The red jewel was harder than corundum. I checked it for enchantment yet found nothing. This could be a diamond, and not just a false one Created in dream but a blessing of gods—a wonder, a treasure beyond price—which I could carry with me in reality.
One more test would prove it. My breath came in short gulps as I Attracted to my hand a silver diamond from a shelf. I activated it, and a ray of pure white light shot upward, extending through the skylight and into the night.
I moved the red jewel into the beam; the light bent as it entered a glassy facet. In that instant, I knew. The ray had refracted within the jewel to the characteristic angle of a diamond.
The red diamond shone with the color of rose petals held up to the sun. As more and more light pooled in the jewel, its facets lit the laboratory walls with triangle patterns, all spinning as the jewel revolved in the air between my fingers.
My dream city might forever stay locked in night, yet I felt in this moment the warmth of basking in summer’s grandest day.
Day Thirty-Nine, Third Trimester
Drowsiness paralyzed me, and I was too tired to swallow whatever foul-smelling ooze Maid Janny spooned into my mouth.
“Even babes eat applesauce,” she said. “Perhaps you’d rather have broccoli ground into a green paste.”
I mumbled something then succumbed to sleep.
In my laboratory, finding the magic user seemed more impossible now than ever. I had expected Tethiel’s information to lead directly to the source of the mass pregnancies.
Between examining the faces in my mirror of tailors and jewelers and other men whose professions allowed them to touch large numbers of women, I stole glances at the red diamond. I could improve its cut: Additional facets would throw more light back at the viewer’s eye, at the cost of shearing off pieces of jewel from its pavilion end.
I resisted the alterations, knowing I would only have one opportunity to perfect the stone, and the moment could be better savored once Morimound’s women were safe. Not to mention, the thought of diminishing the diamond in any way upset me more than cutting a gemstone ever had.
I forced my attention from the red diamond long enough to decide that the key to finding the Soultrapper lay in understanding the Bone Orbs and their creation. Summoning a replica unchild from memory, I scowled as it levitated above my operations table. When I had encountered the one unchild, yellow bands of cartilage had circumscribed each interlocking bone. The Bone Orbs would enlarge over time, and their external skeleton would replace the cartilage, bones fusing together to form something that looked like an eggshell with one groove running from end to end.
My prediction grew in front of me, leg bones twisting to fit between stretching ribs. I had a sense that I gazed upon some nefarious puzzle box of ivory: If I could find the right bone in the white jumble then I could open it and free my city.
A band of cartilage had divided the orb into halves, and the one I had witnessed had revolved along its yellow axis to cut Faliti. That young unchild had fractured. A quick prediction told me that most unchildren would grow solid enough to kill their mothers and birth themselves, without breaking, before the end of the month. Tethiel had not lied about running out of time.
I awoke struggling with my harness. The haze of my consciousness melded with my anxiety, producing a near delirium.
“Maid Janny! Maid Janny!”
“My, my,” she said, unthreading my arms from the silk bindings, “you look all caught up, like a fly in a web.”
“Not a fly.”
“A butterfly then, by your color. Or a moth. Or a pack of moths and butterflies stitched together.”
“Take me to Sri and Alyla,” I said.
Janny guided me down corridors that I no longer recognized, into a guest room. I needed several seconds to reassure myself that the blurry figure in the bed was Sri and the one sitting on a nearby couch was Alyla. A third woman stood next to Alyla, a servant I had ordered to accompany the girl, as I deemed the risk too great for one so frail to move about the grounds alone. The sight of her and Sri alive reassured me, and I focused on Sri’s long white hair, finding the Once Flawless sleeping with her mouth open.
“You were sick in your room for two days,” came a girl’s voice, confusing me until I localized the sound as originating from Alyla. “Are you feeling better?”
“No.”
