Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 38
‘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.