Once they had located her, they had waited only until dark to mount their rescue attempt.
“You almost waited too long,” she murmured to Corrig and Joshua. The other three servitors had left them to travel north at speed in order to arrive home long before Stavia, Joshua, or Corrig came there. As far as Marthatown was concerned, Stavia had had an accident while on her exploration trip and the family servitors had gone to fetch her. That other servitors had been absent simultaneously was purely coincidental. Servitors were always coming and going on one kind of business or another.
“I don’t know if I’d have lasted much longer,” she murmured again.
“Sorry, love,” said Joshua, raising her on his shoulder to feed her more soup. “We didn’t know you were going to try to escape.”
“Couldn’t stand it,” she mumbled through the mouthful of vegetables and broth. “Couldn’t stand him.”
“Yes,” said Corrig. “That’s easy to understand.”
Sometimes it was Septemius who raised her head and fed her broth. It was to him that she whispered the terrible secret, the one she had forgotten until that moment and forgot again a moment afterward.
They entered Marthatown at night, driving the creaking wagon through dark streets to the small hospital where Morgot and a quiet little room awaited. Morgot took one look at Stavia and turned away, her voice coming oddly, as though from a distance. “Janine, Winny, will you attend to this, please?” Then she went away, not to return for a little, by which time Janine and Winny had Stavia bathed and gowned and stretched out on the clean, unmoving bed with her head on a proper pillow.
Morgot came back then, with her eyes red but her voice perfectly calm. “It’s going to take you a while to heal, child. I suggest you go right off to sleep and start doing it.”
“CHERNON ACCUSED US OF KNOWING SECRETS,” Stavia said, rolling her head upon the pillow. She had tried to sleep, as Morgot had suggested, but she couldn’t. She was feverish, restless. All through the night her eyes had popped open at every movement, every sound. Now that it was daylight again and Morgot was there, Stavia needed to tell her things. “He said the women had secrets. Things he wanted to know. To be powerful.”
There was a long, pregnant silence, one so reminiscent of other silences which had fallen from time to time when she had been very young (silences older people had imposed when they became aware she was listening) that she opened her eyes, almost expecting to find herself a child again. Morgot was looking at her intently. “We do have secrets,” she said. “Of course.”
“I know,” Stavia said. In the wakeful night hours she had thought about that, about the things she had said to Chernon, all unwitting. “I’m afraid I told Chernon a few of them.”
“Like?”
“Like how we know who a baby’s father is—the blood test.”
Morgot didn’t say anything for a moment. “Well, that’s really no secret, Stavia. Chernon may never return here. If he does, and if he tells the warriors everything you told him about that, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Like the contraceptive implants.”
“We would have preferred they didn’t know, but it doesn’t cause any major emergency. We use implants for many things besides contraception. That can be managed, I think.” The expectant silence came again. “You are pregnant, you know?”
“I thought I might be. Chernon cut the implant out some time ago.”
“It was the shock and pain of that which Joshua and Corrig felt,” Morgot said. “I saw the wound. Not a neat job.”
“I don’t think Chernon cared.”
“No, possibly not. The question is, do you want to have the child?”
Stavia turned her head wearily away. Did she want to have this child? Was there any reason not to want a child, except for her fury at Chernon, this blistering feeling she had when she thought of him, as though he were a wound that needed cautery, a boil to be lanced, something requiring an immediate, terrible pain so that healing could start. “Is there some reason of health that I shouldn’t?” she asked, begging for an excuse.
“We’re not sure yet. The wounds on your back are fairly superficial. Painful, because they’re infected. Unless there’s something else, something unforeseen, you could probably manage the pregnancy without any physical damage.”
“Well then. What was it Myra said that time? I’ve got to start sometime.” It wasn’t what she felt, but she was too sick to feel what she felt. If she gave in to her anger, it would overwhelm her, wash her away, and she would never find herself again. Somehow, though she was conscious for longer periods each day, she felt no stronger, no more able to cope. She did not want to feel anything, decide anything.
“There are at least two differences between you and Myra.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were forced and she wasn’t. And you’re carrying a warrior’s child.”
“Well so was Myra….” Stavia’s voice faded away into aching quiet.
Morgot was shaking her head. No. To and fro like the pendulum of a clock. No.
The silence became deeper, more vibrant with meaning, things that were not said suddenly more important than anything she had ever been told. Something she should have known, should have guessed.
“Myra’s first child… little Marcus. He wasn’t Barten’s child.” She didn’t say it as a question. It wasn’t a question. “Not Barten’s child. Not any warrior’s child. The warriors father no children. Not for any of us.”
Stavia shut her eyes and the dizziness came again, washing over her in a series of little quivering perceptions, as though the room shook to a strong wind, now, again, again. Something was wrong inside. Something broken that she hadn’t known about, that Morgot
