The Soul of Power

by Callie Bates

More cramps ravage my back. I cry out inadvertently, clutching my belly. Another cramp doubles me over.

  “No,” I’m whispering aloud, “no no no—”

  This can’t be. I can’t be having my baby here, not now. Not months early.

  I lurch toward the door, hobbling in pain. I thump my fists against the wood. “Help! Alain! Sebastien! Help! I need a doctor!” I try to keep my voice level, but it’s rising into panic. I scream, “I need a doctor!”

  Silence. I press my forehead against the door, sobbing though my eyes are dry. Another cramp grips my back. I pound again. I’m going light-headed, either from my panic or from the premature birth. I can’t be giving birth now. I can’t lose the child.

  I’m not going to die like this, and neither is my baby.

  Voices murmur in the corridor. “Alain!” I scream, trying to push my voice through the wood. Trying to demand, with the power of sound, that they listen. “My baby—I’m losing my baby—I need a doctor!”

  The voices fall into abrupt silence. Tears leak from my eyes, and a fresh wave of cramps rolls over me. They must think I’m lying. That I’m trying to trick them into letting me out. They must think this is a ploy.

  Unless this is what someone planned all along. I ate the food they brought us, unthinking. What if someone has poisoned me?

  But Alain said he was sorry. There’s no reason for him to fake the pity in his eyes. These guards worked for me for months; I remember their names and their families. They might be angry and frustrated with the things that I have done, with the death of Thierry, but they don’t hate me. I’m sure of it.

  But they still don’t trust me enough to open the door, or fetch a doctor.

  Once again, pain contracts my back. My skin is slick with sweat; my legs are shaking. “Help!” I cry.

  Nothing.

  I stumble back to the bed, but it’s too far to bend over, so I turn to the desk again instead. I grip it, panting through my open mouth. If this child is coming now, four months before its time, I will do everything I can to see we both survive. I have no other choice.

  Though my father has ordered me executed. Unless I can come up with some plan, I’m due for death anyway.

  I lean against the desk, drawing in a long, shaky breath. I’m trembling all over. I’ve lost everything, and everyone—my crown, my kingdom, Teofila, Alistar, Rhia, my friends, my people, my guards. And now maybe my daughter as well. I don’t know what will happen when Elanna and Jahan return, if they even arrive; I don’t know if I’ll survive to see them.

  Voices echo out in the corridor. I turn woozily toward the door, bracing myself against the desk. Is it Rhia? A doctor?

  It’s a woman’s voice, raised.

  The bolt slides back in the door. My heart is pounding with hope.

  Candlelight.

  A woman stands on the threshold, clenching a burning candle in one birdlike hand. The lace sleeve of her robe has fallen, exposing the length of her arm. The hauteur of her face is breaking into horror.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Phaedra Saranon demands.

  I press my free hand to my stomach, riding out another wave of cramping. In slow, careful Idaean, I tell her, “I need a doctor.”

  Her gaze flickers from my hands to my rounded stomach. Her face pinches in disdain. I could overpower her. I could break out into the corridor.

  Into the arms of the guards? No. That won’t work.

  “I need help,” I tell her again.

  She looks me up and down, frowning, as if I’m not measuring up to whatever she expected. The sound of her snakes into the room, though I can hardly feel it over my own pain. A complex tangle of notes that sounds, if anything, annoyed. Does she not understand that I’m with child, that I’m going into labor, that I need help? What is she even doing here?

  I find myself shouting at her. “Get me a damned doctor!”

  She straightens, and real anger flares in her eyes. A scarlet, humming thread rises from her. I suspect no one ever speaks to Phaedra Saranon this way. She’s sneering because I spoke Ereni. “I don’t know your backwater lingo.”

  “Then why are you here?” I cry out, in Idaean this time. A cold sweat has broken out on my forehead. The room spins a little. “What do you want?”

  At that, she steps forward and hunkers down before me, as if we’re at the fireside having a chat. Softly, she says, “Someone told me magic is awakening in people throughout these lands.”

  I roll my eyes, hard. “Did you—bring a witch hunter?”

