Birth: A Novella (6 page)

I waited to see what Dominic would do. He
must be here in some official capacity, perhaps as a referee. But
the catcalls intensified, people wishing failure on him, using
expressions they would not have dared even to think to Margrave
Aranyi, that were somehow permissible here, in this arena. Dominic
ignored it all, a cold smile on his face, nose jutting proudly as
his eyes scanned the crowd. He saw me, bowed with the slightest
inclination of the head on the slender neck, fastened his helmet,
and announced through the mesh of the mask that he was ready.
“Bring on the first challenger,” he said.

He
was the hated champion, the one
the crowd wanted to see defeated even though they didn’t dare bet
against him, who had never lost a match.

The first bouts were indistinguishable to
me. Dominic was—
magnificent
was all I could think. He moved
as gracefully as when he danced, although his knees were bent in
the fencer’s crouch, and he was so quick that one might suspect him
of using his gift unfairly. But he wasn’t; I knew, even if his
thoughts had not already proved it, that his innate sense of honor
would be outraged at the idea. He whirled and thrust, advanced and
slashed, all as if performing a great choreographer’s masterwork,
except this was unscripted.

I had never seen him practice this noble
craft to which he had dedicated so much of life, at which he shone.
He had spent an hour or two each morning at Aranyi training with
Stefan, confiding once to me that his companion would never make
much of a swordsman, but needing the exercise so as not to grow
stale. I had not watched the two of them practice; it was not
something a man did in front of his wife. When I saw him now, the
supreme master of his art in glorious action, I knew only that the
crowd, that hated him so, must hate beauty and grace and
excellence. They were pigs, brutes, morons. I despised them with
all the force of their own hostility to Dominic.

Eight times a young hopeful came out into
the ring, and eight times Dominic, the embodiment of the perfect
swordsman, defeated him. It happened so quickly the first few times
I thought there had been some mistake, that the rules had been
broken or that the challenger had defaulted, knowing he was
outmatched, but it was just that they were not up to Dominic’s
level. Dominic rarely took his full five minutes between bouts; he
had barely broken a sweat. The crowd was ready to take him on
themselves, en masse.

The ninth challenger looked vaguely
familiar. “Lord Roger Zichmni.” The announcer’s voice was
breathless with awe. The crowd thrilled to see the handsome, fresh
young face of their ruler. It had all the elements of a soap opera
plot: youth against age, fair against dark, good against evil.
Surely not
, I thought.
That’s overdoing it a bit
. But
the feelings were all around me. People saw Dominic as predatory
and cruel, proud and ruthless, aloof and overbearing and—everything
I had been angry with him for being. My last argument with Dominic
was still fresh in my mind, words spoken that I wished had not
been, important things left unsaid. I renounced my unwifely
thoughts then and there.

This fight went differently from the start.
Roger was an excellent swordsman; Dominic had tutored him for
years.
And he was younger
, I thought.
And he hadn’t just
fought eight matches with barely a break between them
. It was
the only fight that went more than one round. The officials danced
around the pair, watching the blades and the feet for infractions.
Twice they stopped it, awarded a penalty; once in Roger’s favor,
the second time in Dominic’s. I thought the crowd was going to tear
the place apart when the referees ruled for Dominic on the
penalty.

A few men jumped out of their seats, started
to run to the front, to the ring. They had weapons—plain daggers
and knives, not ‘Graven swords or with prisms in the handle—but bad
enough. It was automatic with me, a reflex. I had my dagger out,
the prism angled up to the light, and the weapons knocked out of
their hands before they reached the ropes that separated the
contestants from the front seats. The men ran on several yards
before they could stop, staring stupidly at their empty hands,
feeling at their waists. They looked around wildly for a few
seconds until they saw their weapons lying on the ground behind
them, and by then guards had surrounded them and were marching them
away.

