Brood of Bones (12 page)

“Des-ti-tute.
Right.”

I waved him away then slumped back into my silk harnesses. Panting, I thumped my cane against the ceiling.

“Move to the shade.”

Once I slipped into sleep, I summoned my mirror to show my conversation with Salkant of the Fate Weaver. After I blotted out all the other sounds of the Bazaar, his whisper echoed in the laboratory.

“The Seventh Flood will come in my lifetime.”

All the floating jewels held still, and with a wave of my hand, the mirror turned black. Fears mixed inside me with pangs of helplessness; I curled up, drifting in the air in an approximation of the fetal position. My gowns spread out for twenty feet in a pool of blue, purple, and black fabrics, intermingled with red satin, dashes of white scarf, and islands of green taffeta.

The mirror sounded the whisper again, so I could be sure.

“The Seventh Flood will come in my lifetime.”

Sri the Once Flawless had dreamed of a Seventh Flood that would destroy the city in a wave not comprised of water. Likewise, the Third Flood had not involved overflowing rivers but invading foreigners, and I could not help but wonder if the Seventh Flood related to the mass pregnancies.

I wanted to believe that the Fate Weaver had brought me back to Morimound to help the women, yet her priest had predicted doom.

Priest Salkant must have misinterpreted the webs, I reasoned. The Flood Wall I had built would prevent torrents of muddy water from drowning Morimound’s people and sweeping away the majority of their homes.

Still, I felt I had plummeted through a thousand feet of icy air without clothes.

To distract myself, I summoned the herbalist’s ledger, and it fluttered open inside the mirror. I read each page at a glance, seeing that Noblin had first sold less dangerous herbs but had run out. Most women had tried to obtain a second dose, and when he refused them, they returned again, signing under different names. It was evident from their style of pen strokes. Through deception, the women received second, third, fourth, and, in one case, fifth doses, in the hopes of expelling their pregnancies.

Either the herbalist had trouble identifying people through his spectacles, or he had allowed the women to escalate the dosage without thought for their health. I suspected the former, in the light of the horror on his face when I had accused him of murdering the women.

The godsent children seemed to have a resiliency to poison. These women had swallowed dose after bitter dose of wormwood. I feared for the health of Alyla Chandur because her angry mother had purchased four doses. Although Faliti Chandur had not signed under her correct name even once, I recognized her handwriting.

The reflection in the mirror changed to show Alyla, the whites of her eyes yellow from damage to her liver caused by toxins. I had missed it at the time, yet I judged her mother had poisoned her with the herbs to try to rid her of the baby.

In a second mirror, I studied my memory of Sri the Once Flawless and her rough and cracked fingernails, signs of depleting bone strength, common enough in the pregnant yet dangerous in elders. The grandmothers of Morimound would continue to break bones; their hearts would stop, and their veins would burst from the stresses of pregnancy.

Sri was seventy-three years old, while Alyla had only lived twelve. For both, the dangers would intensify over the next two months, during which they would likely give birth too soon, and if they survived to gaze on what they had born, they would in all probability be suffocated by grief.

I had to do something, for the thousands of women in serious risk. Either I had to watch the old and very young succumb to deadly childbirth, or I had to succeed where Noblin the herbalist had failed in terminating the pregnancies. The thought induced me to retch.

Although my magic could serve to expel a pregnancy, I loathed the idea. In addition, I could not go to sleep with thousands of women, no indeed. Wormwood also seemed to have failed in the worst way thus far, apparently insufficient to overcome the spell or divine will responsible. I hoped to find out which power was at work; knowing the cause of the pregnancies might present a safer course of action.

In the short term, I had to save Alyla. Her breath had reeked of wormwood, and if Faliti gave her another dose then she would likely perish before even beginning the trial of labor. Her mother might not listen to my warnings, yet I trusted that her father would. Harend Chandur would be spending his day at the White Ziggurat, or so Faliti Chandur had complained, and there I would make an appearance.

While peering at Alyla through the mirror, I realized her angular and spindly features shared little with the bone structure of Harend Chandur, giving me ninety-five-percent
confidence
she was not his true daughter.

Outrage stopped me from breathing, and I might have passed out, if I were not already dreaming. I would never have betrayed Harend, had I been able to marry him.

I awoke sticky with sweat, and I bid Deepmand drive me to the White Ziggurat. We arrived in minutes, as he had shaded the carriage nearby in an Island District mango orchard.

I left the carriage and craned my neck upward to gaze at the White Ziggurat, its gypsum plaster glaring brighter than snow on a mountaintop. Acolytes in white robes and merchants in finery walked together on the steps, talking on the ziggurat’s terraces.

After arriving at the base of the stairs, I stopped. I could manage a few steps in these gowns, if I was careful, yet I feared the heat would incapacitate me before I reached the first terrace; a faint would result in injury. By no means could I endure the one thousand, one hundred and eleven steps leading to the ziggurat’s summit. Neither could I employ one of the sedan carriages, due to the volume of my gowns. Removing my adornments was not an option: Only their lavishness bewildered others into taking me seriously.

I walked into the path of two acolytes, my silks blocking their way.
“A silver coin for whoever finds Harend Chandur and mentions my desire—my wish to speak with him.
I will await him in the shade of that tree.”

