Poisons. The word makes me throw back my covers and swing my feet to the floor. “I am ready now.”
Annith’s brow wrinkles in concern. “Are you certain? You’ve been here only a short while.”
“Yes, but I had five days to recover from my injuries during my journey, and in truth the tisane and the breakfast have done much to restore me.” I am as hungry for this work I have been promised as I was for the bread. “I would love to begin now, if it is allowed.”
“Of course! To rest or to work, the choice is left to you.” Annith fetches me a gown from the wooden cupboard. It is a dove gray habit, like hers, and as I slip it over my head, I can feel myself slipping into this new life that I have been given.
Annith helps me comb my hair, her fingers gentle even among all the tangles. when I am presentable, she leads me from the room and down the confusing maze of corridors. She opens a thick door and we step outside. I blink against the bright sun, then hurry to follow her. She leads me to a small stone cottage downwind from the convent. “I am not to go in,” she explains, “as I do not have your gift. But you may enter; the good sister is expecting you.”
“She is?”
Annith’s eyes sparkle. “She suspected you would want to start right away.” Then she bids me goodbye and heads back toward the convent. Alone on the doorstep, I knock.
"Who is it?” a voice calls out.
“It is Ismae,” I say, wondering if I need to explain further who I am since I am not sure if she knows my name.
“Come in!” the voice says cheerfully.
I open the door and step inside.
The maids in my village talked of falling in love with a man at first sight. That has always seemed naught but foolishness to me. Until I enter Sister Serafina’s workshop. It is unlike anything I have ever seen, full of strange sights and smells, and I tumble headlong into love.
The ceiling is high, and the room has many windows. Two small clay ovens sit on the floor. In front of the fireplace is a range of kettles, from one big enough to cook a goat whole all the way down to one so small it could belong to the fey folk of hearth tales. A large wooden press takes up an entire corner of the room. Fragile glass containers and globes sit beside squat earthenware jars and silver flasks. The most striking thing in the room — a writhing mass of glass vessels and copper tubes — sits alone on one of the worktables. Two flames burn beneath it, and the whole thing hisses and bubbles and steams like a large, deadly viper getting ready to strike.
“My still,” Sister Serafina says with great pride. “I use it to boil and reduce substances to their essence, removing all the extra matter until nothing but the poison remains.” She motions me over to the table, and I come eagerly, ducking under a lowhanging clutch of roots drying in the rafters. A strange and pungent combination of smells reaches my nose, rich, earthy notes combined with a cloying, sickly sweetness, and a strong acrid smell lurking underneath.
On the table is a bowl of withered black seeds and a pile of shiny red ones. Large round pods the size of rosary beads are scattered next to drying tubers that look like a man’s organ. Seeing those brings Sybella’s question of last night back to me.
Sister Serafina studies me closely. “How are you feeling?”
I start to tell her that I can hardly feel my injuries any longer, then I realize she means how am I feeling among all the poisons. “Fine,” I say. To my surprise, I am smiling.
“Then let’s get to work.” She shoves a bowl of round green pods in front of me. They are misshapen lumps covered in soft, flexible prickles. She takes up a small pointed knife. “Cut them open and extract the seeds, thus.” with a deft flick of the blade, she guts one of the pods, and three fuzzy seeds spill out. She pinches one between her fingers and holds it up to me. “One of these will make a man so sick, he will wish to die. Three of these will kill him.” Then she hands me the knife, places the seed back on the table, and returns to her distillery.
The knife handle is smooth and well balanced, a thing of beauty, but the seed pod is tough and fibrous, and my hand is not as skilled as the nun’s. It takes a long time before the point of my knife pierces the hard shell and breaks it open. I glance up to find Sister Serafina watching me. Unable to help myself, I flash a smile of victory at her.
She gives me a toothy grin, and then she turns back to her work and I turn back to mine.
