Blooded (Lisen of Solsta Book 3)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  “Lorain,” she said, rising, “your child is my nephew and an Ilazer. I will never forget that. Nor will I forget you inviting me to share in this miraculous moment. Thank you.”

  “But you must go,” Zanlot surmised.

  “Only because I’m overwhelmed by it all. Forgive me. But I will invite you and Elor to the Keep soon for a visit.”

  “We would be honored, my Liege.”

  Flooded with guilt at the part she’d played in this baby’s lack of a father, Ariannas backed away, headed for the door and departed. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Everything she’d seen, everything she’d heard, all the emotions she’d experienced chased her back to the Keep. By the time she returned to her office, her guilt had quieted a bit, allowing her mind to brim with questions. And, lucky for her, Nalin awaited her at the conference table, going over some document or other, probably in preparation for the privy council meeting in two weeks.

  “My Liege. That was quick,” he said as she plopped down beside him. “How was it? You did stay until the child emerged, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, catching her breath. “One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

  “The baby is healthy, I assume?”

  “I guess so. Nobody seemed concerned about anything.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Boy? Girl? A name perhaps?”

  “A boy. She named him Elor. She said she relinquished her claim as pouching parent to name him that. In memory of Ariel. So I guess the ‘El’ part is for Ariel with ‘lor’ tagged on for Lorain. Is that normal?”

  “For a late Empir? Certainly. And with the added advantage of poking you with it every time you say your nephew’s name? Definitely.”

  “And what is the ‘cusp’?”

  Nalin laughed. “You don’t even know that?”

  “I was brought up in a haven, remember?”

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget. The cusp is the moment when the parent feels the baby pull from the teat. This occurs right before the baby emerges.”

  “And something else.” The hesitation in her voice left her wondering why she even kept asking these questions. “The baby was furry. Is that to keep it warm in the pouch? And when does it go away? Because clearly it must since I don’t recall ever being covered in fur.”

  This time Nalin simply smiled and said, “Yes. It’s warm inside the pouch, but a little extra insulation is always helpful. The fur sheds within a couple of days. A ritual bathing is done on the second day after outcoming, and that usually takes care of it.”

  Ariannas nodded, overwhelmed, yet she still had so many questions. “He’s got red hair.”

  “A true Ilazer.”

  “His eyes are blue. Will they stay that way or change?”

  “Lorain’s eyes are blue, and Ariel was the only brown-eyed Ilazer in recent memory. But they could change.”

  “And how do they nurse? Do they crawl back inside the pouch? Or do they somehow nurse from the outside?”

  “So many questions.”

  She felt silenced—like he’d grown tired of her inquisition. “Fine. I’ll just stop asking them.”

  “No. No, my Liege. I was admiring your curiosity. Now, what was it? Oh, yes, nursing. From the time a baby attaches to a teat right after the transfer, it never switches to the other one.”

  “Sounds like the other one would go dry.”

  “It does. So when the baby emerges, it continues to nurse on that one teat, but it never returns totally to the pouch. It nurses with only its head inside.”

  Ariannas nodded. Now it all made more sense to her poor Earth-misguided brain.

  “So, tell me,” Nalin asked, “how did she like the gift?”

  “Oh, she loved it. Maybe that hint of recognition will keep her quiet for a while.”

  Nalin picked up his quill, presumably to resume whatever he’d been working on before her return. “We can hope,” he said. “We can but hope.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  distractions

  In a chamber a little larger than his own, Korin sat on the stony floor with one of the small ones. Several torches illuminated the room, and a half dozen children and two adults other than himself occupied it. Korin’s tasker had reassigned him here after he’d refused to return to the top of the mesa something like three weeks ago, and he enjoyed his time with these innocents who could elicit smiles and laughter he’d thought lost to him forever.

  At the moment, the little girl sitting beside him asked question after question about his big belly and what was inside it and could she see it please and when would it come out. Korin found himself imagining his own child at this age, about three years out, and wondering if she, too, would exhibit curiosity about life. Odd thoughts for a soldier, but many things odd to a soldier had come to him during his pouching.

