Brood of Bones (17 page)

I would bring Alyla into this laboratory. She was the obvious choice for observation and potential aid: The greatest number of years of life stretched ahead of her, fate permitting, and she would lose the most to dying of childbed fever. I would risk the Propriety Pledge for a chance of freeing her of the unchild.

Leaving the laboratory, I said, “Deepmand, take me to the Chandur residence.”

We arrived in the late afternoon, and I hoped Harend Chandur would have returned home by now because I would rather deal with him than his unfaithful wife.

A young man answered the door, and my gowns left him speechless.

I asked, “Are you the son of Harend Chandur?”

“Nah-no!
No, Lustrous Madam.
I’m just Yash.”

“I trust you are capable of finding me a parchment, ink, quill, and a room, where I may have a few quiet moments of study.” Before broaching the topic of sleeping with Alyla, I would write down a secret that would relieve the family’s financial difficulties. “You may also inform Harend Chandur that I am accepting his daughter’s offer of hospitality.”

The young man situated me in a room, where I sat on my ottoman in front of a desk. Faliti Chandur barged in, fist raised.

“What are you doing in my home, with our last skin of parchment? We can’t afford to—”

“Spellsword Deepmand, kindly
remove
Faliti Chandur. I need a meditative atmosphere. Maid Janny, support me as I write.”

Deepmand shut me in alone with Janny. Thumping and raised voices leaked in from the hall. Janny held my shoulder, and I gripped the quill, leaning forward over the parchment and closing my eyes.

I carried the quill into the laboratory, and my mirror showed an image of myself, leaning over the desk. Touching my slippers against the dais, I drifted into the mirror; the glass provided no obstacle, as if it were not there. My gowns hissed around the mirror’s edges, and the temperature of the dream increased. I overlaid myself with my reflection, her arms merging with mine, which would bind my actions in the dream with the actions of my real body. Where some people walked in their sleep, I could write.

My quill dipped in the reflection of the inkwell, where it would exist in the real world, and in minutes, I had filled the parchment with diagrams of diamond facets, along with written instructions on a cutting process. When awake, I wrote in a slovenly hand, yet in dream, my letters were small masterpieces.

I left the mirror and awoke to examine the true parchment. After correcting a few spots, where my ink had run out before I had predicted in the dream, I lifted my voice.

“I am finished, Deepmand.”

He opened the door to admit Faliti Chandur, who entered red-faced and shouting. “You think you can do whatever you want because you’re wealthy? I ask you, is it fair you ride in a carriage with golden wheels while my husband works all day to lose money, and my daughter bleeds away her bride price for every inch she swells?”

Harend Chandur had skulked into the room behind her. I extricated myself from the ottoman and, without meeting Faliti’s eyes, gave the parchment to him.

“This details a diamond cut I have developed, which I call the ‘round perfect.’ These notations describe the new cutting method required. Harend Chandur, with this, your family will return to wealth.”

“This is incredible. I’ve never seen such density of facets.” His eyes widened as he examined the parchment, yet his gaze dropped, his face turning thoughtful. “But diamonds aren’t important now, are they? I just want to know my daughter will be fine.”

He handed the parchment back to me. Faliti snatched it from my hand.

“Don’t be a fool, Harend.”

“And,” he said, attempting to meet Faliti’s stare, “I want to know if the child my wife carries came from a god, or another man, because it didn’t come from me.”

The gravity of his meaning did not register in my mental logbook until his wife slapped him. She asked, “How dare you say that in front of her?”

He touched his face and began to blink. I feared he would cry, yet before that could happen, he left the room.

“I can save your daughter.” I called after him. “I might be able to.”

Faliti did not give Harend a second glance, and the disdain with which she treated him caused my skin to burn and itch. I found it difficult to moderate the tone of my voice.

“I know what you....You do not wish for Alyla to be pregnant. My magic may be able to help her.”

“You are jealous of me, Resha. I know you are, and I don’t trust
your
magic.”

“I just need an hour alone with her.”

“An hour?
Alone with my daughter?
Are you a girl kisser?”

“What? No! Pregnancy has clearly shrunk your brain.”

Although mothers grow more forgetful when carrying a child, once the baby was born their intelligence rebounded, even greater than before.
This blessing of motherhood I might also lose.

Faliti must have doubted her own mental state. For the first time, I saw an expression of uncertainty above her cleft chin.

I said, “You poisoned Alyla with wormwood, yet she is still pregnant. My magic might be able to save her.”

She gripped the parchment with both hands, her fingers tensing. “Use your magic, then. But I’ll be there to watch you.”

“I cannot permit that.”

“And why not?”

I swallowed, looking to Deepmand for help. He locked his gaze elsewhere, on the front door and hallway. After licking my lips, I forced myself to speak.

“I would need to undress. So would she.”

“You are a girl kisser!”

“No! I would commit no indecency.”

“Don’t try to justify your perversions. Get out of my house!”

My clouded mind had no capacity to deal with her accusations, and I felt overwhelmed.

Spellsword Deepmand said, “The elder enchantress is of unblemished character, even if her magic has unexpected requirements.”