Only now did people notice me. First the
ones sitting on either side, who peeped in through the wall of the
tall guards’ bodies. They shouted and pointed, while I stood frozen
like the idiot I was, until the whole crowd saw ‘Gravina Aranyi on
her feet with her dagger in her hand, protecting her husband, the
champion swordsman. Only when the laughter began did I get a sense
of how shamefully I had acted. I felt myself going so red my
eyebrows almost melted off, and I sat down, trying to pretend
nothing had happened.

An official climbed the stairs to my tier,
forcing his way between the laughing, roaring spectators, until he
was close enough to verify my identity. He nodded once to Dominic,
who had removed his helmet, whose third eyelids had turned to glass
and whose mouth was a line with no lips, who was breathing so
heavily I could see his ribcage expanding through the padding of
the tunic. Dominic turned to Roger, and I received it through our
communion, what I could not have heard over the shouts and
laughter.
“Your match, I think. Interference, from my
side.”

“
No, Dominic.”
Roger was laughing
too.
“Call it a draw.”

“
No, my lord.”
Dominic spat the words
out through clenched teeth.
“It is your day, and you are
champion. Pray all the gods you have better luck in your supporters
than I have in mine.”

***

I stare at the puddle of viscous liquid running
sluggishly into the cracks between the hearthstones. My feet are
cold on the bare floor, my upper body hot from the roaring fire, my
lower body so filled with pain it’s like something outside me. If
only I could get this burden off me, I think, this horrible,
swollen belly of pain, I could breathe again, could become
myself.

Bear down when the pain comes, Dominic says.
Breathe and push.

I can’t, I say. It hurts. My earlier
confidence is gone, has flowed out of me with my water. I’m spent,
flaccid, being slowly ripped open by this thing inside me, that he
has put there.

Look at me, Dominic says. In my eyes. The
full communion. I want to show you something. Once the communion
has been reinforced, he motions Magali over to take his place and
lies down on the hearth, looking up between my legs.

In the communion I see it through Dominic’s
eyes, like looking in a mirror: my spread thighs and the familiar
opening between them, once so small, now stretched so wide it’s
unbelievable. And there, showing in the gap, a thatch of dark hair,
not mine, black and thick like Dominic’s.

It’s the most hideous thing I have ever
seen, the instrument of my destruction, this giant hairy sphere
that will break me apart.

You see? he says. It’s our daughter’s head,
right where it should be. He sits up, squats behind me as before.
Just push a little more and it will be over.

Another contraction comes, but it’s not a
contraction, it’s my insides coming out. I scream, no words this
time, just noise, and Dominic echoes me in his harsh parade-ground
shout, startling Magali where she hovers over us.

There’s a mess of blood and all kinds of
disgusting stuff on the floor. Me, I think. That was me, what had
filled me up, occupied the space between skin and bones, front and
back, side to side. All out now. Emptied, weightless, I collapse
against Dominic, as Magali catches up a large portion of the
innards in her arms.

“Perfect,” she says.

Magnificent, Dominic is thinking.

Dominic picks me up, carries me to the bed
and lowers me gently. It’s wonderful to lie on a soft mattress,
although I want some of those warm blankets over me. I’m only
two-dimensional now, flattened and juiceless, and I get cold with
nothing to warm me from inside. The last of my stuffing slides out,
warm and oozing, clumping between my thighs.

Some strange creature chokes and splutters,
then gives a long indignant wail. There is the splashing of water
from the bathroom, and Dominic is holding his dagger, moving toward
me.

The tournament! I remember now. I’m sorry,
Dominic, I say, or try to. He doesn’t hear me. He glides past me,
toward the bathroom, where the crying is coming from, where I can’t
see him.

The room is getting smaller all the time. A
large black border around it is growing wider and wider, narrowing
the little remaining circle of light that is the hearth and its
fire. I’m down at the far end of a cone, the pointy end, gazing up
to the round wide top. Two tiny faces are peering back at me.
Dominic and Magali, I think, ticking them off in my mind, so I’ll
keep it straight. There’s someone else there, too, someone I don’t
know but feel I should. My mind can’t seem to work it out. It
doesn’t matter, I decide. Dominic loved me once, but that’s over
now, and I’m much too tired to care.

