Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 51

‘She’s not the one.’ Suleri’s voice cut across the room. ‘She’s the dirty peasant we saw earlier. Look at her!’ Ignoring her own command, the novice turned her attention to the plate before her, heaping it with bacon and bread.

Nona’s treacherous stomach chose that moment to rumble more loudly than she had thought possible. The laughter that followed made her cheeks blaze and she stood, furious, staring at the floor, willing it to crack and burn. Instead, it was the laughter that cracked and fell into silence.

Tall men in the furs of the red bear, and armoured beneath in bronze scales, came through the doors, novices scattering from their path. The warriors carried themselves imperiously, as though they might just walk over any too slow to get out of their way. Each wore a helm coiffed with chainmail and visored to mimic the sternest of faces without hint of mercy.

Tacsis men! Come with their own rope to set right the mistake at Harriton, or perhaps to administer crueller justice of their own. Nona snatched the knife from the nearest girl’s plate and holding it before her, level with her eyes, she started to back towards the service door in the rear wall.

The men ignored her. They stepped to either side, clearing the main entrance, and raised their visors to reveal faces that admitted no more compassion than had been engraved upon the metal. The abbess came through the open doors behind them, one hand gripping her crozier, its golden curl rising above her head, the other resting on the shoulder of a blonde girl perhaps a year older than Nona.

‘Novices, this is Arabella Jotsis. She will be joining our order.’

‘As was foretold!’ Sister Wheel stepped out from behind the abbess, Sister Tallow to the other side. ‘As was foretold!’ She cast about rapidly, her watery stare challenging anyone to disagree.

Abbess Glass frowned. ‘We can be sure she is Arabella and that she is Jotsis. Anything else is open to interpretation.’ She struck the heel of her staff to the floor, the sharp retort cutting off the novices’ mutterings. ‘We can also be sure that Arabella will study hard and be treated no differently from any other novice.’