Beneath the monstrous illustration there was a door.
It was dark, but there was still enough light to see that the entire left wall was made of ruched velvet curtains. I could hear voices on the other side.
“The crown jewel of the whole place, where a lovely, pious woman can come to rest and restore her spirit, basking in the light of the great Empyrea. This is the part of the house I’ll miss the most.”
“You saved the best of the tour for last, I see,” I heard Kate reply. “Your home is very impressive. I can hardly believe you’ve sold it when you seem to love it so much.”
“I wanted to collect the proceeds of my investment before property value declines within the city.” A soft chuckle. “I have reason to believe that such a downturn is imminent.”
“Always one step ahead, predicting the future,” Kate said with a polite laugh. “Do you also happen to know when my mother will arrive?”
I peeked through a break in two panels to see Kate and Corvalis alone in the enormous inner sanctuary. It was at least six times larger than the one back home in Renalt. He took her hand and pressed it to his lips as her smile froze on her face.
“Now that we’re in the confessional, I have a confession to make, dear Katherine. Your mother isn’t coming today. I’m sorry. Something came up for her, and she wasn’t able to make it.”
“Oh,” Kate said, visibly deflating. “Well, thank you for the tour of your lovely home. I’d probably better go.”
“Back to a husband who mistreats you?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen it, Katherine. Firsthand. The irreverent way he speaks to you, the way he lords himself over you. Not to mention how he’s forced you into subservience, working for others when it should be you going to balls, so the rest of the world can marvel at your beauty.” He stroked her cheek. “It is my greatest folly, letting you get away.”
“I’m sorry, Dedrick,” Kate said, “if I’ve given you the wrong impression—”
“It would be easy to undo,” he continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “The marriage, so obviously performed under duress, can be annulled. And as for the whelp, no one of importance even knows about it. Once it has been delivered, it can be given to a decent, Empyrea-fearing family somewhere, or to an orphanage—”
Kate hit him, her hand whipping so fast across his face that it knocked his head to the side, revealing a series of scratches under his hair, by his ear. The ones I’d given him just after he’d killed Molly.
He touched a hand to his lip, and it came away with blood. “Don’t be stupid, Katherine. I’m trying to save you. To give you a chance. A lesser man wouldn’t even consider taking up with you now.”
She raised her hand to strike him again, but he grabbed it before she could land the blow. His handsome face was drawn into a sullen pout. “Oh, Katherine. You’re breaking my heart.”
He pulled her against his chest and took out his luneocite knife, nicking his own hand with it before pressing it against her neck. I grabbed the object nearest me—a vase—and dashed from my hiding place. But I was fast enough only to hear him say, “Know that I never wanted this for you. Nihil nunc salvet te.”
I slammed the vase full-force against the back of his skull. Crystalline shards fell with Dedrick to the ground. My hand hurt; the force of the blow had reopened some of my cuts. Kate was holding her hand against her neck, eyes terrified.
Dedrick was on all fours, trying to crawl over to us. His eyes were blazing with a malevolent fire. He grabbed at my skirt, and I brought my foot down hard on his left arm, the one I’d cut the last time I’d faced him. He cried out, but I’d already moved to his other side, laying him out flat with a kick to the back he’d bruised on the terrace stones.
“Come on!” I shouted, pulling Kate to the door and slamming it tight behind us.
Kate was shaking, but she brought a candelabra to me and I drove the metal shafts into the handle to jam it.
Behind the door, Dedrick was laughing softly. Almost politely. “You don’t know what’s coming,” he said. “You don’t know what will happen when I get out of here.”
Kate shrank away, and I slammed my hands against the wood. “You aren’t getting out of here, you dog. The next time you leave this room it will be in chains.”
The words surged from me, and with them, magic. What had Simon said back in Renalt, hidden away in the sanctuary? Over time, and with practice, the more instinctual and accessible magic becomes.
