Jaws of Darkness (51 page)

Ealstan always had plenty of work to do, even when dealing with Pybba’s legitimate business. When he added on the rest, he wondered how he ever slept at night. But he didn’t stay late, as he had so often in the dark days when Vanai was a captive in the Kaunian quarter. With her so close to her time, and with no one but him she could trust, he wanted to be there as much as he could. If Pybba didn’t like it, he would have thrown his job in the pottery magnate’s face. But Pybba hadn’t said a word.

On the way home, Ealstan walked through the park where he’d gone with Vanai just after she worked out the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. He’d named her Thelberge there, when he’d run into Ethelhelm the drummer and singer, whose books he’d once kept.
Poor Ethelhelm,
he thought.
Poor, cursed Ethelhelm.
A man of half-Kaunian blood, the musician had been putty in the Algarvians’ hands. He’d liked his riches too well, and had got much too involved with the redheads, though he’d finally used the sorcery to escape their clutches.

I
wonder why I thought of him.
Maybe it was just going through the park. Maybe it was the musicians playing on the grass—although Ethelhelm wouldn’t have had much to do with the trumpeters or the viol player. The drummer, now, the drummer wasn’t bad.

The drummer, in fact, was good enough to make Ealstan pause and listen for a little while and toss some silver into the bowl the band had set in front of them. A nondescript, stocky fellow, the drummer could have made much more money playing in clubs or even in theaters. He sounded … He sounded like someone doing an excellent impression of Ethelhelm.

After a bit, the drummer’s eyes met Ealstan’s. That wasn’t surprising; only eight or ten people were standing around listening. What was surprising was that the drummer’s eyebrows rose slightly, as if he recognized Ealstan. If he did, he had the advantage, for Ealstan was sure he’d never set eyes on the fellow before.

He’d almost got back to the block of flats when he stopped so suddenly, the woman behind him bumped into him and let out a torrent of shrill complaint. He apologized, but too absentmindedly to suit her.

Up in the flat, though, he said, “I’m sure that was Ethelhelm, sorcerously disguised to look all Forthwegian. He can hide the way he looks, but he can’t hide the way he plays the drums. And he knew who I was—I’m sure of that, too.”

“For his sake, I hope you’re wrong,” Vanai said. “You told him as much yourself: if he wants to stay safe, he has to stay away from music. If you recognized who he was, someone else will, too, and then the Algarvians will have him.”

“I know. That would be too bad.” Ealstan had had his quarrels with Ethelhelm—he’d had quarrels with most of his employers—but he wouldn’t have wished falling into Algarvian captivity on anyone, especially on anyone of even partly Kaunian blood.

Looking back on it, Vanai had trouble defining exactly when she went into labor. Her womb had been squeezing now and again throughout the last couple of months of her pregnancy. She thought that was normal, but had no one she could ask. Over the couple of days after Ealstan saw, or thought he saw, Ethelhelm, the squeezes grew stronger and came more often.

Are these labor pains?
she wondered as she walked around the flat. They didn’t keep her from walking, or from doing anything she needed to do. And they didn’t hurt. How could they be pains if they didn’t hurt?

She lay down beside Ealstan, wriggled till she found the least uncomfortable position—finding a comfortable one, with her belly so enormous, was impossible these days—and fell asleep. When she woke, right around dawn, it was to the sound of a snap. She also discovered she needed to use the pot, but she couldn’t stop herself before she got there, and dribbled on the floor.

“What is it?” Ealstan asked sleepily.

“I think … my bag of waters just broke,” Vanai answered. She hoped that was what it was. If it wasn’t that, it was something worse.

“Does that mean this is it—I mean, that you’ll have the baby pretty soon?” The mattress creaked as Ealstan sat up in bed.

“I don’t know,” Vanai said irritably. The truth was, she didn’t know much more about it than he did. But it was happening to her, not to him. It hardly seemed fair. He’d been there at the beginning. Why shouldn’t he be there at the end, too? She went on, “I think—oof”

“What’s the matter?” Ealstan could hear that something was.

“Now I know… why they’re called … labor pains.” Vanai got the words out in small bunches. This time, when her womb clenched, she really felt it. Maybe the water in there had shielded her from the worst of the squeezes. Nothing was shielding her any more. She’d been looking forward to having the baby. Now, all at once, she wasn’t so sure.

