by Patty Jansen
But the girl wasn’t listening. Loriane wrestled the sodden nightgown off and stumbled to Isandor’s cupboard to find spare clothes.
Where was Tandor? He could have helped her with the young Knight downstairs.
She yanked a nightgown out of the cupboard. Myra was crying. She was drenched in sweat, and, Loriane realised with a shock, pushing. Was she ready yet?
“Come, Myra, let me examine you first.” She managed to get Myra off her knees but before she was back on the bed her waters broke, with fluid exploding all down her legs. Myra screamed. “Let me go. Don’t touch me!”
She grabbed hold of the back of the bed with white-knuckled hands and pushed until she was red in the face, gasped for air and pushed again. More fluid dribbled down her legs and puddled at her bare feet.
Loriane’s heart thudded. She had given the girl a lot of sedative; she couldn’t have gone from sleep to this stage so quickly.
“Myra, just calm down. Breathe deeply. I only want to check you.”
“I know about this checking of yours. It hurts. You keep away from me.”
Loriane put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. It was slick with sweat. “Myra—”
“Keep away, I said.” Myra lashed out and hit Loriane. Her nails bit into the skin of her arm.
“Ouch!” Loriane stepped back. Red welts rose on her wrist.
The brat! She felt like hitting the girl in the face, but she knew that sometimes women in extreme pain reacted like that.
She schooled her voice to calmness. “Very well. I will leave you. I have another patient anyway.” She started down the stairs.
“No! Don’t go,” Myra screamed. “I wasn’t serious.”
“But I was. I’ll be downstairs.”
And she strode off, feeling more welts on her face from where Myra had hit her. Oh, if Tandor came back . . . She balled her fists. Tandor, Tandor, all her trouble could be traced back to him. He came here, dumped this uneducated nutcase on her, and then spent all day gallivanting about town.
Oh, if he came back, she was going to tell him to pack up his girlfriend and take off with her, and to leave her alone.
The young man still sat next to the stove, holding the towel to his face. His eyes met hers and a twinge stirred in her. Just briefly, the way the light played over his cheekbone, she was reminded of a young Knight in the meltery, many years ago. He was strong and handsome, and as they danced by the firelight, he’d enclosed her gull feather in his fist and yanked it hard and sharp, so the leather strap broke. His intense eyes said, you’re mine, and she had been delighted. With this Knight, a Learner like the young man sitting next to her kitchen stove, there was no fumbling in freezing warehouses. He’d rented a room in one of the Outer City’s inns, a room with a large bed and a blazing fireplace. She had bled, just a bit, but he had been gentle, and he’d let her sleep next to him. In the morning, he’d given her a card with how to contact him, should that prove necessary. Which it did.
Never again had she carried a child for a Knight. Never again had she seen the young man, nor her baby boy with the face all squashed from birth. She very much doubted she would recognise either if she saw them again.
She set her things on the table next to the young Knight and proceeded to clean up his cheek, gentle around the edges of his cuts. She saw the handsome Knight’s face, lit side-on by the fire. She felt his weight pressing on her, his warm skin against hers.
Once more, she was in the sled, her father driving it through the snowstorm. She sat in the back wrapped in furs, and every bump in the ice had cut through her belly like a hot knife. She’d been petrified of giving birth out there, on the snow-covered plains between the Outer City and the palace, but the child had taken a whole agonising day of pains to arrive.
Wails from Myra drifted from upstairs.
“What’s with her?” the Knight asked, concern on his face.
“Well, you know I’m normally a midwife. . . .”
He raised his eyebrows, and then a look of understanding came over his face. “Oh. If I’m keeping you from your work . . .”
“Not at all.” Loriane cringed and tried hard not to feel guilty for walking out on Myra. For once she was going to be tough like the midwives in the palace birthing rooms. Those women slapped misbehaving girls in the face, like that old hag had slapped her, not once, but three times. Myra would have to learn on the job what it meant to be a breeder. You only scream when it’s bad.
She dabbed at the young man’s face, dislodging clots of blood from his nose. Strangely enough, he didn’t smell of bloodwine. “Well, someone certainly gave you a good beating.”
A tiny shiver went through him. The shiver became a spasm. His muscles tensed up.
“Are you all right? Are you feeling sick—”
But he didn’t react to her. His gaze was far off and his breath came in shallow gasps.
Loriane grabbed his wrist. His pulse raced like crazy.
Before she could do anything, he blinked and shook his head, meeting her eyes. Was there shame in them?
“What was that?” she asked.
He shrugged and looked away.
“Is there anything you’re not telling me? Do you have a problem?”
His mouth twitched. He hesitated. “Well, I get these . . .” Then he stopped, shook his head again.
