The Beauty of Darkness - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,115
supposed to be a joke?”
“I meant in other ways—most notably the knife you were flashing in my face.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Betrayal tends to familiarize one with weapons.”
I nodded. Yes, I thought. Sadly, it does.
“It looks like someone’s taken a weapon to your head too,” she said.
I reached behind, feeling the crusted gash on my scalp. “It would seem so,” I answered. I had passed out and slept for two straight days on the trail after vomiting up half my insides. The throbbing had eased, but it was probably what had dimmed my judgment enough to walk into an unknown cottage without my own weapon drawn. Perhaps that was a good thing, or Pauline might be lying dead on the floor now.
I walked over to the window and opened the shutter, hoping to see a glimpse of Lia and Berdi. The downpour obscured the forest beyond, and thunder rumbled overhead. I gently pressed on the back of my head, wondering how bad the gash was. Beneath the crusted patch of blood, there was still a sizable lump. It was ironic that a housekeeper armed only with an iron pot had nearly done in the Assassin of Venda.
How the Rahtan would laugh at that.
The name dug into me with a surprising sting—and longing. Rahtan. It brought back the familiar, the feeling of pride, the one place in my entire life where I had felt like I belonged. Now I was in a kingdom that didn’t want me and in a cottage where I wasn’t welcome. I didn’t want to be here either, but I couldn’t leave. I wondered about Griz and Eben. Surely Griz was healed and they were on their way by now. They were the closest thing I had to family—a family of poisonous vipers. The thought made me grin.
“What’s so amusing?” Pauline asked.
I looked at the severity in her gaze. Had I done this to her? I remembered all of her kindnesses back in Terravin—her gentleness. I had thought that the young man she so earnestly waited for couldn’t possibly deserve her and then when I learned he had died, I had hoped it wasn’t by a Vendan hand. Maybe that was what she saw when she looked at me, a Vendan just like the one who had killed her baby’s father. Though my smile had long faded, her gaze remained fixed on me, waiting.
“Nothing’s amusing,” I answered, and looked away.
Another hour slipped by, and it seemed one labor pain hadn’t subsided before another began. I dipped the rag into the bucket of cool water and wiped her brow. She didn’t resist this time, but closed her eyes as if trying to pretend it wasn’t me. I was getting a bad feeling about this. She was racked with another spasm.
When the pain finally passed and she relaxed again against the makeshift pillow I had made for her, I said, “We may have to do this alone, Pauline.”
Her eyes shot open. “You deliver my baby?” A smile broke her face for the first time, and she laughed. “I promise you, the first hands that touch my little girl won’t be a barbarian’s.”
I ignored her barb. It didn’t hold the same venom as an hour ago. She was getting tired of fighting me. “You’re so sure it’s a girl?”
She didn’t get a chance to answer. She was seized with a pain so strong, I was afraid she wasn’t going to breathe again, and then on its heels came a sobbing scream. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I think she’s coming. Blessed gods. Not now.” The next moments were hot and blurred, her anguished wails tearing through me. She cried. She begged. I held her shoulders, and she bent forward in pain. Her nails dug into my arm.
My heart pounded furiously with every scream. It was coming. There was no more waiting. Dammit, Lia! I eased Pauline back against the pillow, lifted up her dress, then pulled her underclothes free before I could think too much about what I was doing. A head crested between her legs. She said a hundred things to me between each pain, a breathless one-way conversation of pleas to the gods and curses. She fell back crying, too tired to push.
“I can’t,” she sobbed.
“We’re almost there, Pauline. Push. I see its head. It’s coming. Just a little more.”
She cried, a weak happiness briefly washing over her face before it vanished and she screamed again. I cupped the head, more of it emerging.