Birth: A Novella (4 page)

“Then the sooner he starts the sooner back.”
Dominic turns away in dismissal. His eyes lock on mine; he seems to
glide across the floor to me, communion flowing between us,
smoothing the way like harness grease.
My love, my lady wife.
Come to me
. But he comes to me, holding out his arms,
enveloping me in an embrace that brings us into full communion.
Forgive me. Oh, my love—

Another contraction begins, and he takes it
on himself, bending low, clutching his slender waist and hard
stomach, crying out with the transformation from healthy man to
woman enduring her greatest agony. He perspires in my arms, an odd
mix of smells coming off him: hay and leather, the familiar salty
tang of his own sweat and the off-putting odor of another man’s,
horse sweat and harness grease and semen.

When the contraction passes he straightens
up. His face has gone pale with the pain, but he breathes deeply,
color returning, getting a sense of the pace. “I’ll bathe now,
while I have the chance. You should be all right for a few minutes,
and I’ll be quick.” His boots and breeches are off before I can
protest.

“Don’t leave me.” My voice is the whimper of
a child.

“Come with me then,” Dominic says. “It’s no
good starting out dirty. We’ll be covered in muck before this is
over.” He sounds almost cheerful at the prospect, removing his
shirt and flinging it away as he moves toward the bathroom.

“Then why bother?” I ask.

“Come on!” He won’t waste time explaining
but drags me through to my bathroom, arms enfolding me, hands
caressing me. “You know about the dangers of infection, the
importance of sterile surroundings. And you should be naked, too.”
He tries to pull my dress up over my head, gets entangled in the
petticoats and camisole, and looks for help. “Where’s what’s her
name, the little sexpot, Katrina?”

“Home,” I say. “With her husband. She’s
pregnant too.”

“Bloody hell.” Dominic goes back into my
room and sticks his head out the door to the corridor. “Tariq!” he
shouts. “Where’s Roger?”

Tariq is close by. “
Lord
Roger,” he
says, “is in the Zichmni Suite, bathing.”

“Good,” Dominic says. “When he’s done, have
him come to my room. You too.” He lowers his voice, speaks instead
of thinking, so I can’t catch his words.

Tariq, who has been cold and distant,
changes at Dominic’s words. “Yes, Margrave,” he says. “I
understand. Yes, of course I will.”

“And send Magali back in here!” Dominic
calls after him. “And find a housemaid!”
Assuming there are any
females in this house who aren’t breeding
, he mutters to me in
communion.

***

And then there was Inauguration Day at the ‘Graven
Military Academy. The new cadets, all who have passed their
probationary period, along with officers and men who have been
promoted, are confirmed in their positions. It’s a jubilee, a
joyous celebration, and nobody likes to miss it. When I wanted to
go out on the first sunny day in two weeks, there wasn’t one male
over the age of fifteen free to escort me. I decided that, with
everyone at the ceremony, no one would know whether I was indoors
or out or even in the city at all. “Come on,” I said to Katrina,
“let’s take a stroll, just the two of us.”

“My lady!” She was shocked, and delighted.
“What will Margrave Aranyi say?”

“Expressions no lady should use,” I said.
“But he won’t know. We’ll be home again before he’s decided which
cadets to deflower next term.”

We spent a long, tiring morning wandering
through the stalls in the market and following the wide streets
leading from ‘Graven Fortress as they narrowed through residential
neighborhoods. It was not the anonymous freedom of a city walk I
remembered from my life on Terra. People recognized me. Not because
they had ever met me, but because of my third eyelids and my gray
wool cloak with the Aranyi cipher woven into the pattern, and
because of my shape. It had been the hot topic of the season that
Margrave Aranyi had married and that his bride was pregnant.

Everywhere we went people stared and
whispered, the braver ones asking if I needed help, and all trying
to sell me something. They expected payment too, not like the
shopkeepers in the town outside La Sapienza seminary. This was
Eclipsia City, and ‘Graven must pay like the rest. Men eyed
Katrina, made rude remarks; some even touched her, until I ended up
walking with my dagger in my hand, much like a man prepared to draw
his sword. I let the prism in the handle show above my clenched
fist, ready to angle the sunlight into my eyes if necessary.