My eyes had steadied on Alyla, who sat on the heavily pillowed couch with a book propped on her belly, and I imagined the Bone Orb inside her revolving, blood spreading down her sides and over the cushions. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“I have a present for you,” Alyla said, blushing down at the book in front of her. Without lifting her eyes, she held out a shawl embroidered with an iris, in purple thread. “Do you like it? This flower won’t wilt.”
“How did you know that purple was my favorite color?”
My purple dress was buried under a menagerie of hues. The gown would be complemented well by my red diamond, a great loss to the global aesthetic that I would always have to hide the jewel.
In a rush of ear-popping panic, I realized I did not know where the diamond was. I opened one hand and found it empty. In my second hand, the jewel glittered in the moment before my fingers snapped closed again. The relief was startling.
Alyla glanced at the embroidered iris, her eyes shying away. “Mister Obenji told me I could pick anything I wanted, and the lady said purple was the most expensive.”
I reached out for the shawl but stopped short of taking it. “I cannot wear that.”
“Oh.” Her face fell. “I suppose it doesn’t have any gold embroidery, or silver lace.”
A vague understanding that I had offended Alyla induced me to try to say something placating. “It is only that the shawl has no meaning.”
She rubbed from her eye something that might have been a tear. I must have said the wrong thing again.
“I’m so sorry,” Alyla said. “I only wanted to give you something, Miss Elder Enchantress. You’ve been so good for taking me in.”
Trying to help her understand, I pointed to my gowns. “I wear only achievements. Each of these means something. The maroon one is most hours slept in a day. The teal is highest leap. The black with gold thread is greatest force of Attraction.”
Maid Janny snickered. “What was that last one?”
I spoke over her. “You are not at fault that your gift is meaningless.”
Alyla sobbed and kept repeating herself. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I felt like crying, too, and wondered if I should not say anything ever again for fear it might offend someone as sweet as she. My struggle to think how to comfort her was eroded by thoughts of the Bone Orbs ripping from her and Sri, the unchildren tumbling out to roll over my ornate rugs. I clenched my red diamond until it cut skin, knowing that Alyla’s small size would throw her into labor prematurely. She would die of childbed fever, or of womb lacerations, and if I tried to help, then the Soultrapper might very well kill her in the same way he had her mother.
This conversation might be the last Alyla heard before contractions wracked her.
I snatched the shawl and handed it to Maid Janny. “Find a place for it. I will wear it. I thank you, Alyla, for the beautiful gift.”
Lifting one of my sleeves, I dabbed the tears from her face. Her sobs decreased in force, and she tried to smile for me.
“Maid Janny,” I said, “I will take my lunch in this room.”
“Would you mean dinner? It’s quarter past nine.”
“When I say I want lunch, you will serve it. No matter the time.”
Janny left me with Alyla and Sri, who had yet to wake. I sneaked a hand in to check Sri’s pulse, and she still lived.
A servant woman in the room spoke to Alyla. “You must read for the elder enchantress. You have such a pretty voice.”
Alyla gazed down at the book that balanced on her belly. She cleared her throat but did not speak.
“I should li
ke for you to read,” I said.
She closed the book. “I heard something in the Bazaar, something an acolyte said.”
The servant woman touched her arm. “I told you not to believe him.”
Alyla twined her fingers together. “He said the Ever Always planted death in us. That we won’t have baby girls after all.”
My left hand clutched my right, which in turn held the red diamond. I lifted both hands to press them against my mouth, unable to say anything.
“Is that why mother died?” Alyla dragged her tear-stained eyes upward to meet mine.
Pushing through the pain in my chest, I said, “No, it is not that.”
“Then will I have my baby girl? I’ve picked the loveliest name.”
I thought of the perfect names I had chosen for my own children: Chrysoprase, Beryl, Carnelian, and Agate. Images of the four doors to their rooms closed in my mind and locked; the jewels fixed into the wood were all dim in a dark hall.
“Save that name,” I said. “For your next child. You are young, and you will have more, I promise you will. Only, not yet.”