“We’ll return faster than flies, Lustrous Lady.” The acolytes sprinted up the steps, making a game of it.

“Walk,” I shouted after them, “or I will not be the one to piece together your broken skulls.”

The banyan tree I had chosen overshadowed the road and, being in plain sight, would not cast suspicion on the respectability of the meeting.

My stomach kneaded itself while I thought of encountering Harend again at last. My father had polished diamonds for his father, who had been a master gemcutter, and I had thought his family unimaginably wealthy, in my youth. The other girls had teased me, saying he only liked me because we did ill-fated things together at night. We most certainly had not. Sleep had imprisoned me from sunset to sunup, and in evening and morning, too, when my mother had tired of kicking me and let me lie.

My head began to nod, even though I stared at the blinding ziggurat to try to stay awake.

“Elder Enchantress,
may
I make a request regarding my family?”

“What? Ah, you may, Spellsword Deepmand.”

“Thank you, Elder Enchantress. Given your new position as the Flawless, I think it possible your residence in Morimound may be of significant duration.”

“I will thank you not to associate me with that title, and my departure will come as soon as I judge the city safe.”

“May the Fate Weaver grant swift success to that endeavor, Elder
Enchantress.
” Two ziggurats of gold embellished his breastplate, designed after the structures towering above us. “My request was whether my family might reside in your manor, for as long as I have the privilege of protecting you.”

I bowed my head, allowing the folds of my headdress to cover my grimace at the idea of the children of another woman running through my halls. Like Alyla, one of his children was illegitimate, sired when Deepmand guarded an enchantress away from the Academy. His wife had claimed the baby premature, yet the boy’s healthy birth weight spoke against it.

The alternate parentage might not have been as obvious to Deepmand, and I had never mentioned it because he seemed to love the child. Besides, he should have known of his fate to be a cuckold, as he had married a foreigner.

“My wish has always been to return here for my retirement,” Deepmand said, “and I will begin the arrangements to move my family to Morimound. In the happy event of your sudden success and departure, I would still be able to join them in two years.”

I said, “Your family will be provided with a respectable residence in the city proper.”

“Your generosity humbles me, Elder Enchantress.”

Tilting my chin to peer at the gilded globe of his turbaned head, I rubbed my upper lip against my teeth. “Deepmand, there is something of which you should be informed.”

“Yes, Elder Enchantress?”

“I may need to—that is to say it is possible—I may be required to treat another woman.” If I drew Alyla into my dream then I could determine immediately if she too carried an unchild and what might be done to help her. In my estimation, the Propriety Pledge was meant to stop young enchantresses from foolishness, not to thwart the Provost of Applied Enchantment from doing essential work.

“A woman other than Lady Sri?”
Deepmand’s lips folded inward, disappearing in his beard. “My concern
lies
in matters of...propriety.”

“My concern, Spellsword Deepmand, lies in the wombs of our people.” I waited until two men in robes passed out of earshot before continuing. “Not everything may have progressed properly.”

He frowned. Maid Janny looked up with concern, asking, “Are the children not right?”

“Shush!” I lifted a hand to her, my eyes still on the Spellsword. “It may be necessary.”

“If it is necessary,” he said slowly, “then I will assist you in discretion. Elder Enchantress, I believe the gentleman walking toward us may be none other than Harend Chandur.”

I searched for the symmetrical face and well-proportioned physique I remembered from my youth, and I kept looking even when someone stood before me, blocking my view.

“Resha, is that you?”

The familiar voice came from a man past his prime, his back slumped, his double chin shabbily shaven. His eyes were dull, and they could not meet my stare.

I knew this was Harend Chandur, yet the sight jarred with the portrait of him I had painted years ago in my dream.
A tightness
spread down my throat into my chest, as I thought how unfair it was that in addition to my having to spend my life far from the city I loved, everything in that city had the inconsideration to change in my absence.

“It is I,” I said.

“I wasn’t sure I’d see you. You avoided me on your last visits, didn’t you? Ah, anyway, they say you’ve come to lead the city to prosperity, and everyone is buying goods. Even Nilmar Tightfist gave me a loan today.”

I had often thought of what I might say to Harend when next we met, yet much of it no longer seemed suitable, especially not with Deepmand and Maid Janny beside me. My resentment toward Faliti brought one fact to my lips.

“Are you aware your wife has forged your handwriting, twice, to ask me for money?”

He sighed. “It’s my own fault, I refuse to ask for handouts, and the gods haven’t blessed any of my ventures.”

“The fault cannot be yours, unless you knew of the forged letters.” I had thought Faliti had
wrote
them to discourage me from writing Harend, yet I could discriminate her imitative scrawl from his with ease.

“I didn’t, but I don’t blame her. We’re sending our son through the empire's martial university, and the tuition is turning us to paupers.
Couldn’t do less for him, though, because he’s the hope for the family.”

“I have not had the privilege of meeting your son, yet I did see your daughter today. There is something I wished to tell you about her.”

Harend fingered the threads of a frayed section of his vest. “Yes? She’s a good girl, though, I admit, not everything I expected.”

“What are you implying?” I wondered if he suspected her mother’s unfaithfulness.

“I guess I’m comparing Alyla to her brother, which is less than fair. We were counting on a good bride price for her, and she’s ruined that by, well, you’ve seen her.”