When I stepped back, my bloody handprint remained on the door like a promise.
25
“The baby,” Kate said. “I think she’s coming now.” Tears were streaming down her face.
“We’re almost home,” I said. “Can you make it?”
She took a long, deep breath. “I don’t know. I think so.”
“Do you have a midwife I can fetch?”
“No,” she said, her face contorting with pain as a contraction took hold of her. “Nathaniel’s sister is a midwife, but she lives days away. She was going to come next week.” She opened her eyes. “There’s just you.”
It can’t be just me, I thought but didn’t say aloud. I’d helped Onal a few times when I was younger, but these were not normal circumstances. I also didn’t want to mention the wound on her neck. It was small, but it still hadn’t stopped bleeding.
I got her up the walk and helped settle her onto the bed. “I sent him away,” she said between contractions. “Nathaniel tried to warn me against speaking to Dedrick, and I sent him away.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I reassured her. “I’ll go to town, see if I can find a midwife or a healer.” Kate kept her sewing money in a can on the kitchen shelf, and I emptied it into my pockets.
“Please don’t go,” Kate begged, sweat standing out on her forehead. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“I won’t be long,” I promised. “Everything will be fine. I swear.”
* * *
In the evening light, the windows of Sahlma’s apothecary were empty and forbidding, but I rapped on the door anyway. Three, four, five times. I paused, then three times more. “Open the door!” I shouted. “Please!” I didn’t want to be here again, but I’d left Kate in too much of a hurry, neglecting to ask her for a name or address of someone qualified who could help. Sahlma was the only one I knew of.
It was a sour face that greeted me when the door finally came ajar, but it grew sourer still when I took down my hood and she saw that it was me. “Stupid wench,” she said angrily. “You dare come back here and disturb my peace again?”
“I need your help!”
“Go away.” She tried to shut the door in my face, but I slammed my hands against it before it could meet the frame.
“Don’t!” I said frantically, pushing past her. “Hear me out! Please! I can pay.” I took out Kate’s coins and slammed them onto the counter. “I have a friend. She’s about to have a baby, but it’s too early and”—I swallowed hard against the lump that was burning in my throat like a coal—“she was hurt by a wicked man and now she’s bleeding and bleeding and it won’t stop. She’s going to have this baby, and soon, and she or her baby could die unless you help me.” I knew the truth of it as I said it; even with help, Kate’s chances were grim.
Nihil nunc salvet te.
“Be gone,” Sahlma said with a cough. “And take your coins and your troubles with you.”
I said through gritted teeth, “Please. What about the baby? A mother should never have to be without her child.”
It was what Zan’s mother had said to Sahlma, right before she jumped.
She reeled back as if she recognized the words, but only for a second. “Get out.”
A small, gray face peeked out at me from behind her skirts. “Who is the little boy in the cap?” I asked, gently assessing the similarities between his young, spectral face and her weathered, aged one. “He’s your son, isn’t he?”
The little boy in the ca
p watched me, waiting.
Sahlma’s hand lashed my face. I could feel the sting of each one of her fingers on my lips, but I kept going. “You are the way you are because of him, aren’t you? Because you lost him.”
Her hand slowly lowered. “How do you . . . ?”
“I can see him. He’s right here with us, right now as we speak.”
Her voice began to shake. “You’re trying to manipulate me.” Her lips curled down in rage. “How dare you? How dare you use the memory of my son in such a way?”
I steeled myself. “I am not lying.”
All my life I’d been terrified of their touches, to see their horrific tales play out in front of my eyes. But I knelt down and held my hand to him. He stepped out from behind her skirts and looked from my outstretched hand to my face, as if asking for permission. I gave a slight nod, and he placed his small, pale fingers in mine.
It was like plunging my arm into an ice-ridden river. I gulped at the shock of his cold touch, but I didn’t let go.
