Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 84

Nona opened her mouth to say something sharp. ‘I—’

‘Yes, Sister Wheel! I’m looking forward to our Spirit class.’ Hessa smiled up at the nun so sweetly that Nona almost believed she meant it. ‘But we’d best go now or Mistress Path will be cross with us.’

Sister Wheel made a sound of disgust and released both of them, wiping her hands on her habit. ‘Quickly then!’

Hessa showed a fair turn of pace with her crutch, her withered leg swinging beneath her skirts. Nona matched her speed, glancing back at Sister Wheel, now making for the dome. ‘I don’t like that old woman!’

‘Hah, Wheel’s all right once you know her ways.’ Stump, swing, stump, swing. ‘Just wait till you meet the Poisoner. Now she is scary!’

Nona entered the Tower of the Path with Hessa, using the east door. Novices were supposed to be drawn to a particular door but none of them called to her. All four doors led into the same room – an echoingly empty one with a stone spiral stair at the centre, and around the walls the strangest pictures Nona had seen, though in truth until she entered the ring-fighters’ rooms at the Caltess she had never seen paintings. While Hessa laboured up the stairs Nona took a moment to glance around at the two dozen or so portraits, nuns all of them, but with their hair uncovered and the most peculiar flights of fancy added. One lacked half a face, with tatters extending across the gap out over a night-black background. Another in place of one eye had a red star, its rays reaching in all directions. Another still had no mouth and in her hair flowers of a kind Nona had never seen, the deep blue of evening sky.

‘Nona!’

She sped up the stairs after Hessa. The stairway seemed long enough to reach the tower top but offered no doors into any rooms along the way before emerging into the middle of a classroom. At least Nona assumed it to be a classroom – it looked more like a church. Apart from the chairs on which Red Class sat, and a large iron-bound chest at the front, the room was completely bare. Even so, it had a beauty to it. Four tall and narrow windows broke the light into many colours. Scores of stained-glass panels made each window into a glowing, abstract picture that threw reds, and greens, and blues, across the walls and floor. For a moment all Nona could do was gape at the alien wonder of the place.