purposes best, something that hides what is inside.”
“Tomorrow, I will. .”
Begasti shook his head. “No. Not tomorrow. We need to be done with this tonight, and take ship tomorrow morning. Can you imagine that no one has missed her? By tomorrow, the search will be intense. We must do this thing, dispose of whatever is left and be gone.”
“Be reasonable! Where will I find such things at this hour? All shops were closed hours ago!”
Begasti gave him a flat and ugly look. He turned his back on Arich and began to dig in one of the baskets near the door. “And you will wait until the shops are open and go in to make your little purchase and then come back here for what must be done? Don’t be a fool. Go and get what we need, however you must. Then pay a visit to our dear friend Trader Candral. Tell him he is to arrange transport for you, on a swift ship bound downriver, one with an enclosed cabin we can share. Do not tell him I am leaving with you. Let him think that I remain here in Cassarick and that the threat still dangles over him. By the time he realizes we are both gone, it will be too late for him to betray us.”
Arich shook his head angrily. “And while I am doing all these dangerous things, what will you be doing?”
Through slitted eyes, Malta saw Begasti tilt his head toward her. “Preparing the shipment,” he said flatly, and Arich had the small decency to pale.
“I am gone,” Arich announced and reached for the door.
“You have the stomach of a rabbit,” Begasti announced disdainfully. “See that you do your part and quickly. We have many tasks to do before the sun rises.”
Child and afterbirth were now clear of her body and still the baby had not made a sound. Malta tented her knees protectively over him and moaned and panted wildly as if still in the throes of labor. The men ignored her as Arich angrily arranged his hooded cloak and then left. Her scrabbling fingers had gradually drawn the hem of her tunic from under her motionless child so that when she got to her feet she would not tumble him to the floor. She tried not to think of her precious newborn, still birth-wet, lying on the filthy floor of a brothel. Rolling her head to one side, she moaned and gauged the distance to the dirty knife that rested by the plate and spilled flagon.
She’d waited too long. “Time to be quieter,” Begasti said. The coldness of his words snapped her gaze up. He loomed over her, a loop of fine line in his hands. A bootlace? She met his eyes and saw in them both determination and disgust for what he had to do.
Malta lifted her feet from the floor and shot them out at him, catching him in the midriff. He oofed out air and staggered back. She rolled away from her baby, crying out with the effort, and grabbed the knife with one hand and the sticky flagon with the other. The Chalcedean was already back on his feet and coming at her. She swung the flagon in a wide arc and it cracked against his jaw. She followed it with a wild thrust of the knife.
It was not a weapon for killing, only a short-bladed kitchen knife for cutting cooked meat and not a very sharp one at that. It skittered on his vest, not penetrating. She set her body weight behind it and just as he grabbed her wrist, cursing her, the skating tip of her blade found his unprotected throat and sank in. She joggled the knife back and forth wildly, horrified at how it felt as the greasy warm blood hit her fingers and yet wishing nothing more than to cut his head completely off.
He flailed at her, his curses suddenly gurgled threats. One of his desperate blows caught the side of her head and sent her crashing into the wall. His hands found the knife she’d left stuck in his neck and pulled it out. It clattered to the floor. Blood followed it, leaping out in pulsing gouts.
Malta screamed in horror and staggered back. The next instant, she sprang forward to catch her babe and snatch him to safety as Begasti staggered in a circle in the room. The Chalcedean crashed to his knees, both his hands at his throat, trying to hold in the blood that sprayed out between his thick fingers. He stared up at her, his eyes and mouth wide open. He grunted at her, blood coming out with the sound, spilling from his lips and over his bearded chin. Slowly he toppled over on his side. His hands still clutched his throat, and his legs kicked. She retreated from him, her baby clutched to her chest, the umbilical cord spilling over her wrists to the connected and dangling afterbirth.
She looked down, finally, for the first time, at her child. A son. She had a son. But as she regarded him, a low cry of dismay escaped her.
Her dream of someone handing her a chubby infant wrapped in a clean swaddling cloth had come to this. Birthed in a brothel. Dirt from the floor clung to his wet cheek. He was thin. He stirred faintly in her arms. His tiny hands were bony, not chubby, and the nails were greenish. He was already scaled, on his skull and down the back of his neck to the nape. Reyn’s eyes, but deep blue, looked up at her. His mouth was open, but she was not certain at first that he breathed. “Oh, baby!” she cried out in a low voice that was both apology and fear. Her knees folded and she sank to the floor, the child on her lap. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she sobbed.
The knife was on the floor near her knee, but it was covered in the Chalcedean’s blood. She could not bear to touch it, let alone cut the birth cord with it. She remembered her trousers, still shoved into the front of her tunic, and pulled them out. She set her child on them, and bundled the legs around him, wrapping the cord and the afterbirth with him. “It’s all wrong, so wrong,” she apologized to him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, baby. I’m so sorry!”
He gave a sudden thin wail as if to agree that this was not how life should treat him. It was a terrible sound, lonely and weak, but Malta laughed aloud that he could make even such a noise as this. She could not recall that she had taken off her cloak, but there it was, on the floor where she had labored, wet with two kinds of blood. Her beautiful Elderling cloak. It would have to do.
Begasti gave a low, drawn-out moan that sent her staggering away from him until she cowered by the wall. Then he was still. No time. No time to think about anything. The other man would come back, and he must not find her here. It was hard to get her cloak around her and fastened without setting the child down, but she would not let him be out of her arms. She opened the door and tottered out into the small common room she had passed through earlier. Night was deep and the room empty. She heard no sounds from the whores or their customers. She was exhausted and every muscle in the center of her body felt overused. Blood was trickling slowly down her legs. How far could she get like this?
Bang on the doors of the brothel chambers? Demand help? No. She could trust no one who would knowingly shelter Chalcedeans in the Rain Wilds. Even if they were sympathetic to a woman in such a desperate situation, when Arich returned, they would likely give way, out of fear or in response to bribery.
She crossed the room and carried her newborn son out into the storm and the night.
Day the 26th of the Change Moon
Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders
