His Conquering Sword (36 page)

“I’m sorry,” murmured Cara.

He just shook his head. David thought his heart would break, to see their sorrow. Then Charles kissed her and they separated. Charles sighed, crossed back to the table, and slid the slate into its slot underneath the wood grain surface. “Bakhtiian has to stay with the army until nightfall. Listen. Give me a few moments alone with Tess. Then send Sonia in to me, and I’ll let her talk to her. I’ll find some way that the two of us, Sonia and I, can go outside. There’s no point in me attending Tess, Cara. I can’t contribute anything except grief and anxiety and that won’t do you any good.”

Cara nodded. Charles went inside, and a moment later Maggie emerged from the inner chamber. The bells tinkled on the entrance flap, and Sonia swept in.

“I beg your pardon,” she said to Cara, “for charging in. But Tess—” She was pale, her lips set with worry.

From the inner chamber, they heard Tess start to cry, soft, despairing sobs. Sonia went white.

“Go on,” said Cara gently.

Sonia rushed in.

David and Maggie and Cara looked at each other. Tess sobbed. Sonia spoke soothing words to her, and once Charles spoke, softly.

“Well,” said Cara suddenly. “We’ve work to do. Maggie, I’m going to need Jo. There’s one thing I have to do, and it’s going to take all of our skill to pull it off.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.

“You’ll switch with Jo at the surgery,” Cara continued, so preoccupied now that David wondered if she’d even heard Maggie’s question. “You know the routine in the surgery well enough. If you can’t stomach it, then—well, Sibirin can order things perfectly well.”

“I can handle it,” said Maggie. She looked at David, asking a question with her eyes, but he could only stare back. He had no answer either, for anything. He heaved his shoulders in a sigh and drew a hand back over his hair. His fingers tangled in his name braids, and as they smacked together and stilled, he mouthed a prayer.

“I’ll go, then,” said Maggie, and she left.

“What about me?” David asked quietly.

“We build what we can out of tragedy,” said Cara in a soft voice. “I can’t let this opportunity go by.”

“What opportunity? Cara, you sound like you’re trying to talk yourself into something.”

Charles pushed the curtain aside and poked his head through. “Cara, are you coming back? The contractions are picking up. Sonia and are I going out to get some things for the baby.” Behind him, David saw Sonia bend down and kiss Tess, and embrace her, holding her. Then she straightened and came over to Charles.

“Yes, we’ll need one of our stoves, and a cradle, and a scarf and blankets to wrap it in. If it can live at all, if it’s as early as it seems, then we’ll need to keep it warm. Some goat’s milk, perhaps.” She met Cara’s gaze. “I’ll arrange all this.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Cara. “I’ll attend to Tess.”

There was a pause. Then Sonia took hold of Cara’s hand, briefly, and let it go. “There is no healer in this camp I would trust as I trust you,” she said. Charles waved her forward and she preceded him out.

Cara crossed through into the inner chamber. The room lay swathed in cloth, which draped the counters and shielded the table readouts. Two holographic lanterns lit the space, suspended from the corners. “Increase illumination,” said Cara, and the light brightened.

Tess lay on the table with her eyes closed. Tears streaked her face. “Oh, God,” she said. “All for nothing.”

“Hush, child,” said Cara. She smoothed Tess’s hair down tenderly and let her hand linger on Tess’s cheek. “Let’s get these clothes off you.”

“One’s coming,” said Tess. “Shouldn’t it hurt more than this? It doesn’t really hurt at all.”

“Except in the heart, my child. David, can you help me with her trousers? We’ll need to prop you up, Tess, here at the end of the table, for the delivery. Maybe David can just sit behind you.”

“What about Jo?” David asked.

Cara shook her head. “At the rate Tess is dilating, Jo may not get here in time. Gloves. Stool.”

“Another one,” said Tess.

“David, go get Aleksi.” David dashed into the other chamber, called outside, and ran back in. “I’ll need a second covering, here at the end of the bed,” Cara continued as if he hadn’t moved.

“It’s changing. It’s going lower. Cara, is this what’s supposed to happen?”

“Yes. Breathe evenly. Lay back, I’ve got to examine you. This will be uncomfortable. David, uncover the counter and start the procedure that’s listed on the monitor.” Bells tinkled. Aleksi and Jo came in together. “Sterilize,” said Cara, and they went out and came back in. “Jo, thank goodness.” Jo nodded and went over to the counter. “Aleksi, sit with Tess.”