That night, I attend dinner in the refectory with the others. It is a large stone chamber with arched doorways and long wooden tables. I see there are less than a dozen girls in all. At thirteen and fourteen, Annith and I appear to be the oldest. The youngest looks to be no more than five, although Annith assures me they do not learn anything of the killing arts until they are older. All of them bear a fair measure of beauty. Perhaps Mortain sires only comely daughters.
“There are even more of us,” Annith tells me. "We have half a dozen full initiates of Mortain, but they are all away, carrying out His wishes.”
Eight nuns file in and head for a large table set apart on a dais. As we eat our dinner, Annith tells me of the nuns I have not yet met. There is the horse mistress and the weapons mistress and the mistress of martial arts, as well as an ancient nun whose only duty is to tend the crows in the rookery. Another nun is charged with teaching history and politics. The last one, a woman who may have been pretty once but now reminds me of a peahen, instructs us in courtly manners and dancing. “And,” Annith adds, her eyes growing bright and her cheeks pink, "Womanly arts.”
I turn to stare at her in surprise. "Womanly arts? why do we need instruction in that?” I hope the small flicker of panic I feel does not come through in my voice.
She shrugs. “So we may get close to our victims. How else are we to see if they have a marque? Besides, all our talents and skills must be well honed so we may serve Mortain fully.” It sounds like a lesson she has been made to memorize.
“Is that all of them, then?” I ask.
“Sister Vereda is not only old but blind as well. She never eats with us and keeps to her rooms. She is our seeress and speaks with us only when she has had a vision.”
I feel someone watching, and look up to find the reverend mother’s cool blue gaze on me. when our eyes meet, she lifts her goblet in private welcome. The immensity of it all surges through me, leaving me dizzy with my unexpected good fortune. This is my new life. My new home. The one I have prayed for ever since I was old enough to form words. A deep sense of gratitude fills me. I will make the most of this chance I have been given, I vow, and I raise my goblet in return.
Chapter Five
It is a full week before I see Sybella again. what they did to calm her, not even Annith has been able to find out.
She first appears among us at the dinner hour. The entire refectory falls silent when Sister widona, the nun with the melodious voice and a talent for taming the convent’s horses, appears in the doorway with Sybella at her side.
When the nun leaves to join the other sisters at the main table, Sybella stands for a long moment looking down at our table, proud and scornful. The younger girls are too awed by her to do anything but stare, but Annith scoots over on the bench to make room for her. Sybella ignores her and instead sits next to me. I am exquisitely uncomfortable at this. Annith has been so kind to me, I cannot bear for her to be shunned like that. And yet . . . there is something about this new girl, and I am filled with a dark joy that she has chosen to sit next to me. I glance down at my plate so Annith will not see my secret pleasure.
Sybella is thinner than when I last saw her, but her eyes are less wild, and the shadows are nearly gone. Her haughtiness, however, is untouched. She sits on the bench, her back rigid, and looks neither to the right nor to the left.
Proving she is a saint, Annith offers the branch of friendship once more by asking, “May I get you some stew?”
Sybella glances disdainfully at the food in front of the rest of us. “I do not eat pig slop.”
Her words are as shocking as a slap to Annith’s face. Annith’s cheeks pinken. “I assure you, neither do we. Sit there and starve for all I care.” It is the first time I have seen Annith provoked into a temper.
Sybella does exactly that; she sits and stares at the wall while the rest of us eat our dinners. It has a severe dampening effect on everyone’s appetite, except mine. Having eaten only turnips for years — and old, rotten ones at that — I am always hungry.
After a few minutes of this, Sister widona rises from the main table, goes to the stew pot that hangs in the hearth, and ladles up a portion. She carries it over to our table and sets it in front of Sybella. "Eat,” she orders. Sybella looks up, and the power of their gazes clashing is nearly audible.
when Sybella makes no move toward her bowl, Sister widona leans over and speaks softly into the girl’s ear. "Eat, or I will force it down your throat.”
Her words shock me, for I cannot see these gentle nuns doing anything as heavy-handed as that, but the threat works. Staring mulishly at the nun, Sybella begins shoveling the stew into her mouth. Satisfied, the nun returns to the dais.
