A lone Sharum, dead on the road.

She woke with a start, her stomach roiling, and practically fell from bed in her desperation to get the chamber pot. It sloshed as she dragged it from under the bed, but she was not fast enough even so, and vomit mixed with last night’s urine on the floorboards. She knelt there, shuddering and retching, tears streaming down her face. Her eye socket ached, and she knew another cluster of headaches was on its way.

Oh, Bruna, what have I become?

There was a knock at the door, and Leesha froze. Dawn was only a purple hint outside the window. Too early to leave for the caravan.

Again the knock. ‘Go away!’

‘You open this door, Leesha Paper, or I’ll have Gared break it down,’ her mother said. ‘You just see if I don’t.’

Leesha stood slowly, her legs watery and her stomach still roiling. She found a clean cloth and wiped her face, then pulled a robe over her stained nightdress, cinching it tight.

She went to the door and lifted the bar, opening it a crack. Elona’s face, looking like she’d just swallowed a lemon, was never the first thing she wanted to see in the morning.

‘Now isn’t a good time …’ Leesha began, but Elona ignored her, pushing into the room. Leesha sighed and shut the door behind her, dropping the bar back in place. ‘What do you want, Mother?’

‘Thought you’d grown out of waking me and your father with your blubbering,’ Elona said. ‘Feeling bad about what you did, killing that boy?’

Leesha blinked. No matter how many times her mother read her mind and cut to the quick, it never ceased to shock her.

‘Well don’t,’ Elona snapped. ‘You did what you had to, and that boy knew what he was getting into when he picked up his first spear.’

‘It’s not that simple—’ Leesha began.

‘Pfagh!’ Elona waved a hand dismissively. ‘How many Rizonans you think he killed when they took the city? How many lives are you saving by keeping him from telling tales?’

Leesha felt her legs giving way, and fell to a seat on the bed, trying hard to make it seem as if she had meant to sit all along. Her stomach felt like a boiling pot, stirred too quickly and threatening to foam over the rim. ‘I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but that doesn’t mean I should be proud of it.’

Elona grunted. ‘Maybe not, but for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you, girl. Know I don’t say it as much as you deserve, but there it is. Didn’t think you had it in you to stand up like that. Glad to see something of me in there, after all.’

Leesha frowned. ‘Sometimes I think there’s too much of you in me already, Mother.’

Elona snorted. ‘You should be so lucky.’

‘Why the change of heart?’ Leesha asked. ‘You were the one pushing me to marry Ahmann and let him make me a queen.’

‘Had a better look at his rule since then,’ Elona said. ‘Ent no way I’m spending the rest of my wrinkle-free days with everything except my eyes wrapped under seven layers of cloth.’ She hefted her breasts, barely contained in a dress with a swooping neckline. ‘What’s the point of having paps like these if you can’t put ’em on display and laugh as men drool and women simmer?’

Leesha raised an eyebrow. ‘Wrinkle-free?’

Elona glared, daring her to say more. ‘Letting that warrior go would have jeopardized everything you’ve worked for. You might have laid the drama on a bit thick, but there’s no denying this trip was good for the Hollow. You bought a conditional peace, scouted the enemy camp, whispered wisdom and doubt into the ear of its leader, learned of those mind demons and bone magic. All that, and you got your toes curled in the process. Hag Bruna was still around, she’d be prouder than Jan Cutter showing off his prize bull.’

Leesha smiled wanly. ‘I hope so. I was just thinking I’d disappointed her.’

Elona turned to the window, looking over her reflection with a critical eye. Though there were no men to see, she reflexively straightened her hair and smoothed the bosom of her dress. ‘A bit, perhaps. Any apprentice of Bruna – night, any daughter of mine – should have been able to enjoy a few rolls in the feathers without making a child.’

Leesha felt her face flush red. ‘What?’

Elona pointed to the disgusting mixture on the floor, making no effort to help clean it. ‘Seen you throw your hysterics a lot of times, girl, but ent never seen it sick you up. Night, I can’t recall you sloshing up ever. You got more than Mum’s paps and posterior. You got my iron belly.’ She smiled, patting her stomach. ‘But I was sick as a cat the whole time I was carrying you.’

Leesha felt her boiling stomach freeze over. She tried to swallow as she ticked off the days since her last flow, but the lump in her throat prevented it.

Could it be true?

With more desperation than she had reached for the chamber pot, Leesha went for her pocketed apron. Like a Jongleur’s coloured balls, she juggled herbs and instruments, grinding and mixing until she had a tiny vial of milky fluid. She swabbed at herself and put it in the vial, holding her breath.

Her lungs gave way well before the time the chemics took to react. She turned pointedly and began to count by thousands to mark the minutes until she could turn back and see if the chemics had gone from milk white to pink.

One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand …

‘You already know what it’s going to say,’ Elona said. ‘Quit biting at your fingers and figure out what you’re going to do about it.’

Leesha raised an eyebrow. ‘Do?’

‘Don’t play dim with me, child,’ Elona snapped. ‘I was apprenticed to Bruna as well. You could flush the problem right out if you wanted.’

‘Really, Mum?’ Leesha asked bitterly. ‘You, who’ve pushed me to have children my whole life, would tell me to kill the child?’

‘Ent a child, it’s a notion,’ Elona said. ‘And a bad one, at that. Doesn’t take a genius to see that babe would be a gap in our wards big enough for the mother of all demons to ride through.’

One hundred thousand. One hundred and one thousand. One hundred and two thousand …

Leesha shook her head so hard she felt it rattle. ‘No. If it’s far enough along for me to be sick, it’s a life, not a notion. You complained I missed my most fertile years, Mum, and you weren’t wrong. If this is how the Creator wants to give me a child, then I’m going to take it.’

Elona rolled her eyes. ‘You picked a bad time to go all Canon, girl.’ She shrugged. ‘But if you’re not going to flush it, you’d best seduce someone else, quick and public, to buy yourself time.’

Leesha felt her mouth fall open. ‘I swear, Mum, if you so much as say Gared’s name …’

But Elona surprised her with another disgusted wave of her hand. ‘Pfagh! You can do better than Gared Cutter! Have another go at the other Deliverer, now that you have the knack. It’s clear as day he’s pent and needs a draining. Do him as good as you did the demon of the desert, and you can have the both of them eating out of your hand and brought to heel by winter.’

‘Or brought to blows, all our respective men behind them,’ Leesha said.