Kushiel's Justice - Jacqueline Carey [130]
"How do you know?" I lifted my head. "Have you done this before?”
"No." Her fingers knotted in my hair, her face softening. "Come here.”
I went.
Sibeal sent for a wise-woman, an herb-witch who'd attended her own birthings. It was women's business, that, and I wasn't privy to it. She was a nut-brown woman, wizened and bent. Later, Dorelei told me she'd poked and prodded, testing her insides with surprisingly gentle fingers, smelling them afterward, her broad nostrils flaring.
At the time, I knew only what the wise-woman reported.
"Oh, aye!" She gave us a gap-toothed grin, her head bobbing. "The lass is with child.”
I knew; I'd known all the while.
It made me tender, it made me solicitous, it made me a little bit mad. I couldn't get past the notion of it. I forgot, altogether, about the bindings on me. During the days, I was content. At night, I made love to Dorelei, crooning to the child in her belly.
"Which one of us do you want?" she asked me once, tartly.
At that, I sat back on my heels. "Would you have me lie, my lady, and say the child has naught to do with it?”
"No." Her dark eyes filled with tears. "May the gods help me, I'll take what I may have of you. After all, it doesn't matter now, does it?”
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "I grew up without the benefit of parents to love me. I'll not have our child do the same.”
"I know," Dorelei whispered in reply.
Somewhere, somehow, we'd come to understand one another, Dorelei and I.
During those days, my bonds, like Hyacinthe's responsibilities, rested more lightly on me. Oh, I checked them daily, but there was naught to threaten them. I bore them easily. Betimes, I was glad of them. Without the ache of desire plaguing me, I was able to take genuine joy in moments of ordinary happiness.
It came almost as a surprise when the day arrived for us to depart for Bryn Gorrydum, but summer was fleeting and Hyacinthe had watched the Cruarch's flagship cross the Straits in his sea-mirror. It was time. Only a month ago, I would have faced the prospect of repeating my nuptial vows with a vague, half-felt dread, masked by steel resolve and false courtesy. Now I was calm.
So it was that we all set forth, riding in the company of the Master of the Straits and his lady wife. The children, who had grown fond of us, howled bitterly at being left behind. I watched Dorelei embrace them in farewell and promise to visit, a tender ache in my breast. I wondered if the child we'd made together, their young kinsman-to-be, would emerge stamped with the inexplicable trait of some unknown ancestor, like Donal and his protruding ears.
The thought of my impending fatherhood still overwhelmed me with unfamiliar emotion.
In ways I'd never guessed, it seemed I was truly my mother's son.
Although the city was only a day's ride away, we elected to make camp a half league or so beyond its outskirts that evening. Urist sent Kinadius to fetch the rest of our escort to accompany us on the morrow, that we might enter the city in splendor befitting the Master of the Straits, a Princess of Alba, and assorted D'Angeline royalty.
"How long has it been since you camped a-field?" Joscelin asked Hyacinthe as we lounged around the campfire that night.
"Not as long as you might think, Cassiline." Hyacinthe sounded amused, and far younger than he had when we'd first arrived. "I do leave the Stormkeep at times to wander about. I do it quietly, that's all.”
He'd appeared at Montrève once when I was a boy, not long after Phèdre had rescued him. I'd not been on hand to witness his arrival, but I still remembered watching him leave; a dim figure on a grey horse, vanishing into the dawn mists. I wondered what it felt like to command the elements, to reconcile that self with the Tsingano lad who'd told fortunes for coin in Night's Doorstep. My own struggles seemed small and insignificant beside his fate.
In the morning, the full complement of our