Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 67

Nona and Arabella pulled out fighting tunics, each top paired with ankle-length trousers, holding them against themselves under the critical eye of their partner.

‘Too small, even for you,’ Ghena barked. Jula had already led Arabella off to the changing room, the new girl seemingly more anxious to keep her golden curls than worry overmuch about the fit of her tunic.

‘It looks about right …’ Nona hadn’t ever chosen clothes before, but it did look about right.

‘When someone grabs you.’ Ghena lunged forward and seized a fistful of the tunic. ‘Do you want them to have a handful of this or a handful of your skin?’

‘I don’t want them to grab me,’ Nona said. ‘A loose tunic makes it easier.’

Ghena snarled and ripped the tunic top from Nona’s hands. ‘You’re partnered with me, farm-girl. Every mistake you make makes me look bad. Mistress Blade will test you and if you fail I get punished. And if that happens I’ll take it out on you.’

Nona snatched the top back. ‘Winning is never a mistake.’ She met Ghena’s dark and furious eyes, feeling her own snarl begin to twist her face, remembering how she had screamed out her fury as she ran towards Raymel Tacsis. A second later the heat blew from her, as if a cold wind had rattled through the room. She saw the hangman’s sheet again, Saida just a shape beneath it. Anger hadn’t saved her. Winning hadn’t saved her. Nona took the tunic two places along from the one she’d tried last and held it up against her. ‘Good enough?’

‘Good enough.’

They reached the changing room to find the first novice already leaving. ‘You two will make a lovely couple with your shiny heads.’ Ketti ran her hands over her brow as she passed them, grinning, her own thick cascade of black hair tied back tightly with a white cord.

‘… pigs and cows.’ Arabella broke off, aiming a bright smile at the door as Nona and Ghena entered. All the novices laughed, a couple trying to hide it behind their hands.

Nona set her teeth, and finding a space on the long bench began to struggle out of her unfamiliar clothing, throwing it up on the pegs above as the other girls had. The room smelled of old sweat, of bodies packed close – you could smell it out in the main hall, faint but pervasive. It reminded her of the village.