“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.