  “Alas, my friend Alcibiades is dead. I miss him,” she adds. “We had such illuminating conversations. I learned a great deal from him, you know.”

  I just grunt. My back aches.

  Phaedra Saranon tilts her head. “I wanted to have a look at you. The rebel queen. Do you have sorcery?”

  “What makes you think I’d tell you?” I say through gritted teeth, though I can feel the outline of the bone flute in my pocket, humming. “So you can lock me up and send me mad?”

  “You shouldn’t judge before you understand,” Phaedra tells me. “My father was the kind of fool you’re describing, and so is my brother, to some extent. So is that boor you call your father—Euan Dromahair—who simply spouts whatever line he thinks will catch him a crown. But I…I see that sorcery is coming back into the world. Times change, and those who are wise change with them.”

  I stare at her. “Are you a sorceress?”

  Phaedra bursts into bitter laughter. “Perhaps if I were, it would be me, not my brother Leontius, sitting on the imperial throne.”

  Another cramp racks my body, and I grind my teeth together. “I need. A. Doctor.”

  “It’s no good talking to you,” Phaedra informs me. “Especially when you’re…like that.” She grimaces, flapping her hand at my contorted body.

  “A doctor,” I whisper. “Please.”

  “Mmm.” She seems to consider, then shrugs. “I’ll think about it. Euan wants you dead, and while I’m sure I could persuade him otherwise, he’s so damned tiresome. And honestly, I don’t quite see how useful you can be to me.”

  I stare. She’ll think about it? A slow-burning anger boils up through my throat, strangling me.

  “It’s a pity,” Phaedra says. The sound of her has dimmed, now, as if she’s no longer curious about me. She rises and steps back through the door. “Guards, close her in. I’ll let you know if you’re required further.”

  As the door swings shut, I glimpse Alain’s face. His gaze jerks from my stomach to my face. I must look like a cornered she-bear, both terrified and ferocious. Then the door falls closed.

  And I am alone, once again, in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  GRADUALLY, MY EYES adjust. There’s some light from the almost-full moon, coming through the still-open window. I crawl over to the desk and brace myself against it once more. The cramps are growing worse. I draw a breath through my open mouth. I will survive this. I will. I’m not going to sink into panic and fear. I won’t pound on that damned door again.

  If my baby comes now, I will birth it myself. We will both survive, just to spite the cursed man who sired me.

  Through the pain, I start to sense sound. The sound of me, or of the child, I don’t know, but it is a humming that begins somewhere in my bones and spreads through my womb, twining around the child pressing upon my birth canal.

  Between the pangs of the cramps, and my own ragged panting breaths, I start to sing. Hitches of song. Hardly more than breaths.

  At last my eyes close. I fumble for the bone flute in my pocket, feeling its power hum into my body. The cramps are still coming, but my breathing evens. For a strange, lucid moment, I think I feel hands on my shoulders. I think I smell my mother’s scent, and then it is gone.

  The door opens.

  Fo
otsteps run across the floor behind me. “Sophy!” It’s a breathless whisper.

  I must be hallucinating. But there are real hands on my shoulders now, warm and trembling, and a sliver of light behind me. I turn.

  “V-victoire?” I whisper, and then grunt at the onslaught of another cramp.

  It is her, dressed in black, with her dark curls captured under a knit cap. “Can you walk?” she asks urgently.

  “I—I can try.”

  She takes my arm; I clutch it hard. Together, slowly, we cross the length of the room.

  Out in the corridor, Alain and Sebastien are waiting. We emerge, and with a hard look Alain closes the door behind us and once again locks it.

  “You’re going to have to walk fast, Sophy,” Victoire says to me. “Once we get out of the east wing, we’re going to have to hurry.”

  I look blankly around the corridor. We seem to be entirely alone. “Where—?”

  “You’re the only prisoner, for now.” She nods at Alain and Sebastien. “These two have been ‘demoted’ to looking after you without rest or food, because they didn’t carry you bodily from the Diamond Salon.”

