North Star Guide Me Home (29 page)

With a hiss of irritation, Sierra raised one hand. A jagged bolt of blue shot across the tent and wrapped around the officer’s throat, choking off his voice. Eyes growing suddenly wide, he raised both hands to claw at it.

‘Hold your cursed tongue, Slaver,’ Sierra said, her voice as cold as the heart of winter. ‘You brought this on yourselves. If you’d left my people untouched none of us would be here now. You put me in mind of a bully, snivelling because the child he thought a weakling bloodied his nose. You attacked a herd of goats, only to wail with indignation when one turned out to be a tiger in disguise. You dare speak of reparations? That’s what you’ve had these last few months, your fair reward for ravaging the north. Perhaps next time you’ll think twice before striking at others.’

Still holding the young officer, his face turning purple, Sierra turned to Cam. ‘We’re wasting our time. We should just march on Akhara. It’s the largest city in the world, they say, home to a million people. I’ll melt the whole cursed thing into a lake of glass and be done with it. Settle this matter once and for all.’

Cam raised a hand to stall her. ‘Sirri, Akhara is twelve hundred miles away. If they won’t agree to our terms, we’ll ride, but I’d rather go home than face another half-year of tramping around the empire. Let them have a day to consider their situation.’ He turned to the Akharian leader. ‘Does that seem fair to you, southerner?’ He laid a hand on Sierra’s arm, and at his touch she withdrew her power. The young officer collapsed, ribs heaving as he gulped for breath.

The Akharian seemed to be chewing on his tongue. ‘I will relay your words to the emperor at once,’ he said, and stood with a perfunctory bow.

Isidro stood as Cam did, with Sierra and Mira following suit, and the four of them left, heading to the tents Cam’s men had set up within a ring of guards.

As he left the pavilion, Isidro felt a tingling rush of energy centred on his sash. Frowning, he pulled out the stone Delphine had given him. When he’d looked at it that morning it had been as pale as snow, but now it pulsed with light.

Cam glanced back, and when he saw the stone in Isidro’s hand, he stopped. ‘What’s that?’

‘Delphine’s signalling device.’

‘Is it the baby? Already? I thought she had weeks yet.’

Mira laughed at that. ‘It’s hardly an exact science, Cam. Babes come when they’re good and ready.’

Isidro gazed down at the stone. Sierra peered at it as well, power still rippling through her hair and over her skin. ‘Have one of the mages make contact,’ she said. ‘Madric promised to send word.’

Isidro closed his hand around the stone, feeling suddenly uneasy. He started walking again, falling into step beside Mira. ‘It takes a long time for a babe to be born, doesn’t it?’

‘Usually. With Cade I laboured for a day and a half.’

‘We made contact this morning and there was no news.’

‘It’ll be early yet. We might get back before it comes … and it can start and stop, too. It’s nerve-wracking, waiting for labour. There’s no sense guessing. Sierra’s right, wait for some solid word.’

Isidro frowned down at the stone again. Delphine wouldn’t send word rashly and risk distracting them. She was always cool-headed and calm in a crisis. She wouldn’t interrupt the negotiations without a good reason.

In their tent, Cam sent for the mages. Sierra could make contact in a pinch, but it was difficult for her as well as wasteful of her power and tended to cause blinding headaches in those at the far end. While Cam gave his orders, Isidro pulled out the map case and shook the crackling parchment from the tube.

After a few moments, Makaio joined them in the tent, and Cam and Mira both went to greet him.

‘That didn’t exactly go as we discussed,’ Cam said as a servant brought food and drink, ‘but it went well enough, I thought.’

‘Indeed. It might have been better to save the threats for when they dig in their heels, but it’s a sound tactic for a fast resolution.’

Isidro blocked out their words as he measured the distances on the map. A man on a rested horse could reach Delphine in three or four hours.

He felt someone come to stand by his side, and glanced up to find Ardamon peering down at the map. ‘Something wrong?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. I just … I have an odd feeling about this.’

He spoke softly, but across the tent, Cam turned his way. With a nod to Makaio and Mira, he left the conversation and came across to them. ‘What’s that, Issey? Another of your hunches?’

