Sisters of Sorrow Read Online Free PDF

emptied her cup again, and again. The fourth time she dipped into the water, she heard, for the first time in hours, the echoes. She had tuned them out as she worked, but these echoes were clearer, closer even, and very disturbing.
    She froze and listened. Myriads of ducts conveyed the noise of machinery and conversation from all quarters of the orphanage to this point. But the conversation she heard now seemed so much more distinct.
    Anna wedged her foot into one of the cogs on a large gear wheel and pushed herself up until she could squeeze her head through the opening above the plate. Water filled the room beyond. Anna could not see how far back the cistern went, but she guessed it was vast. Her lamp light did not reach the far wall. Holes riddled the domed ceiling of this room, regular circle or square shaped holes. Many of them dripped water.
    The walls of this room, the cistern Anna decided, angled outward away from the iron plate. A ledge, maybe eighteen inches wide, ran along the walls, just above the water. Small rectangular holes penetrated the walls just above this ledge. Discoloration surrounding the openings indicated that water often flowed into the cistern through them, though they were dry just now. After a moment, Anna understood. These were the downspouts. These pipes led to the roofs and gutters where rain collected.
    And the voices, the echoes through these pipes, must be from someone speaking near one of those downspouts. Someone on the roof? But that didn’t make sense. Then she remembered Sister Eustace’s patio. A grand patio like that would have gutters. Suddenly she realized if I’m hearing conversations from one of the patios, it must be either Abbess McCain, or one of her proprietresses.
    The voices rose and fell, distance and bizarre acoustics garbled the individual words, but the tone of the conversation was clear: ambition, conspiracy, treachery.
    Anna’s head was already through the opening and, as Jane frequently pointed out, her head was the thickest part of her. She worked her scrawny chest onto the top of the plate, walking her toes up the cogs of the gear. Then hoisted herself over the lip and slid out onto the narrow ledge.
    Anna crept along the edge, worm crawling at first, then carefully, ever so carefully, rising to a hands-and-knees crawl. She put her ear to each of the downspout openings as she came to them. A fat white frog leapt out of the third pipe, squeaking loudly as it flew past her face.
    Anna let out half a squeak of her own before clamping one hand over her mouth. The frog splashed into the black water and disappeared. Anna tottered on the ledge, almost falling in herself. Only by flopping flat on her belly did she managed to stay on the ledge.
    For several seconds she, lay flat on the stone, her heart slamming against the inside of her ribcage. This is stupid, Anna, get back to where you belong, she thought, and she was right. But just then, voices started up again. Very close now. Intrigue permeated the conversation’s tone. Secrets were being passed, big secrets, and Anna was so close. She scooted forward again, just a few feet, to the fourth pipe.
    With her ear to the hole, Anna recognized Abbess McCain’s voice at once. “Are your sure?”
    “No, not entirely,” said the second voice, one Anna did not know, “but her story lacks credibility.”
    “Yes, it does, and so does her telling of her story. Sister Dolores does not strike me as either strong-willed or incorrigible.”
    The other voice laughed. “I can’t even call her devious, though she is trying to be such.”
    “Has she given any indication of her true purpose?” Abbess McCain asked.
    “No, but I would speculate that she intends to smuggle someone off the island… Or, perhaps she is trying to make a name for herself as a reformer, a crusader against child labor.”
    “Hmmm…” McCain paused. Anna pictured her pacing the room, deep in thought. “Has she indicated special interest in any of