by Jenna Rhodes
Her mouth opened. “I—” and then a mighty spasm took her, and as her father knotted off the last stitch, she surged to her feet.
“Squat,” he told her. “Like you were milking one of the goats but without a stool. It’ll help.”
She did, and it did. He gathered up her skirts as he ordered Dayne to bring the boiling pot over to him.
“I’m washing up,” he said to Dayne. “You, too, in case you have to help catch.”
Dayne’s face flushed for a moment. “She’s not a cow,” he responded softly, as he rolled his remaining sleeve to over his elbow and washed.
“Never, but catching a baby is not all that much different.”
And then Nutmeg heard words, but little made sense as her body seized her and did what it must to bring her child into the world. Moments passed. Long, awful, dread moments that left her gasping in between with relief, only to be seized up again, over and over. She felt it at last as the child passed and rocked back onto the branchy cot, on her elbow and her father cried out, “Well done, Meg. A beautiful baby girl.”
“Girl? It . . . It can’t be.”
Dayne mopped her forehead. “A wee, perfect little girl. She looks like you, in a very pinkish and somewhat . . . well, I can see you in her squeezed-up little face.”
Tolby took care of the rest, then wrapped up the baby in his slicker and held her up so that Nutmeg could see her tiny, perfect hands with fingers already trying to grip, and little feet with exquisite little toes, and a wispy brush of dark hair upon her head. She reached for the child in wonder. “So it’s you I’m meeting, finally,” she told her baby.
Baby eyes did not reveal her Vaelinar bloodlines, nor did her heart-shaped face with pudgy cheeks except for the tiny, tip-ended rosebud ears, but that no longer mattered. One look and she had Nutmeg’s soul. She held her close as the child wailed its first cries and then softened, chortling for her. She held her baby close.
But a girl. How could it be? Nutmeg ran her fingers over the downy soft bit of hair. A beautiful, wonderful girl.
And then another, hard spasm took her.
“Hold on,” said Dayne. “She’s crowning again. There’s another.”
Tolby took her girl from her, and put her gently on the leafy cot, tucking her in before turning to Nutmeg. “Are you sure?”
“A-course he’s sure!” Meg snapped, her body rigid. “This is not bobbing for apples and fun.” A growling groan escaped her, shutting away whatever else she might have said. She threw her arms up to Tolby and Dayne to grip her wrists and she held on for dear life. She lost all sense of time, all but blacking out and then she felt the pressure push the baby through, a relief through the pain.
She could hear the offended squall. Dayne gripped her firmly.
“A boy,” Tolby announced, “and as like to Jeredon as could be, with a touch of you.”
A boy. The boy.
Nutmeg gave a tired, wobbling smile before passing out.
She woke groggily with the late afternoon sun still slanting across her and knew she hadn’t been out long, woodsmoke stinging her nostrils. One of the babies gave a fitful cry.
Dayne and her father had been talking. They stopped and turned to her. “Better?”
“Always. They must be hungry. Give them here.”
“Are you up to it?”
“I had better be, hadn’t I, with two of them?” She held out her arms in welcome. “The boy is Evarton, and my girl is Merri.”
“You sound certain,” Dayne commented as he snuggled little Merri into the crook of her arm.
She felt no doubt. “I am. For Jeredon Eladar, and Merri for . . . us. Because that is a Dweller-sounding name.”
Dayne turned away as she began to suckle a child on each breast, the business of doing it harder and definitely more painful than she’d imagined, but she knew it would soon be routine. If she could handle two babies. She was ample enough, she supposed, but wet nurses had been around almost as long as mothers, and she might have to find one. Evarton fastened his eyes on her as he pulled, but Merri squinched hers shut tight as if concentrating all that she was on this drinking business. She put her chin to the top of his head. “All babies’ eyes are muddied a bit and change color, and I can imagine yours will be like his, green with streaks of amber.” Evarton made a noise of contentment. Merri fisted one tiny hand and waved it about.
Tolby cleared his throat. “We have been talking.”
“Imagine that.” Meg looked at him.
“I have a question for you, first.”
