by Patty Jansen
The girl had grown taller than him. Tandor grabbed her hand. She glowed and her touch burned even in the hand he was not supposed to have. With his real hand, he wielded the dagger and stabbed.
As soon as the knife made contact with her luminous skin, a surge of icefire went through him. It burned through his senses. He held up his hands to catch the heart, but too late, realised the icefire was flowing out of him into the girl. The scar on her chest glowed white.
Tandor struggled, but couldn’t let go.
A young man took hold of the girl’s shoulders. Another jolt shuddered through Tandor’s body. A third child joined. That figure, glowing too much in Tandor’s pain-stricken eyes to determine gender, grabbed the next person. Tandor braced for the jolt, and still screamed when it came. He was still panting and sweating when there was another jolt, stronger still.
The rectangular shape of the Heart had lost some of its brightness. Still, the glowing figures were joining up, linking hands. Strands of icefire now flowed from the rectangular device into the children.
They were sinks. The device was voiding itself, its power flowing into the children’s bodies.
The next jolt was so strong it turned Tandor’s muscles to jelly. Shivering, crying, he fought to stand upright and found he couldn’t. The two figures on either side of him had grown so much that his legs hung off the floor. His hand burned with intense cold. His trousers were wet from where he had lost control of his bladder. And still the rectangular shape became more visible, less strongly glowing, but more silver, like a giant metal box, with leads, pipes and other protuberances on the outside. Some ancient device the function of which he could only guess. A weapon.
Jolts of icefire made him scream, his voice raw. The pain made him sick, but his insides were empty.
Then the jolts stopped.
The circle of hands around the Heart was complete.
The children, or the grotesque, glowing shapes that had been the children, held its power now. The thing itself was no more than an ugly dented metal container.
No one moved.
The surface of the machine trembled, and shivered as if someone had kicked it. Seams split apart. Shafts of light shone through, and expanded, etching into the ceiling. There was something inside it. The ground rumbled. The ceiling split open, hissing smoke. Debris rained from the stone and lit up where it intersected the beams. The children let Tandor drop to the ground.
Tandor sat there, dazed, while a firework of icefire raged over his head. The children, now constructs of light, breathed icefire. Their mouths spewed it when they spoke. Strands snaked away from their circle of hands, pulverising stone. Pipes burst, spewing forth water that glowed with icefire, ice-cold water too contaminated to freeze.
Tandor screamed. “Listen to me!”
But his voice didn’t rise above the crackling and the rumbling. He gathered strands of icefire in his hands, tried to wind them around the legs of the grotesque figures. The strands fell away or snapped when the figures moved, as if they were simple threads.
No control, no control over this monstrous creation.
Too much exposure. The Knights shouldn’t have removed the protective casing. They shouldn’t have played with things they didn’t understand and couldn’t see.
He shouldn’t have come here not knowing what the Knights had implanted in the children. He should have realised the danger. He should have shot the children.
It was too late. The power was out of control and he was no match for it.
Tandor ran.
Up the ramp, as fast as he could. His legs ached, his lungs burned, but he didn’t stop. He ran and ran.
At the door that led out of the twisting ramp, he almost crashed into a group of Knights.
“Get out, get out!” His voice was hoarse.
They just stared at him, their faces already peeling from exposure.
Tandor ran through the experiment room, back to the stairs that led up to the entrance of the birthing room.
Loriane! He had to get her out of here. He ran up the stairs.
Blood pumped in his veins. His face was burnt; he could feel the sting of cold air on raw skin. The numbness of the injury was wearing off.
Up, up. Black spots danced before his eyes. He missed a step and stumbled against the wall, bracing himself with his hand. By the skylights, the skin on his arm was peeling in big slabs, leaving raw and oozing flesh. The sight made him feel sick.
While he stared at it, the ground rumbled deep below his feet. Tandor listened, holding his breath. The floor vibrated with a low keening. The sound increased in pitch, and increased until the metal-and-stone construction of the building sang. Tandor ran. He almost blacked out, but he ran. Up, up, up, into the corridor. Into the room at the end.
“Loriane, Loriane!”
The room was empty, beds abandoned, a trolley of medicines upended in an aisle.
Tandor ran towards the exit.
“Loriane!”
The guard post was deserted. Shouts drifted in from outside.
“Loriane!”
The roar of an explosion overtook him.
Chapter 29
* * *
MYRA SAT STARK NAKED, legs spread on the birthing chair. Sweat-soaked hair clung to her head.
The elderly palace midwife knelt on the cushion facing the girl, and placed a basket with soft towels under the chair. She nodded at Myra. “You’re almost ready.”
Myra’s expression was distant. Her lips trembled, and then she muttered, “Help me, help me, help me.” With each help, her voice became louder. Her breath sped up, her legs trembled, her one hand dug into the flesh of her thighs. She howled.