And so our training at the convent begins, and everything the nuns promised Sybella and me on that first night comes to pass. we study the human body as thoroughly as the physicians at the great universities, poring over drawings of human anatomy that make us blush. But despite our modesty, we learn where the weakest parts of the body hide. How skin is attached to muscle, and muscle bound by sinew to bone, and how these connections can best be severed.
We become well versed in all manner of fighting, with our hands and feet, our elbows, even our teeth. we are trained in every weapon imaginable: knives and daggers, garrotes. we practice with throwing rondelles — small, razor-edged disks — until we can strike our targets accurately. we shoot short bows and longbows — if we can draw them. If we cannot, we are forced to strengthen our arms until we can. Crossbows too are part of our training, for they are highly accurate when one needs to strike from a distance.
Where I truly excel is in the poison workshop with Sister Serafina, the soaking and stewing, pressing and distilling, learning the nature of all the deadly substances and how best to coax their poisons from them and combine them for the desired effect.
But of course, not all are lessons are so compelling. There are long, boring stretches spent studying history and politics and memorizing the noble families of Brittany. we also study the royal houses of France, for according to the nuns, France is the biggest threat to our country’s independence, especially since our duke banded together with other great lords in an attempt to depose the French regent. The deed has not gone unpunished, and hostilities have broken out once again between our countries.
We novices must also learn how to dress in finery and maneuver without tripping. we practice smiling mysteriously and become masters of the seductive glance, peering out from beneath our lashes, our eyes full of promise. These particular lessons make me feel so ridiculous that I often dissolve into fits of laughter and am sent from the room in disgrace.
I alone of the older girls must have extra lessons. Since I am new to the convent and not noble born, I do not know how to read or write, skills the nuns assure me are required to serve Mortain, for how else will I read Sister Serafina’s recipes or the instructions that tell me who to kill? I spend long, frustrating hours alone in the scriptorium practicing my letters over and over again.
While the nuns are strict taskmistresses, they are kind too, rarely raising their voices or shaming us. Mayhap they know that treating us well makes us want to please them all the more, or mayhap they suspect we have had too much shame in our lives already.
I take to this new life like a fish to water, Sister Serafina says. within the passing of a season, my nightmares grow infrequent and I find myself thinking less and less of the realm of man beyond the convent’s walls. Indeed, it is as if that whole world has ceased to exist.
Chapter Six
Three years later
November is known as the blood month, the time of year when animals are slaughtered for winter. How apt, I think, that my first assignment comes now.
Not wanting to announce my presence to the stablekeep, I steer my horse to a copse of trees just beyond the tavern, then dismount. I pull my cloak tight against the chill wind coming off the sea and slip Nocturne a carrot pilfered from the convent kitchens. “I will be back soon,” I whisper in her ear.
I turn from my horse and make my way through the trees and shadows to the tavern. Anticipation bubbles through me, so strong it is all I can do to keep from running to the door and throwing it open. Sybella was first sent out nearly a year ago, and I had despaired of ever getting an assignment of my own. At least I am better off than Annith, who is still waiting. I had thought she would surely be given an assignment before me.
I shove that puzzle aside and focus on the task at hand. This is a true test of all I have learned at the convent. I must be ready for anything and know that I will be judged accordingly.
When I reach the door, I pause, listening to the murmur of voices mingling with the clatter of crockery on the other side. The tavern is doing a brisk business this evening, with the men in from the fields early and the fishermen back with their day’s catch. Good. It is easier to go unnoticed in a crowd. I slip inside. At this late hour, the men are well into their tankards and are far more interested in the dicing going on in front of the fire or in catching the attention of some serving wench than they are in me.
The room is poorly lit, which suits my purposes well. Keeping close to the shadows near the wall as I have been taught, I make my way to the stairs that lead to the second floor, where rooms can be had for the night.
First door on the right, Sister Vereda said.
