Cast in Chaos. Michelle Sagara
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her door, she saw her mirror flashing. She had bread and cheese and meat in the basket that Severn had given her, and if she disliked magic—and she did—it was still damn useful. The bread wasn’t stale enough to cut herself on, and the cheese hadn’t dried out. Nor was the meat likely to be sour enough to poison her. She grabbed all of those, and headed to the mirror; it was her personal mirror, after all, and no one could dress her down for leaving fingerprints on it.
She lost most of her appetite when the screen’s image solidified and the familiar face of Marya took up most of the frame. Marya was as close to head of the midwives’ guild as made no difference, and she looked haggard. The circles under her eyes—which were often there because her sleep hours were worse than Kaylin’s—had almost overtaken her cheekbones.
She wasn’t speaking; the mirror wasn’t active; this was just a placeholder to indicate she’d tried to reach Kaylin earlier. Kaylin, around a mouthful of meat, muttered Marya’s name. The mirror twitched twice, and took its sweet time connecting, but it finally did.
Marya’s face swam into view.
“Kaylin!” Marya, who was probably in her sixties although it wasn’t safe to ask her actual age, looked horrified.
The midwives’ guild was not, Kaylin suddenly remembered, within the circle in which rain had turned to blood. She cursed, briefly and quietly, just before she swallowed the overly ambitious mouthful she’d just bitten off. “I’m sorry, Marya,” she said quickly. “It’s not what it looks like. I’m not bleeding, I wasn’t in a fight for my life, and I didn’t kill anyone else.”
Marya’s expression shifted from pale horror to something almost as bad.
“You need me to go somewhere.” It wasn’t a question.
“I need—I’m not sure what we need. But, Kaylin—” she shuddered “—things are—things are going wrong with some of the births in a way we’ve never seen. And one or two pregnancies. I—”
“You want me there? Or do you want to give me an address?”
Marya bit her lip. Marya never did something as impractical and quavering as biting her lip. Kaylin lost her appetite.
“Come here,” the midwife finally said. “I’ve got the other addresses, and…and I don’t want to send you out there for nothing, but I don’t— Just, come here.”
It didn’t rain. The sky was the kind of clear that threatens rain, but doesn’t quite deliver. That was about as much as Kaylin noted on her run to the midwives’ guild. She was aware that it might be a long damn night, and she had forced herself to eat, which was never much fun when anxiety made one’s stomach actively revolt. She also changed her clothing, peeling herself out of things that were way more sticky than they should have been. She wouldn’t have bothered, given Marya’s tone and expression—but if she was sent out to help anyone, showing up covered in dried blood wasn’t likely to make her job any easier.
She made it to the guild on foot, glancing briefly at the visible moon and wondering how much it had shifted its position. The guild’s doors were open. Lights were on, and could be seen through the slightly opaque windows.
As a building, the guildhall was not terribly impressive; it didn’t boast the size—or the expensive stairs, doors, and decorative bits that stuck out at all levels—of something like the merchants’ guild. It also didn’t boast the same prime real estate, but at the moment it was situated outside of the Circle From Hell, closer to the Ablayne, on Kirri street. The street was one of the oldest of the Imperial streets, and the name on the very few signs that marked it was actually about ten paragraphs longer than Kirri, which is why it deserved a diminutive.
Kaylin hurried in.
Marya was in the office, such as it was. She had a large desk—it was half again as large as Marcus’s—but there were no other desks in the room. There were cupboards, and a long counter that ran the length of the wall opposite the window, breaking only for the door. There were two standing shelves as well, and these were the repository of a number of books, but they also held bottles, jars, and assorted dried herbs. At least that’s what Kaylin assumed they were. She recognized some of them; bitterroot for fever, worry-not to prevent pregnancy; most of them she didn’t know.
There were three mirrors in the room, none of them full-length; one sat on the right-hand side of Marya’s desk, its lion claw iron legs ensuring that nothing short of serious effort would knock it over. Marya appeared to be seriously considering it. She looked up as Kaylin entered.
Her first words reassured Kaylin.
“There’ve been no deaths. If it had been—if we’d really needed you, we’d’ve been able to find you. Your Sergeant’s been good about that, I admit it. I didn’t expect it, but—he’s been good.”
Kaylin exhaled, because she’d been holding her breath and it was well past stale. “Okay,” she said. “No emergencies.”
“There were two births. One was a first child, but in either case the delivery was not considered a terrible risk. I had Mellan attend the first birth.”
Kaylin nodded. It made sense; Mellan was one of the younger midwives, but she’d been the midwife in charge at a number of births for the past three months.
“The baby was born. A boy. He was healthy.” She hesitated, and then said, “He had three eyes.”
“Pardon?”
“Three eyes. They were infant eyes in every other respect, but he has an eye in the center of his forehead just above the bridge of his nose.”
“Where was the birth?” Kaylin asked quietly. “What was the address?”
“Sauvern, near Bitton.”
The child had been born within the confines of the circle.
The rain of blood had been bad; the Swords were probably still out in the streets enforcing a certain rationality upon people who’d been caught in the torrent. A demonstrably secret, on going investigation into one of the most powerful humans in the city had been totally compromised by a cheap, charlatan fortune-teller.
But with this new bit of information, it was suddenly, completely damn serious. “How were the parents?”
“The parents, thank the gods, are followers of Iravatari.”
When Kaylin failed to nod as if the sentence seemed relevant, Marya rolled her eyes. “The goddess of wisdom and enlightenment? Tall, robed lady?”
“Sorry.”
“Never mind. Iravatari has three eyes. It was a shock to the parents, yes—and I think a shock to young Mellan—but when they recovered, they were not unhappy.”
Kaylin nodded.
“The second birth was more problematic.”
And tensed. “How?”
“The second birth was attended by Helen. You know Helen?”
Kaylin frowned for just a minute, and then nodded. “Older woman, this tall, brown eyes, hair down to her knees?”
“She doesn’t wear her hair down when she’s working,” was the severe reply. “But yes, that would be Helen. She attended the second birth. The second birth was a first child, a girl.”
“The child was also…different?”
“The child, at two minutes out of her mother’s womb, could speak.”
“Speak?”
“Yes. In complete sentences. There may well be a god of speech, but in this particular case, the parents were not thrilled. I believe they were confused, but the child’s grandmother insisted that the baby had been possessed by evil spirits. She did not attempt to harm the infant—”
“Not if Helen was there, she didn’t.”
“—but