Chapter 6 #8
Bron wished her and Elal farewell and urged Disaris into a quick jog to where the horses waited.
Uzmina was as good as her word and more.
His gelding stood alongside a sorrel mare, both saddled and bridled.
Bron tossed Disaris onto the mare’s back and handed her the reins.
“Are you ready?” he asked, squeezing her calf.
“Because we’ll ride hard once we’re outside the Nesting Grounds. ”
She nodded, reaching down to touch his cheek. “Thank you, Bron.”
He stepped away and mounted his horse. “Don’t thank me yet. Just keep up. We’re not out of the thorns until we’re well clear of the encampment.”
They ambled leisurely toward the camp’s northern perimeter so as not to draw attention.
A few people watched them pass before returning to the tasks at hand.
Bron prayed all they saw was a Daesin soldier followed by a bed maiden riding toward one of the flea-infested makeshift taverns that lined the camp’s borders.
He kept their pace to a walk until they were a quarter league beyond the Nesting Grounds.
The vast plains opened up before them like a black sea under a star-salted sky.
He looked to Disaris beside him, her brown hair silvered in the moon’s light.
He’d often dreamed of her next to him, certainly not in dire situations like this one, but his partner in every endeavor, against every adversity, beside him on horseback, beside him in bed, beside him in death.
She must have sensed him watching her for she turned her head and met his gaze with a smile. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her features were drawn with exhaustion, but her smile held both anticipation and hope. “Is it time?” she asked.
Well past time, he thought. He thumped his heels against his gelding’s sides. Disaris did the same to her mare, and soon they galloped toward a mysterious gate that led to an uncertain destination and hopefully the rescue of a woman hunted by a madman.
Over the course of two decades, Bron came to the realization that while Disaris jin Gheza was the lodestone that always drew him back to the place he called home, it was her sister Luda who was the catalyst for the major changes in his life.
She was born when he was twelve and Disaris was ten, and while it wasn’t his first encounter with Death on the doorstep, it was one of the most memorable.
He’d spent the first half of the day working in the fields with the majority of the villagers.
With harvest season at its height, everyone with the ability to swing a scythe, cut with a sickle or gather and bundle was put to work.
Bron had contributed his time and sweat to Yeoman Ban’s fields, cutting alongside Disa who’d been assigned to bundle shocks of barley for drying before going to the threshing floor.
He’d intended to work a full day, eager to earn as much coin as he could to help his mother restock their larder.
Hazarin had insisted that this day he work only until the noon hour, then come home and help with the laundry.
She’d delivered four children in two days’ time, and the pile of soiled linens from the birthings had grown to a mountain in no time.
“I’m expecting two more babies to arrive in the next week,” she told Bron as they sat across the table from each other, eating bread slathered in butter by candlelight.
The morning sun hadn’t yet crested the horizon, but outside the road was loud with the creak of wheels as farmers transported harvesters from the village to their fields.
She offered him a third slice of bread. “Enjoy it while you can,” she said. “Disa’s amman won’t be sending us her nice bread for a fortnight at least once she has her little one.”
Bron rolled his eyes and wolfed down the bread.
He was heartily sick of hearing about the much anticipated arrival of the newest jin Gheza family member.
It was all Disa talked about these days: what the baby would look like, whether it would be a boy or girl, what games it would want to play.
He’d listened with half an ear, wishing Gheza would just have the goblin so Disa would talk about something else.
Fate had taught him early on, and in the most shocking way, to be careful what you wished for.
When the harvesters broke for lunch, Bron bid Disa farewell with the promise to work beside her the next day, and began the trek home.
He’d had his hand on the door latch when it was yanked roughly away, and the door flew open to bang against the interior wall.
Hazarin stood in front of him, no longer recognizable as the soft-voiced mother he knew and loved, but a vengeful goddess of war, grim-faced and bloodied from chest to knees.
Behind her, the sound of a wounded animal suffering an agonizing death filled the house.
“Bron, run to the miller’s,” she snapped.
“Tell his wife I need her help with Gheza. Now!” He was halfway to the gate when she called after him.