“These what?” she prompted.
But he would say no more and seemed reluctant to meet her eyes. She rinsed out the bloodied cloth, weighing up the risk of what she was about to say. She had seen little spells like this before, but he was a Knight after all, and Knights weren’t supposed to be inflicted like this. But the condition could be quite dangerous.
“You know,” she began. “Physical imperfection isn’t the only type of defect caused by icefire. Some people have imperfect minds. They seem to find it hard to see the difference between a real experience and things that have happened in the past. They keep reliving memories, sometimes from long ago—”
“I’m not crazy.” His voice was much too forceful.
“I’m not suggesting that at all.”
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you are.”
A silence followed, broken only by Myra’s moans. Loriane had washed all the blood off his cuts, which were deep and nasty. What by the skylights had he done to himself? The worst cut had collected half a bag’s worth of sand. It looked like he’d been dragged along the street. But his injury was not what concerned her. This young man had serious mental trouble, and he was in denial about it.
She took a deep breath, gathering courage to speak again. “Just in case, I want you to know that ichina will help.”
“Ichina?” He faced her now. “But that’s for girls trying to . . .” His cheeks flushed.
“Ichina is a powerful medicine that will do much more than help girls conceive. It also helps a number of other conditions, although they’re not common.”
“So that’s why we only hear about girls taking it?” He sounded relieved.
“Yes.” She let a small silence lapse and then she asked him, “Do you want some?”
He hesitated. “If, say, a boy needed to take it for—um—other reasons, would that boy also have trouble getting a girl pregnant, you know, before he takes it?”
Loriane had to restrain a snort. Oh, these adolescents were so transparent sometimes. What had he been doing? Fooling around above his station, and now he was afraid his family would have to foot the bill?
“Quite likely.” Although she didn’t know this for sure. It wasn’t important. The future would bring whatever it would bring.
He blew out a breath.
Loriane asked again. “Would you want some?”
He nodded, once.
At that moment the door clanged. Loriane turned.
“Tandor!”
His hair was wet, with frozen chunks of ice, and hung down the sides of his face in dirty strings. A dark stain marked his cloak and blood had dried up in a scratch across his cheekbone.
He wasn’t looking at her, but staring at the young Knight.
“What are you doing here?” He spat the words out like broken teeth.
“Tandor,” Loriane protested. “That’s not how you treat—”
Tandor strode across the kitchen and grabbed young Knight by the collar of his cloak. “You let him escape!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sorcerer!” The Knight’s eyes bulged.
“Oh yes, you do, or you wouldn’t be sitting here with your face bloodied up. You let them out of that warehouse, didn’t you? And then you found that your friend wasn’t your friend anymore?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” the Knight shouted.
“Hey, no fighting in my kitchen!” Loriane yelled, but the men paid her no attention.
The Knight scrabbled for his belt. He pulled out a long metal stick and jammed the point in Tandor’s chest.
Tandor froze, eyeing the glittering crystal that pushed into his shirt.
The thing wasn’t sharp at all, but Tandor let the young man go, his eyes wide. “It was you with the sink?”
“It was me.” He let the staff sink ever so slightly.
Tandor’s eyes roamed the young man’s face. “Oh, I see.”
“I don’t see, Tandor,” Loriane said. “I don’t see anything at all apart from the fact that you’re bothering my patient—”
“Loriane, he is—”
“I don’t care who he is. The Healer’s Guild made me pledge that I would help every sick or injured person who comes to my door. Get out or make yourself useful. Go upstairs and see if you can talk some sense into that girl of yours.”
A brief smirk went over the young Knight’s face.
Tandor pulled the Knight’s collar tight with his golden pincer hand. “Don’t even dare say it.”
Loriane rolled her eyes. Why did men get so hung up about their dicks or lack thereof?
Tandor looked down. The Knight had the staff once more directed at his stomach. What was that thing?
“You think you’re so smart with that toy, don’t you?” Tandor snorted.
The Knight pressed his lips together. Blood was again running from the wound on his forehead.
“I’ll get you, sorcerer.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Tandor grabbed the young Knight’s wrist in his pincer hand. Pushed the staff away and the Knight back into the one of the posts that supported the sleeping shelves. He lazily withdrew something from his pocket, a long metal barrel with a wooden handle. He pointed it at the Knight and poked the metal into the soft skin under his chin.
Loriane had only heard of the Chevakian powder guns, but she was sure this was such a thing.
The Knight’s eyes widened.
“You should have known that you can’t surprise me,” Tandor said.
The boy swallowed hard. He clutched his staff.
Tandor laughed. “Ah, we are a coward, aren’t we? Why don’t you go and tell your Knights that the game is over? The game is over for everyone.”