***

That night Dominic was like a stranger. He didn’t
shout at me or threaten me or acknowledge my existence in any way.
He came in for supper, bathed and sat at his place at the table,
eating rapidly and never saying a word to me or looking in my
direction.

I broke the silence. “I’m sorry. I was
frightened when I saw them coming at you with knives—”

Dominic put his knife and fork down slowly,
carefully, as if otherwise he might hurl them at me. “I see,” he
said. “You naturally assumed I was incapable of defending myself
against a couple of commoners with pocketknives.”

“No, I just—”

“I see,” he said again. “You did think I was
capable, you merely wanted to save me the trouble. At a tournament,
a swordsmanship exhibition, my wife has to use her woman’s dagger
to protect her husband from men with knives.”

I sat staring at my plate.

“I lost the match, you know,” he said.
“Because of you.”

“You conceded,” I said. “You could have left
it a draw.”

“So you spied,” he said, “as well as
interfered.”

“Why did you want me to come and watch it?”
I said, shouting.

“Because I’m crazy,” he said. “Because I
thought you’d enjoy it. The gods help me, I thought you could
behave yourself for an hour or two.”

“
Behave myself
?” I was screaming by
now. “You’re talking to me like a child, like that slave-wife I was
afraid of becoming.”

“Yes,” he said, “I am. But you’re a little
old for a child, and since you can’t obey the simplest instruction
you’re not much use as a slave, either.”

That’s when I slapped him. I didn’t leave my
chair or even use the prism in my dagger. The sheer force of my
anger somehow solidified through my
crypta
into an extension
of my body, and this spectral arm and hand reached out and smacked
his head so hard it bounced against the high back of his chair.

He was on his feet and drawing his sword
before he knew what had happened. When he figured it out he stood,
breathing heavily, the way I had seen him in the tournament ring.
Then he walked quickly to the door of the suite.

I got up, ran after him. “I’m sorry,” I
said.

He didn’t turn around. “Why? For doing what
comes naturally? You’re a termagant by nature. Don’t become a
hypocrite as well.” He called to Ranulf for his cloak, threw it
around himself and walked out into the night. He was gone a week,
and when he came back it was to say that he had broken with Stefan
and was I happy now.

***

I open my eyes to gray light. Dawn or dusk? No, even
twilight on a rainy winter evening would have more color. I must be
in the telepathic ether. I don’t care for the ether; it’s too easy
to get lost. Sometimes people don’t return, their bodies left as if
in a coma, their minds drifting on waves of neural electricity to
nowhere.

A voice comes from the direction of where I
think my body is. “She’s bleeding too much for me to stop it by
myself.”

It sounds like the voice of someone I know,
but I can’t identify it. Like seeing that third person in the room
before, the one I didn’t recognize but should have. It’s
frustrating, like trying to remember an actor’s name from hearing
one small line of dialogue. I’m too tired to play guessing games,
so I stop thinking about it.

I move along in the murk of the ether, not
walking exactly, but not floating or flying either. More like
rowing, only there’s no boat, just my shell of a body that has lost
its vitals, propelled by the oars of my fading consciousness.
Slowly the gloom dissolves until I can make out a few details: a
trail through dense forest, and snow-covered slopes off to the
side. There are people up ahead; I can sense their minds. Not the
thoughts, only the presence of human intelligence. They’re
separated from me by some big divide, and when I get close I see
it’s a crevasse, like in the high mountains. I push myself to the
edge, looking down at the people milling about at the bottom.

There! There’s my mother!
She looks
so young—younger than me—but I would recognize her even without
having seen holosnaps of her at this age. I know her mind, maybe
better than I know my own, from the many times I shared her
thoughts. She was the one person on Terra whose thoughts I could
tolerate, overflowing as they were with love for me and an
unshakable belief in my abilities that allowed me to go on trying.
It was when she died, and I had known that I was now, truly and
forever, alone, that I had felt free to leave Terra.