“And have the constable fetch Reylan. He’s delivering salt to the butcher in Twebek. Tell him Gheza’s in trouble.”
By the time he’d done her bidding and raced back, gasping and dripping sweat, the miller’s wife had already arrived and was inside the house.
Bron sidled past the horse and cart parked outside the gate, and eased the door open for a cautious look inside.
The house was stifling and smelled of copper.
The tiny parlor was empty, but he heard women’s voices in his mother’s bedroom.
He stood at the threshold between front garden and house, uncertain he should enter, when the bedroom door opened.
While the miller’s wife didn’t look as terrifying or bloodstained as his amman had earlier, she wore a somber expression as she cradled a bundle of cloths in her arms. A smile wreathed her face when she spotted Bron in the doorway. “Did you find the constable, lad?”
He nodded and swallowed, fearing the answer to his question. “How is Disa’s amman?”
The woman exhaled a long sigh. “It was touch and go for a moment for both mother and baby, but your amman is a fine midwife and Gheza a tough woman. She’s resting right now.
” She approached Bron with her bundle. “Hold out your arms,” she said and placed the blanket-wrapped package gently in his arms before he could back away.
He gaped at the strange creature he suddenly held. Swaddled in layers of cloth, it was almost completely hidden except for a head covered in spiky brown hair, and a face that was nothing more than a tiny, wrinkled mass of flesh coated in some kind of waxy, white substance.
Bewildered, he looked back at the miller’s wife. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
She grinned and nudged him toward one of the two chairs in the room. “Hold her while I help your amman tend to Mistress Gheza. You can tell Disa when you see her that you held her sister before she did.” She patted his shoulder. “Don’t fret. I’ll be right back.”
Though Hazarin was a midwife and had overseen numerous births in the mothers’ homes and even her own home, it was the first time Bron had been present for any part of one and certainly the first time he held a newborn baby. And he was terrified.
He sat frozen in the chair, hardly daring to breathe in case he accidentally dropped his fragile charge.
The baby made tiny mewing noises, her nose wrinkling periodically as if she smelled something unpleasant.
Bron didn’t understand why some people made a fuss over babies.
They were usually fussy, smelly, and loud.
And this one, with her cone-shaped head and puffy eyes in a wrinkly face, was exceptionally not pretty.
Still, he touched a fingertip to the shallow indentation below her nose and chuckled when she blew out a tiny sneeze.
It felt like hours, but also seconds that he held the baby until Hazarin herself stepped out of the bedroom to rescue him.
She scooped up the baby with a practiced move, pausing to tilt her head when he resisted giving her the baby.
“Thank you for watching over her, Bron,” she said.
“She needs her mother now, and Gheza worked hard to bring her into the world. She’s eager to see her.
Why don’t you wait in the garden for Reylan and bring him inside once he gets here. ”
When Reylan galloped up to Hazarin’s house on a borrowed horse, he had Disa with him.
Bron raced ahead of him to throw the door open before the man crashed through it, calling his wife’s name in a terrified voice.
Bron caught Disa by the arm before she could follow him.
“Your amman’s fine, Disa,” he said. “You have a sister.”
To no one’s surprise, her reaction to the news was comprised of a great deal of joyous shrieking, dancing, then sobbing on Bron’s shoulder as fear for her mother came crashing down on her. He patted her back and comforted her in the best way he knew how: he took her fishing.
When it came time to bestow a name on Reylan’s and Gheza’s new daughter at her naming ceremony, they asked Bron to choose it.
Stunned by the honor, both Hazarin and Bron had gaped at them until Hazarin stuttered a soft “Are you sure?”
Bron, caught unprepared by such an unexpected gift, scrambled for ideas. He’d never named anyone or anything before, not even the cricket he’d caught and kept as a pet until a toad ate it.
He recalled a recent moment when Disaris had held her sister, gently rocking back and forth to keep her asleep as Gheza looked on with a watchful eye. “I’ll love her dearly, Amman,” she assured her mother.
“Dearly,” he muttered. What name meant “dearly” or “dear one?” He snapped his fingers. “Luda,” he announced to the startled adults waiting for his answer. “Name her Luda.”