“Pybba won’t get his accounts cast today,” Ealstan said. “I expect he’ll figure out why I’m not there.”

“I expect so,” Vanai agreed—once the pang eased, she could speak freely. She also seemed to have stopped dribbling. She got up off the pot and waddled back to bed. She hadn’t been there long before her womb clamped down again. She grunted. This one was stronger than the last.

“Can I get you anything?” Ealstan asked anxiously.

Vanai shook her head. “I’m going to do this till I’m done,” she said. “I can tell. It’s real now.” She wanted to laugh at herself—she made it sound as if she were going into battle. But the laughter wouldn’t come. This
was
a battle, and some women didn’t come back from it. She wished she hadn’t thought of that.

To keep from thinking, she got out of bed and started walking. It wasn’t so easy now, not with the pangs coming every few minutes. When the third or fourth one caught her in the middle of a step, she almost fell.
That would not be a good thing to do, not now,
she told herself. She stood there, waiting for the labor pain to end and her belly to ease back from rock hardness. That seemed to take a very long time. She was gasping by the time it finally happened. Moving slowly and with great care, she walked back to the bed and lay down.

“Are you all right?” Ealstan looked faintly green. But he stayed by the bed and clutched her hand, and she didn’t suppose he could do much more than that.

“I’m as well as I can be,” Vanai answered. “I don’t think I’ll do any more walking, though, thank you all the same.”

Before very long, her womb squeezed in on itself again. The baby didn’t like that, and kicked and wiggled as if in indignation. Because there was very little room in there and the walls of the womb were tight, that hurt, too, where it usually hadn’t before. Vanai hissed, which made Ealstan jump.

When the tension eased, she said, “This is all supposed to happen, I think.” Both of them had read as much as they could about what happened when a baby was born, but the Forthwegian books on the subject told less than Vanai would have liked. Back in Oyngestun, her grandfather had had classical Kaunian gynecological texts in his library, but they might as well have been a mile beyond the moon for all the good they did her now.

And the Kaunians of imperial times had known a lot less about medicine than modern folk did—even the Forthwegians whom the descendants of those Kaunians reckoned barbarians. A lot of what was in Brivibas’ texts was probably wrong.

Ealstan suddenly said, “You look like yourself again, not like a Forthwegian.”

Vanai started to laugh again, only to break off in the middle when another pang hit. She started to say something in spite of the labor pain, only to discover she couldn’t. What her body was doing took charge now, and her mind had to wait till her body gave it leave to work once more. In the time between pains, she said, “That’s the least of my worries.” Sweat ran down her face; her hair, newly re-dyed black, felt wet and matted. She might have been running for hours. People called giving birth
labor
for a reason, too.

And it went on and on. The pangs came closer together, and each one seemed a little stronger, a little more painful, than the one just before. After what felt like forever, Vanai asked, “What time is it?”

“Midmorning,” Ealstan answered.

She almost shouted that he had to be lying to her, that it had to be mid-afternoon at the very least. But when she looked at the light through the windows, she realized he was right. In a small voice, she asked, “Would you get me a little wine?”

He frowned. “Should you have it?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t
think
I’ll puke it up if I drink it, and my mouth is dry as the Zuwayzi desert right now.”

“All right.” Ealstan brought it to her. He also brought in a wide-mouthed basin in case she proved mistaken. But the sweet red wine went down smoothly and stayed down, and she felt better for it. Her mouth no longer seemed caked with dust.

Another eternity that might have been an hour or two dragged by. Ealstan stayed by the side of the bed, squeezing her hand, running a cool, damp cloth over her forehead and neck every so often, occasionally holding up the wine-cup so she could take another sip. She was glad to have him there, gladder than she would have been to have a midwife, even if a midwife knew more.

And then, all at once, she wasn’t. “You—you—you
man,
you!” she said furiously, in between two pangs that hardly left her room to breathe, let alone talk. “If it weren’t for you and your lousy prick, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

Ealstan looked stricken. After a moment, though, his face cleared. “One of the books said that when you started calling me names, it was a sign the baby would come soon,” he told her.

