Birth: A Novella (5 page)

***

It would have been all right if Dominic had not
decided to inquire, at the end of the shift at the checkpoint, if
anything he should know about had happened during the inauguration.
With the most trustworthy guards occupied elsewhere, it was a prime
opportunity for trouble, and Dominic is always thorough.

I sensed his anger all the way across town,
felt it drawing near as he returned to ‘Graven Fortress and stalked
toward the ‘Graven family suites, outpacing the other officers,
telling them to go on ahead, he would meet up with them later, he
had some urgent business at home.

I wasn’t going to start being afraid of him,
I decided. When he banged open the front door I was ready for him,
my dagger unsheathed and in my hand.

“Put that away,” Dominic said. “And go to
your room. What I have to say is not fit to say in front of the
servants.”

“But it’s fit to say to me?” I went for
sarcasm, to cover my nervousness.

He touched his own dagger, remembered my
condition, and thought better of it. “In your room, Amalie. Now.” I
had been prepared for hot anger, not this cold, hard shutting out,
a wall in the mind.

When I didn’t obey, he took my arm, pushed
and pulled me into my room and slammed the door behind us, making
my ears pop. “You went out, all the way to the checkpoint, with no
escort apart from a pregnant girl who’s a walking invitation to
every man with a working dick. You’re not stupid, Amalie, and our
communion has functioned adequately until now. And I know you
understand the Eclipsian language. So I can only assume you have a
death wish.”

I stood, still holding my dagger, transfixed
by this tall, avenging demigod of a man I had somehow got myself
married to, vaguely wondering why his touch hadn’t led to
communion.

“I told you to sheathe your dagger.” Voice
flat, harsh, like a command to an insubordinate cadet.

He moved toward me, and I held the dagger
toward the fire, angling the light and heat toward my eyes. “If you
come any closer,” I said, “I’ll blast you.”

He took another step forward and I formed a
directed beam of light and sent it toward him, but he had his own
dagger out by now and he swatted my feeble effort away with a light
beam of his own. The two glowing columns soared like slow-motion
arrows, colliding near the ceiling with a clap of thunder and
raining plaster dust on our heads. Katrina shrieked next door, and
Stefan, who had been waiting for Dominic after the ceremony, came
running in.

“
Out
!” Dominic roared before he saw
who it was.

Stefan jumped back about three feet, saluted
and shouted, “Sir! Yes, sir!” and turned and ran.

Dominic startled at his companion’s voice.
“Stefan!” he said. “Wait.” But Stefan had gone beyond the range of
his enraged lord’s voice and thoughts.

Dominic turned back to me where I sat on the
bed. I had to pee, but I wouldn’t go to the bathroom with him
there. I was hungry and tired, and I wanted to crawl into bed and
bury myself under the covers like a bear in a cave and never emerge
until spring, after the child was born.

He hovered over me, staring down like a
vulture waiting for the dying prey to stop moving. “Is that what
you want?” he asked. “Do you want to make trouble between me and my
companion?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course that’s what I
want. And I want to have you cold and hating me and never making
love to me anymore, too. Who wouldn’t want that? Why do you think I
married you, if not to be miserable and wishing I was dead?”

“Oh, Amalie,” Dominic said, sighing. I could
feel his anger melting away like the snow on the Aranyi greenhouse
roof on a summer morning. “You can’t– You mustn’t– Why did you have
to go out unguarded? Don’t you understand? It’s for your
protection. What would you do if you were attacked by robbers or—”
He decided not to list all the things that could have happened, to
be grateful that they had not.

I sat up. “Use my prism and zap them in the
nuts,” I said to his one answerable question.

Dominic laughed. “Cute,” he said. “But they
work in gangs, large groups. You couldn’t ‘zap’ more than one or
two before the others overpowered you.” At least he was
laughing.

“And how many of these ferocious gangs are
there roaming the wild streets of Eclipsia City?” I asked. “With
all these guards around.”

Dominic was sulky again. “You don’t know
what’s out there. And I don’t want to find out the hard way that
there’s something we missed. Now promise me.” He took my hand.
“Promise me to uphold your marriage vows.”

“There’s no marriage vow about guards,” I
said.

