Black Sun Light My Way

by Spurrier, Jo

  Cam sighed. ‘Well, that much is true. Just keep in mind, Delphi, it’ll be read by more eyes than just hers.’

  Once he left, it took Delphine some time to compose her letter, even though she’d been mulling it over for weeks. They’d been friends since they were girls, when Etenia was brought to the Palace as a newly discovered Sympath. She and Harwin had been Delphine’s most loyal friends through the disaster that was her marriage. She wouldn’t judge Delphine for falling in lust with her former slave. In the end Delphine wrote only a few terse paragraphs before she folded the letter and sealed it with wax. With the message in hand, she made her way back to the main square and the civil office from which the town was governed. For a small fee, she could add her letter to the Imperial Dispatch, and it would be in Akhara within a few weeks.

  On the way, Delphine felt a telltale touch of dampness in her nethers, and made a hasty detour into a public convenience. For days she had been dreading the arrival of her monthly courses, for aside from her single handkerchief she had only her bedding and the clothes on her back to tear up for rags. It proved to be a false alarm, though the dull ache in her back promised it could not be far away. Delphine made a mental note to add clean cloth to the list of supplies to be found before the day was out.

  At the civil office, Delphine handed over her letter and the fee, and then stood frowning at the brass calendar on the office wall as she tried to work out exactly when her letter would reach Akhara.

  As she turned to leave, her eye fell upon a second chart, above the larger yearly calendar. This one showed the lunar month, with the marker hanging over the black-painted disc that represented the new moon.

  Delphine’s frown deepened, and as a clerk hurried past she waved him over. ‘Is this calendar accurate?’

  He didn’t so much as glance at it. ‘I assure you it is, madame. We are in an intercalary month. Perhaps you should ask your husband to explain if you find it confusing.’ He walked away as Delphine spluttered and flushed. Was she mad? Of course it was accurate. And hadn’t she avoided even looking for the moon, certain it would show that her courses were due and that she would face the embarrassment of asking Cam if he could spare a rag?

  Delphine could feel the blood draining from her face and, unable to bear the sight of the calendar any longer, she stumbled out into the busy street. She found a spot out of the traffic and tried to add up the days and weeks she’d been travelling with Cam, but the numbers wouldn’t stay straight in her head.

  When a sherbet-seller passed by pushing a handcart, Delphine impulsively hailed the man, and fumbled over a few small coins as he scooped out a cupful from the earthen jars buried in packed straw. She sat in the shade to sip the confection of syrup and crushed ice, and tried once again to work out how much time had passed.

  It was those weeks near the border that had tripped her up; those long, exhausting, terror-filled days spent trying to stay out of sight of the soldiers who seemed to be everywhere, and then the ordeal of crossing the swamplands. Between her hazy memory of the exhausting trek and her fervent desire to forget the whole wretched experience, Delphine had miscalculated the time completely. Her courses weren’t due any day now — they’d been due two weeks earlier, and hadn’t occurred.

  ‘Good Goddess, have mercy,’ Delphine whispered. Was she pregnant?

  She couldn’t see how this had happened. She’d taken Rhia’s herbs religiously until the day she and Cam had fled the Akharian soldiers, and that was a week after she’d last lain with Isidro. She’d bled at the last full moon — no, she corrected herself, the one before that, for the last full moon had come two weeks ago, when the weather had been too foul for her to notice it. It simply didn’t make sense.

  A woman with a basket of vegetables slung over her arm directed Delphine to an apothecary, in a tiny shop full of herb-scented darkness. Inside, there was another cursed lunar calendar, hanging there as though to mock her. Delphine glared at it once and looked away, and then felt her chest tighten as the shopkeeper, a portly man of middle years, greeted her with a bow. ‘May I be of service, madame?’

  ‘Do you have anyone here who knows of women’s matters?’

  ‘Yes, madame. My mother is a midwife, mostly retired now, but ladies still ask her advice. Please, come this way.’ He led her to the back of the shop, past a little girl tucked behind the counter playing with her dolls, who scampered off when sent to find her gran. He showed Delphine into a tiny cubicle screened with a curtain and furnished with two worn wicker chairs padded with fading cushions.