The midwife cursed. “Oh, come on, girl. It’s not going to happen with screaming. If you want to be a breeder, you’ve got to do better than this. Push, by the skylights. Push, push.”
Myra wailed and panted. Tears ran over her face. “I can’t. Please help me, Mistress Loriane.”
“She’s right,” Loriane said. “You have to do this. We can’t help you any further if you don’t want to be helped.”
While Myra wasn’t looking, the midwife reached between the girl’s legs, trying to examine the baby’s progress.
Myra screamed and kicked. “You’re not touching me!”
“Right. That’s it.” The midwife wiped her hands on her apron and rose. “I’ve had enough. I’ll be back when you decide to behave.” She walked off between empty beds where women who shouldn’t be walking had vacated their beds to get away from Myra’s screaming.
Myra, her eyes wide, stared after the woman’s broad back. “She can’t just leave me!”
“Yes, she can,” Loriane said. “You’re behaving like an idiot.”
“But I’m going to die.”
“Yes.”
Myra’s eyes widened. She clearly hadn’t expected that answer. Her lip trembled. “Mistress Loriane? You’re kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. You will die if you don’t do what we say.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Then for all you’re worth shut up.”
The girl was shivering with another building pain. “I’m scared. I’m so scared, Mistress Loriane, please help me, please . . .” She threw her head back.
Loriane covered the girl’s mouth with her hand. “Shut up, shut up.”
She kneeled at the pillow the midwife had just vacated, put her hands on the girl’s sweaty and blood-slicked thighs, fixing her with a hard stare. “Or I’ll tell Tandor that you behaved like an idiot.”
Myra clamped her lips, her eyes blazing with anger. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Good. Now shut yo
ur mouth and push.”
Myra pushed. Her face went red until she gasped for breath. Then she pushed again. Loriane patted her knee, knowing that girls didn’t like being touched at this stage.
She whispered, “Very good, keep going, keep going. You’re almost there.”
Myra pushed and pushed. Drops of fluid dribbled on the towel in the basket under her.
The silence was heavenly.
Two of the women who had left came back, peeking around the corner of the door. Their eyebrows rose. They had probably expected Myra to be dead.
Loriane glanced at the door. Tandor needed to come back quickly. If this was over, she could maybe ask the midwife for an examination, but after that, she could stay here no longer, neither could she go to the sled with a driver no one could see, or wait in the sled for a man who wasn’t supposed to be in the palace.
Another contraction. Myra was really getting into it now. She pushed and panted, and pushed. The midwife came back and joined Loriane with set of instruments that included forceps and needles and gut thread. This was not going to be easy.
Loriane rose, sore and stiff from sitting in the uncomfortable position. The child inside her was kicking her in the ribs. It wouldn’t be long before she had to come back here herself.
Myra pushed and howled and pushed. The midwife was easing out the baby’s feet, and then the abdomen. Her calming words were wasted on Myra, who was hysterical. “It hurts, it hurts!”
“Keep going, keep going.”
The head of the baby shot out, followed by a gush of fluid. Myra screamed. The child fell into the midwife’s hands, wet and slippery and covered in blood-stained slime.
Loriane’s stomach cramped. She turned away from the group, scanning the room for a bowl to throw up.
A healthy cry drowned all the women’s talk
“That’s a big boy,” one of the women said.
But then someone gasped.
“By the skylights,” the midwife said in the silence that followed. “He’s Imperfect.”
“I know, I know,” Myra cried, her voice hoarse. “Give him to me.”
“I can’t. He . . .” The midwife licked her lips. She was still holding the squealing infant.
Loriane swallowed bile, and swallowed again, quelling her stomach.
In her haste to get Myra to help, she had forgotten the rule about Imperfect babies. She hadn’t even considered it, since Imperfects were hardly ever born these days.
“Give her the child,” she said, shouldering her way into the group.
The midwife gave her a strange look.
“The girl is from Bordertown, and will be going back there.” She eased the squealing boy out of the midwife’s hands and proceeded to cut the cord. She wrapped him in towels to still his cries. Everyone in the room had gone very silent.
Myra looked puzzled from one to the other. She was leaning back in the chair, still bleeding from a good tear, sheened with sweat, white-faced and totally spent. She had suffered for three days. It was probably a wonder she was alive at all. If this had happened in Bordertown, she might not have been.
“You had best fix her up,” she said to the midwife.
Carefully, she lowered the child at Myra’s swollen breast. The girl gasped when he latched onto the nipple and then started laughing, and crying.
Loraine’s eyes misted up. How could she have forgotten her first time? That incredible relief after all the pain. The healthy baby at her breast. The boy would be sixteen now. Unlike her, Myra would keep her little boy.
“I’m still going to have to report this with the Knights,” the midwife said. “They have been very strict on Imperfect births recently.”
