Fire & Ice Read online

  Chapter 7

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  ICE FLOES, belly slithers, what would they think of next?

  Loriane pulled the thread and knotted it close to the young man’s skin. She cut the needle free and covered the wound with a dab of paste to stop it going bad.

  “That will become a nasty scar, I’m afraid,” she said. On his forehead, too. Stupidity forever engraved on his face.

  The man blinked, looking up at the canvas ceiling of the treatment tent. Light from the central fire flickered in his eyes. He was too drunk to respond, too drunk to feel pain. He also had been too drunk to swim, probably; otherwise he would not be sitting here.

  “I’ve finished with him,” she said to his friends who waited by the fire, hands outstretched to warm themselves. “Take him home and make sure he rests for a ten-night.”

  They mumbled agreement.

  Loriane heaved herself to her feet and tossed her instruments—scalpel and needles—into the cooking pot that hung over the fire.

  “Help me put his clothes back on.”

  One of the young men came forward and pulled his mate up from the chair while Loriane wrestled unwilling limbs back into armholes, sliding cloth over wounds she had bandaged earlier. The stench of bloodwine around the men made her gag.

  The man’s cloak, blood-splattered and dirty, went over his clothes. Then the two friends shuffled out with the patient.

  Loriane sighed and sank down in the chair that still held the young man’s lingering warmth. Rest. Like that would ever happen. More likely, she’d see him back here tomorrow with . . . let’s see . . . alcohol poisoning, cuts from the ice, bruises from his fellow’s fists or deep ugly scratches from trying to mount an eagle. Seriously, had she ever been that stupid at that age?

  She so much preferred her usual patients: pregnant women who came to her for advice and who asked her to come to the palace birthing rooms to help deliver their children.

  She should pack up and go home before someone brought the next victim. During the Newlight festival, there was always a next victim. She had been on her feet since this morning. They hurt. Her belly hurt.

  As she picked up her cloak, the tent’s outer flap whispered like it did when someone entered. A girl stood there, barely out of adolescence. Loriane knew her; she lived a few streets away, the daughter of a merchant.

  “Mistress Loriane! Am I too late?”

  Loriane sighed. “I was about to go home. Be quick.”

  “I’d like to get my ichina.” The girl’s eyes shone. “I got my first bleeding, just in time for Newlight.”

  All girls went through this trial, the ritual deflowering of their innocence. When they bled, they were allowed to consort with whomever they liked whenever they liked during the Newlight celebrations.

  Loriane went to her medicine chests. She rummaged through her medicines for the jar of ichina, and measured out a small quantity of the red powder on her scales.

  “You must take it on the first day you stop bleeding. You should mix it in a drink. It’s most effective if you use it in the morning.”

  The girl nodded solemnly, but her eyes shone.

  “Are you sure you want it now? Because you would have more chance next year. A girl’s bleeding usually takes some time to settle before you can conceive.” If that happened at all. Far too many women went barren.

  “No, I want it now.” The girl blushed.

  All right—she fancied someone.

  “Anyone important? If it is, you have to make sure you get a contract negotiated if you fall pregnant. Don’t ask too much. They might use you again if they’re happy with you.”

  The tent flap rustled again, letting in Aera, one of the Outer City’s regular healers, an older woman with a severe bun on top of her head. She advanced silently into the tent, put down a bucket and peeled off her cloak. Underneath, she wore a sturdy dress. She rolled up the sleeves and started transferring chunks of ice from her bucket into a large pot of water that hung over the fire.

  Loriane rattled off the other things in a businesslike manner. The girl left, happy and red-cheeked, clutching the treasure in her pocket.

  “You go home,” Aera said into the silence. “I’ll take over. You look tired.”

  Loriane nodded. She was tired. Somehow, this child exhausted her more than the previous nine had.

  “How long until you drop that child?”

  “A ten-night, no more.” Or tonight, she wished with all her mind, but so far none of the concoctions she gave her girls had worked on her.

  “Urgh. Rather you than me. Whose is this one?”

  “Yanko.”

  “Good catch. Hope he’ll pay well for the suffering.”

  Loriane nodded non-committally. The world of breeders was far removed from this woman’s life. Most of the bright-eyed girls who came to ask Loriane for ichina never came back again. Like so many of the city’s women, they were barren. If they were lucky, they would snare a decent husband who would pay a breeder to have his children. If they found no husband, well, there was always the street, the pleasure parlours and the merchants who were always looking for workers in poorly heated warehouses.

  Loriane donned her cloak, bid the healer good luck and left the tent.

  She had feared there would be more people waiting outside for treatment, but the queues had gone and a sense of quiet had descended over the festival grounds in preparation for the night, when revellers moved to the Outer City’s melteries.