Flashes of words and pictures and memories flew around my head like snow in a flurry. I told her, “He was named after your favorite bird. A . . . a kestrel. He’d always find a stick to carry when you’d walk from town to town, looking for work as a maid. Sometimes you had to take other work to buy him food. You’d make him wait outside in the street so he couldn’t hear what was happening to you, but he could hear. You hardly ate much; you gave what you could to him and put a little money aside—to take him on a boat ride, you said. He loved boats. You’d walk past the docks with him every day and compare the ships in the harbor—the colors and sizes—and talk about which one you’d take him on when you had enough money saved up.”
Tears were shining in her eyes. Her hands were twisted up in her apron, which she knotted and pressed against her mouth, dampening her shrill wail of grief.
My entire arm was becoming a block of ice, but I held on. “Your husband was often gone for months, but he always found you when his funds ran dry. The last time, he stole the money for your boat ride and wasted it on bad bets. When Kestrel found out, he cried. But the crying just upset him. He tried to make Kestrel quit crying.” Breathless horror was suffocating me; I didn’t want to see this. “And he . . . and he—”
“Stop,” Sahlma begged. “Please stop.”
Tears were running down my face as Kestrel’s story flew past my eyes. “Stars. Oh, merciful Empyrea. I’m sorry. I am so sorry.” I closed my eyes. “You buried him in the forest,” I said shakily. “You planted a sapling on the spot. And then you went back to the man who took your little boy from you and you hit him on the back of the head with a rock while he was sleeping. You were about to hit him again when you saw the patch of bloodleaf under the bridge . . . and then you dragged him to it, dumped him on it, and then you slit his throat and pushed his body into the river below. Then you went back with the petals . . . you dug up the tree . . . you tried . . .” I looked up at her through bleary eyes, unable to finish.
Sahlma pressed both hands to her face and sobbed.
Kestrel waited calmly while I collected myself. “Your son . . . he wants you to know that he doesn’t blame you, even though you blame yourself. He loves you. He doesn’t want you to be sad anymore.”
The boy nodded and withdrew his hand. My arm fell to my side. I couldn’t move it. I clutched it with my other hand and staggered to my feet.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll go.”
“Wait,” she said. “I did collect bloodleaf petals that day. Two of them. One I used . . . you saw how. The second, I sold to buy my education as a healer. I wanted to help people like me . . . but time and circumstance has a way of beating the idealism out of a person.” She wiped at her puffy face with the back of her age-spotted hand. “I’ll help you, if I can. Show me the way.”
* * *
It was dark when Sahlma and I rushed across the cottage threshold. We could hear Kate’s wrenching cries before we even reached the walk. We found her kneeling at the side of her bed, bent over in excruciating pain.
Sahlma got right to work, rolling up her sleeves. “Water. Now.”
I hastily filled a basin and rushed in with it, water slopping over the sides as I set it next to the bed. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” Kate asked.
“You’re going to be fine,” I said reassuringly before shooting a worried look at Sahlma, who said nothing.
Kate was racked with another hard contraction, tendons standing out against her skin as she struggled through it. The bloodstain on the gauze pressed against the cut on her neck began to spread further across the white plane. The wound still had not clotted.
“It won’t be long now,” Sahlma said, furrows deepening above her brows.
Kate labored through the waning hours of the night, growing ever weaker.
Near morning Kate gave one final, shuddering push, and the child was born. A little girl.
“Look, Kate!” I said. “You were right. A girl.”
“She’s alive,” Sahlma said, looking wan and sad. “But she’s small, and not breathing well.”
Tears shone in Kate’s eyes. “Can I hold her?”
Sahlma wrapped the baby up and passed her to me. I paused to pull the fabric away from her face. It was round and perfect, with sweet, tawny cheeks and a little bit of dark, curly hair crowning her head. Her eyelids flickered open and she began mewling weakly. Her eyes, I could tell, would be deep brown. Just like her father’s.