  A few moments later, an ancient and wizened woman entered, moving cautiously through the darkness and feeling her way with a cane. ‘Well now,’ she said when she’d settled into the other chair, peering at Delphine with milky eyes. ‘How can I help you, dear?’

  ‘My courses are late,’ Delphine said. ‘But I can’t be pregnant, I just can’t.’ She explained the situation as simply as she could, leaving out irrelevant details such as the kidnapped lover and the flight from the north.

  The old woman listened and nodded. ‘And you took the herbs every day?’

  ‘Yes,’ Delphine said. ‘Until a week after he’d gone.’

  ‘Your last bleeding, was it the usual amount?’

  ‘Well, actually, no. It barely lasted a couple of days.’

  ‘Lighter than normal?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, but … well, we … there was something of a disaster, you see, and — doesn’t it interrupt your courses if something dreadful happens and throws you into shock?’

  ‘Indeed it can, madame. But they were due again at the full moon, you say? And there was no show?’ The woman took hold of Delphine’s wrist, then felt along her arm, squeezing with a still-powerful hand. ‘If you were weak and sickly, I’d say something of the sort was possible, but you seem strong and healthy to me.’

  ‘But that can’t be right!’ Delphine pleaded. ‘The physician assured me the herbs would work!’

  ‘Well now, herbs are tricky things. The potency can change from season to season, and depends on how they were grown and dried, and how long they were stored … what were you taking, madame?’

  ‘I don’t know what to call it in our language,’ Delphine said.

  ‘And are you still taking it now?’

  ‘Well, actually … no, I had to leave it behind.’

  The old woman shook her head. ‘You must take them until your next course begins to be certain. Have you been more tired than usual? Had an aching back? Been sick to your stomach?’

  ‘That was the frogs! And I’d bled before that, anyway. You don’t bleed if you’re pregnant, do you?’

  ‘Oh, it does happen, dear. Did you take your man to bed not long before?’

  ‘I …’ Delphine choked the words off. She couldn’t quite bring herself to talk to a stranger about such a personal matter.

  ‘It’s not uncommon to bleed a little just after conception, or when your courses would have been.’ The old woman tilted her head, apparently watching her through eyes Delphine was certain were quite blind. ‘Congratulations, madame.’

  Delphine went through the rest of the day in a kind of daze. At a flea market she bought some second-hand clothes to replace the ragged ones she and Cam had been wearing for so long. She found a bookseller and bought a map showing the springs and wells of the region, spinning him a tale of a trip with her scholar father to the ancient ruins to the west when he asked why she wanted such a thing. She bought soap and some scented oil for her poor neglected hair, but all the while she was imagining what a child would look like with Isidro’s Ricalani features and her dark skin.

  Between the two of them the child was bound to be intelligent, and it ought to be handsome. It would likely have mage-talent, too — the gift was often passed from parent to child, and with both of them so bestowed the probability was even higher. Delphine felt no shame in gloating over that — it was one bright point of hope in a scheme of utter darkness.

  What if Isidro didn’t
survive? Cam and Mira would feel bound to help a woman carrying his child, but they were hardly in a position to offer her shelter, even if she did return to Ricalan. And if Isidro lived and saw Kell dead, the situation would hardly be better. She was a traitor, carrying an outlaw’s child. There were countless ways that this could end badly, and very few in which it could end well. Whether they were in Ricalan or Akhara, they would be hunted.

  And then there was the matter of Sierra and Isidro. Isidro would feel honour-bound to stand by Delphine, but he’d made no secret of the fact that he still cared for Sierra, and Delphine wasn’t certain she was willing to share his affections in the Ricalani manner. But what was the alternative? He would want to help raise the babe, but could she stand to be around him and watch him love another? It would hurt less to stay in the empire and brave society’s disgust of an unwed mother, if she could find some way to escape the charges of treason. Delphine had to admit that it was improbable — it seemed far more likely that the child would be taken from her and raised in fosterage, trained from its earliest days to revile such unworthy parents. But at least then the babe would live. Mage-craft was still outlawed in Ricalan, and those folk had a habit of poisoning those with inconvenient talent.