“The Knights are at the festival. The guard is really light. If I take her out tonight—”
“Back to your house? Like this? She needs to be under observation. We need to notify the father’s family—”
“She is from Bordertown, there is no breeder’s contract.” Please, she really didn’t want to argue about it now. Even the thought that Myra might lose her baby made her chest constrict. She still saw the nurse walk away with her beautiful boy.
“No contract? How can that be?”
“Because . . .” Loriane spread her hands. Tears pricked in her eyes. Because she loves this boy.
The midwife raised her eyebrows.
“Please, just let me take her home.”
“I didn’t think you would—”
The floor trembled.
“What by the skylights . . .” the midwife said.
The other women stopped chatting and glanced at each other. The door creaked open letting in a waft of freezing air, and a guard. He looked around the room, wordlessly and disappeared, leaving the door open. The frosty chill settled in Loriane’s stomach. Tandor had gone down there. He was doing something stupid. He was always over-confident, that was how he’d become maimed in the first place.
She heaved herself to her feet and waddled towards the door. When she was halfway across the room, the floor rumbled again, more violently this time. Dust and plaster rained from the ceiling. A chunk of stone came down behind her, scattering bits over beds and couches. And something, something she couldn’t see or describe made the air hum with tension.
Tandor, for sure. Tandor never came for just a social visit, and Tandor had wanted to get into the palace, that’s why he was here.
Loriane turned, her heart thudding. “Myra, come, now.”
All around, women scrambled for their bedding and warm clothes. Myra just sat there, clutching the child. She could probably not walk unassisted. Loriane ran back into the room and pulled Myra up. “Come on, Myra. We have to get out.”
The girl’s eyes were wide. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know, but there are fifty floors above us, and I think I’d rather be in the street if this building is going to collapse.”
The floor rumbled again.
A group of knights burst from the corridor into the courtyard, into the snow . . . which was melting into sludge. Steam rose from the ground. Bears bucked and pulled in their harnesses.
Loriane walked as fast as she could, dragging Myra with her. The girl’s steps were insecure; she was probably close to fainting. The boy had started crying, muffled in the towel. Myra stumbled. Her face was deathly white. Yes, yes, I know this is a cruel thing to do to you. “Come, run, run.”
Myra couldn’t walk fast, let alone run, but Loriane pulled her along.
When they arrived in the courtyard, the floor heaved again.
Loriane pushed Myra into the sled and stumbled in herself. No Tandor. No driver.
“Go, go,” she screamed at the bear and yanked the reins.
At that moment, there was a roar behind them. The ground trembled and bucked. Metal creaked. Glass crashed behind her.
The bear reared, pulling the front of the sled up with its harness. The animal sprang forward, and bounded out the gate.
Too fast, too dangerous.
The back entrance of the palace was in a narrow street, half-blocked with rubble. People were running out of every entrance; people lay in remains of collapsed facades. One woman hung on for her life on the crumbling construction that had been an apartment floor. A breeze stirred up her nightgown, giving Loriane a view of her pallid body. An instant, and then the sled whooshed past. People ran out of entrances on both sides of the street, screaming and pointing. The bear plunged into the fleeing crowd. Loriane yanked the reins, but couldn’t stop the animal. In the mayhem, people fell, causing others to trip over them. People in flimsy clothes, people with bleeding wounds. Glass was everywhere.
The ground bucked and rumbled. Debris fell d
own from the towering buildings that lined the street. More glass. Pieces of stone. People screamed over the deafening noise. The bear was growling and snapping at bystanders.
Then there was a thundering rumble behind them, and a huge whoosh. A cloud of smoke and dust filled the street. Every bit of glass that was still intact shattered. A rain of razor-sharp fragments pelted down. Loriane threw her and Myra’s cloaks over both of them, and when the pelting stopped, she peeked out.
Silence, except for the creaking and groaning of metal.
The street behind her was blocked by a heap of rubble. In the dusty air all she could see was the structure of the palace gates, no longer attached to anything. The buildings were all gone.
The only people here were ones who no longer needed help, burnt and bloodied corpses, their skin blistered, limbs ripped.
Someone whistled; she recognised the sound.
“Tandor?” Her voice sounded like that of a lost child.
She shoved aimlessly at pieces of rubble. There was far too much of it, and she had no chance of finding him, certainly not without help.
The stupid idiot.
“Someone please help me.”
No one replied. Everyone here was dead. The ground was freezing up in a hard layer of ice. Soon, the pieces of rubble would have frozen onto each other.
“Tandor, I love you,” she screamed at the silence. She had never said those words aloud, but they were true, true as she stood here, carrying someone else’s child, and wishing it was his, wishing for his arms around her, wishing for his voice to tell her everything would be fine.
On top of the rubble appeared a tall, bear-like figure, stepping from block to block without hesitation. At first, it seemed like the figure floated in the air. It looked like some kind of demon, with strange protuberances sprouting from its upper body. Then it came closer and Loriane saw that the figure carried someone, but still did not appear to have legs. The arms and head, too, seemed only half there. Tandor was real enough, but was he alive?