decent place, a good place. A place they could find pride in.
'I didn't give up before, and the gods know I'm cursed well not going to give up now. What if we can hold this rock? Won't that give hope to others?'
'Who will be captain?' repeated Pil.
'That's right,' she said fiercely, looking at each in turn: the fire captain still stricken and likely to break out in a whine; Peddo
exhausted but thoughtful; Kesta twisted between despair and hope. Pil as always so calm that you didn't know whether to love him or shake him to see if he would ever yelp. 'We need a commander, someone who knows Toskala and the other halls. Someone who has allies. Someone who might actually know what he's doing, even if he is a vain-hearted and insufferably smug horse's ass. I say, we send word to Argent Hall. To Marshal Joss.'
53
Joss paced to the edge of darkness beyond which Scar drowsed on a rocky perch, but he heard
and sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Yet he could not shake off a tingle along his skin, like ants crawling up and down his neck. He returned to the fire. Water boiled in a pot set on a tripod over the flames. He placed a bowl on a rock and poured water over leaves, then covered it to steep. Darkness had trapped them in the steep- sided, hidden valley, and he was himself confined to the circle of firelight with a blanket on the ground, if he even dared attempt sleep. Hearing the scuff of footsteps, he rose.
Miyara set down their lamp beside the bowl. She wiped sweat from her forehead with a cloth and sank into a crouch, rubbing her neck.
'How are things?' he asked, not sure how much he was permitted to know but desperate for any scrap.
'I'll take the tea. Thanks for brewing it. Priya and I could use a sharp pinch to keep alert.'
'How are you managing without the lamp, if you don't mind my asking? Or did you find another in the shelter?'
'I did not.' She grinned. 'Us reeves taking a break from training at Naya Hall to spend a night in the cave aren't doing so because we need light, eh?' She laughed.
Joss ran a hand over his head. 'What do you mean?'
'Surely you of all people would-' Then she laughed again. 'As nervous as you are, Marshal, you'd think you were the father, eh?'
'Or responsible for Captain Anji's wife. This is scarcely the time for jokes.'
'Aui! No more jokes, then!' Miyara shook her head, lifted up the bowl's cover, and inhaled. 'Eihi! That's ready, eh? It's out of your hands, Marshal. The gods will favor her, or curse her, but if you ask me, she's a tough one. Never a word of complaint. She's managing as well as any can who must suffer through her first birth. Here, now, let's take this back. I've something I'd like you to see.'
'Is that allowed-? I wouldn't want to-'
'Not all the way into the cave. If you will, Marshal, come and see. It's a puzzle. I thought you might have an answer.'
She carried the lamp and he the bowl, warm against his hands. The path led through a tangle of growth unexpected after the dry tableland of the Barrens: candleflowers, plum, falls of sweet-scented heaven-kiss, moist ripe sunfruit, lush stands of uncultivated jabi. This burgeoning orchard of wild fruit was tended solely by the gods' blessing. He bumped his head on a ripe sunfruit dangling over the path.
Miyara balanced in the lamp in one hand and plucked it with the other. 'This way.'
No insects chattered, nor did night-waking animals rustle within the growth. The lack of animal noises was unnerving, but at least a stream babbled in the distance and wind caught among the surrounding crags. They reached the pool, deep and round, rimmed by the remains of an ancient building. A waterfall thundered into the pool from the height. They walked alongside walls no more than knee height, worn down by time and wind and rain. Who had built here? Lived here in such isolation? How had they found their way in, when truly it must be impossible to reach the valley by climbing?
Halfway around, as they neared the curtain of water, Miyara halted. The pool rippled with a constant churning. The waterfall glinted with filaments of light, and at first he thought the lamplight was reflecting within the falls and then he realized she had snuffed the wick. A glow emanated from tendrils of writhing light spilling out of the falling water and drifting, as if pushed by the action of wind and water, into a cave carved out of the rock that extended behind the falls.
In that protected cave, the reeves from Naya Hall had kitted out a shelter with a chest, flown in, in which they stored a lamp, oil, bedding, bowls and utensils, and a pot for cooking.
In that cave, Mai labored, and he was cursed sure that if anything bad happened to her, he'd be called — quite rightly — to account for their coming here instead of crossing the Olo'o Sea to deposit her into the capable hands of the Ri Amarah women.
'Were those — things — there before?' he asked nervously, as the glittering strands swirled in an eddy of wind and mist.
'I'm not sure. They'd be easy to miss in daylight. They're like finest quality silk thread, neh?'
'Miya! Are you there?' Priya called from behind the curtain of water, and because of the noise he could not tell if she was frantic or just searching with her voice.
The reeve set down the lamp and took the bowl of tea out of Joss's hands. 'Keep the water hot.'
'There's nothing else I can do?'
She shrugged. 'This isn't men's business, eh?'
Walking on a narrow rim that hugged the rock wall, she vanished behind the spray.
A splash disturbed the pool. A dark shape shouldered out of the roil and so quickly slipped beneath that it might have been only a trick of the light, or a reminder from the gods that he was intruding. He started back around the pool, but before he reached the path he heard his name called and turned back.
Miyara waved wildly at him, both hands aloft.
He ran back. Wisps slithered in the air around him, and when one brushed his cheek he got such a jolt, like a stinging burn, that he yelped.
She called, 'Marshal, we don't know what to do. You have to come.'
He followed her along the narrow path, steadying himself with a hand along the rock wall on his right while water poured past to his left. The mist pelted him, an oddly iron taste on his tongue. They passed out of the spray and into the cave. She halted. A step behind, he stared into the cave, which extended deep into the rock, a haven lit so brightly that he blinked before he saw Mai.
'What do we do?' cried Miyara.
With a plank wedged across and between rocks, they had set up a birthing stool halfway back in the cave, over a hollow smoothed into the cave's dirt floor. Mai leaned into a cushion made by her
folded clothing, but she was herself limned by filaments clustering around and over her as if to smother her. And yet she breathed; she grunted, and Priya said,
'I told your breath as I say the prayer of opening. Now.' She spoke words in a steady voice, while Mai gripped the edge of the plank and strained.
Priya was her own self, unencumbered, but the filaments traced Mai's form as if a translucent second skin wrapped her, so that she blazed.
'Here it comes, plum blossom. Look down. Do you see it? This is the head of your child.'
Panting, seemingly oblivious of the threads of light, Mai bent her head to stare down between her legs. Her sweaty face changed expression. 'I can't look!' she cried. And then, 'I have to push again!'
'Take in a breath. Hold it.' Priya spilled words Joss did not understand, as Mai pressed her mouth shut and bore down.
Miyara grabbed his elbow. 'Quickly! We must weave a blessing. She has no clan to surround her. The child will be cursed if no blessing greets it!'
The hells!
She stamped to begin, and though he had no particular skill, he was like anyone who had heard the chants