  Soon enough, the stream of patients would recommence, bringing unconscious drunks choking in their own vomit and men with gashes from fights.

  With a shiver, she wondered what Isandor was doing. He’d been a boy this time last year, talking about the races with wide-eyed wonder. Now he was with the Knights and had a brooding handsomeness, which made her sure that by the end of Newlight he would no longer be a virgin. If a girl came to her door claiming to carry his child, would he have the money to deal with it? Could she cope with raising another one of those strange children that made her skin crawl? He was fifteen, not ready for any of this.

  I was thirteen when I let myself be taken by the young noble Knight with the curly hair, and fourteen when I pushed out his son. After a day of pain, a beautiful baby with big bright eyes. She had fed the child and had never wanted to part with him. But the palace midwives had taken him away. The boy would be sixteen and living a world away in the towers of the City of Glass.

  Oh, she had done well enough. With the Knight’s money, she had been able to leave her embittered father. But no amount of money could take away the pain of losing her first child.

  She wanted a different future for Isandor. She wanted to tell him not to touch any girls, but knew he wouldn’t listen anyway.

  “Loriane,” a male voice called.

  “I’m on my way home. Go to the help post at the festival.” Then she realised she sounded snippy and added, “Unless it’s an emergency.”

  “For you, there is always an emergency.”

  The next moment warm arms enclosed her from behind. The man’s clothes smelled of exotic spices and oil.

  “Tandor!” Could it be true? She leaned away from his male warmth.

  Tandor indeed. By the skylights, where had he been? His blue eyes smiled at her. The street lamps glinted in the golden curls on his cheeks. He was wearing his noblemen’s disguise again. He looked so good; he was here for her.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Shh.” He put a finger to her lips and pulled it away when his lips came closer. His kiss was hungry, and for a moment, she lost herself in desire.

  His hands strayed to the taut skin of her belly. “Another one, eh?”

  “It pays my food.”

  “Oh, Loriane, how many times do I have to tell you that you don’t have to do this.”

  “And I’ll tell you just as many times that I have no other option. I’m a fertile woman, and there’d be talk if I weren’t carrying.”

  By the skyli
ghts, she was angry all of a sudden. Why hadn’t he let her know he was coming?

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s a long story. We need a safe place to stay, and I thought—”

  “You thought Isandor’s bed is empty so you can stay with me?” By the skylights, he was so transparent. “Tandor, you don’t need to find silly excuses to stay with me, even though you always manage to think of some.” Wait—he had said we?

  She glanced over his shoulder. His familiar sled waited in the street, with the equally familiar cloaked and hooded driver. She had never seen the man’s face, and had never heard him speak. Tandor had told her the young man had an accident and couldn’t speak. His face had become terribly disfigured, he said. Would he have to sleep in her house, too? He never came inside.

  Fur stirred on the back seat of the sled; a head lifted from what had looked like Tandor’s luggage a moment ago.

  “Can we go now?” asked a female voice.

  Loriane stiffened. “Who’s that?”

  She pushed himself out of his embrace. Her heart thudded like crazy.

  “This is Myra, from Bordertown.”

  His eyes met hers, intense, and she had no idea what that look meant.

  Her lips felt stiff when she spoke her next words. “It’ll cost to stay with me. This is the time of Newlight. There are no beds for hire anywhere in the city. If you stay in my house, I’ll have to cancel a paying visitor I’d agreed to take.”

  “Loriane, Loriane, you know you’re the worst liar in the world?”

  Damn him. She shrugged and let a silence lapse. Then she let go of his arm, severing the last bit of physical contact between them. “Let’s go.”

  He guided her to the sled, where he sat between her and the girl. She was a wisp of a thing, barely older than Isandor. It looked like she had travelled with him for quite some distance, with the amount of furs covering her and her wind-chapped, rough cheeks.

  Tandor never said a word to the cloaked driver, but the man flicked the reins and the bear loped into action. Once they were out on the street, the going was slow. Groups of drunken youths came out of side streets, laughing and pushing each other, and generally not looking out for other people, let alone sleds.

  “Busy,” Tandor said into the uneasy silence. He kept his gloved hands ostensibly on his lap, as if uncomfortable with showing either her or his young lover affection.

  Loriane turned her head away, seeing shops and groups of revellers pass through a blur of tears.

  She thought he travelled to collect knowledge and to conduct his Chevakian stepfather’s merchanting business. She thought he belonged to her; she thought that was why he visited the Outer City. She thought . . .

  What did it matter?