“Oh, and how often has she ‘done her magic’ on you?” Faliti whipped her eyes from Deepmand to me, and she held up the parchment. “Is that what this is?
A bribe?
A gift for a daughter’s mother to keep quiet?”

In a way, I had hoped this favor would predispose them not to tell about my falling asleep with their daughter. I thought her rude for pointing it out.

My face had flushed, and I began to feel the lightness of a near faint. I could not convince Faliti with my fatigued mind, and I shuddered, taking the first step to leave.

Retreat would not help, I realized. I would have to convince someone, sometime. Leaving would admit guilt, would allow rumors that Faliti would be all too happy to spread.

I met Faliti’s gaze, yet her angry stare stripped me of much-needed focus. Shifting my eyes to the wall beside her, I tried to organize my thoughts, although it felt like juggling hot sand.

“Alyla,” I said. “She may lose more than her bride price. The childbirth may kill her.”

“It better, after the grief she’s put me through.”

“What did you say? By the Fate Weaver, she’s your daughter!”

“Better dead than giving birth to a bastard. She’d disgrace her brother.”

“She may not give birth to anything living. It might not be—”

“And better than playing kiss-fanny with an enchantress old enough to be her mother.” She threw the parchment at me but then picked it up again, clutching it to her breast.

“The child might not be a child, and I have to know. I have to see her.” Heat and shame ignited inside me, and I no longer knew what I said.

“There won’t be a child,” Faliti said, “even if I have to tear it out of her.”

“It, it’s not what you suppose. She isn’t pregnant with a baby.”

“And just what else can you be pregnant with?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“But you know you want my daughter. Leave, or I’ll scream on the streets what you are.”

“You too.
There’s no baby inside you.”

“Are you blind?” She ran a hand down the slope of her belly.

“Have you quickened? Has Alyla?”

“I will, any day now. I’ve been expecting to.
For some days.”

“None of the women have. I can’t believe they ever will.”

The heat inside me mounted into a firestorm, and I had the ridiculous thought that my gowns would catch flame. I hung onto my cane, hoping I was not destined to fall to my knees in front of Faliti.

Sweat flooded in to douse my kiln of velvet, and all my strength and dignity also squeezed out of my pores. My knees wobbled; my shoulders sunk under the weight of sodden gowns.

Now Faliti would jeer at me. She would see I was as helpless as the girl who had fallen asleep in a field, under rain clouds. Any moment I would hear her chuckle and explode with laughter.

The silence of the room confused me, and I craned my neck upward. The ribbons of my headdress slid away from my eyes and revealed Faliti, clutching her belly. After blinking, I saw her eyes wide with the same fear I had seen in her daughter, the worry and uncertainty of all mothers.

“Fine,” she said, “but I won’t have you touching my daughter. Use your magic on me first.”

“On you?”

“I don’t want you to hurt Alyla.”

I thought I remembered Faliti voicing a wish that her daughter would die, only a few minutes ago, and her protestation of concern baffled me. Then again, few things made sense to me while awake.

My plan had been to take Alyla into my dream. I wrinkled my brows, wondering why I should not take Faliti instead, except for the fact that this contemptible woman was the last one alive that I would wish to see me undressed. My gowns protected me from scorn, and stripping them away would reveal the full emptiness of my life.

My gaze settled on her belly, and I wondered if a heart beat inside a cluster of bones, as in the womb of Sri the Once Flawless. I had to know.

“Maid Janny, find a pallet.
Spellsword Deepmand, you will stand guard outside the door.”

“You will have to wear a blindfold,” I said.

Faliti crossed her arms above the bulge of her abdomen. “Are you sure you’re not a girl kisser?”

“All the nobility wear blindfolds, when I treat them in Mindvault Academy.”

“Well, this is my house, and I won’t let you do anything I can’t see.”

“Then, you must sleep.” I waved to the cot, which Maid Janny had found.

“That’s worse. I wouldn’t even feel what you’re doing to me.”

“You have to, or the magic will not work.” Actually, she would plummet into my dream regardless, yet closed eyes would not see me unadorned.

“How could my sleeping make a difference? Just put your magic in me.”

My tongue slid over my palate toward my throat with my disgust. I imagined the other elder enchantresses learning how I had "put my magic" into people.

Janny had strung five clotheslines across the room and, after removing my golden hump, began the process of undressing me, of untying and unbuttoning, pulling off layer upon layer of fabric. I had to concede that Janny had a certain strain of intelligence, as she never faltered in this task, retaining the knowledge of the exact order in which the gowns had to be removed. The complex sequence flummoxed me when awake.

“This is also necessary,” I said to Faliti.

Faliti sat on the cot, observing.
“By the Ever Always!
Just like eating an artichoke. There’s always another layer.”

Janny said, “Except artichokes are less prickly.”

My drooping eyelids decreased the effectiveness of my glare. I rested on my ottoman, as undressing took too long for me to stand, yet sitting increased the absurdity of resisting sleep.

I tried not to nod off in front of Faliti; the embarrassment of the thought alone burned my cheeks. Nonetheless, I found myself in my laboratory twice, although I left immediately.

Janny had removed my headdress, and Faliti must have seen my chin sag to my collar. I stole a glance and was surprised to see an expression on her face other than gloating.