David moved aside to make room for Jo and looked back to see Aleksi staring at them in amazement.

“Where’s Ilya?” Tess asked. “Another one.”

“He’ll be here,” said Cara. “He’ll be here.”

“But the men are supposed to leave camp,” said Aleksi. “It’s bad luck for a man to watch a child’s birthing.”

“Aleksi, you may leave if you wish. I need your help, and jaran customs aren’t our customs. Which will it be?”

“Oh, stay, Aleksi,” said Tess, and Aleksi went to her at once. She let out her breath all at once, and her voice took on a sudden intensity. “Cara, I have to push.”

David watched, feeling useless. Jo worked on with efficient fury, linking equipment, setting up the IV. Aleksi helped Tess sit up, leaning into her, linking his arms under her arms and over her chest, so that she could prop herself up on him. Cara waited.

It didn’t take very long for the baby to come, and it was no wonder. In two pushes the head crowned, and on the third the body eased out into Cara’s waiting hands. Its skin had a strange bluish-gray color, smeared with some whitish substance, and the body was perfectly formed: miniature fingers and toes, testicles, button nose, and perfect rosebud lips, crowned by a shockingly black crop of hair. It was a tiny little thing, so tiny.

So still.

Aleksi buried his face against Tess’s hair.

Cara cut the cord.

Tess stared. “Cara,” she said. “It’s so hot in here. Could you get me a blanket, I’m freezing.” She shuddered, all through her frame. Her eyes rolled up, and she sagged back against Aleksi.

“David! Take the baby. I’ve got to deliver the placenta.”

“I can’t!” Still and dead, the baby barely stretched longer than Cara’s cupped hands. It was bloody, too, streaks of it that echoed the streaks of blood along Tess’s thighs.

“You must, David.” Cara’s voice cracked over him, and he obeyed blindly, through tears, taking the tiny thing from her and wrapping it in a white square of cloth that Jo handed him without looking at him. The body was warm and soft, cooling as he held it. One little hand peeped out of the cloth, each minute finger tipped with a white nail. He covered it hastily, binding it in under the cloth.

He felt dazed. A numbing roar descended on him, and he watched as through a haze while Cara and Jo fussed over Tess, hooked her up to this and that, flicked on the modeler, cut off her tunic, set into a glass dish the strange veined blood-red creature that was the placenta. Tess’s image appeared, floating in the air at the foot of the bed, turning, pulsing critical red all along its length.

Voices sounded outside. Cara did not even look up. David shook with exhaustion and realized that he was squeezing the bundle in his arms. He was filled suddenly with such revulsion that he thought he might well be sick.

“Think, you idiot,” he said under his breath. Bells chimed.

“I don’t think—” someone said, protesting.

“I will see Tess!” said Bakhtiian.

Without thinking, David stepped to the curtain and eased himself through so that the curtain sealed shut behind him. “Don’t go in!” he said. And came up short, facing Bakhtiian.

Rajiv stood wringing his hands a pace behind the other man. “Oh, thank goodness, David!” he exclaimed. Then, like a coward, he turned and hurried back outside.

David made himself look at Bakhtiian, but Bakhtiian only stared at the bundle in David’s arms. He smelled of smoke and dust, and his clothes still bore the impression of his armor. His face was ashen. Slowly, he held out his hands. David gave him the child.

He cradled it against his chest. Easy enough, that was, since the bundle did not reach from his elbow to his hand. With the other hand, carefully, he unwrapped the cloth. The hair showed first, all course and black, and then the impossibly perfect face, still and shuttered. The tiny arms, the fingers, the chest, the legs, and the tiny tiny little toes. He said nothing; he did nothing but breathe. Then, more carefully than David had, he wrapped the little body back up and hugged it closer against him. He raised haunted eyes to David’s face.

“Tess?”

“I don’t know,” said David. “I don’t know. Dr. Hierakis is with her. We can’t disturb her.” He braced himself for a torrent of protest, but Bakhtiian said nothing. David glanced back toward the curtain. He heard Cara and Jo, speaking terse, quiet phrases that David himself barely understood and Bakhtiian certainly could not understand: IV, anesthesia, transfusion, systolic pressure, basal temperature, placenta abruptio, antibody sensitization.

In the middle of the room, Ilya Bakhtiian stood silent, crying, holding his dead son.