Vanai called him more names then, all the names she could think of, in both Forthwegian and classical Kaunian. She hated to stop when the next labor pang took her, but had very little choice; just breathing through it was quite hard enough. But she resumed when it finally ebbed.

After a few more pangs, she felt the urge to use the pot again, as if her bowels badly needed to move. When she said so—her sudden storm of anger against Ealstan had passed away as fast as it blew up—he answered, “That means you’re ready to push the baby out.”

That wasn’t what it felt like. It felt as if she were straining to pass a stool the size of a football. She’d heard that a couple of times, from women talking back in Oyngestun before the war. She hadn’t imagined it could be true—how could having a baby be so crude? Now she found out for herself.

But, no matter how hard she bore down, the baby didn’t seem to want to move. “I’m trying to shit a boulder,” she panted as Ealstan ran that cloth across her face. “I’m trying to, but it’s stuck.”

“Keep trying,” he said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do.”

She had very little choice. Her body kept straining to force out the baby. It would have kept on doing that whether she wanted it to or not. The most she could do was concentrate, take a deep breath, and try to help it along. She pushed with all her might—and this time felt movement. That made her push harder than ever. She let out a noise half squeal, half groan, and all effort.

“Oh, by the powers above,” Ealstan said softly. “Here comes the head.” He let out a startled squawk. “No—here comes the baby.”

Once Vanai had pushed out the head, everything else was easy. That was the hard part, both figuratively and literally. Shoulders, torso, and legs followed in short order. So did the afterbirth. Ealstan made gulping noises. “You’ll have to throw away these sheets,” Vanai said, before asking the question she should have asked first: “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” Ealstan answered. “Here—I’m tying the cord with one hank of dark brown yarn and one of yellow. Now I’m cutting it. Now …” He held up the baby. She started to cry, and quickly went from purple to pink.

“Give her to me,” Vanai said. “Give me Saxburh.” That was the girl’s name—the Forthwegian girl’s name—they’d picked. Vanai also thought of her as Silelai—her own mother’s name. If things in Forthweg ever improved for Kaunians, perhaps the baby could use that name, too.

Ealstan handed her to her mother as if he had in his hands an egg that might burst at any moment. Saxburh had a little hair, incredibly fine. What there was of it was dark. Her eyes were dark blue, but that meant nothing: all babies’ eyes were that color at first. Whether her skin would prove fair or swarthy, whether she’d be lean like a Kaunian or blocky like a Forthwegian— who could say? Too soon for such guesses.

“Here,” Vanai said, and set the baby on her breast. Saxburh knew what to do; she began sucking right away. That made Vanai’s womb contract painfully. She let out a hiss and began to realize how worn she was. She felt as if she’d been run over by a wagon full of logs.

And then Ealstan had the nerve to say, “Move a little.” But when, after a groan, she did, he swept off the fouled bedclothes and gave her a pair of drawers and a cloth pad of the sort she wore when her courses came. She set Saxburh down for a moment so she could put them on. The baby’s high, thin wail made Vanai pick her up again in a hurry.

As Saxburh went back to nursing, Vanai asked Ealstan, “Could you get me something to eat, please? I feel like I haven’t had anything in years.”

“Of course.” He hurried away and came back with bread and sausage and olives and cheese and two big mugs full of wine. As Vanai fell to like a famished wolf, he raised his mug high. “To our baby!”

“To our baby!” Vanai echoed with her mouth full. After she swallowed, she took a long pull at her own mug. She wanted to bathe. She wanted to sleep for a year. For the time being, she was content to lie there with Saxburh and try to rest.

Major Scoufas looked up from his mug of ale at Colonel Sabrino. “Well, your Excellency, now I know you are truly in bad odor at King Mezentio’s court,” the Yaninan dragonflier said.

Sabrino’s mug held spirits, not ale. He hadn’t got very far down it, though, not yet. “I told you that the day my wing got here,” he replied. “Why do you say you know it now?”

“Because if your superiors cared for you at all, they would have sent you north to try to stem the Unkerlanter tide there,” Scoufas replied. “But no— they have left you here to keep us Yaninans company. And I happen to know they are sending everything they can possibly spare to the north.”