He was still babbling. 'How could it-? Aren't you-? What do you mean, that was your water?'
Liquid ran down her leg; there was plenty of it, since the womb is a vessel of water and blood in which the growing seed is nurtured. In the desert, as the saying goes, without water there is no life, without blood you have no kin.
'My womb's water. Now I will deliver the baby.'
'Eiya! What if it slips out and falls into the water?'
'It won't come right away. My womb's passage has to open. How long until we reach Olossi?'
'I am not flying over the sea all night with a laboring woman
whose baby might drop out at any time.' He tugged on the harness and the eagle began a low slow curve. The other reeve signaled with flags, querying, and Mai saw Priya dangling, like her, and staring toward her, trying to read the situation. 'The hells! The nearest village is south, but there might be agents of the Red Hounds in hiding there. The Ireni Valley lies too far north through barren, uninhabited, rough country, not a place I want to have to set down. May those cursed Sirniakans have their balls eaten off by demons! Could they not have waited to attack?'
She began to laugh again, because she had never imagined him the kind of man to start raving. Then another pain caught, and he swore, and she rode it out by measuring each breath in four counts and out four counts, trying to picture the peaceful altar of the Merciful One, who brings ease to women in the throes of birth.
'Mai? Mai!'
'Oof! No, it's just — it's fine. What about that valley? The Naya Hall reeves say it can only be reached by air.'
'True enough, and it's not far as the eagle flies. Aui. I've only been there once, though, and not so late in the afternoon as this with the cursed sun going down. The hells. Gods rot it, what choice have we?'
They swung around, flying toward the setting sun and the dull red gleam of far distant mountains. The female reeve followed, and for a while they flew in silence with the marshal breathing raggedly while Mai counted off the intervals between her pains. Not too close together, enough that she began to get tired of counting. Yet Joss was right: they could not fly all night over the water, with a chance the baby might drop before they reached Olossi.
'What can I do?' he said after pain had ripped away her breath again. 'I'm cursed useless.'
'Eh! Ah! The hells.' She pressed a hand to her head as the pain receded, relieved she had a respite, however brief. 'Get us put down in a safe place. The pains will come more quickly, and be more severe. We'll need a fire, boiled water, scraps of cloth or grass for the bleeding afterward. Priya knows a tea to brew for the pain, but she hasn't any with her, never mind.' On she talked, because it kept him quiet and her mind busy, sorting through her memories of births she had attended, only one of which had ended in a mother's death.
Do not think of that, nor of early babies and how difficult it was for them to survive.
The shore rose into view. To the right she saw the settlement's embankment.
'Too close,' muttered Joss. 'Eh, well, now I know my heading.'
They passed above the turbulent break between sea and land. Mai glimpsed a party of unknown mounted men wheeling to face trouble: a mass of Qin and local riders approaching both from the direction of the settlement and, somehow, from the road behind the outlanders. The outlander troop broke toward the sea, the Qin in steady pursuit over rugged ground. Down the Qin drove them. A pair of arrows tipped with fire traced a spectacular arc out of the Qin company and up into the sky before plunging into the sinks and shallows along the shoreline.
Flame licked the surface, boomed in a sink with a startling burst, and then raced in a flare of light along the shore as the oily smear that stained the surface caught fire and spread.
The Qin pushed their enemy down into the burning sea.
Then she and Joss were past, too far away to watch the course of the battle, but for a long time after as they flew inland, Mai could see the shoreline limned in fire as night overtook the east.
PART SEVEN
Cleansings
52
Two riders on winged horses emerged from Toskala's council hall and rose, flying, into the gathering night. In quick succession, four more emerged and galloped into the heavens in pursuit. The people crowded into Justice Square began to call and scream and argue in a clamor that made Nallo wish she could smack each one until they all shut up.
Pil was crouched beside Volias, his own face hovering just above the reeve's parted lips. Straightening, he shook his head. 'He's dead.'
'The hells!' She ran up the ramp, pushed past some idiot shrieking woman in blood-soaked merchant's robes, and stopped at the threshold, slammed by the reek of blood and the stench of death. Gagging, she backed away, and bumped into a person crowding up behind. She turned and slugged; Pil caught her arm.
'Cursed demons slaughtered them all,' she said, voice breaking on the words. 'Nothing we can do here. Let's get back to the hall.'
Pil slung Volias's corpse over his shoulder. Nallo took point, shoving down the ramp and through the crowd with vicious pleasure in seeing people flinch away. Tears washed her face. She wanted to rip someone's cursed ugly face off just for all the gods-rotted useless nattering, no one taking charge, an assembly of weak-hearted fools.
No one guarded the gate to Clan Hall, but a swarm of reeves and fawkners were streaming in and out of the lofts and buzzing in the torch-lit parade ground like bees smoked out of their hive. Seeing her and Pil, Peddo ran over.
'Ah, the hells!' he cried, but he wasn't surprised to find Volias dead.
'There's been a massacre at the council hall, demons guised as Guardians from the tales,' said Nallo. 'Then Volias just dropped dead. What's going on?'
'Bring him to the lofts.'
Inside, she smelled blood enough to make her choke. Likard ran up. He'd been weeping. Others were still crying as they wriggled aimlessly here and there like so many decapitated eels.
'Are you just always that sloppy about fixing the cursed bird's hood?' Likard shouted at her.
'What?'
Unlike the big, open barracks rooms, the lofts had separate sections and separate entrances, linked by corridors for the fawkners to move quickly from one cote to another. She ran ahead, but the side door to the loft where Tumna sheltered was already open. She staggered to a halt inside. Two young men sprawled on the floor, one headless. Tumna's feathers were stuck out in a rage, and she was still swiping at them with her talons, rolling them over as if they were toys. Her hood was crumpled in a corner, as if it had hit the wall.
'Slow down,' wheezed Likard, behind her. 'Cursed if those two hells-bitten bastards weren't hopeful fawkner's assistants at all, but agents for the cursed army, come up here to kill the eagles while everyone slept. They slaughtered Trouble and Surri in the first two lofts. When they snuck in here ready to stab Tumna and Sweet, I tell you that cursed ill-tempered raptor must have torn off her hood and skewered them. She ripped the head clean off that one. May he rot and roast and freeze in the hells.'
Tumna was alive. Exasperated, the huge raptor chirped, glaring at Nallo in the muzzy lamplight as if in complaint: thugs disturbed my night's rest! How like them!
Nallo began sobbing. Folk came up to touch her as if to make sure she wasn't a ghost, while others ran up and down the corridors to see if anyone else was sneaking around, anyone not accounted for. Murderers!
The shouting and anger and all manner of voices churned as if a storm blew through. Trouble dead. Volias dead. Surri dead, whichever eagle she was, and her reeve with her. Nallo hadn't even learned every reeve's name yet, much less figured how to tell the eagles apart.
Sweet, still hooded, shifted restlessly on her night perch, much disturbed, PIl appeared at Nallo's side.
