She was still breathing, but not for long. He glanced around quickly; if Barr caught him, he would be in serious trouble. A tiny voice inside asked him why he’d even bothered risking it.
Because he couldn’t let the woman be eaten alive like her companion had been, that was why. There wasn’t much left of her face and nothing left of her ears. He doubted she could even still hear him. Both hands were gone. She should not have still been alive. He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said, although it wasn’t.
Out of the corner of his eye: motion. Then again.
The hounds had torn open her abdomen. He didn’t want to see it. But there was the movement again—was it her breathing? No, he could hear that. The movement didn’t match. He steeled himself, and looked closer.
Then he stifled a cry and scuttled back from the woman. He didn’t want to believe what he’d seen. It was unbelievable. It was unthinkable. But then the movement came again and suddenly he was running. Toward the House, toward people. He was new enough, inside, that the only thought in his head was to find his mother, that she would know what to do. Because he didn’t. He didn’t know. He couldn’t even think straight.
He found himself in the courtyard. Bizarrely, it was empty—the courtyard was never empty—except for a single woman. A city woman, by her clothes, about the same age as his mother. Her blond hair was luminous in the moonlight, her head cocked as if she were listening for something. He didn’t know why she was standing there doing nothing. He didn’t know why there was nobody else around.
Then, as if she’d known he would be there, she turned toward him. “Help,” he said, panting. She was not his mother but she would do. “I need help.” He grabbed her hand.
And found himself lying on the cobbles. He hadn’t seen her push him down but she must have. Or had he fallen? A big satchel hung across her body, the biggest he’d ever seen. She towered over him, pale and fierce, and for a moment he thought she was going to kick him. Instead, she said, “Sorry. I’m edgy. Show me where.”
When it was over he would marvel that she’d managed to keep up with him with such a big satchel, because he had run as fast as he could. The gardens would have been quicker but staff weren’t allowed there unless they were working, so he led her down the rough service path by the Wall. Miraculously, he didn’t trip and neither did she. The trip back to the kennel seemed to take only a fraction of the time it had taken him to run to the courtyard, but trips back always felt shorter. It seemed only moments before the blonde woman knelt next to the mauled body outside the kennels. There was still nobody else around. Incredibly, the thing was still breathing.
Not thing. Woman.
He expected the blonde woman to react to the wreck of flesh before her, but she only made a small pitying noise. She laid a hand on the woman’s bloodied breastbone—her fingers twitched over it for a second first—and closed her eyes, as if praying.
Darid had not brought her here to pray. “But—she’s—”
“I know,” the strange woman said, eyes still closed. Then, to Darid’s relief, she opened them; nodded briskly, opened the enormous satchel, and began digging through it. A moment later, her hand emerged with a short, fat knife. Like her hair, it seemed to glow.
Unceremoniously, she bent over the dying woman’s abdomen, and cut. The sound was like fabric tearing. Darid squeezed his eyes shut and oh, lords, he would rather be anywhere else than here right now, he would rather be back in the kennel with Jon or fighting the hounds or being kicked to death by Barr.
“There,” the woman with the knife said. Gently, almost crooning. “There, brave girl. Almost done.” In a normal voice: “There’s a towel in my satchel. Get it for me.”
Still managing not to look, he opened his eyes a slit. Just enough to see the bag. Inside, he did, indeed, see towels, and soft blankets, and a metal tool he remembered from the night his second sister was born. Forceps.
“You’re a midwife,” he said, startled. “How are you a midwife?” The coincidence—the impossibility—of having stumbled upon exactly the person he needed, in exactly the place he needed her, with no impediments and