Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 40
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‘You could send the child on her way here, abbess.’
They stood at the point where the track began its steep ascent up the tumbled cliffs of the plateau, cutting back and forth across the gradient in a dozen hairpin turns. The older nun turned to Nona and pointed across the woods and fields to the west. ‘Morltown is five miles that way. A girl could make herself useful there, find fieldwork.’
Sister Apple stood shoulder to shoulder with Sister Tallow. ‘The high priest will be on this in a heartbeat. The Tacsis won’t even have to ask.’
‘Pick your fights and pick your ground, abbess,’ Sister Tallow said. ‘Jacob would love to get his feet back under the convent table. This would be the perfect excuse.’
‘And you did just steal her from prison …’ Apple frowned, glancing back towards the distant city.
‘Mistress Blade tells me not to fight.’ A smile, then the abbess turned to begin the climb. ‘And Apple tells me not to steal …’ Nona started to follow her. ‘You’re nuns. Show a little faith.’
A last edge of the sun clung to the horizon as Abbess Glass led the way towards a peculiar forest of stone pillars, their shadows reaching across hundreds of yards of rock towards the travellers’ approach. Nona followed, flanked by the two nuns, neither of them winded by the long climb that had set the abbess wheezing. The old one, Sister Tallow, looked as if she could climb all day. The younger, Sister Apple, at least had the decency to appear flushed. Nona, toughened by endless laps at the Caltess, felt the climb in her legs, and the dampness of her shift where sweat stuck it to her back, but made no complaint.
The plateau, really one huge slab of rock, narrowed to a neck of land before widening into a promontory. The pillars stood across the neck, from cliff to cliff, dozens deep, scores across. Abbess Glass led the way through – finding her path seemingly at random. All about them the columns, taller than trees, stretched towards the darkening sky. The place held an odd silence, the wind finding nothing to sing its tune, only stirring the dust and grit among the towers of carved stone. Nona liked it.