Brood of Bones (10 page)

“By the Ever Always!
Are your dresses quite safe? One just grabbed my ankle.”

Lightening enchantments in my gowns caused them to undulate more than expected, lending them an appearance of animation. I saw no reason to put Faliti’s mind at rest and maintained my silence.

“And you, er,” she said to Deepmand
,
 
“
your boots are cracking my floorboards, ant-ridden such as they are.”

“My apologies, Madam.
I will
Lighten
my step.”

I walked through the rooms of the first floor, noting items of refinement, such as a tapestry of peacock feathers, amid otherwise bare furnishings. “Is Harend Chandur present?”

Faliti tidied some sewing stuffs. “He’s meeting his merchant friends at the White Ziggurat, so he can lose more money.”

“Then you may now introduce his daughter to me.”

“I’m sure I would, but she’s recovering and bedridden, and I wouldn’t be a fit mother if I taxed her strength with visitors.”

Argument required more mental dexterity than I usually commanded when awake, so I had little recourse than to repeat myself. “You have my permission to take me to her bedside.”

“Alyla is not seeing anyone. She’s in no state to.”

“She will see me. My presence is most salubrious.” I walked past Faliti as she ground her teeth.

Finding no bedrooms on the first floor, I looked up a ladder leading to the second story. It had a gentle
incline,
similar to a stair, but stepping on the rungs would prove difficult with my oscillating sense of balance and inability to see my feet.

Hoping I was not fated to fall once again in front of Faliti, I gathered as many of my skirts as I could and explored the first rung with my slipper. Stepping up, I tried to find the second rung, yet velvet and silk slithered around my foot. I had to step on my skirts, although this made me sway and tilt, my shoulder brushing the wall; letting go of my gowns to catch myself only aggravated my plight, with satin blocking any possibility of a subsequent step.

I tipped backward and knew I would fall in a most dreadful and undignified way. Faliti had committed an act of negligence in employing this ladder, her disregard tantamount to assault with intent to injure.

Gauntleted hands gripped my shoulders, and Deepmand carried me to the second floor in a leap that cleared the whole ladder. Relief made me gasp, and my knees knocked under my skirts as I strode down the hall, dragging my gowns out of the way so that the Spellsword could stop levitating and rest his feet on the ground.

I avoided Deepmand’s gaze, ashamed that I had needed his assistance for the most simple of tasks. I wished, for a moment, that I could activate enchantments when awake as a Spellsword could. Of course, such a practice would be neither possible, for an enchantress, nor dignified.

A voice quavered down the hall. “Mother, do we have guests?”

I stepped into a bedroom and saw a girl sitting up between pillows, her swollen abdomen rising from beneath sheets. Her slender limbs caused her to resemble a pale spider with only four legs; her skin was waxy and sickly as white jade. The square chin she had inherited from Faliti sat at odds with her smaller frame and timid eyes, which were reddened and bulging.

If fate had permitted then I could have married Harend, and Alyla might have been my daughter. The inside of my chest felt rubbed raw. I asked, “I wish to know, have you quickened?”

After roughly a dozen blinks at my gowns, she still failed to find voice to answer.

“Have you quickened, child? Oh, and I am Enchantress Hiresha.”

She swallowed and said, “I’m afraid I don’t move too fast anymore.”

“I mean have you felt your baby move?”

“Oh.” Her lashes flickered over large, beautiful brown eyes. “I’m not sure.”

With little insulation in the form of physical bulk, she should have felt each kick as a stab. She should have been sure. My fears dragged my gaze away from hers.

I doubted that so slight a girl could give birth safely, certainly not with a labor shorter than twenty-four hours; I imagined her ordeal, a lifetime of agony compressed into a day of blood and strain, and then I saw her final contraction producing not a pink, healthy child but a thing of bones, a god’s cruel trick, an unchild.

It could not be. I promised myself it
would
not be, and I felt a current of excitement and a deep sense of meaning that made me think I was exactly where I was meant to be, nestled in the pattern designed by the Fate Weaver. The goddess had guided me here to save this girl from grief.

Regretfully, said goddess had yet to provide any clue as to how I could help her and the other thousands. If I but knew how a letter might reach the Fate Weaver’s cavern palace at the center of the world, then I would have written a stern complaint.

Faliti stomped into the room. “She shouldn’t be like this. If she’d been stronger, she wouldn’t be this way.”

I eyed Faliti’s own motherly belly. “All the women in Morimound are pregnant.”

“My daughter has no right to be. Alyla could’ve dodged it, if she had the will to do anything in her life except spread her legs for some alley boy.”

Alyla hid her face behind her hands and sobbed. I felt I should comfort her, although I did not quite know how. My gloved hand glittered as I laid it on her knee, and I wondered if a gentle squeeze would be a suitable demonstration of affection. When I tried it, the fleshless knee jabbed my fingers.

I said, “Priest Abwar has proclaimed these pregnancies as godsent.”

“God or alley boy, she could’ve said ‘no’ to one less than the other. I tried to build something out of her, but the Fate Weaver spins some thick and others thin.”

I, of all people, knew that.

“Are you still having nausea, my child?” I spoke the address without thinking, and the words tasted bitter on my tongue. She was no child of mine.

Alyla glanced at her true mother then looked down.

“No, she isn’t,” Faliti said. “She has trouble seeing.”