“And it would be. . . .”
“Did anyone ever suspect you were carrying two?”
Meg thought a moment before shaking her head sharply. “Never. Not even Mother.”
The two men nodded sagely. “Then we have a suggestion. Find a wet nurse and leave Evarton behind for a bit, in safety.”
She frowned. “And why would I leave my son behind?”
“Tressandre. She would probably feel far less threatened if you produce your daughter, so like us and so unlike the Vaelinar.”
The words fell like rocks upon a tight drum skin. Nutmeg waited a moment to take them in. They made no sense at first, and she swirled them around in her head until they did. Her eyes opened a bit wider.
“And if Tressandre doesn’t feel charitable? What if she decides that being Dweller is far more despicable and Merri becomes the target of all her venom? That sentiment would back her if she assassinated a mongrel? Use her for bait? How could you say such a thing?” She took a deep breath. Both babies stopped suckling a moment and Merri’s little face bunched up unhappily. “And how long would I leave Evarton ‘in safety’?”
“A year, perhaps two, at the most. While Tressandre has her child and Lariel proves her claim insubstantial.”
“You want me to give away one of my babies for years? How would he even know me when I took him back? How would I repair the hole in my heart for doing such a thing? How could you ask it of me?”
“It might be best,” Dayne answered softly.
“Never will I sell myself short again because of Vaelinar politics. These are my children and I will raise them close and well. Don’t ever tell me to give either of them up again.”
Tolby’s face creased in sadness. “Are you certain, Meg?”
“Never more. Only the years will tell if I’m right, but I won’t be trading one for the other. We will keep them safe.” She tightened her embrace about them. Merri began to drink again, but Evarton, who had never stopped, seemed full and laid his cheek against her bosom and watched her. She looked up to see Dayne watching her.
He gave a brief, crooked smile before turning back to the fire. He’d done some hunting evidently because she could smell meat roasting on a spit as he busied himself tending it. He said something she didn’t catch. “What was that?”
“I said I would be one of their guardians. If you’ll have me.”
Her face warmed. “How could I not?”
He twisted around. “There are a hundred ways and more you could turn me away, Nutmeg Farbranch. I pray you use none of them.”
She saw the intensity of his expression and in his eyes as he braced himself. He expected her to refuse him, but how could she? Disappointment chilled her, deep inside, that he asked for the babies and not for her as well. Not that she thought he wanted her in that way, or even that she was ready after losing Jeredon, but disappointment wended its way throughout, despite all that. Someday she would want again. Look for love again. And she had begun to think when she did, that Dayne would be the one she searched for. She could think of no one else she’d rather have in her heart.
Words jostled against her tongue and lips, refused to issue, not until she had thought long what to say and swallowed twice against a dry mouth to say them. “Verdayne Vantane, I would be honored for you to be a guardian for
my children.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Because that is the way it will be, regardless of your permission.”
She sputtered slightly, and Tolby chuckled.
He tapped his belt knife on the spit. “Supper is ready, and I suggest we make plans before we sleep. The spring sun should wake us early, and we need to be on our way. There’s a war brewing out there, and I intend to have our babies in a safe haven before it hits. May the plots and conspiracies of our kin pass us by.”
“Amen to that!” Tolby answered.
Meg hugged her children close. From his lips to the ears of the Gods, wherever They might be sleeping.
Lariel
LARA EMERGED into the late morning from the manor’s kitchen door and enjoyed the sunlight as it came down to bathe her. The gold about her throat warmed against her bare skin and seemed to tighten about her waist. She smoothed the Jeweled armor down over her chain, her fingertips catching a buzzing tingle as she did so. She pulled her gloves across her fingers, waiting as Chastain led her gelding Yarthan out of the yard, and made an inspection of his harness before placing himself at his headstall, holding him for her to mount.
She stepped forward. “The battalion is readied?”
“Waiting on the road.”
“And the company to remain behind?”
“Patrolling, my lady, as you commanded.”