“Then....” Alyla cradled her belly. “It’s a stillbirth?”
My tongue fretted forward and back against my teeth. I could not tell them about the Bone Orbs. I never could. “I will try to make everything right, yet please, do not inquire how.”
The servant woman took Alyla’s hand, and I observed how the maid by turns clung to her fingers and patted them. I wondered if I should do the same to Alyla’s opposite hand or if that would have a counterbalancing effect.
A snort drew my attention to the bed. Sri the Once Flawless lifted her head. “Mister Obenji is coming!”
I said, “Exactly how do you purport to know that?”
“I heard him, of course.” She tried to lift herself to a sitting position but could not manage it. The pregnant servant rushed to help her.
“Careful,” I said to her. “And, Lady Sri, you could not have heard him. There was nothing to hear.”
Even as I said it, I glanced over the ruffles on my shoulder to see Mister Obenji speaking to Maid Janny. I moved into the room a bit more to gain the space to turn around, and then I entered the hall to listen.
Janny was holding a tray with a saucer and sliced oranges. “She’s the bravest woman alive and good at heart. But she’s never happy. By my reckoning, everyone should have at least one day of happiness.”
Mister Obenji looked past Janny to see me. “Elder Enchantress Hiresha, I give thanks to the Ever Always for your recovery.”
“I was not sick. I merely stayed in bed until evening.”
While I ate, Sri tittered over Mister Obenji. “Did you see, Hiresha? He’s wearing the turban I embroidered for him.”
Mister Obenji’s white mustache bent upward in his smile. “The lady Sri could’ve been a master tailor.”
“Any needlework at all is exemplary,” I said, “considering her arthritic hands.”
He cast a concerned eye at me, making me wonder if I should apologize. He salvaged the situation for me by clasping her lumpy fingers and saying, “Lady Sri has lovely hands.”
Meanwhile, Alyla was hugging the servant woman, and although I thought I should say something more to her, I needed all my focus to feed myself and stay upright. My drowsiness weighed on my head like a lead skullcap.
After finishing my saucer of milk and cubed mangos, my tongue felt swollen and slimy, and my stomach roiled. “Maid Janny, you have served me spoiled milk.”
“If it had spoiled,” she said, “wouldn’t you have tasted it?”
“I cannot be expected to taste everything I eat.”
My stomach heaved, and bitterness spread up my throat. I stumbled from the ottoman and fell on my side, which was a blessing: A bedstead hid me from view when I vomited.
“I think I am less than well,” I said as Janny helped me to my feet. I had never had so much difficulty digesting, although I had never been under such stress.
We passed servants in the hall who scurried to clean up the mess, and my next awareness was of Janny securing my arms in the harness.
“Mustn’t sleep,” I mumbled while slipping into my dream.
Surrounded by shelves full of glowing baubles, I decided I must investigate my nausea before a lack of nutrients endangered my health. I replicated myself, the copy standing before me in only petticoats.
“Lie down, Elder Enchantress,” I said to her.
She complied. The golden manacles on the operations table retracted, as I saw no need to secure myself. The blue diamonds spun around my hands, subdividing her as I searched her liver and kidneys for signs of poisoning. Her organs were healthy and shapely.
I asked her, “Have you experienced any other symptoms?”
“My breasts ache,” she said.
Now that she mentioned it, I supposed my breasts tingled on touch; I had not noticed because I had more important things to do than acknowledge bodily sensations.
The symptoms of nausea combined with sensitive breasts caused my mind to recoil. I thought I knew what this indicated, yet, no, it could not be that. The idea was too monstrous.
The blue diamonds sped to reveal the replica’s womb.
“I have disquieting news,” I said to the other me. “We are pregnant.”
The embryo inside me was not my child; my copper-cone bauble told me as much. A Bone Orb was growing in my womb.
