A few hours before Sunwake she ambled, a clumsy, off-balance sentinel, to Mercy Tirel's chamber-door in the Broken Dagger. Her breath, the progeny of repressed discomfort, hissed out from the cracks between her uneven teeth. Her black hair clung to her neck in sweat-dampened ringlets.
When the older woman answered, Gloria Wynsee held aloft the flat of her palm. Brown skin was smeared with wetness. A half-question, half-statement greeted the physician, carried on staccato breaths.
"Did I break," the pregnant girl said.
* * * *
The process had forewarned its coming over weeks: pangs and dashes of muscular agony that she could offset with forced breaths and adjustments in stature or repose; the occasional arctic fear of prematurity relieved with a few moments of measured breathing; stitches and stabs attributed to stubborn pockets of gas under her ribs or the babe's impatient furor.
But these did not vanish. Even at the Rememdium Edificium, an hour later, where hurts were made well, the spasms, the compressions, they refused to abate--
("We've newly-boiled linens," someone said.)
Candles sparked to life; there were white robes all around, each an indistinct silhouette, and all she wanted to say was Please, please, will you take it out, I'm quite ready for it to be out.
("And water for the ablutions, too, all properly purified.")
I'm all knees. I'm all knees and belly from this perspective, she thought as unseen arms aided in peeling her sodden gown from her. Compliant and rubbery, her limbs, one whole and the other halved, obeyed the assistance. Her eyes, meanwhile, rolled left to right, seeking out the physician, trying to find her friend.
("She attends chapel, doesn't she?")
And crumbled Time slipped by, cleverly elusive.