Peter Brett - The Core

Leesha considered. Letting Amanvah cast her alagai hora in the mixed blood and fluid of the birth would open her vision to the futures of Leesha and the child both. Even if she was fully forthcoming – something dama’ting were not known for – there would be too much for her to convey in words. She would always have secrets, secrets that Leesha might desperately need.

But Amanvah’s concern for the child, her half sibling, was written in gold through her aura. She was desperate to throw for the child’s protection.

‘There are conditions,’ Leesha said. ‘And they are not negotiable.’

Amanvah bowed. ‘Anything.’

Leesha raised an eyebrow. ‘You will speak your prayers in Thesan.’

‘Of course,’ Amanvah said.

‘You will share everything you see with me, and me alone,’ Leesha went on.

‘Ay, I want to see!’ Elona said, but Leesha kept her eyes on Amanvah.

‘Yes, mistress,’ Amanvah said.

‘Forever,’ Leesha said. ‘If I have a question twenty years from now about what you saw, you will reply fully and without hesitation.’

‘I swear it by Everam,’ Amanvah said.

‘You will leave the dice in place until we can make a copy of the throw for me to keep.’

Amanvah paused at this. No outsider was allowed to study the dama’ting alagai hora , lest they attempt to carve their own. Inevera would have Amanvah’s head if she acquiesced to this request.

But after a moment, the priestess nodded. ‘I have dice of clay we can cement in place.’

‘And you will teach me to read them,’ Leesha said.

The room fell silent. Even the other women, unschooled in Krasian custom, could sense the audacity of the request.

Amanvah’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes.’

‘What did you see, when you cast the bones for the child in Angiers?’ Leesha asked.

‘The first thing my mother ever taught me to look for,’ Amanvah said.

Leesha set warded klats around the antique royal heirloom that had been used as an operating table. The wards activated, barring sound from both directions as she and Amanvah bent over the operating table, studying the glowing dice.

Amanvah pointed one of her long, painted nails at a prominent symbol. ‘ Ka. ’ The Krasian word for ‘one’ or ‘first.’

She pointed to another. ‘ Dama. ’ Priest.

A third. ‘ Sharum. ’ Warrior.

‘First … priest … warrior …’ Leesha blinked as her breath caught. ‘Shar’Dama Ka?’

Amanvah nodded.

‘ Dama means “priest”,’ Leesha said. ‘Does that mean the child is male?’

Amanvah shook her head. ‘Not necessarily. “First Warrior Cleric” is a better translation. The words are neutral, that they might call either gender in Hannu Pash. ’

‘So my child is the Deliverer?’ Leesha asked incredulously.

‘It isn’t that simple,’ Amanvah said. ‘You must understand this, mistress. The dice tell us our potentials, but most are never reached.’ She pointed to another symbol. ‘ Irrajesh .’

‘Death,’ Leesha said.

Amanvah nodded. ‘See how the tip of the die points northeast. An early death is the most common of the child’s futures.’

Leesha’s jaw tightened. ‘Not if I have a say in it.’

‘Or I,’ Amanvah agreed. ‘By Everam and my hope of Heaven. There could be no greater crime in all Ala than to harm one who might save us all.

‘ Ala. ’ She pointed to another die, angled diagonally toward the face with irrajesh. ‘Even if we risk she doom the world instead.’

Leesha tried to digest the words, but they were too much. She put them aside. ‘What will your people do, if they learn the child is without gender?’

Amanvah bent closer, studying not just the large symbols at the centre of the dice but dozens of smaller ones around the edges, as well. ‘The news will tear them apart. It is too dangerous to announce the child’s fate now, but without it, many will take this as a sign of Everam’s displeasure with the Hollow Tribe.’

‘Giving them excuse to break the peace Ahmann and I forged,’ Leesha said.

‘The few who still need excuse, after the son of Jeph cast the Deliverer from a cliff.’ Amanvah bent to look closer at the dice.

‘See here,’ she noted, pointing to a symbol facing into the cluster. ‘ Ting. ’ Female. She slid her finger along the edge of the die, continuing to show how the line intersected irrajesh. ‘There is less convergence if you announce the child as female.’

The child was bathed and changed by the time Leesha and Amanvah finished. Elona dozed in a chair with the sleeping baby in her arms. Wonda stood protectively over her, while Darsy paced the room nervously. Tarisa had stripped the bloodied bed and put down fresh linens, now busying herself readying a bath.

‘She,’ Leesha said loudly, stepping beyond the wards of silence.

Darsy stopped in her tracks. Elona started awake. ‘Ay, whazzat?’

Leesha squinted into her warded spectacles, searching the auras of the women as they gathered before her. ‘So far as anyone outside this room is concerned, I just gave birth to a healthy baby girl.’

‘Ay, mistress,’ Wonda said. ‘But said yurself, babe needs guards day an’ night. Sooner or later, one’ll catch an eyeful while we change the nappy.’ Her aura coloured with worry. ‘Speakin’ of which …’

Leesha laughed. ‘By order of the countess, you’re relieved of nappy duties, Wonda Cutter. Your talents would be wasted wiping bottoms.’

Wonda blew out a breath. ‘Thank the Creator.’

‘I will personally read the aura of every member of the house staff and guard with access to my daughter.’ Leesha looked at Tarisa. ‘Any who cannot be trusted will need to find employment elsewhere.’

Her maid’s aura flashed with fear, and Leesha sighed. She had known this was coming, but it made things no easier.

‘We’ll tell Vika and Jizell as well,’ Leesha said. ‘We’ll all need to watch as she develops in case her condition causes unforeseen health problems.’

‘Course,’ Darsy agreed.

‘You tell Jizell, you’re tellin’ Mum,’ Wonda warned. Jizell was Royal Gatherer to Duke Pether now, reporting directly to Duchess Araine.

Leesha met Tarisa’s eyes. ‘I expect she’ll find out, regardless. Better it come from me.’

‘That go for her, too?’ Darsy jerked a finger at Amanvah.

‘It does.’ Amanvah’s aura stayed cool and even. It was a fair question. ‘I will not lie or withhold information from my mother, but our interests align. The Damajah will have a vested concern for the safety of the child, and will be essential in keeping my brother from trying to claim or kill her.’

Elona opened her mouth, but Leesha cut off the debate. ‘I trust her.’ She looked back at Amanvah. ‘Will you and Sikvah stay here with us?’

Amanvah shook her head. ‘Thank you, mistress, but enough rooms have been finished in my honoured husband’s manse for us to move in. After so long in captivity, I wish to be under my own roof, with my own people …’

‘Of course.’ Leesha put a hand on Amanvah’s belly. Shocked, the woman fell silent. ‘But please understand that we are your people now, too. Thrice bound by blood.’

‘Thrice bound,’ Amanvah agreed, putting her own hand over Leesha’s in an act so intimate it would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. It was strange, how sharing pain could sometimes do what good times could not.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Darsy asked when Amanvah left the room.