Lariel stood by her horse’s stirrup in hesitation, a nagging thought at the back of her mind that she could not banish even as she could not quite bring it up clearly so that she might understand why she hesitated, why she worried. She slapped her gloves across the palms of her hands.
“My lady?”
“I have forgotten something. And it vexes me not to know what it might be.”
He opened his mouth and then shut it, having evidently been taught sometime in his young past that it was not wise to interrupt thoughts at such a time. The corner of his mouth skewed tightly.
She rubbed at the spot between her finely arched eyebrows, and then shook her head. Lariel sighed. “Still no word from Calcort?”
“Not yet this day, but the bird handler did not seem worried. The winds and uncertain weather, he thought, would have delayed any flight.”
Her guards would have, she knew, not waited for a certain time of day to send off a bird if Nutmeg had gone into labor. The word would have been sent off immediately. She had to assume that no message meant all was well. Would be well. If Jeredon had any way to work his will upon this world, he would be watching Nutmeg and his unborn child. She believed that. As for things undone or forgotten, she couldn’t linger.
“On to Ashenbrook, then.” She pulled her gloves on emphatically and then swung up. Her gelding lifted his head high and let out a challenging whicker as she settled into the saddle and shoved her boots in securely, taking up the reins.
They had barely ridden out of the manor’s yards when the wind came whistling in. It turned the helm on her head chill even with the leather lining and she put a hand up to make sure it stayed snug on her head. Yarthan wheeled and trumpeted a protest into the storm front, nostrils flared, and pawed a front hoof on the road. Roaring in fiercely, the wind lifted his mane from his arched neck and buffeted Lara so that she grabbed for a hold.
Chastain’s horse wheeled in panicked circles until he got hold of her and curbed her to a standstill. The trees about them whipped in a frenzy and beyond, where the River Andredia flowed, she could hear a torrent, as if the storm filled the river and sent it cascading harshly down the banks. The air smelled of the sea and of spent lightning.
“I don’t like this,” her armsman muttered. He clapped a hand to his sword hilt.
“Would you strike down a lightning bolt? We have no power against this.” She swung her horse about. “We’ve objectives we can handle. Join the battalion while we can. Make the border of Larandaril. Ashenbrook can no longer wait!” She shook her reins and Yarthan sprang forward, head down, as if he thought he could outrace the storm. The clouds behind clashed against one another and the boom of thunder began to shake and rattle down the valley and across the groves. She could hear tree branches crack and fall. She bent low over her horse’s neck and chirped to urge him into a pounding run.
They reached her battalion at the edge of the border, in a wide, far-reaching meadow bounded by forest on either side, her men in armor and leather hunkered down for a siege, the cavalry dealing with white-eyed horses who reared and spooked against the incoming storm. Clouds blackened the sky, and she reeled Yarthan about, eyeing this far reach of Larandaril, a border she’d crossed to go to war at Ashenbrook several times over the past year, and what she saw struck her heart as solidly as if someone had reached out and punched her.
Maiden’s nod, pink-throated blossoms thrashing in the wind, the wildflower growing in abundance over the green grasses, everywhere she looked. Near her manor, they grew in handfuls here and there—but in this place, in this time, they looked like a pink flood upon the green. Her eyes widened at the sight. At what she’d seen in prophecy. What she’d viewed, through Chastain’s eyes when she’d possessed him. When Sevryn had found the corrupted side of her soul. When the nodding pink blossoms filled the fields and her vision. When she’d come to meet a death she could not possibly meet, not and have the world of Kerith survive what was yet to come.
Everywhere. She knew that meadow. The flowers. Chastain by her side. She knew. The time of her death loomed over her. No matter what she had done, it had found her.
Lara’s hands tightened into fists. Yarthan, on the bit, whickered a protest as her hold bruised his mouth and rose into a half-rear in the air. “Seventh Battalion!”
