She didn’t get a chance to answer. She was seized with a pain so strong, I was afraid she wasn’t going to breathe again, and then on its heels came a sobbing scream. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I think she’s coming. Blessed gods. Not now.” The next moments were hot and blurred, her anguished wails tearing through me. She cried. She begged. I held her shoulders, and she bent forward in pain. Her nails dug into my arm.
My heart pounded furiously with every scream. It was coming. There was no more waiting. Dammit, Lia! I eased Pauline back against the pillow, lifted up her dress, then pulled her underclothes free before I could think too much about what I was doing. A head crested between her legs. She said a hundred things to me between each pain, a breathless one-way conversation of pleas to the gods and curses. She fell back crying, too tired to push.
“I can’t,” she sobbed.
“We’re almost there, Pauline. Push. I see its head. It’s coming. Just a little more.”
She cried, a weak happiness briefly washing over her face before it vanished and she screamed again. I cupped the head, more of it emerging.
“One more push!” I yelled. “One more.”
And then the shoulders came, and with a last quick whoosh, it was in my hands, wet and warm, its tiny body arching, a small hand waving past its face. A whole baby, in my hands, slivers of eyes already peering out at the world. Peering at me. A gaze so deep, it carved a hole in my chest.
“Is it all right?” Pauline asked weakly.
The baby cried, answering her question.
“He’s perfect,” I said. “You have a beautiful son, Pauline.” And I laid him in her arms.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
It was almost like a full tavern, so many crowded into one place.
I tried to imagine it as Terravin.
Except there was no ale
. No stew. No laughter.
But there was a baby.
A beautiful perfect baby. Berdi sat on the end of the bed, crooning over him as Pauline slept. Gwyneth, Natiya, and I sat at the table, and Kaden lay sleeping on the floor in front of the fire. He was shirtless, his shoulder freshly bandaged, and his head rested on a folded blanket that Natiya had brought.
The rain poured down relentlessly. We were lucky the roof held. A bucket caught a single leak in the corner.
When I had tracked down the room Pauline had directed me to in the village, I’d found it empty and ransacked, with the windows flung open in spite of the rain. They fled, I thought, through a window. That was a very bad sign. The innkeeper claimed he’d seen nothing and didn’t know where they’d gone, but I heard the terror in his voice—and then I saw the fearful curiosity as he peered into the shadows of my hood. In my haste, I had left the mourning scarf behind.
I pulled the hood farther down over my face and ran to the abbey grounds. I instructed Natiya to go the cottage with our horses and supplies while I hunted down Berdi and Gwyneth. I searched the streets and peered through tavern windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of them somewhere, but then the innkeeper’s terror registered with me again. He had been as afraid of me as of whoever had ransacked the room and was eager for me to leave. I ran back to the inn. Berdi and Gwyneth would never have left without Pauline. I found them hiding in the kitchen.
It was a tearful, but hasty reunion. Gwyneth said she’d seen the Chancellor and soldiers outside her window and heard their brisk demands to the innkeeper to be led to Pauline’s room. They were baffled at how the Chancellor had known Pauline was there. They confirmed the innkeeper was trustworthy—and he had stalled as long as he could, giving her and Berdi a chance to flee. When I told them of Pauline’s condition, the innkeeper sent us on our way with food and supplies that we packed onto Nove and Dieci.
Natiya had been able to find the cottage but said Kaden had already delivered the baby by the time she got there, and had wrapped him in his shirt. She had bandaged the cut on his shoulder, which I knew was inflicted by Pauline, but she had also tended a gash on the back of his head. He’d told Natiya he had received a heavy blow from an iron pot. From whom? I wondered. That was why he hadn’t shown at our rendezvous point, and perhaps explained his heavy sleep now. He never stirred when we walked into the cottage.
I watched his even breaths. It was strange, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him sleep before. Whenever I was awake, he was awake. Even that one rainy night months ago when we’d slept in a ruin and his eyes were closed, I’d known a part of him still watched me. Not tonight. This was a deep sleep that worried me. It made him seem more vulnerable. I hadn’t even had a moment to express relief when he had walked into the cottage this morning, but now I stared at him, emotion welling in me. I kissed two fingers and lifted them to the gods. Thank you. He was injured, but he was alive.
“I think I still have a few leaves of thannis in my pack, Natiya. Will you steep them and make a poultice for his head?”
“Thannis?” Berdi asked.
“A foul-tasting weed that has some helpful uses beyond drinking. It grows only in Venda. Good for heart, soul, and growling stomachs when food is scarce—except when it seeds and turns from purple to gold. Then it becomes poison. It’s the one thing they have in abundance in Venda.”
The mere mention of the weed made an unexpected yearning swell in me. Memories that I had buried tumbled loose. I thought of all the proffered cups of thannis—the humble gifts of a humble people.
Gwyneth angled her head at Kaden sleeping by the fire and frowned. “So how did all”—she twirled her hand in the air—“this come about? How does one go from being an Assassin to being your accomplice?”
“I’m not sure accomplice is the right word,” I said, snapping beans and adding them to a kettle. “It’s a long story. After we eat.”
I looked over my shoulder at Berdi. “Which reminds me, I promised Enzo I’d tell you he hasn’t burned down the inn yet. Boarders are fed, and the dishes are clean.”