The size of a tick, the unchild resembled a sphere, a blob of flesh that had invaded me by unnatural means. It had yet to develop any bone shell, and its heart had not begun beating, meaning I had carried it for no more than a month. I had not noted any change in my monthly emission, as I never had one; magic in a white-sapphire anklet arrested my cycle. Fertility was a nuisance before it was needed.
I felt unclean and angry beyond measure that this intruder would defile the place meant for my children. A golden knife whisked from a shelf to my hand. I had resolved to craft an enchantment to excise the trespasser from my body.
The red diamond would serve as the receptacle for the magic, both because of its availability and because of its capacity for complex spellcraft. Into the diamond, I copied the knife’s enchantment, which caused units within the body to disintegrate through self-suicide, and I tuned its specificity to the unchild’s tissue signatures.
While I worked, I grew aware of a presence, the same I had felt before the unchild had shattered in Faliti. The Soultrapper watched me.
He could not harm me, I told myself: The unchild had not yet developed any venom. Still, my spellcraft felt rushed, and I forced myself to slow down and concentrate. To the disintegrating enchantment, I added one that neutralized the venom in other Bone Orbs as well as one designed to reabsorb the bone found in the womb. The latter two effects would not apply to me, yet they might prove useful, should I ever use this enchantment to cure another woman of her unchild. I would not dare to do so while the Soultrapper lived, however, as he could command the Bone Orb to revolve and shred her womb.
The red diamond now glowed, as did the other objects on the shelves and the jewels floating about the laboratory. Unlike them, the red diamond was real and would carry its enchantment to the waking world, although there it would not glimmer.
I judged the enchantment would dismantle the final vestiges of my unchild in fifty hours. Relieved, I noticed that I no longer felt I was being watched. Whether or not the Soultrapper had understood what I had done, he would likely sense the loss of one of his unchildren. He must realize he had erred in infecting me, as not only had I developed an enchantment to annul a Bone Orb, but I also knew that the Soultrapper had touched me.
Now, he could not escape.
Only ten people had touched me in Morimound, and the Soultrapper was one of them. Tethiel had said a woman Soultrapper had never been found, and I ruled out the four women who had presumed themselves on my person.
Six men remained: Deepmand, Priest Salkant, Priest Abwar, Harend Chandur, Mister Obenji, and
Tethiel. The Lord of the Feast had gripped my arm last night, yet the unchild had been developing inside me for approximately a month. I studied the expressions of the others as they viewed the pregnant women.
The glee evident in Abwar of the Ever Always most concerned me. I did not enjoy the prospect that a respected priest could be responsible for the mass pregnancies.
Fondling, slapping, pinching, Priest Abwar touched most everyone around him as he waddled about in his green and white robes. When he spoke of the Ever Always causing the pregnancies, his enormous tongue heaved from one side to the other of his smiling mouth, and speaking of sacrificing to honor his goddess lifted his whole face in a grin like an enchantress receiving a shipment of jewels and gold.
The sacrifices he had performed had bloodied the ziggurat steps, and I remembered Tethiel saying a Soultrapper would have no fear of blood. He did dread something, however, as his face pinched together in terror for fractions of a second. He was neither pregnant nor in danger of dying in a flood, since he lived up high on the Island District, and I wondered if his fear was that he would be discovered a Soultrapper.
I could be mistaken. Priest Abwar’s terror might derive from something else—perhaps his god—and he tended to show the most delight at mention of the sacrifices, again implying a penchant for blood but not necessarily for Soultrapping. I had to be certain, before requesting Tethiel to strike.
Day Forty, Third Trimester
Awakening to morning beaming through windows, I left my room to find Deepmand. “Prepare the carriage. We will pay a visit to the Priest of the Ever Always.”
An aftertaste of nausea made breakfasting difficult, yet after the half-portions I felt revitalized. I would soon determine if Abwar of the Ever Always was the Soultrapper, and, pending confirmation, I would bid Tethiel to cut the priest’s thread from the fabric of life. All the grief and worry caused by the mass pregnancies would be recompensed.
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