Kate Elliott - Shadow Gate

'Yes,' she said, shaking him off. She had lost all that hard-won equilibrium, her market face burning away in the face of trouble.

Sheyshi trailed behind, irritating everyone with her wails. 'Mistress, let me help you.'

'No! I'm fine.'

They reached the market square. Mai panted and puffed as the marshal hooked into his harness. To walk under the shadow of the huge eagle took courage, but Anji had done it, so she could, too. Then the harness had to be adjusted to fit over her distended belly, but at least the sling under her hips supported her weight comfortably. Priya was being hooked in by the female reeve. Sheyshi slunk away, still bawling, a Qin soldier in awkward pursuit.

'Are you ready?' asked Joss.

'Yes.'

He blew a tone on his whistle: Up!

Mai laughed first as fear squeezed her heart, and then she laughed because, as the ground dropped away and they picked up and up, the entire settlement fell into her view in the most astonishing manner. She could see everything! The mountains striped with late afternoon shadows. Sheep pouring over a slope as they moved to pasture. The skin of water gleaming in the irrigation ponds and the net of canals moving water into greening fields. The racks of drying fish. The sky, so blue above, and the mirror of the sea so wide below, fading in the east to dusk.

No wonder reeves left their families behind and never looked back.

She spotted the procession returning from the Ladytree, everyone chanting and dancing, but as she watched, twisting because the view was falling away behind them, a pair of figures reached the crowd and a trickle of tiny figures spun out of the celebratory mass as oil separates from water. Anji was already spreading the word, putting his plan in motion.

Then they were over the water, and she lost sight of the settlement. Why did Anji not trust her? Or was it those around her he did not trust? Agents of the Red Hounds might infiltrate in many guises. As for the Hieros, that knife could cut both ways: her agents could spy on foreign agents, but they could also spy on him.

With mighty wings outstretched, the eagle glided. The land

receded behind them. She had never ever imagined anyone could travel so fast. The wind rumbled in her ears, and carved scallops in the glittering surface of the water far below.

On and on they flew. The sea darkened in the east, promising night. Joss had his arms around her shoulders in a discreet lover's embrace and, abruptly, he relaxed his grip and withdrew his hands.

She gasped, gripping the harness because she felt suddenly how fragile were the straps holding her in.

'How are you doing?' He was very close, accustomed to embracing women, no doubt, while she had never been this intimately close to any man except Anji.

'Hu! I have to pee, but I should have known that would happen! No, don't worry.' She giggled, so giddy she thought her spirit must be flying even higher than her body. 'I'm joking.'

Her abdomen clenched so hard her next words were choked off, a fist clenched to squeeze her breath right out of her lungs. Warm liquid gushed down her thighs.

'The hells!' cried Joss. 'I thought you said you were joking.'

Eldest daughter, she had attended at every birth in the Mei clan since she was old enough to run errands in and out of the birthing room. 'That was my water breaking. I'm going to give birth.'

'Now? Right now? The hells you are!'

A spark of panic surged to a flame. She shut her eyes and let it run, as a pure, wild fire might rage along her skin. Let it fall away, like clothes shed from the body. Her fear died. She would live, or she would die. She must accept what was, in order to think and to act.

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.