  This path of thought was the reason for the three bundles of herbs and powders Delphine had tucked away in her clothes. The old midwife had given her very specific instructions on how to brew them into a tea that would bring on late courses, as the euphemism went, up until the fourth month.

  She didn’t want to do it. Her one great regret in life was that she had no family. It was for the best that she’d never brought children into her doomed marriage, but that didn’t stop the cold tingle of regret, or the little hopeful flutter in her chest whenever she thought of the babe she might one day hold. But at the same time she couldn’t shake the image of Isidro lying dead. She’d chosen to involve herself with these folk — she could have walked away long ago, but she’d made her decision, and she wouldn’t take it back if she could. There was, though, a hard road ahead of her as a result, and she knew she needed to be ready and able to make any choice necessary. She didn’t want to do it, but she would if she had to.

  Back at the inn, Delphine left the new clothes to be laundered and returned to the room. Cam was dozing, and as Delphine entered he roused enough to lift his head, but soon laid back again. Delphine meant to sit and think on her problem further, or perhaps visit the bathhouse, but first she lay down on the other bed to rest, just for a moment. The next time she opened her eyes it was to a knock on the door that heralded the evening meal.

  Cam let the servant in, and the girl loaded the table with roast fowl, crisp fried potatoes, vegetables seasoned with garlic and sesame, bread, cheese, fruit and a flask of red wine. Delphine tipped the girl and sent her away rather than have her wait upon them.

  ‘Fires Below, Delphi, I haven’t seen a meal like this in months,’ Cam said. ‘Shall I carve?’

  ‘Please,’ Delphine said. She’d ordered too much, but when they’d arrived she’d been ravenous. Now, her belly still felt twisted into knots, and she looked on without enthusiasm as Cam loaded her plate with thick slices of golden-edged meat. She added potatoes and greens and tried to make herself eat.

  Cam ate as only a starving warrior could. He had been thin when they found him in the ranges, and he’d grown leaner on the journey west. The Ricalani winter furs made even someone of her stature look broad-shouldered and bulky, and they turned men of a warrior’s build into bears — huge, hulking and shaggy. It was only when the winter coat was set aside that people returned to normal proportions. As they’d trekked into the warmer south, Cam’s Mesentreian skin had taken on a deep, golden tan and his fair hair was bleached blonder in the sun. In the heat of the day he’d rolled his shirtsleeves up to the elbows, and the sight of his lean, muscled forearms verged on immodest after the northerner’s usual habits of covering up.

  As Cam finished his first helping and reached for the dishes again, he saw Delphine’s plate still nearly full. ‘Delphi, are you still feeling ill?’

  Delphine hastily picked up her knife, but then she decided that she didn’t care to expend the effort of keeping a secret. ‘Cam, I’m pregnant.’

  She spoke just as he took a sip of wine, and at once he began to choke, turning red as he coughed and snorted. Once he’d recovered, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and threw it down on the table, an oddly urbane gesture from a man in filthy and travel-stained clothes. ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Yes,’ Delphine said. It all made sense to her now, her absolute exhaustion on the journey, a weariness so complete that, looking back, she couldn’t separate the days in her memory. The nausea that had gripped her as they crossed the fens, which she had blamed on the bad water and the worse food; the tenderness in her breasts that she’d taken as a sign her courses were about to begin. Delphine reached for her wine cup and took a slow sip.

  Cam watched her steadily, his gaze so unwavering that she couldn’t help but remember the day he’d summoned her to his sickbed and demanded to know what she was doing with his brother. Was he about to deny that Isidro was the father? Her hand tightened around the pottery cup as she felt herself gearing up for a fight.

  ‘Will you keep it?’ Cam asked.