Now that I had sinned so obviously, I
refused to admit defeat. We were almost at the Terran Sector.
Things would be better on the other side, where no one would know
me in my new incarnation.
What fun
, I thought, to revisit
the scenes of my first weeks here, before I met Dominic and changed
my life forever. How wonderful it would be to see from the outside,
as ‘Gravina Aranyi, the cage that had so imprisoned me as Amelia
Herzog. In the back of my mind was the suspicion that I had merely
exchanged one cage for another, but I wouldn’t let the thought
penetrate all the way through to my consciousness.

I had forgotten the checkpoint. It’s like
two countries side by side, the old Eclipsian residential city and
seat of government, and the new Terran Sector for commerce and
cultural exchange. Guards from both sides staff it, veteran
Eclipsian officers who can be counted on to know who’s who, and
young men and women in Terran uniforms learning to tell nobleman
from commoner, trader from tourist, industrial spy from
environmentalist. Terrans are rarely allowed across from their
side, while Eclipsians are free to come and go, but we must check
in when leaving and again when returning. Unlikely as it seems,
it’s theoretically possible for a Katrina to go out and a Terran
imposter to come back in her place.

When we approached, the Terrans were all set
to wave us through.
Just another dowdy little Eclipsian,
pregnant like most of them, despite having a full-grown
daughter.

What?
I wondered, looking around.
Who?
They thought Katrina was my daughter, I discovered with
shock and wounded pride.

Amazing she isn’t barefoot
, the
female guard was thinking of me with scorn.

I couldn’t resist. “My husband is very
kind,” I said in Terran. “He lets me wear shoes on the
cobblestones.” Her startled, involuntary glance to my boots and her
shamefaced smile lifted my mood temporarily.

The Eclipsian in charge was incredulous
until he had registered the design on my cloak and seen my face,
third eyelids protectively lowered and at full silver strength.
“‘Gravina Aranyi!” He bowed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion,
worried at so strange an occurrence, not knowing what to look for,
but sure it was trouble. “Does Margrave Aranyi– Where are your
guards?”

“At the ‘Graven Military Academy, of
course,” I said. “For Inauguration Day. How come you got stuck on
duty?”

“Bad luck,” he said, “and strong drink.” He
attempted a fatherly smile. “Margrave Aranyi would have my head,
and I’d hand it to him on a plate, if I let you through on your
own.”

He was certain I remembered him from
somewhere. It’s the curse of ‘Graven: we’re so few, and easily
recognizable, all the ungifted think we can tell them apart, can
recall a face or a name seen or heard in a brief presentation, even
years in the past. But the
crypta
helps. Dominic had taught
me the officer’s trick of getting the name from their thoughts,
letting them think we knew it all along. I attempted to escape my
fate. “Honestly, Kojiro, I’m not alone. My maid, Katrina, is with
me.”

Kojiro looked at her, not yet seventeen,
with the angelic face and perfect little figure of any heroine of
ballad or romance. “Oh yes, ‘Gravina,” he said, rolling his eyes,
“fine protection indeed. No bandit or street thug would dare to
tangle with a dangerous one like her.” He winked at Katrina, pursed
his lips to steal a kiss. “One glance from those big brown eyes and
the toughest brigand would be your slave. I suppose you’re spoken
for.”

Katrina giggled but shook her head, not
understanding the heavy-handed lowland humor. “No, I’m
married.”

Kojiro pretended to have been stabbed
through the heart, clutching his chest and staggering. “A child
like you! Have they no shame in the mountains?”

“Not much,” I said. “Listen, Kojiro. If we
go home now, can we dispense with the guards? You don’t want to
leave the post unmanned.” We were speaking Eclipsian, so it was
safe to add, “You know the Terrans aren’t much use in an emergency.
They don’t even know who I am.”

“Too true, my lady,” Kojiro said. “That’s
the reason you need the escort.” He turned to the other Eclipsians,
a boy of sixteen on punishment detail, and an old man of seventy
filling in for the day. “Escort ‘Gravina Aranyi to her quarters.
And not just to the entrance of ‘Graven Fortress. To the door of
the Aranyi Suite. Is that clear?”