“No,” he said. “About keeping faith.”

We had been getting there, then I wrecked
it. “
You
don’t,” I said, animated by the thought of all the
wrongs I have endured. “When have you stayed home for me, kept me
company, backed me up at those horrible supper parties?”

“Oh,” Dominic said, “so that’s what this is.
Payback. Because I’m not a doting husband who loses his position
and the respect of his peers when he can’t tear himself away from
his wife’s side.” The jokes still rankled, apparently.

“Why does it have to be anything other than
what it was?” I said. “I went out with Katrina because it was a
nice day and all the guards were busy.”

“A decent woman would have stayed in,” he
said.

“
Decent
?” I said. “So now I’m
indecent?” I jumped up, lifting the skirts of dress and petticoat
and shift, and ran at Dominic, flapping the hems over my exposed
pubic hair. “This was decent enough for you in Aranyi. How did it
become indecent all of a sudden in the city? Or maybe it’s just not
worth your time anymore because you’ve already stuffed it.”

Dominic stared at me then, as at the
travelers’ shelter, when there was no possible response to my
ravings, turned his back and went out. He did not slam the door.
What was much worse, he rotated the handle and closed the door
gently, as on an invalid. He called Katrina and sent her in to me,
saying that ‘Gravina Aranyi was tired and would go to bed early. He
had not referred to me as Lady Amalie since we arrived in Eclipsia
City.

***

Oh, Amalie, my love. We are in synchrony now, the
same thoughts and memories flowing between us, our minds porous as
mesh. You don’t know how much I wanted to beg your forgiveness for
all my neglect, take you in my arms, kiss you and get you to talk
dirty to me all night.

Why didn’t you?
I remember how the
communion had not formed at his touch.

With you eight months gone? And tired and
uncomfortable?
He smiles, bringing back the image from his
thoughts.
And when you get angry like that you fluff up, like a
kitten seeing its first dog—

Is that a version of ‘you’re beautiful
when you’re angry?’
I ask.

That’s a cliché?
His mind is all
innocence; Eclipsis has not caught up to Terra in its understanding
of sexist platitudes.
You
are
beautiful when you’re
angry. And frightening. A kitten with the claws and teeth of a
tigress. And it makes me want you so—
He doesn’t like to say it
now, any more than he could have admitted it at the time.

Fiercely?
I suggest.
Like with
Roger?

Oh, gods
. He laughs, ashamed.
Yes.
It’s why I blocked the communion, wouldn’t let it start.

“Shit! Shit fuck!” The strong contraction
catches us unprepared, and I curse and swear out loud in Terran.
“Shit, fuck, piss!”

The contractions are coming closer together,
lasting longer and hurting more. Dominic renews the communion,
pulling the pain from me into his own belly. He sweats in the warm
room, grinding his teeth, lying beside me on the wide mattress,
soft and thick with its multitude of absorbent layers.

Someone is giggling, trying to stifle it,
but not totally succeeding. Magali.
What could be so funny
,
I wonder, angry with self-pity,
with us in such pain?

It’s Dominic, shouting in his deep voice, my
Terran obscenities translated perfectly and literally into
Eclipsian, and delivered in his crisp aristocratic pronunciation,
that makes Magali choke with strangled laughter.

“Fuck a duck!” I shout when another one
hits, and Magali whoops out loud as Dominic, in deep communion,
renders the phrase in his own language.

A window blows open on a gust of freezing
air, pushing against the shutters. Snowflakes dance in, swirl
wildly in the draft, and immolate themselves on the hearth. Magali
runs to close the casement and fasten the shutters.
How short
the days are,
I think. It’s dark outside, I have seen through
the open shutters, although it seems as if my labor has only just
begun, during the after-dinner siesta, while Dominic and Roger—

“He won’t make it,” Magali says. “He’ll be
caught in this fucking blizzard.” Concern for her son Wilmos makes
her speak like that, imitating Dominic’s and my shouted words. Her
eldest son, barely fifteen, has been sent to fetch Naomi the witch
back to Aranyi to help me.

Dominic lifts his head from kissing my brow.
“Wilmos grew up in these mountains, Magali. He can take care of
himself in a storm.”