J
IROANNES SAT UNDER THE
shelter of his awning, a blanket over his legs, his torso and arms encased in a fine brocade coat, and watched the glow in the west where the sun sank down over the hills and blended its light with smoke and fire from distant Karkand. He sipped at hot tea. Steam rose from the porcelain cup; this cup alone, of all that Syrannus had so carefully packed back at his uncle’s villa, still remained fit for him to drink from. All the others had been chipped or broken or stained. Vines and peacocks circled the rim, a delicate round of painting. The aroma of the tea soothed him. Around him, the camp was quiet. At last.

He shuddered. He had not known that a woman could shriek that loudly, or that a woman who so clearly feared his attentions in the bed would show such anger when he informed her that he intended to visit elsewhere that night. As if it was any right of hers to dictate where he found his pleasure. But perhaps Syrannus had been right all along. The old man had, in his mild way, cautioned against the marriage. And yet, Laissa’s audience with Mother Sakhalin had proved successful, or at least, so Laissa had reported. With the Habakar king in the hands of Bakhtiian, Habakar merchants streamed to Jiroannes’s camp to beg for an audience with the princess Jiroannes had married. No, Syrannus had been wrong: The alliance would serve him well.

“Eminence?” Lal scurried toward him, bearing a thin-necked porcelain pitcher glazed white and etched with flowers. “May I pour you more tea?”

Jiroannes nodded. As Lal bent, Jiroannes saw a mottling on the boy’s dark skin. “What is this?” he asked, reaching up to touch the bruise with one finger.

“It is nothing, eminence.”

“It is a bruise. Where did you get it?”

Lal kept his eyes cast down. “It is nothing, eminence.”

“I command you to tell me.”

Lal finished pouring and backed away two steps. “The mistress struck me, eminence, when I entered her chambers after…” He faltered.

“After we argued.” Wind stirred the awning. Beyond, smoke obscured much of the western curve of the sky, but above, stars began to show in the high bank of the heavens. It was frustrating enough never to know what was going on in camp, except that the jaran had at last assaulted Karkand. Jiroannes felt strongly that Mitya noticed and cared for him, but he doubted if Bakhtiian even remembered that a Vidiyan ambassador abided in his train. In order to complete his mission, he needed Bakhtiian’s notice. And now—now Laissa had the audacity to strike
his
servants. It was all too much.

“Lal, you will cease waiting on my wife. It is insufferable that she treat you in such a fashion. Henceforth, you will serve me alone and cease going into the women’s quarters. I’m sure that will be a relief to you, in any case.”

Lal sank to his knees, balancing the pitcher in trembling hands. “I beg of you, eminence, it was nothing.”

“You
want
to continue to serve her?” Jiroannes was astounded. “After she, a mere woman, treated you in such a way?”

“Eminence.” Lal bent his head and shoulders, curving over the pitcher. From the guards’ camp, Jiroannes heard a hacking cough and a baby’s whimper. Darkness shielded the hills. The smoldering haze of the besieged city illuminated the western horizon. “I am not a man. My mother sold me into the palace service when I was still a boy, and after they cut me, I knew that only in the women’s quarters could I rise to a position of importance. Eunuchs are not allowed to hold any office higher than that of attendant of the sash in a lord’s household, and never any administrative office.” In the lantern light, Jiroannes studied the boy’s beardless cheeks. “You have treated me well, eminence. You have been generous and kind, but you know it’s true that while I can’t become an official in the Great King’s court, I am welcome within the women’s quarters.”

Jiroannes tilted his head back. The underside of the awning lay dark above him, but he knew the scene well enough, having seen it created in the slave workshop abutting the women’s quarters in his uncle’s house: fine Vidiyan lords in their Companion’s sashes riding to battle flanked by flags and standards and the Great King seated under a parasol, observing the march. A moment’s reflection assured him that Lal was right: a eunuch was not considered a fit servant in a man’s household, except as a body servant, and certainly not in the household of a Companion of the Great King. A eunuch might tie a lord’s sash, but neither eunuch nor woman was allowed to hold the parasol over the Great King’s head. Eunuchs belonged in the women’s quarters, as go-betweens, as guards, as master of the gate and master of the treasury, as ministers seeing to the administration within the cloistered walls.

“Very well,” he said at last. “But you remain under my protection.”

“You are all that is magnanimous, eminence.”

Jiroannes drained his tea, and Lal poured more into the cup. The warm liquid soothed him, and he felt the truth of Lal’s words. He had been kind and generous to his slaves, and yet, one still eluded him. “Lal, send Samae to me.”