Isidro was silent for a long moment. ‘Yesterday, someone was talking of spies. The Akharians could have worked out where Mira was by our actions — there’s only so much distance we could have covered in one day.’

‘It’s possible,’ Cam said.

‘Right. But it must have been someone close. Which means they’re near Delphine.’

Cam nodded slowly. ‘Madric’s one of our best men,’ he said. ‘He won’t take any chances. If there’d been an attack he’d have sent word straightaway.’

Isidro looked down at the stone again. ‘Delphi wouldn’t trigger this lightly. She must have a reason.’

‘You want to go to her?’ Cam said. ‘How many men do you want?’ He turned to Ardamon. ‘Do we have fresh horses?’

‘Yes, and if we need more, just have Sierra demand them from the Akharians. I doubt they’ll refuse.’

‘Isidro?’ Cam asked.

‘Five or six should do it. We’ll have to make good time.’

Cam turned to Ardamon. ‘Go talk to Tanric, tell him to ready the horses and pick some of the local lads. We need folk who know the ground around here.’

Everyone fell silent as Ardamon strode from the tent. ‘What’s going on?’ Mira asked softly.

Before anyone could reply, a messenger hurried in and pressed a note-tablet into Cam’s hands with a hasty bow. Cam opened it and passed it to Isidro.

Madame Delphine set out an hour ago to take the air with the midwife Nikala and a pair of guards,
the message read.
I’ll dispatch a party at once to ascertain her condition and return her to quarters. More word sent when we have it.

Isidro snapped it shut and dropped it on the table. Everyone followed as he strode from the tent, even the servants. Outside, grooms were already leading horses over. A handful of men had gathered, and near them was Anoa, wearing a sword at her hip. ‘I want to go with you,’ she said, as Isidro came over. ‘Please.’

‘She’s been training hard since you left us,’ Ardamon said. ‘She handled herself well last night, and she’ll sit a horse over cursed near anything. She won’t slow you down.’

‘I just want to get away from these Akharians,’ Anoa said, with a faint tremor in her voice.

There was no time to waste in arguing, and someone as small and light as her could be useful. ‘Mount up,’ he said, as a groom led a horse to him. Isidro gathered up the reins to swing into the saddle.

Cam came over with the map case, and tucked it into the saddlebags as Isidro knotted the reins. ‘Sirri will pass on any news from Madric,’ he said. ‘Keep in touch.’

‘I will,’ Isidro said. Sierra stood just behind Cam, and Isidro caught her gaze. ‘Stay with Cam,’ he told her. ‘Don’t leave his side for a moment.’

Her eyes flashed in response and he instantly regretted the words, but she replied before he could say anything more. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I will.’

Of course she knew. Hadn’t she been Cam’s right hand in the months Isidro’d lain ill and senseless? But there was no time for apologies. He bowed his head, and wheeled his horse as the last of the men scrambled into the saddle. ‘All of you ready? Time to ride.’

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

She couldn’t walk any further — the contractions were coming too hard now, and too close together. In desperation, Delphine had headed out towards the fields where she hoped Nikala and the coachman wouldn’t think to search. But she hadn’t made it far until, with the last bit of strength in her legs, she’d staggered to a patchy hedgerow, crawling into a hollow where some beast must have forced its way through, hoping desperately that the camouflage enchantment would make it seem like a solid wall of green. The stone was her only defence now.

At first, she’d been able to hear them searching, but they seemed to have moved away — or perhaps the pounding of her heart and the laboured rasp of her breath drowned them out.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Labour lasted for days, that’s what everyone had told her. Biting her lip in fury, she felt cheated and betrayed. There should have been ample time for her kin to reach her side, for Sierra to come help with the pain of the birth. That was what she’d prepared for, nor giving birth alone and hunted, crouching in a hedgerow like some wild beast.

Poor little babe,
she thought to herself.
Conceived in a tent in the mountains in a Ricalani spring, and planted in my womb only because I had to leave Rhia’s moontime herbs behind when we fled. Fed on frogs and rabbits as we marched westward, and then quickened amid an army of freed slaves as we turned to the east again. Is it truly any wonder you’ll be born on rotting leaves at the edge of a field? It seems far stranger to think that after all this, I thought you’d be born in a warm house on a feather bed.

