Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 17
People choked the street but the abbess wove a path through the thickest of the crowd. Nona followed, so close that the tails of the nun’s habit flapped about her. Crowds unnerved her. There hadn’t been as many people in her village, nor in her whole world, as pressed into this street. And the variety of them, some adults hardly taller than she was, others overtopping even the hulking giants who fought at the Caltess. Some dark, their skin black as ink, some white-blond and so pale as to show each vein in blue, and every shade between.
Through the alleys rising to join the street Nona saw a sea of roofs, tiled in terracotta, stubbled with innumerable chimneys, smoke drifting. She had never imagined a place so big, so many people crammed so tight. Since the night the child-taker had driven Nona and his other purchases into Verity she had seen almost nothing of the city, just the combat hall, the compound where the fighters lived, and the training yards. The cart-ride to Harriton had offered only glimpses as she and Saida sat hugging each other.
‘Through here.’ The abbess set a hand on Nona’s shoulder and aimed her at the steps to what looked like a pillared temple, great doors standing open, each studded with a hundred circles of bronze.
The steps were high enough to put an ache in Nona’s legs. At the top a cavernous hall waited, lit by high windows, every square foot of it packed with stalls and people hunting bargains. The sound of their trading, echoing and multiplied by the marble vaults above, spoke through the entrance with one many-tongued voice. For several minutes it was nothing but noise and colour and pushing. Nona concentrated on filling the void left as the abbess stepped forward before some other body could occupy the space. At last they stumbled into a cool corridor and out into a quieter street behind the market hall.
‘Who are you?’ Nona asked. She had followed the woman far enough. ‘And,’ realizing something, ‘where’s your stick?’
The abbess turned, one hand knotted in the string of purple beads around her neck. ‘My name is Glass. That’s Abbess Glass to you. And I gave my crozier to a rather surprised young man shortly after we emerged from Shoe Street. I hope the warden’s guards followed it rather than us.’