Chapter 12 #2
“One was my friend Idabel,” Hannalinde guessed.
Aalis nodded. “The other two were in the cliffs long before you were born. One mother died, but the child survived. One child was stillborn but the mother survived.”
Both mother and child survived in only one of three births. A chill ran over her skin, and Cléa must have felt it too, because she gripped Hannalinde’s shoulder, squeezing it. “All will be well.”
Aalis nodded. “I don’t tell you this to frighten you, but so you understand that, though I have centuries of experience and will do my best for you, there are still risks.
You will need a human midwife as your friend had.
It should be someone who can attend you during my daysleep, understands your anatomy, and can help care for the child while you recover after the birth. ”
Hannalinde nodded. “I have hired the apothecary Betje as a midwife.”
Aalis gave an approving nod. “Good. How is your health in general? What are you eating?”
Hannalinde recited her daily intake, which had improved since moving into the eyrie. Now she had meat at every meal, and plenty of fresh fruit from the forests of the north, which had always been too expensive on her mending budget.
“Not bad. You will need to eat more minerals or the child will leach them from your bones. Add powdered stone to your food when you can stomach it.”
“Eating stone seems bad for the teeth,” Hanna mused.
“If you don’t eat it, the baby will leach minerals from your teeth, too.” Aalis dismounted her roost and fetched a bottle of sparkling, gray dust from one of the shelves. She handed it to Cléa, who tucked it into the pouch at her belt. “That will keep you both healthy.”
Hannalinde pressed her hands to her belly. The fluttering was there, faint and restless, a small creature rearranging itself beneath her ribs. “Is the child healthy now?”
“From what I can feel, yes. Strong heartbeat. Good size for the stage.” Aalis paused, tilting her ancient head. “You don’t seem happy. Why not?”
The question was so direct that the answer fell out before Hannalinde could catch it. “I’m terribly lonely.”
Cléa sucked in a wounded breath.
“During the day,” Hannalinde amended to a version of the truth, not wanting to hurt her.
“When you and Rikard and Roul are asleep, I have no one to talk to. The keepers visit the eyrie, but they won’t speak to me.
I visit my friend and go shopping when I can, but the climb takes more out of me every week, and I can’t spend every afternoon in someone else’s rooms. All I have otherwise is my embroidery and my windowbox. ”
She stopped. She was saying too much. The Nadir’s wife shouldn’t confess unhappiness only weeks into her marriage. She should be happy as a new bride and new mother. Grateful for her new home and the safety it afforded her.
“I don’t mean to complain. You have been so kind to me,” she assured Cléa, who was still recovering from the revelation. “It is just…an adjustment.”
Aalis watched them with a shrewd expression. “It’s natural. You are a diurnal creature living in a nocturnal household. Of course you’re lonely. You must have a companion. A human one, awake during your hours, who can keep your mind occupied.”
“Humans can’t visit the Tower,” Hannalinde reminded her. “Only keepers and residents.”
Cléa straightened. “You could ask your friend to move in!”
“Carlijn?”
“Why not? She could keep you company and help with the hatchling when it arrives. After all, it may be awake during the day when I am not.” Cléa seemed to have just realized this, and the corners of her mouth pulled down.
“Human babies wake all times of the day and night,” Hannalinde said, hoping to cheer her up with the fact. “I can’t believe Rikard would welcome another human living in his eyrie, though. He barely tolerates the keepers.”
“It’s not for his comfort,” Cléa said dryly.
Aalis nodded. “A woman who is lonely is a woman whose body will suffer for it. I’ve seen it before. The isolation becomes a weight, and the weight presses on the child. You need laughter during the day and someone to notice if you fall on those wretched ladders.”
Cléa added, “You don’t have to suffer alone. You have a mate, and he took a vow to protect you. Let him honor it.”
Your burdens, mine to share. He’d sworn it in front of the whole city in his gruff tone.
She nodded. “I will ask him tonight.”
“I can’t stand to think of you climbing all those ladders now. Let me hire a guard to fly you to the seventh tier,” Cléa begged on the way out of the rookery, after paying Old Aalis and scheduling the next visit.
Hannalinde froze. She knew she should accept the small kindness, but the thought of some strange gargoyle’s arms around her made her feel a sick kind of dread. What if it was him?
“I don’t know,” she stuttered out in a panic, wishing desperately that Rikard was here to think of a more palatable solution. He would be in his office for hours yet, though, buried in complaints and correspondence. Did she dare interrupt him with such a small problem to solve?
Of course not. She’d promised not to trouble him in his daily life. She couldn’t be cowardly about this. “A friend of yours, maybe? Someone you…trust?”
Cléa clucked her tongue. “Of course, you’re shy. How silly of me. I’ll go get Roul. He can’t be too far into his cups at this time of night. Wait here by the lantern, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
Hannalinde nodded, hugging herself on the spare rookery balcony while Cléa took off into the night, doing her best to ignore the dark, oily presence in her mind. She pushed back against it mentally, forcing it into the recesses of her skull, and to her surprise, she could do it!
She could only hold it back a few seconds before it bled through her defenses, but still! Perhaps with some practice, she could block him out completely. Her heart sped with hope.
Cléa reappeared with Roul, who graciously, with only minor huffing and puffing, hauled her, wingbeat by wingbeat, up to the seventh tier. It was an unsettling ride, but at least she knew and trusted him.
“Thank you,” she said honestly when he deposited her on the balcony. “You are a gem, Roul.”
“Think nothing of it, my girl,” he preened. Cléa rolled her eyes and whisked him off to some social engagement, leaving Hannalinde alone in the quiet eyrie to prepare for bed.
She tidied up the evening trays for the keepers to take away, and it was then she noticed the small parcel on the table.
It was wrapped in brown paper and twine and leaned up against the milk jug so she couldn’t miss it.
A scrap of paper tucked into the string read for Hanna in Rikard’s precise Nadir’s hand.
Inside was a skein of embroidery silk in a shade of blue so vivid it stopped her breath.
It wasn’t the typical woad-dyed blue she could find in the market.
Spun from the naturally blue silk of the lazuli moth that lived in the forests to the north, this was much rarer and difficult to obtain.
He must have ordered it from a fae merchant weeks ago, perhaps as long ago as the wedding.
She held the silk up to the lamp. The threads caught the glow and shimmered, each one finer than a baby’s hair. It was a treasure and must have cost him a fortune. Did he value her so much?