“Blurred vision is common from increased—”

“You’ve been at it again, you disgusting girl.” Faliti pointed at the wall behind the bed, where the bricks had cracked and chipped. She brushed clay flakes from Alyla’s shift and sheet. “And here are the crumbs. What are you, some mud-eating pig?”

She slapped Alyla then pinched her cheeks to pry open her jaw.

“Spit it out, girl. Out with the brick you’ve eaten, or I’ll throttle it out.”

I noticed a chunk of clay between two of Alyla’s teeth, and her tongue was yellow. “This is also common.” Disturbingly so, given the uncommon thing I feared was inside her.

“Eat no more of our house or it’ll crumble, as poorly built as it is. You have shamed us in front of my important guest. Do you see her, Alyla? See the gemstones strewn about her? I knew her when she was poor and stupid, and now I bet she earns more in a year than your father will in his whole life.”

When Alyla tried to meet my gaze, her eyes lost themselves among the mazes of copper and silver thread embroidered in my gowns.

Faliti said, “Say something to the enchantress. Prove you may be dumb, but you can at least speak.”

Alyla’s spindly fingers gripped her belly as if she felt the need to cling to something. “You honor the roof of... of our home, and we in-invite you to live here as our guest.”

Faliti cuffed the back of her head, ruffling her dark hair over her eyes. “Why would you say that? The enchantress owns the largest mansion in Morimound and would never want to stay in this fly-pen.”

At the sight of her hitting the girl, my hand rose to my mouth, and I held back a sob. I wondered how Faliti could strike something so precious, could abuse a gift given by the Ever Always: a child of her own blood.

Deepmand shifted beside me in a clink of metal, and he tugged at his beard.

I left the bedroom before I had a fit. Descending the ladder almost killed me even after Maid Janny had climbed up to hold my shoulder.

Once safe on the ground floor, I said, “I will dine here.”

“Surely not, Enchantress,” Faliti Chandur said, walking down the ladder. “We’re reduced to drinking tea and eating field peas, nothing I could serve you.”

“Maid Janny will retrieve my meal. And tea is the only suitable drink for women of childbearing years.”

Janny muttered, “And who’d want those years?”

She returned from the carriage with a basket and my ottoman, and she helped manage my skirts while I approached the padded stool. Faliti could use a normal chair, which she did, setting in front of herself a bowl of eggs and rice.

Faliti asked me, “Why did that enchantress choose you, anyway?
Those years and years ago.
Out of all of us working the rice paddy, she picked you.”

“She saw me sleeping in the rain.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“I have significant aptitude for enchantment.”

“I don’t believe it. She could’ve taken any of us to your land of fancy dresses.”

Janny cut my broccoli florets into quarters, and she shucked greater beans, which had been steamed. She placed a napkin and silver fork into my hands.

“That can’t be what you eat,” Faliti said. “That’s food fit for
the muddies
working fields.”

“After a certain point,” I said, “quality of sustenance is independent of cost.”

“You’re mocking me. You came to this house to gloat and mock my ill fate.”

My hands began to tremble, so I hid them under the table. “Faliti Chandur, you are fortunate beyond measure.”

She barked a laugh. “You call unpainted bricks and only one servant fortunate? And look at you, the woman with the city in her hand, and you never had to stoop for it. You never were forced to carry a man’s child or weep over a miscarriage!”

The bowl of egg and rice smashed against the wall, and I stared from its dribbling yellow chunks back to Faliti. She sat still and composed as if she had not just thrown her meal.

She asked, “Did the priests really make you the Flawless?”

“I am not flawless.”

“Well, I know your plan, Resha. You will try to take Harend from me, but I won’t let you. He’s mine and still will be no matter how many gems you flash in front of him.”

I glanced at her marriage necklace, a twined chain of gold bearing a diamond. “Faliti Chandur, you will refer to me as ‘Elder Enchantress Hiresha,’ or not at all.”

I struggled up from the ottoman then left the house.

As Deepmand drove me uphill, I pondered the potential truth of Faliti’s claims. My dream held more than my laboratory, and one of its other rooms contained a portrait of Harend; I had thought to one day wed him even though he was married to Faliti.

I saw no point in marrying anyone until I could stay awake between kisses.

The carriage stopped at the God’s Eye Court, and acolytes and petitioners gathered as close around me as they dared. “Lady Flawless, I have a dispute over aquifer shares.”

“And I represent a man wrongly trampled on the very streets of this city.”

“The bridal price hasn’t been paid for my daughter.”

“Quiet!” I raised my hands, my sleeves fanning out in a spectrum of fabrics ranging from red to green to purple. “I am only interested in babies, mothers, and—most to the point—babies inside mothers. Acolytes, you will make reports of women’s general health, size, weight, and how many per thousand have miscarried and quickened.”

The day simmered, and I strained to remember what I had planned next to say.

“Make special note of any not pregnant. Furthermore, you will bring women ordered by their age and place of residence for my examination tomorrow in this court.”

As the acolytes formed themselves into work teams, a one-armed man approached me and kneeled to touch one of my myriad hems. I lifted a hand both in acknowledgement and to cover a yawn. My mouth snapped back shut when he spoke.

“Elder Enchantress and the Flawless of Morimound, someone is murdering our women, and I can tell you where to find him.”