safira stabbed a novice …’