“Now stop this idiocy in my house!” Loriane yelled. “Tandor, leave him alone so I can treat him.”
Tandor laughed, defying the Knight to make another comment. He didn’t, and Tandor stepped back.
Loriane finished with the young man in silence, while Tandor leaned against the pillar. In a very demonstrative way, he took two bullets from his pocket, jackknifed open the barrel and slid the bullets into the magazine.
The young man gave him nervous glances. As soon as Loriane finished bandaging the wound, he jumped up.
Tandor clicked the barrel back into place and pointed the gun at the Knight’s back while he ran to the door.
The door shut.
He had forgotten his ichina.
Tandor laughed. “If all else fails, a Chevakian powder gun will kill. Bang, bang.”
Loriane whirled at him. “Tandor, are you crazy? What is this stupid behaviour about? That young man missed out on some important treatment because of you.”
He smiled, but that only made her fury greater. The Knight was an angry young man, who might do silly things without treatment.
“He’ll be fine.”
“How do you know that? What do you know anyway? Why shouldn’t he come back here with a bunch of Knights to question me? You haven’t lived in the city for years. Things have been different ever since Maraithe died. She had the Knights in hand, but Jevaithi is much too young. They don’t listen to her, and from what I’ve seen, they shelter her from the people. She hardly goes out, and the Knights just do whatever they want, so if they want to come back here and burn down my house, they will. I can tell you that. And it happens to people, I can tell you that, too. You know the merchant Merro—”
Tandor smiled. “Jevaithi is gone.” Then he started laughing. “Jevaithi is gone with that boy of yours. I saw them fly off on his eagle. Towards the mountains. Bye, bye.”
“Isandor?”
By the skylights, Tandor had gone mad.
“He was kicked out of the Knighthood for being Imperfect, to be imprisoned in the palace, but he escaped everyone, even me. He took Jevaithi from under their noses.”
Tandor laughed, the sound a strange shriek.
Loriane had never heard him laugh, not like this. “Tandor, what’s wrong with you?” He was telling lies, wasn’t he? He was crazy; something had flipped in his mind.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Tears ran down his cheeks. “We’re all going to die. That’s what’s wrong.”
Loriane’s heart thudded against her ribs, but she forced herself into calm.
“Of course we are going to die. Life is a terminal illness.” And you seem to suffer badly.
“Loriane.” He crossed the kitchen to her and scooped her in his arms. “Loriane, I love you.” He bent forward and pushed his mouth on hers. His tongue met hers, hot and passionate. “There. I’ve said it. I love you, I love you.”
Loriane pushed him away. “You’re drunk.” But she didn’t smell any liquor on his breath. “Now you’re either going to tell me what all this is about, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“It’ll be morning soon enough and I’ll have Knights on my doorstep, by which time you’ll no doubt be long gone. I need something to tell them. What happened? What did you do? What am I going say?”
“Loriane, calm down.”
“No, Tandor. I don’t understand why you had to threaten him. I don’t. You can’t just come in here and create problems for me.”
“Have I ever left you with a problem?”
“Are you kidding? My whole life is a problem of your making, starting with that baby you brought me. Who is Isandor, Tandor, why is he important to you and why have you never told me?”
“I mean a problem you can’t handle?”
She snorted. “One day this whole game of yours is going to fall apart. Whatever game you’re playing. And we’re all going to suffer for it.”
There was a scream from upstairs.
“By the skylights, Myra.”
Loriane thudded up to the sleeping shelf. Tandor remained halfway up the stairs.
Myra was on her hands and knees on the floor, rocking from side to side. She glanced up between sweat-soaked strands of hair.
“I hate you.” She spat out the words.
Loriane wasn’t sure who she meant. Both of them, probably. Doubts about the father of the child resurfaced. Tandor hung around Myra too much not to be involved, and he still hadn’t told her why he had brought the girl with him, rather than hidden her somewhere else. He’d lied to her. The child was his after all.
Why, Tandor, why? She looked at his handsome profile in the glare from the stove. She loved him; she hated him. It was time for her to break with him, to stop waiting for him to make sense to her.
“Tandor, stop whatever silly games you’re playing and give me a hand. Hold her.”
His eyes widened. “Hold her?”
&nbs
p; “He’s not . . . holding . . . any part . . . of me,” Myra panted. Her voice was hoarse.
“Then sit still. I’m going to examine you, and if you hit me again, I’m going to belt you so hard your head is going to hurt worse than the rest of you. Understand?”
Myra nodded, but a pain took over. She rocked, and moaned and cried. Loraine washed her hands, cringing as her own belly tensed up. Stupid girl, by the time it came to the hard work, she would have no energy left.