“Sometimes,” I say, sorry to think of the
boy forcing his way through the storm on a pointless errand, “women
have contractions days or even weeks before they actually give
birth.”

“Lady Amalie,” Magali says, “that doesn’t
happen very often.”

“SHIT! SHIT A BRICK! GODDAMN FUCKING ASSHOLE
BULLSHIT MOTHERFUCKER—OOOWWW!” Dominic shouts it with me, in
Eclipsian, making Magali explode with laughter despite her
worries.

Something very large is forcing its way into
a very small part of my insides.
This is it,
I can tell. I
leap out of the bed, finding the strength through the communion,
moving instinctively to squat on the stone hearth. Dominic follows,
squatting behind me, buttressing me with his body, bracing my back,
his hands under my armpits.

“‘Gravina,” Magali says, “you should stay in
the bed—”

“It’s all right,” Dominic says. “It’s better
like this.” Magali starts to argue and Dominic interrupts. “How did
you birth your own, Magali?”

She laughs. “Squatting, my lord. Cursing and
shouting and squatting on the hearth.”

But it’s too big for me. It ruptures
something inside—I feel it pop—and blood and fluid run out of me,
down my legs and spattering on the hearthstones.

Dominic can’t help laughing at my
exaggerated ideas.
No, beloved. It’s only your water
breaking.
His eyes meet Magali’s across my bowed head. “I don’t
think we have to worry about weeks,” he says.

B
ut I outdid myself at the
‘Graven Military Academy Tournament. The swordsmanship tournament
is the event of the late autumn season. It’s prime entertainment, a
monumental gambling opportunity, and an educational show all in
one. Dominic had surprised me by inviting me to watch it, since
women are in general discouraged from attending these masculine
rituals. As ‘Gravina Aranyi, I was considered an exception, a great
piece of condescension I must not be so ungrateful as to turn
down.

The few women in the audience were mostly
brothel and tavern workers. I did not sit with them, but was given
a box to myself, with Katrina of course, a knot of guards
surrounding us, in the center among the ‘Graven sections; arranged,
like the Assembly seats, by Realm and family.

“Oh, ‘Gravina!” Katrina’s eyes were
sparkling. “We should see something fine today!”

I had not thought about what we would see.
Dominic hadn’t talked much about it, only mentioned it once to
Stefan, saying he hoped he would be given leave to attend. Stefan
had said he wouldn’t miss it, he’d go AWOL if he had to. Dominic’s
wrath had been as brutal as it was sudden. “Don’t you
ever
use that term around me!” he said. “Not even in jest. I could have
you court-martialed.”

“But, Dominic—”

“Major Aranyi,” Dominic said. “When you
speak to me of Royal Guards or Military Academy business, you must
address me correctly. Surely, Cadet Ormonde, you know this by now,
in your second year.”

“Sir,” Stefan said, his voice breaking,
barely audible, “Major Aranyi. Request permission to withdraw.”

“Granted,” Dominic said.

It was my first hint that all was not right
there, either. I didn’t notice Stefan in the audience now, but it
was hard to see through the guards. Only my view of the little
fighting arena was unobstructed.

The audience was impatient for things to
begin, and the men whistled and stamped their feet. An official
came out eventually to explain the rules to the crowd, who knew it
all by heart. There would be ten fights, he said, or as many as
there were challengers. Choice of weapon to the challenger.

“Get on with it,” someone shouted.

The champion was allowed five minutes rest
between challenges. Should he be defeated—

“Then we’ll all have to sell our firstborn
to pay off the bookies,” another man yelled. “Get on with it.”

Should the champion be defeated, the referee
continued, the new champion can choose to retire or take on the
remaining challengers. This last part was drowned out by a whole
chorus of “Get on with it!” After a hurried recitation of the few
rules of combat, the champion was announced and the booing
began.

But it was only Dominic who walked out. He
was dressed for weapons practice, his boots replaced by softer
footwear with flexible soles, his shirt and breeches partly covered
by a quilted tunic, gloves up to the elbow and a fencing helmet
carried in his arm. A whole arsenal of his weapons—foils, sabers
and broadswords—was carted out by an attendant.