  This time it was Delphine’s turn to choke. Again, her first urge was to prevaricate, but she swiftly shoved it aside once more. She’d started on the path of honesty, and she would stay the course. He’d earnt that courtesy. ‘I haven’t decided.’

  He nodded and lifted his chin, gazing somewhere over her head as though minutely examining the cornice of the whitewashed walls. For a long moment they sat in silence, Cam’s eyes unreadable as Delphine toyed with the excellent food that she had no desire to eat.

  ‘I can’t blame you,’ Cam said. ‘If Isidro dies you’ll be in a wretchedly awkward position, and if he lives it won’t be much better. But he’ll stand by you, you must know that.’

  ‘Of course,’ Delphine said. ‘He’s a good man. I wouldn’t have slept with him otherwise.’

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Cam asked.

  Delphine set her spoon down with a clatter and folded her arms across her belly. ‘I don’t have a family, not really. My mother’s people disowned her completely. My cousin, Torren, only sought me out after Papa died, and I’ve no doubt he regrets the association now. This may be my only chance to have a babe of my own, but … Whether Isidro lives or not, whatever happens with Kell, we’ll be hunted. I don’t want to bring a child into the world just to have it killed.’

  ‘Would your people kill a babe in arms for the crimes of its parents?’ Cam asked.

  ‘It has been done. If a master is killed by his slave, then every slave in the household is put to death, even the babies. It’s not the same as our situation, but it’s a precedent. It’s far more likely that the army will catch up with us somewhere out in the west and kill the lot of us before I even begin to show.’

  ‘What if they took you alive and tried you for treason?’ Cam said. ‘Do your people execute pregnant women?’

  ‘Again, it’s been known to happen. But they’d probably wait till the babe was born and then sell it into slavery.’

  ‘Even with your talent, and Isidro’s? I mean, is the child likely to become a mage?’

  ‘Yes, actually, very likely. But in that case it would be picked up in the examinations and he — she — would be trained to serve the empire without ever knowing what happened to all of us. If it is a boy, one with strong talent, they’ll push him into the military. He could end up fighting his father’s people one day.’ Delphine had to blink back tears as she looked away. ‘If this had happened at any other time I’d be happy, but right now? It’s a disaster, pure and simple.’ She blotted her eyes on her filthy sleeve. ‘But it is what it is, and we must deal with it. My people have a saying — hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.’

  ‘I know it,’ Cam said. ‘We say it, too.’


  They sat in silence for a long moment before Cam spoke again. ‘Delphine … if Isidro does die, the child will be the only kin I have left. If you keep the baby, I’ll stand in his place. I’ll be a father to the child and support you both as best I can. Whatever you decide, you won’t have to bear the burden alone.’

  ‘What about Mira?’ Delphine said.

  Cam closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his face. ‘We’ll work something out. I’m not proposing marriage, Delphi —’

  She snorted at that, and he flashed her a grin.

  ‘What you do with your personal life will be up to you, but if the babe lives it will know its kin. I’ll swear a blood oath if you like.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Delphine said. ‘But I can’t make up my mind right now.’

  He nodded, fiddling with his spoon. ‘I understand. You’ll do what you have to do, Delphine. I’d expect nothing less.’

  Delphine picked up her spoon and pushed the food around on her plate, and then scooped up a piece of golden potato. ‘It does make me feel better, knowing I don’t have to do whatever it is alone.’

  Cam picked up his cup, touched it to hers, and drank.

  Chapter 21

  Isidro knelt on the loose yellow earth. The wooden cup on the low wall before him rippled as his vision wavered with exhaustion. Kell’s shadow fell over it as he channelled power into the compulsion demanding Isidro pick up the cup and drink. Isidro’s muscles ached and trembled with the effort of fighting it. His one consolation was that it was costing Kell almost as much to apply the compulsion as it cost him to resist it.

  He’d had nothing to drink in two days. The only food he’d been permitted was some dried meat, so heavily salted that he’d thrown it away after one bite, knowing it was intended to madden his thirst in another of Kell’s tortures.