Her waters had broken some minutes before she’d found this meagre shelter, and her instincts were screaming that the babe was coming and it was coming now. The pain was immense, unyielding, a vicious sensation that made her feel like she was being torn in two, but somehow she was able to dismiss it, to seal it up in a corner of her mind where it seemed distant and unimportant compared with the need to keep silent.

All her strength was focused on keeping her breath deep and steady, lest the sound of panting give her away. As each contraction came that was the only thought in her head, just keep breathing, in and out, as she knelt on the leaves smelling of damp and musty earth. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, but there was no arguing with reality. The babe was coming, and it was up to her to get them both through.

Isidro crouched low over the horse’s neck as they thundered along muddy roads. They had a clear run, and yet it seemed the hills and fields crawled by.

He wanted to kick his horse faster, but it would be a mistake. No beast could cover this distance at a dead sprint, they had to pace themselves.

He glanced up at the sun, moving too fast through the sky. The thought of what could have gone wrong tormented him — they’d been on guard against infiltrators since the earliest days of the rebellion, but none had ever come close enough to do harm, until now. Did they have Delphine already?

There was nothing to do but ride, and hope.

On reflection, Delphine thought, perhaps it was better this way. The whole business was horribly undignified. She was drenched with sweat, straddle-legged and groaning like a beast, stripped of all clothing but a Ricalani-style breast-band and an underskirt of pale cloth now stained and soiled with blood and other fluids. If there was one good thing to be said of this situation, it was that no one else would see her like this.

The contractions were coming solidly now, with no breaks in between. Oddly, the worst of the pain seemed to be past, and now there was nothing left but the urge to push. When she reached a hand between her legs, she could feel something hard and round, with a thatch of damp hair.

Alright,
she told herself.
Almost there. Just a little further …
whether she was talking to herself, or the babe making its way into the world, she couldn’t say.

By the time the edge of the village was in sight, the horses were stumbling with weariness, their strides grown short and foam dripping from their lips and flanks. They’d approached the town by a road leading from the western end, but something kept drawing his attention to the east, like a vine leaning towards the sun. When a narrow lane appeared, little more than a muddy track between hedgerows, Isidro signalled to his men and wheeled the horse to take it. ‘Where are we headed, sir?’ one of them called.

‘Don’t know, exactly,’ Isidro said. ‘I’m following my gut.’ Cam was the one who went on about trusting his hunches, but to Isidro it was never more than a suspicion, a feeling that he could pin no rational explanation to, and which was too insistent to ignore.

The lane took them to another, lesser-used street, and Isidro slowed to a trot. There
was
something to the east, he could
feel
it, throbbing like a heartbeat.

He reined in. ‘Alright, spread out eastward, make a search. If you see anything, whistle like you’re lost in a snowstorm.’

‘Yessir,’ the men replied in a chorus.

‘Anoa, stay,’ he said as the men peeled off, and she waited, watching expectantly. ‘Head around the outside of the village to the east,’ he said. She was the lightest of the riders, her horse had had the lesser burden and it could cover ground the fastest now. ‘Keep your eyes peeled for tracks, fresh wagon marks, anything.’

She gave him a salute. ‘Yessir,’ she said, then wheeled her horse and kicked it into a weary canter.

Nearby there was another lane leading to the east. Isidro turned his horse to that path and drove it onwards.

It was a girl, tiny and perfect, with a fuzz of black hair. Delphine wept as she cradled the babe to her chest, still covered with fluid and some slick, whitish stuff. The little one was darker than she’d expected, given that Isidro was so much lighter-skinned than herself, and her eyes were as dark as the night.

She’d hacked off the lower part of her underskirt, using half to wrap up the grotesque, fleshy mass of the afterbirth. As she wrapped the remainder around the tiny, shivering form, suddenly thrown out of warm darkness into a bright, cold world, the babe screwed up her face and began to wail.

‘Oh, no,’ Delphine said. ‘No, no, little one, hush. Please, for the love of life, don’t cry.’

She cradled the bundle to her chest, patting the little one’s back, but it made no difference to the reedy cry. She remembered, then, the advice to put the babe straight to her breast — well, that at least ought to stop the noise. She had to set the babe down to fumble with her breast-band, but that only seemed to make the child wail louder.