Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #3)

by Mark Lawrence

“There might not be a meaning to the world, or in it, but that does not mean that what we do has no meaning.”

The fight matters. But in the end it is never truly won or lost, and victory lies in discovering that we are bigger than it is.

She hadn’t realised that she loved the old woman before. But she did. And Nona Grey could no more walk away from that than from her own skin.

“I haven’t reached the Path in twenty years because in all that time I have never left it.” Sister Pan glanced again at Nona. “Run, child. Please.”

There would be no quantal, not even an ice-triber at the edge of some distant hot sea near the planet’s pole, who would not know that some great thing had fallen.

Only the long reach of Abbess Glass had enabled her to step clear.

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW

“It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me. It doesn’t matter if she hates me. She’s my friend. I won’t leave her.”

And you’re still acting like a child, Nona! You run into everything heart-first, expecting . . . what? You didn’t understand how people work when the abbess brought you here as a dirty-footed peasant. You didn’t understand when she sent you away. And you don’t understand now. People lie, Nona: they steal, they cheat, they’re unfaithful. People hurt you, they let you down. They sell you out.”

“You choose your friends. If you’re going to worship dead people you didn’t choose, then perhaps the bonds of friendship shouldn’t be so easily broken. No?”

As Keot had once told her: your foes shape your life more than friends ever could.

With death so hard upon her heels she wished she could have been a better person, wished she could have saved her friends.

“It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size,” Jula quoted, and offered a bloody grin from among Sherzal’s guards.

Some lessons must be written in scars, Sister Tallow had said. Nona would miss her too.

All leaves must fall in time, she had said. The lives we lived fall away from us, but something remains, something that is part of the tree.

“To sow knowing that you will not reap is an old kind of love, and love has always been the best key for unlocking the future.”

Mercy for others in victory. Mercy for yourself too. You deserve happiness, child. Never forget it.”

MOONS MIGHT RISE and fall, empires wax and wane, even the stars come and go, but there are constants too, and though the story of our kind is ever-changing it is also always the same.