“No.”
“But you told the convent table that you did . . .”
“No.”
“But you said—”
“I told them you didn’t strangle the girl.”
“But you didn’t see . . .”
“Are you given to lying?” Zole looked up from her porridge.
“No . . .”
“The abbess says words are steps along a path—the important thing is to get where you’re going.” Zole shrugged and returned to her porridge.
Nona hesitated then spoke. “Is this because I saved your life when Raymel . . .”
Zole swallowed. “My life was only in danger because of your actions.”
“What? I saved—”
“If you had killed Raymel Tacsis at your first attempt I would not have been lying poisoned in a cave. You should have cut his head off.”
Nona sat back. Zole hadn’t spoken so many words in a row to her for years, perhaps ever. Over on the Grey table Ara and Ruli were laughing at Jula who seemed to be demonstrating knife moves with a spoon. Nona grinned. It would be good when they joined her in Mystic. She’d feel safer sleeping in the same room as Joeli Namsis with Ara in the next bed.
“You should hide him better.” Zole pushed her bowl back.
“Sorry?” Nona turned from watching her friends.
“You are careless. You lack control. I have seen him at your wrists when we fight, and at your neck when you are screeching.”
“I don’t screech!”
“Like a haunt-owl.”
“I—” Nona suddenly realized that whether she screeched or not wasn’t the important thing here. She lowered her voice, staring at Zole’s dark eyes. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You’ve seen nothing!”
Zole shrugged. “On the ice we know the klaulathu. We do not run from them screaming ‘devils’ like you people huddling in the Corridor.”
Nona restrained herself from pointing out that Zole had been huddling with them for at least the past five years. “Klaulathu? Do you know how to get rid of them?”
Keot rose along her spine. I can only leave when you die.
Zole stood. “It is possible but hard. Better to live with him. They are of the Missing, you understand this? Pieces of the Missing that they abandoned before they crossed the Path.” She walked off, leaving Nona openmouthed.
“Looked as though you got more than three words out of the Argatha!” Darla sat down heavily beside Nona and started to heap her plate.
“Well, I am her Shield!” Nona reached for the food too. She made it a point of honour to always eat more than Darla managed, and Darla had an appetite most bears would envy.
“Path first today,” Darla grumbled. She took three smoked kippers.
“Not too bad.” Nona took four.
“For you maybe. For me it’s a choice between meditation until my brain runs out of my ears, or begging off to see if I can get past four steps on blade-path.”
Nona shovelled eggs and kept a diplomatic silence. Darla had the worst sense of balance of any novice at the convent. Path lessons for those with quantal blood at least consisted of more than hunting for serenity, clarity, and patience. Nona had a much more interesting time under Sister Pan’s close guidance, but every attempt to reach the Path was a reminder of the day Hessa died. With the shipheart gone, reaching the Path, which had always been a trial, became a feat of near-impossible difficulty. On the day Nona had fought Raymel somehow the depth of her anger, or being thread-bound to Hessa who was so close to the shipheart, had let her run the Path. In the years since, Nona had touched the Path on just a dozen occasions. Only in recent months had Nona regained the same level of competence without the shipheart’s presence as she had when it was kept at the convent.
“Practise the patience trance,” Nona advised. “It’ll make the lesson more bearable.” She crammed an overfull fork into her mouth.
Darla grimaced. “I don’t have the patience to learn the patience trance. It’s a vicious circle.” She filled her mouth too and they chomped at each other a while. Despite the gerant girl welcoming Nona to their first class together with a beating, they’d become firm friends, not that an outside observer would know it from the number of insults Darla threw Nona’s way.
• • •
ZOLE, JOELI AND Nona entered Path Tower by three different doors. Nona had found the east held a sense of rightness about it that the others lacked. Joeli came through the west in opposition. Zole came through the north, perhaps remembering her origins out on the ice.
In the classroom at the top of the tower they found themselves seats amid the play of light from the stained glass windows. The classroom was freezing as usual and the novices’ breath misted before them. The tower had been built without fireplaces, relying on the shipheart warming the oil pipes that ran the length of the structure. Sigils on the pipes closest to the shipheart had converted its power into heat. Many of the convent’s buildings had been adapted since the loss and the wind now stripped the smoke from a score of chimneys, but Sister Pan had resisted change.
“Welcome Mystic Class girls, welcome.” The ancient woman sat on her treasure chest, wrapped in a fox-fur robe for which the abbess had sought special dispensation from the high priest on account of Sister Pan being close on a hundred with nobody left alive who could say whether each year was now taking her closer to that century mark or further past it. “Zole and Nona have joined us! It’s a rare class that boasts three quantals.”
Two days earlier Joeli had been the only quantal in the class and the sole recipient of Sister Pan’s attentions. Joeli scowled and wrapped the illegal shawl