  Alain looks at his feet. “We couldn’t leave you to d—in there alone, Your Majesty. So we sent for Mistress Madoc.”

  Despite everything, despite the cramps moving through my aching body, I feel a swell of gratitude. And hope. I look from Alain to Sebastien. They’ve both drawn back toward the wall. They know what will happen to them, in return for their mercy.

  “Neither of you can stay here like this,” I say. “You need to come with us, or—”

  “We can’t do that,” Sebastien interrupts, then looks ashamed. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I need the pay. My mother depends on it.”

  I glance at Victoire. She nods, reading my expression. “Then I assume you gentlemen don’t object to a short sleep?”

  They both swallow, but neither objects. Victoire tugs a small brown vial from her pocket—“Laudanum,” she says, apologetically. The men each take a sip, then settle themselves on the ground, sprawling themselves out as if they succumbed to a struggle. Both of them have already fallen unconscious before Victoire and I slip away.

  “They’ll be awake soon enough, and no worse for wear,” she whispers, then touches my arm. “Can you walk?”

  Another cramp digs through my back, but I reach into my pocket, gripping the bone flute. The humming pulse of it floods through my body, a numbing counterpoint to the cramps. If I focus on it, I can move.

  “Let’s go,” I whisper.

  * * *

  —

  WE CIRCLE DOWN through the east wing. The cramps are growing worse again; I bite my fist and grip the bone flute tighter. The corridors lie echoing, deserted. “Where are all the guards?” I whisper.

  “I paid them off,” Victoire replies. “My family’s wealth has to be good for something.”

  We emerge through a back exit from what was once the kitchen, into an overgrown garden. Ahead, past a thick hedgerow, city homes bulk up out of the dark. Victoire winds past the ancient garden stakes to an old gate whose hinges squeak mightily when she opens it. On the other side lies a promenade, full of night. We dart across to another gate in the hedgerow. This one has also been abandoned by its guards. We emerge into the street. A fine rain has begun to fall, wetting my head, sliding beads of moisture into my mouth.

  Now, on the wide avenue, with clouds scudding over the moon, Victoire hesitates. “You go on. I’ll give you directions—”

  “No.” My legs are trembling, a hard, racking pain, but I shove the discomfort deep down, into another part of my mind. “We stick together.”

  Victoire’s head turns toward me, but in the dark I can’t make out her expression. She says, “Then hurry.”

  We hurry. She leads us down the wide avenue—back toward the palace and Royal Square. My heart begins to pound, this time entirely unrelated to the cramps gripping my back. I have a feeling of what’s awaiting us.

  The square is wide and dark, eerily silent except for the scuff of our own footsteps. We both stop, listening hard through the thickening rain. A bulky shape has been newly placed beside the still fountain. Something square and pale sits at the top, visible even through the rain.

  Victoire gives a low, soft owl’s hoot. A pause. Then a cautious hoot comes out of the rain.

  “Stay here,” Victoire orders and dashes across the square, toward the bulky shape that can only be a scaffold, with Rhia bound bonelessly atop it. I glance toward the palace gates. The rain is lancing down in great sheets now, and the gates are lost in a muddle of water and darkness, along with any guards who might be overseeing them.

  A spasm wrenches my back. I grind my teeth together, refusing to cry out.

  Through the rain and my own squinted eyes, I can dimly make out fleeting movement on the scaffold. Then it’s gone so fast I wonder if I imagined it. Water drips down my ankles. It makes puddles in the cobblestones. There is nothing but darkness and the sound of falling rain.

  Their shadows emerge so subtly they seem to be part of the night: Victoire, followed by a man. My heart leaps so hard my whole body shudders. “Alistar!” I whisper as loudly as I dare.

  “Soph,” he hisses back. He’s carrying Rhia’s limp body wrapped in a length of cloth.

  “Is she—” I begin.

  “Yes, she’s alive.”

  “Demetra’s back at the house.” Victoire snaps her fingers. “Go!”