  The sled stopped in front of her limpet. Loriane stepped from the sled fighting her pricking eyes. She opened the door and stumbled into the short hallway. The air was cold and still in the space between the outer layer of ice blocks and the inner wall of the limpet structure. She had tossed a few bricks in the stove this morning, but they had burnt out a long time ago. Not even Isandor waited for her these days, not since he had moved to the eyrie in the City of Glass.

  Loriane charged into the central room, not waiting to see if Tandor and his mistress followed. She opened the door in the side of the huge stove and flung in a few fire bricks—rubbishy ones. No point wasting her good bricks on someone who cheated on her. With a wick of fire, she then went around the circular room and lit the lanterns. Greasy curls of blubber oil rose past the sleeping shelves towards the ceiling. She indicated what had been Isandor’s shelf, above her head.

  “The bed up there will be yours, once I’ve—”

  She turned. Tandor and the girl had come in after her. In the flapping light of the oil lamps, she saw how pale and tired the girl looked, and how young she was. And how incredibly pregnant.

  Loriane froze, looking from Tandor to the girl.

  Impossible. If Tandor had the necessary equipment, all her ten children would have been his. Or had he perhaps found a way. . . ? But then, why this girl? She’d been available for him all these years.

  The girl gave her a desperate look. “Mistress Loriane, can I please, please use your outroom?”

  Loriane played with the notion to refuse, but tucked it away just as quickly. She was a midwife first, always. “Sure, it’s at the back over there.”

  The girl stumbled past the stove to the door Loriane had indicated, clutching her belly, leaving Tandor and Loriane facing each other in an uneasy silence. The fire bricks sputtered and hissed in the stove.

  “Don’t tell me that you took her all the way from Bordertown in that condition,” Loriane said.

  “She’s in danger.”

  “From dropping the child on your lap, yes. What do you know about delivering a child, Tandor?”

  His face hardened. Right, one didn’t go there with him. “Must’ve been some pretty big danger for you to do something as stupid as that.” She flung a pan onto the cookplate and reopened the door on the stove.

  “Loriane—”

  She grabbed the poker from its spot against the chimney and stabbed the dying coals under the bricks more vigorously than necessary. A volley of sparks flew into the chimney.

  “—I will explain. There’s a real danger to her—”

  “No, just leave it. When you talk like this, everything that’s real to you isn’t to me.” She hated how her voice sounded unsteady. Tandor was the only bit of colour in her dull life. She waited for his visits. She dreamed of travelling with him. Why, Tandor, why?

  A small noise indicated that the girl had finished her business in the outroom, and remained standing by the door. Loriane couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. Had she asked to carry his child, did he pay her, or—she cast Tandor a glance—had he played some sort of trick on her? How had he done it?

  Loriane, jealousy is an ugly emotion.

  “Come on, shut the door, come here and sit down. Let me have a look at you.”

  The girl sat down on Loriane’s old couch and folded her hands in her lap. No, wait, one of her sleeves hung empty; she had only one hand. The other ended in a stump just above the wrist. Oh. That explained a lot. Tandor had said something about other Imperfects during his last visit. It was so long ago, she struggled to remember what it was.

  Loriane kneeled on the carpet and pushed her hands under the girl’s dress. The skin on her belly tensed into a hard ball. The girl took in a sharp breath.

  “Does that hurt?”

  “A bit.”

  Loriane prodded the skin, feeling bumps of the child’s elbows and feet. “How long do you have to go?”

  The girl shrugged.

  “Do you know when you slept with a man?” She tried to see how Tandor responded to this question, but he had gone to the other side of the stove and studied the contents of her pantry, where she couldn’t see his face.

  “Many times,” the girl whispered. “My father didn’t like it, so we climbed into the hay loft. My father was furious when my belly started growing.” Her face crumpled. “I wasn’t the only one either, just the first one. Tandor says the Knights took the others to the City of Glass. Do you know where they are?”

  Others? A chill went over Loriane’s back.

  Just what had Tandor been doing?

  “The Knights discovered the sanctuary I set up for Imperfect children in Bordertown,” Tandor said, still speaking at the wall.

  Loriane could tell from the tenseness in his posture that this was important to him. So he had found himself a bunch of teenage lovers and was breeding an army of Imperfects?

  He continued, “That’s why I took her with me. The Knights didn’t take her because of her condition, but they will be back.”

  “So you brought her to the one place in the land that’s crawling with Knights. Some days you make so much sense to me, Tandor.”

  She pulled down the girl’s dress, a coarsely knitted thing which barely
fit over her stomach. Tears trickled down the girl’s freckled cheeks.

  Loriane hated herself for being so jealous, for admitting how much she had longed for him to come back. It had all been a waste of time.

  She rose. “Come.” And charged across the room.