Читать книгу Red Sister онлайн | страница 89

The six girls burst laughing from the base of the Tower of the Path and ran off towards the plateau’s narrowing point. The four hunska girls outdistanced Ruli and Kariss, but their natural speed counted for less in a race than it did in a fight: hunska blood gave whip-crack reflexes and a startling twitch that could move a hand from one place to another seemingly without the tedium of having to occupy any of the spaces in between, but it couldn’t, for example, move a full body-weight faster than a horse over four hundred yards.

The sanatorium sat at the compound’s outermost edge, built from limestone blocks hewn from the plateau itself, hunkered down against the wind, with a long and pillared gallery on the lee side. Clera ran on into the office while the other novices came to a halt by the door. ‘Why did we have to come here?’ Ketti frowned, hunched over to make herself a height with the other girls.

‘I saw Sister Tallow limping this morning,’ Ghena said. ‘She must be hurt.’

‘How?’ Ruli asked.

Ghena shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

Nona tried to imagine Sister Tallow slipping and coming to grief on a flight of stairs. She couldn’t do it. She had yet to see Mistress Blade fight but everything about the way the woman moved said she would not be taken unawares by the inanimate. Which left …

‘Maybe someone sent assassins after Arabella,’ Ketti said.

‘Assassins? Why?’ Nona had only heard of assassins in the old stories. The Noi-Guin, trained in secret, deployed to end wars, or start them, or to cut away any life that might constitute an offence to someone with enough money to pay fees that even old nobility found staggering.

Ghena grunted at Nona’s obvious stupidity. Ketti raised both eyebrows and did something with her lips that signalled supreme surprise at the depths of Nona’s ignorance. ‘She’s the Chosen One. The Ancestor’s gift. You think there aren’t people fighting over who owns her? Or, if it’s clear that the person who owns her isn’t going to be them, you think they’re not ready to kill her just to stop someone else gaining the benefit?’