  We go, stumbling through the dark, slick streets. I splash through puddles. Water splashes up my skirts, down into my boots. I’m shivering and cramping and yet my eyes are clear and I’ve somehow never felt stronger in my life. Alistar is at my back. Free. Rhia and I both are free; and alive.

  Victoire leads our pack, diving away from the royal avenue down side streets, stitching us farther and farther from the palace. The buildings gather more tightly around us; we pass shop fronts shuttered for the night, and swinging signs whose words are lost to the rain. As we cross a main thoroughfare, a large, pale stone shape rises out of the shadows to our right: the bridge. We’re right up against the river, north of the temple, in the district of shopkeepers and warehouses and merchants. The houses have turned from pale-gray limestone to dark brick, their definition lost in the darkness.

  Victoire turns into an arched opening. I stagger after her, Alistar on my heels. We’re in a garden courtyard, with houses looking down on all sides. She leads us directly across to a home with a small portico, barely large enough to fit us all. But we don’t have to wait: the door opens immediately.

  We fall into the dry warmth. A grunt escapes me. The door hushes shut behind us, and we are left in more complete darkness than we had on the street. All I can hear is everyone else’s ragged breathing.

  There’s a soft hiss, and light blooms. I blink, momentarily blinded.

  “You found them,” a familiar voice says. I stare at a woman with short-cropped hair, wearing a dressing robe.

  “Funny how a bit of coin will do the trick,” Victoire says. “That Euan’s a fool if he thinks our palace guards have the slightest loyalty to him.” More grimly, she adds, “Where’s Demetra?”

  “She’s coming,” another woman says. There’s a creak, and another stream of candlelight: Teofila is coming down the stairs toward us, her hair loose and wild around her shoulders. She cries out when she sees me. “Sophy!”

  She runs to me, and I hug her hard, breathing in the bright humming sound of her relief. “But you’re supposed to be in Baedon,” I whisper. Tears are running down my cheeks.

  “No, darling. We found out you’d been taken before I left. I couldn’t go when you’d been captured. Alistar and I followed you south. Even Demetra insisted on coming.”

  “We’re together now.” I stare over her head at Juleane Brazeur, despite the cramps and my own panting breaths
. Slowly, my mind dull from pain, I’m putting it all together. “This is your house.”

  “Indeed, I make a practice of only smuggling fugitives into my own home.” But then Juleane relents; the sound of her softens. “You’re safe here; we’re the only ones in the house. I sent my housemaid to safety in the country days ago, and have been meaning to depart myself. But Mistress Madoc—and your refugee midwife Demetra—made a strong case for rescuing you.” A nod. “And Lady Rhia.”

  I turn to Alistar; her body seems so small in his arms. Another cramp seizes my back.

  “I’m here.” Demetra hurries down the hall, brisk and professional. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Cramps—it hurts so badly—”

  “Not surprising to go into false labor, given what you’ve been through.” She tugs me forward. “Come; we have a room prepared.” To our companions she says, “Bring Rhia.”

  I slow. “Take care of Rhia first.”

  “I have no desire to lose either of you. I will do my job,” she says firmly. “Come.”

  I let out a hissing breath. My legs are shaking again. I hobble forward, kept upright mostly by Demetra’s support. Somehow we arrive at a small, neat room outfitted with two pallet beds and a warm fire. I groan at the pleasure of its warmth, then immediately begin to sweat, overheating.

  Demetra helps me out of my sodden robe while the others settle Rhia onto the first bed. She stirs a little as she’s set down, with a little cry.

  “It’s all right.” Teofila crouches beside her, holding Rhia’s hand. “We’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  Rhia Knoll opens her eyes and bursts into tears. Teofila leans over her, hugging Rhia against her, whispering reassurances. Alistar and Juleane back out of the room, leaving the five of us alone. Victoire helps Demetra wrestle my wet clothes off, bundling me into a fresh chemise that smells of lavender.

  “Breathe,” she instructs me, and crouches before me, pressing her hands to my stomach. Her head tilts, as if she’s listening to the baby’s movement. I hear a sound myself, teasing the edges of my hearing. There’s a quiver in my stomach, and a tingling runs up my spine.