Her captain, a hard-bitten man who had spent most of his years riding under Bistel and had come to Lariel only upon his death, put his hand up. “Ready on your command.” He had blue-violet eyes, and hair that gleamed the color of bronze, and a network of crinkles about his eyes, and one corner of his mouth rode higher than another, thanks to an old scar. He had once been a contemporary of Bistel, and was made of that same steel, to the core. Before she could answer his unasked question, the skies opened up and rain came down in crushing blows, a torrential rain that stank of brine and seaweed. It flooded the ground, frothing into whitecaps about the horses’ dancing hooves and Lara pulled her sword, swearing. She looked up into a boiling sky and still more rain plummeted earthward in a curtain so dense she could barely see through it. And then the Raymy tumbled after, stinking of the ocean and wet leather and plague.
“Forward, attention!” shouted Gandathar, clearing his steel of his leather and putting himself between her and the first rolling bodies to drop upon the ground in salted, stinking pools of water. Her troops sprang to attention, dispatching the first few groups with relative ease, as the Raymy warriors seemed disoriented, getting to their feet with dazed grunts, but the skies kept raining, as far as she could see, lizard warriors.
Daravan’s tide flooded back, rolling over Larandaril. Not Ashenbrook where it had been taken up. Not where she had the bulk of her troops quartered, as did Bistane and, even reluctantly, the ild Fallyn, and the rest of their allies.
Not where the defenses had been built up carefully in wait. Not where the offensive troops had been quartered for seasons, drilling and anxious, waiting and eager. Not where any of the military minds at her disposal had planned for the Raymy to be. Daravan had weakened beyond any of their expectations.
“Gandathar. Clear a handful of men. Send them back to the birdmaster, have him send word the troops must come here, at all haste.”
Her captain nodded sharply and spun about, pointing five times. The cavalrymen raced past her, horses’ hooves thundering and swerving past the struggling masses of lizard warriors. The last man put his horse into a leap over a knot of Raymy and one of them rose up, bounding as they could do on frog-like legs, sword impaling the jumper deep into its gut, bringing
down the horse crying in agony and the rider in silence as he tried to roll free. Both horse and soldier disappeared in a sea of gray-green flesh as savage cries filled the air.
Only four left to make it back to the manor and send word for reinforcements. Lara turned away, unable to help, knowing it useless to watch, her own position slowly being ringed in as masses of Raymy got to their feet and the rain kept pouring. She wiped the stinging from her eyes and filled both hands with her steel, guiding Yarthan with her knees as he’d been trained. The golden pectoral and girdle flashed as she leaned, twisted and struck, regained her balance and leaned another way to parry a blow, and growl a return warning as lizards reared their warty heads to hiss at her. Yarthan backed slowly into a fortified circle of fighters, all of them facing outward, as Raymy began to press into a formation around them.
“Hold!” ordered Gandathar. “Don’t let them break us.”
A tall order for a small group of men. From the center of the battalion, archers loosed a flight of arrows that cleared the path around them, Raymy falling with gurgling cries and their more cautious fellows pulling back.
Gandathar made it to her knee. “What shall we do?”
“As you ordered,” Lara answered grimly. “Hold.” She looked out over the meadow and remembered that, in her vision, the sun had been shining when Sevryn had struck her down. Had she augured the day wrongly? Or did she yet have time?
She dared not trust to a fate she’d foreseen. Her time was here and now.
She heard a gurgling scream to the rear of their position and turned her head to see one Raymy fall on a wounded horse, tearing it to ribbons like a hunger-crazed hound.
She spoke a soothing word to Yarthan to steady the horse and stood her ground as a wing of fighters, their warty skin glistening in the rain, hopped forward in advance.
When night fell, the rain stopped, if rain it had been. It felt and smelled like an ocean had descended upon them, drowning them under brined waves that caked the skin and stung the eyes and nostrils and almost hid the stench of the diseased enemy. And when night fell, it fell blackly, under storm clouds still hiding the sky, a thousand stars muted. They banked no fires for themselves or the wounded. They dismounted and let their tired horses stand quietly, and set sentries on the outer ring of defense, but the Raymy had fallen back as well, yellowed eyes glittering in the dusk until they could no longer be seen. No sign had been reported of Daravan. They must have taken him apart. Lara sank to her haunches and checked her blades by running bare fingers over them, found a whetstone, and began working the notches out.