Kate took her in shaking arms. “We did it, my girl. We did it.”
I stumbled, numb, into the kitchen, while Sahlma did her best to stanch Kate’s bleeding. I made myself as busy as possible, straightening what was already straightened, cleaning what was already clean. Kate’s half-finished work was everywhere: a pie, ready to be baked. A bundle of fresh firewood in the hearth, ready to be set alight. A basket full of half-made baby clothes next to the chair. I lifted the first dress and stared at it, dazed, wishing I could finish it for her but knowing I’d never do it justice. When I went to lay it back in the basket, I felt a sharp sting on the tip of my forefinger.
Bleeding stars, I thought. I’d pricked myself.
It wasn’t much, just a tiny drop of blood, no bigger than the head of the pin that caused it. But it was the last straw. The numbness with which I’d been holding myself together was gone. Kneeling over Kate’s sewing basket, I cracked.
Zan, Nathaniel, I cried out in my thoughts as the blood drop fell, come back. Kate needs you. I need you. Come back.
* * *
Sahlma’s efforts had been in vain, I could see that. Kate was still bleeding. If the Empyrea had been merciful, Kate would have been allowed the kindness of unconsciousness—but her eyes were clear and full of sharp anguish as she lay holding her child’s tiny, failing body under her chin. She was stroking the back of her baby’s delicate hand, singing a broken lullaby.
“Kate.” My tears were flowing freely now.
She turned her sorrowful face to me and said, “How can I bear it? How?”
“I don’t know.” And I backed out of the room, letting her be alone with her little girl for whatever time they had left together.
Sahlma was washing the blood from her hands in the next room, her face sagging and sallow. “A shame,” she said. “A stars-forsaken shame.” More softly, she said, “No mother should be without her child.”
“You did your best,” I said dully. “But please tell me . . . is there any hope for Kate?”
“No,” Sahlma said, rising. “There’s nothing within the laws of nature that can possibly save either of them now.”
My heart sank, but Sahlma continued, “I think, however, there’s a solution outside of the laws of nature.” She reached inside her pocket and brought out a medicine dropper capsule.
“What is that?”
“It’s bloodleaf petal potion,” she said.
My heart quickened. Nearly incoherent with hope, I asked, “What? Where did you come by . . . how?
”
“There was another time. Another mother, like her, wanted to save her child, took her own life to do it. I managed only one petal that time. I should have given the whole thing to the child, but I had realized, not long before, that there was something wrong inside me. A cancer. And I . . . and I . . . I didn’t want to die. So I distilled the petal into a serum. I gave the little boy just enough to get him past the worst of his illness, and then I kept the rest for myself. I’ve extended my life with it, drop by drop, for almost twelve years now, assuaging my guilt by telling myself that if it wasn’t for me, he’d have died anyway.” She placed the capsule in my hands. “Even still, all night, I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t have to use it. Arguing with myself against just giving it away to a stranger, but I think . . . I think it may be time to finally let go. There are two, maybe three drops left. Enough for one of them at least.”
“You’re making the choice to die?”
“Better to choose it for myself than to have it chosen for me.” Her eyes were glistening. “I’ve done many things of which I am not proud. I knew that someday, if my son was waiting on the other side, I’d have to make an accounting to him, and I couldn’t bear the thought. But now I’m not afraid anymore, and I think I’ve put off our reunion long enough.” She gathered her things. “A mother should never have to be without her child.”
26
When Sahlma was gone, I returned to the bedroom. Kate turned her tear-stained face to me as I entered.
“I keep praying to the Empyrea that this isn’t real. I’ll do anything she asks. I just want my baby to live, Emilie.”
I pulled out Sahlma’s capsule. “I might have an answer,” I said gently. “It’s a potion made from a bloodleaf flower. There’s only a drop or two left. We can give one to each of you. It’s our best chance now.”
She kissed her baby and held her closer. “I don’t want it. Give it all to her.”
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