“I am not a horse!” Pauline screamed. She leaned forward in another spasm. “Berdi,” she groaned. “Go get Berdi.”
I started for the door. “Tell me where—”
“No,” Lia said, cutting me off. “Berdi would never come with you, and I can find her faster. Stay here.”
Pauline and I both protested.
“There’s no other choice!” Lia snapped. “Stay! Keep her comfortable! I’ll be right back!”
She left, slamming the door behind her.
I stared at the door, not wanting to turn and face Pauline. Babies took hours, I told myself. Sometimes days. It wasn’t more than a twenty-minute walk into town. Lia would be back within the hour. I listened to the rain, coming down louder and harder.
Pauline moaned again, and I reluctantly turned. “Do you need something?”
“Not from you!”
An hour passed, and I alternated between silently cursing Lia and worrying about what had happened to her. Where was she? Pauline’s pains were becoming stronger and more frequent. She swatted my hand away when I tried to wipe her brow with a cool cloth.
Between pains, she leveled a scrutinizing stare at me. “Last time I saw you, Lia was ordering you to go straight to hell. What dark magic did you weave to make her trust you now?”
I looked at her glistening face, damp strands of her blond hair clinging to her cheek, a loss in her eyes I had never seen before. “People change, Pauline.”
Her lip pulled up in disgust, and she looked away. “No. They don’t.” Her voice wobbled, full of unexpected sorrow instead of anger.
“You’ve changed,” I said.
She glared at me, her hands passing over her belly. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“I meant in other ways—most notably the knife you were flashing in my face.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Betrayal tends to familiarize one with weapons.”
I nodded. Yes, I thought. Sadly, it does.
“It looks like someone’s taken a weapon to your head too,” she said.
I reached behind, feeling the crusted gash on my scalp. “It would seem so,” I answered. I had passed out and slept for two straight days on the trail after vomiting up half my insides. The throbbing had eased, but it was probably what had dimmed my judgment enough to walk into an unknown cottage without my own weapon drawn. Perhaps that was a good thing, or Pauline might be lying dead on the floor now.
I walked over to the window and opened the shutter, hoping to see a glimpse of Lia and Berdi. The downpour obscured the forest beyond, and thunder rumbled overhead. I gently pressed on the back of my head, wondering how bad the gash was. Beneath the crusted patch of blood, there was still a sizable lump. It was ironic that a housekeeper armed only with an iron pot had nearly done in the Assassin of Venda.
How the Rahtan would laugh at that.
The name dug into me with a surprising sting—and longing. Rahtan. It brought back the familiar, the feeling of pride, the one place in my entire life where I had felt like I belonged. Now I was in a kingdom that didn’t want me and in a cottage where I wasn’t welcome. I didn’t want to be here either, but I couldn’t leave. I wondered about Griz and Eben. Surely Griz was healed and they were on their way by now. They were the closest thing I had to family—a family of poisonous vipers. The thought made me grin.
“What’s so amusing?” Pauline asked.
I looked at the severity in her gaze. Had I done this to her? I remembered all of her kindnesses back in Terravin—her gentleness. I had thought that the young man she so earnestly waited for couldn’t possibly deserve her and then when I learned he had died, I had hoped it wasn’t by a Vendan hand. Maybe that was what she saw when she looked at me, a Vendan just like the one who had killed her baby’s father. Though my smile had long faded, her gaze remained fixed on me, waiting.
“Nothing’s amusing,” I answered, and looked away.
Another hour slipped by, and it seemed one labor pain hadn’t subsided before another began. I dipped the rag into the bucket of cool water and wiped her brow. She didn’t resist this time, but closed her eyes as if trying to pretend it wasn’t me. I was getting a bad feeling about this. She was racked with another spasm.
When the pain finally passed and she relaxed again against the makeshift pillow I had made for her, I said, “We may have to do this alone, Pauline.”
Her eyes shot open. “You deliver my baby?” A smile broke her face for the first time, and she laughed. “I promise you, the first hands that touch my little girl won’t be a barbarian’s.”
I ignored her barb. It didn’t hold the same venom as an hour ago. She was getting tired of fighting me. “You’re so sure it’s a girl?”