Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 74

Nona saw, even in the fractions their fight occupied, awareness start to enter Ghena’s eyes, a widening, a dilation of pupils. She knew the look – she had seen it before in the eyes of her first friend when he had tossed her a fourth ball and she added it to her juggling thinking to please him … She let Ghena’s fist catch her on the left shoulder, and spun with the impact, allowing it to carry her to the floor. A great spray of sand marked her arrival and she stayed there, panting.

A long moment passed and Nona let the world run at its own pace again, feeling the sand grains between her lips, the ache in her shoulder, the sting still in her palms. At last Mistress Blade’s clap broke the silence. Nona sat up, climbed slowly to her feet, and went to rejoin the line. The novices nodded their approval. Clera and Ruli looked impressed, Arabella sour. Of all of them only Ghena’s gaze held a measure of confusion, and in Sister Tallow’s there was a quiet speculation.

Nona liked the dormitories better than the nun’s cell of the night before. The building had three storeys, Red and Grey classes dividing the ground floor between them in two long, low rooms, Mystic and Holy each having their own floor, with study rooms for the Holies at the top. The beds were larger and more comfortable too, being raised on legs, each with a mattress of folded blankets over boards. Nona lay on hers while the class moved about her, chatting and getting ready for sleep. In the bed to Nona’s left Ghena had already crawled beneath her covers and lay dead to the world.

Nona stretched, yawning. The exercises in Blade, one punch and one throw repeated over and over, never quite to Sister Tallow’s satisfaction, had left her sore and sweat-soaked. The bathhouse afterwards took away the ache and stink of exercise and left in its place a warm and bone-deep weariness. If Clera hadn’t reached down a hand to help her out of the pool Nona suspected that she might still be there, floating helpless amid the steam.