***

Dominic rejoins me in my bathroom and runs hot water
in the tub, filling the room with steam. He steps in, holding me at
arm’s length when I start to follow. “No, it’s too hot for you. Let
me get clean, then I’ll sponge you down if you like.”

He washes quickly and towels off, helping me
while I slowly remove every piece of clothing. “Whom have you been
using for a maid?” he asks. “You mustn’t do without, not now.”

“Katrina’s here sometimes,” I say,
defensive, embarrassed to admit I have let so many people go on
extended vacation. But I had felt guilty at our unannounced
reappearance right at Midwinter, when the servants had been
counting on freedom until spring. It’s worse in a way for those who
live at Aranyi, like Magali and her husband, Harald, who had been
enjoying the run of the castle with no master or mistress. “Magali
helps me when she can, or one of her daughters.” She has two who
are old enough to be of use, but neither one has Katrina’s deft
gentleness that I have come to take for granted, and I rarely ask
for them.

Dominic shakes his head at my thoughts. “You
are ‘Gravina Aranyi,” he says. “You must get used to that fact.
It’s your prerogative to return to your home at any time and expect
maid service. Of course you don’t want to be capricious or
thoughtless, but by the balls of Erebos, Amalie! This close to your
time! The poorest laborer’s wife wouldn’t be left to cope by
herself.”

He throws open the door leading to the
Margrave’s bedroom and walks in. A housemaid has been found and
she’s laying a large fire in the hearth. “Have someone bring more
wood,” Dominic says to the startled girl who attempts a curtsy and
goes red in the face at seeing the master naked. “We’ll need to
keep it burning all night.”

Magali is made of sterner stuff. She barely
glances at Dominic but continues her work of laying sheet after
sheet on the bed on top of the relatively clean ones already there.
Every so often she intersperses a large towel.

Dominic leads me out of the bathroom and
Magali runs to help, each taking one of my arms and crossing their
other arm behind my back. “I can walk,” I say, but only for form’s
sake. I enjoy the support of their arms, the comfort of the bodies
on either side. We have passed over, from the neutral territory of
bathroom, to the significance of the Margrave’s bedroom.
How
many Aranyi women have taken this walk
, I think,
assuring
the legitimacy of their children, bearing them in the bed where
they had been conceived. Generations of Aranyis, begotten and born
in this room, probably this very same bed.
Even though this
child has been conceived elsewhere, the tradition will be upheld
with her birth.

I wasn’t conceived here either
,
Dominic confides to me. He has gone into memories of his own, the
transgenic mother singing to the little almost-human boy she had
borne, telling him the facts of his conception and birth, stories
he was too young to understand then, but recalls in adulthood, like
dreams or visions.
A chance meeting, the handsome, gifted
‘Graven lord out hunting, and the beautiful, alien creature,
capable of both male and female manifestations, surprised near its
home in the deep woods, changing abruptly, violently, into its
female form at the sudden sexual attraction. The man and the
“woman” have rendezvous in the woods, or on the Aranyi grounds,
formalized eventually into marriage when she proves to be
fertile.

And I wasn’t born here
, Dominic says.
My mother preferred to be outdoors for her ordeal.

Another contraction hits and I go rigid,
then limp, leaning back against the crossed arms.

Dominic stiffens with me in the communion.
“Breathe like this,” he says, demonstrating, panting in funny
little bursts. I have seen it so many times, in the hologram shows.
Every time there’s a birth scene they always show this breathing. I
laugh until the pain starts up again. “It’s true all the same,”
Dominic says, resenting the reference to the Terran entertainment.
“It helps.”

He
helps, more than anything. Each
contraction, he suffers it for me. He can’t really take it all;
communion cannot make pain disappear, or lessen it. But by sharing
it, undergoing it with me, it seems as if I need bear only half. I
curse as for a minor ache or mishap, gritting my teeth, sweating
and trying to breathe as Dominic has shown me. It is the worst
agony I have ever known, but I tell myself I am getting only half
of it, that it is manageable because I don’t have to experience the
full amount.

I can do this
, I think, surprised. I
smile into Dominic’s pain-wracked, grimacing face. Communion has
given me strength and confidence.
My love
, I say,
I can
do it
.