Sometimes groups of the older children were hired outside the Caltess to pick fruit, and dig ditches, but mostly, as Regol had said, their main task was to grow and to show the promise for which they had been purchased. Maya confided that none of them would be sold on for at least a year, probably two or three.
‘Sometimes the promise won’t show properly until a girl bleeds. I wasn’t half my height at thirteen. Ain’t no point Partnis putting you in training until he knows what you’ll be. Training costs. And it’s wasted on most. Nobody ain’t never going to make ring-fighter without the old blood showing in them. And even when he’s sure you’ve got the gift for it Partnis likes to wait – says best training’s done when you’re mostly grown into your size and speed, so you don’t have to be adjusting all the time.’
Twice a day Maya had the whole attic out in the yard for an hour, first clearing the fighters’ weights back into their chests in the storeroom, then running endless laps, regardless of rain or wind. Nona looked forward to these daily escapes from the closed-in boredom of the attic and the routine of indoor chores. She worked with Saida and Tooram, who had been the last of Giljohn’s acquisitions, to lift the smaller dumbbells abandoned in the yard and return them to the equipment room. In truth, she and Tooram were probably more hindrance than help to Saida. Denam would pass them as they struggled up the steps, one of the heavier dumbbells in each hand, just the sweat plastering the red flame of his hair to his forehead to let them know the effort he was hiding.
They stopped to let him pass, then Saida led them on. ‘Heave!’
Nona didn’t mind that she wasn’t helping much, or that her arms ached, her back hurt and her eyes stung with sweat. She liked to feel part of something. Saida was her friend and whilst she might not need Nona’s help with the weights, she appreciated it.
In their friendship Nona found something absent in the faith of the village, or her mother’s Hope, absent in Nana Even’s moral instruction, or in the bonds of family she had seen break. Something she considered holy and worthy of sacrifice. Making friends came hard to Nona – she didn’t see how it worked, only that sometimes it happened. She had had just one friend, only briefly, and lost him, she wouldn’t lose another.
‘Tell me how you ended up at Harriton, child. Looking up at a noose.’ Abbess Glass’s voice punctured Nona’s remembering and she discovered herself walking along a stony road that divided broad, windswept fields given over to horses and sheep. Left and right the occasional farmstead dotted the terrain, the low-gabled roofs of a villa lay ahead, and beyond that the steep escarpment below the plateau.
‘What?’ Nona shook her head. She had almost no recollection of leaving the city. Glancing back, she saw it lay a mile or more behind her, and that two nuns now flanked the abbess.
‘You were going to tell me what happened with Raymel Tacsis,’ the abbess said.
Nona looked again at the nuns, both taller than Abbess Glass, one very lean, the other with more curves to her, their habits fluttering about them. She half-remembered them joining the abbess at some small gate through the city wall. One had perhaps as many years as the abbess, her face pinched and weathered, eyes cold, lips thin. The other was younger, green-eyed, returning Nona’s distracted inspection with a full smile that made her look away.
Nona fixed her eyes on the horizon. The convent was no longer visible, set back from the edge of the escarpment. ‘Saida was told to clean the floors in Raymel’s rooms. I heard her screaming.’ It hadn’t sounded like a person. In the village when Grey Jarry slaughtered pigs … it sounded like that. Not until one of the boys crowded around the trapdoor had said ‘Raymel’s rooms’ had some cold hand taken hold inside Nona’s chest and drawn her forward.
‘I came down the ladder. Fast.’ It had been slower than falling, but not much slower. She had run into the foyer. Saida had left a bucket and mop to hold the door open, a great slab of oak with scrolling brass hinges.
‘There were pieces of pottery all over the floor. And he was hurting her.’ Saida had knocked something from its niche – she was always clumsy. Raymel had her arm in his fist, his hand swallowing it from wrist to elbow, and he’d lifted her from the ground. He just stood there turning his hand from one side to the other while Saida struggled and wriggled, trying to reduce the awful strain on elbow and shoulder, shrieking all the while.
‘I told him to put her down but he didn’t hear me.’ Nona had run to try to support her friend’s weight, but Saida weighed twice what she did. Raymel noticed her then and, laughing, shook Saida so that Nona flew free. Something cracked in Saida’s arm when he did it – loud enough to register over her screams.
‘So I stopped him. I cut his throat.’
The younger nun snorted behind her. ‘They say he’s nine foot tall.’
‘I climbed.’ Raymel wasn’t nine foot but he was over eight. He had gone down on one knee, still holding Saida off the ground by her broken arm, taunting Nona with an ugly grin on his handsome face.
Nona had sprinted forward. There was time for the surprise to register in Raymel’s eyes, but not for him to move. She had leapt onto his knee to gain the necessary height then slashed her hand across his throat.
‘How did you cut him?’ The older nun, from behind.
‘I …’ Nona pictured Raymel, golden hair curling across an unfurrowed brow, the smile opening into something else, blood sheeting crimson from the slices she’d set deep in the meat of his neck. ‘I pulled the dagger from his hip as I climbed.’
‘That,’ said the younger nun, ‘sounds unlikely.’
Abbess Glass replied before Nona could deliver her sharp reply. ‘Nevertheless, if you look more closely, Sister Apple, you will see that the girl’s tunic was once white rather than brown – a brown which, if the guards at Harriton are to be believed, is a combination of drying blood and prison grime. Moreover she and her friend were both to be hanged for the murder of Raymel Tacsis.’
‘Then why isn’t he dead?’ Nona asked. She wanted Raymel to be dead.
‘Because his father is very rich, Nona.’ The abbess led them from the road onto a narrower track aimed towards the towering walls of the escarpment. ‘Not just a little bit rich but rich enough to buy a different mansion to sleep in every night from now until age claims him.’
‘Money doesn’t matter when you’re bleeding.’ Nona frowned. Rich or poor, people looked the same on the inside.
‘Thuran Tacsis is rich enough that he owns Academy men.’ The abbess hitched up her habit to help her climb the slope. ‘I miss my crozier already. An old lady without her stick to lean on is a sad thing indeed.’
Nona said nothing, not understanding the abbess’s words.
‘Academy men … Wizards, Nona! Mages. Sorcerers. Witches and warlocks. Children with marjal blood. Educated and raised at the emperor’s expense and bound to the Ark and to his service, but free to earn a living outside the palace until such time as he requires their skills.’
‘They can raise a man from the dead?’ Suddenly she thought of her father, unable to remember anything of him but thick black hair and strong, safe arms.
‘No, but they can stop a live one becoming dead. There’s a boundary, a place where we cross over to join the Ancestor. Some among us can visit that boundary and hold a person there while their body heals from wounds that would otherwise make an end of them.’
‘So rich people never die?’ Nona wondered at it, buying off death with gold coins.
The abbess shook her head. ‘No warlock stays by the boundary for long.’ Her breath came shorter now as the way grew steeper. ‘Thuran has a dozen warlocks working in shifts to hold his son from crossing. And many of the things that kill us the body can’t repair, no matter how much time it is given. Cut flesh though, and lost blood … a healthy body can mend one and replace the other. The real