Ken Scholes - Canticle

But now, in this place, so fresh from the death of Hanric and so far from that bonfire on the Inner Emerald Coast and the confrontation with Vlad Li Tam, he felt something stirring within him and did not know what to name it. He found himself recalling the nights and days they’d sweated together, exploring one another sometimes in silence, sometimes amid sighs and cries of delight, in a hundred different pairings. One of those pairings had borne fruit, though later she’d told him of the powders she’d used to give his soldiers back their swords.

And now, she travailed at birth, and there was something wrong with the baby.

Our baby.

He’d thought perhaps the new library would be the greatest thing he ever built, but now he knew that it could not be so. Indeed, this child was.

For hours, he sat and held her hand, pressing messages into her skin and whispering to her as she raged and roared against the pain like the tigers that wandered the garden jungles of her home. He watched as the pain grew and as the contractions increased, and when the time came, he urged her with the River Woman to push, to breathe, to push more and harder.

And when little Lord Jakob was pulled from her, limp and gray, he leaped to his feet to see his blood-mottled son, feeling the room spin away as powerlessness and rage washed him.

And when the River Woman shouted in alarm for her powders and swabbed out the small blue-lipped mouth with her little finger, he turned back to his betrothed and blocked her view and whispered yet more assurances as the Earth Mother gently blew life back into his son and reinforced that life with whatever magicks her alchemist’s pouch could yield.

When that first weak and retching cough came and that first mewling cry of Lord Jakob, Shepherd of the Light, met its first winter midnight, Rudolfo leaped forward to study the tiny face and hands that he had helped to make.

So this, Rudolfo thought as the River Woman cleaned and wrapped their child for the new mother’s waiting arms, is love.

Laughing, the Gypsy King collapsed back into the chair and wept for the terror and joy that had seized him.

Jin Li Tam

Jin Li Tam drifted in and out of sleep, waking to nurse Jakob when the River Woman’s girls brought him to her. Rudolfo had come and gone through the remainder of the night, leaving after they changed out her bed and bathed the sweat and blood of her labor from her exhausted body. She’d run with the scouts, fought with them, even; but nothing had prepared her for this exertion, both physical and emotional. And when it was done, to finally meet the person who had caused her such discomfort and have that memory fade into an intense and satisfying joy. Truly an overwhelming time; something, again, that she was not prepared for.

She held Jakob to her breast, offering the nipple to him. His eyes were still shut, and he was tinier than she thought a baby should be. More gray, as well, his skin the shade of paper ash. He took it, his mouth working at it with less vigor than she would have expected, and she settled back into the pillows that propped her up in bed. Outside, morning announced itself quietly.

There was a faint knock at the door, and it opened before she could answer. The River Woman entered. She looked as if she hadn’t slept yet, dark circles casting shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes. But more than weariness, she looked as if she bore a world’s weight upon her heart.

She is here to bear ill tidings. Jin Li Tam had spent her life reading people, looking for the signs of their honesty, their deception and their attempts to hide truth. The River Woman’s message was written into her posture, into the way she held her head and the way her hands restlessly picked at her skirts.

“Awake again, I see,” she said as she came to the edge of the bed. “May I sit with you?”

Jin Li Tam nodded. “Please.” She shifted while the older woman sat on a corner of the mattress.

The River Woman looked to the girl in the room. “Would you give us a few moments?” Jin measured the strain her voice and watched out of the corner of her eye as the girl curtsied and slipped out of the room.

Jin Li Tam’s eyes narrowed. “There is something wrong with my baby,” she said in a flat voice.

“Yes,” the woman said.

“He was nearly stillborn,” Jin Li Tam added. “You brought him back.”

The River Woman inclined her head. “He was,” she said, “and I did. Yes.” She looked at Jin Li Tam now, her eyes fixed on hers. “The time to be direct is upon us. Your child is sick, Lady Tam, and I cannot make him well.”

Even though she’d known at the core something was wrong, hearing the words sent a shudder down her spine. She felt the worry, hard and cold, in her stomach and found herself instinctively clutching more tightly to the tiny bundle that wheezed against her bosom. “How sick?”

I will be strong, she thought, and will not cry.

The River Woman’s voice was low and more matter-of-fact than Jin Li Tam expected after hours of tea with the old woman in her cat-dominated cottage at the edge of town. “We can keep him alive,” she said, “if we are diligent.”

Jin Li Tam felt her resolve slipping, felt the tears tugging at her, suddenly aware of how much her life had changed. “Have you told Lord Rudolfo?”

The old woman shook her head. “I have not. I wanted to speak with you first.” She paused. “Does he know what lengths you went to for this heir?”

“Yes,” she answered, looking in the direction of his study, remembering the night she’d slipped down there, barefoot and drawn by her conscience to confess her father’s last manipulation of the man she loved. He’d taken it well, but those were the days and nights when the distance had been the greatest, after Petronus’s execution of Sethbert and after her father’s retreat from the Named Lands. He’d accepted it with an aloof politeness that neither condemned nor praised her. Still, she’d felt better with that last deception between them now brought to light. Her eyes narrowed as curiosity over the River Woman’s question nudged her. “Why do you ask? Do you think there is a connection between-”

She interrupted herself, closing her mouth before she finished. Of course there was. Why else would she need to know how much Rudolfo knew? The tears came now, and nothing she did could stop them. She hung her head, held her baby close, and wept.

“Something in the powders lingered, became knit into your son.” She paused. “I know little of how these particular powders work, but they are working hard against him, now. I’ve heard of such things. It’s why the Androfrancines discouraged their use.” The River Woman moved closer and put a hand on Jin Li Tam’s leg. “There’s no way you could have known, Lady.” She offered a sympathetic smile. “Now, I have birds out to a dozen of my sisters as far away as the Divided Isle. They may know something I do not. But it would be best if I could contact whoever gave you the recipe. I’m hoping you can help me.”

An image of the iron armada, now seven months absent from their native waters in the Named Lands, flitted across her inner eye. Jin Li Tam forced her focus away from the waves of despair that threatened to capsize her. She blinked the water from her eyes. “I don’t think that is possible. Surely there’s another way?”

The River Woman nodded slowly. “Certainly, one might be found. The birds are out. And I have the mechoservitors searching every inch of their memory scripts as well as the holdings that have drifted in from elsewhere. But most of the magicks and pharmaceutical knowledge were buried in Windwir.”