  “The baby should emerge around Evennight,” he told the little girl in answer to her latest question. “You know about Evennight, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Father told me last time.”

  “And he told you that the nights would get shorter afterwards?”

  The girl nodded as she fiddled with a piece of straw.

  “Well, this time, the nights will get longer instead.”

  Her dark eyes grew wide in surprise at this unexpected bit of information.

  “It’s a very special time, this Evennight. It’s called the Hanii. We celebrate the children, you and all the others.”

  “Me?” She smiled broadly, and when he nodded, she giggled. Would his child look like this, with hair and eyes both dark? Or would something of the fair Lisen prevail? For the last few weeks, he’d known he’d pouched a girl, but the top of the head remained closed off from him and it was taboo to peek—in Thristas as well as Garla. His patience was weary. Trained to wait without complaint, this skill had deserted him, just as a great many of his other abilities had gone missing lately.

  “Yes, you.” He poked her belly, and she giggled again.

  She was one of his favorites. Her name was Madlen, and in her presence he forgot the worries that plagued him. Tonight she’d even dragged him away from his obsession with Ondra and Rika who had once again disappeared from the mesa a few days earlier. Their departure troubled him. Ondra had plans—he’d read it in her eyes the last time he’d seen her—but when he’d try to draw the truth from her, she’d gone stubbornly silent.

  “Korin.” Madlen recalled him back to their play.

  “Yes, Madlen?”

  “Is it heavy?”

  “Is what heavy?” Korin’s mind shot straight to the last few months’ choices and the burden of what he’d abandoned along the way.

  “The baby. Is it heavy?”

  Korin sighed. Leave it to a child to look at things directly without allowing everything on the periphery to interfere. “No, not very. Just a little. Makes my back hurt a bit if I lean over too much so I stopped leaning over.”

  She put her little hand out and touched his pouch in a gesture so gentle it slashed at his heart. “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled, basking in her innocence.

  “And why do you wear that black thing over your eye?”

  She’d asked this question once before, and he doubted she’d forgotten his answer since she forgot nothing. Perhaps she wanted to be sure the story didn’t vary.

  “Someone poked me in the eye in a fight. I lost the eye.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  Now that question was new, and he searched deep within himself to give her an answer worthy of her own innocent honesty. “Yes. Yes, I do. But my ear on that side has learned to make up for what the eye once did.”

  She smiled, her brown eyes assessing him in a very adult manner. “That’s just silly,” she finally concluded. “Ears can’t see.”

  “No, they can’t. So you understand my problem.”

  “Madlen!”

  Both Korin and the girl looked up to the entrance. Madlen’s
father, Arma, stood there, his duties for the night fulfilled. Korin rose, pulled the little girl up with him and walked her over to her father.

  “Not much longer for you, Korin,” Arma remarked, taking Madlen’s hand.

  “At least a month or more. I could be done with it today and I’d be happy.”

  “I know,” Arma said. “This one pulled at the damn teat so hard in that last month I wished I could have ripped her out.”

  They both laughed, Madlen looking from one to the other with a curious expression. This discussion had moved beyond her.

  “Arma, you wouldn’t happen to know where Ondra and Rika got off to.” Arma was one of the most peaceful members of the Tribe, a man who wouldn’t question Korin’s curiosity.

  “Most likely over the Rim. You know, those two have a secret between them.”

  Korin nodded. “Yes, I think so, too.”

  “I would think you’d be the one person they’d tell.”

  “You forget. I’m Garlan to them now. They haven’t trusted me since I left to join the Guard.”

  Arma smiled and patted Korin on the arm. “Don’t worry. Nothing to do with us. Once they’ve pouched a child, they’ll settle down.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Korin replied, but it was a lie. He believed there was plenty to worry about, especially with Ondra, and that whatever they’d planned, it would have everything to do with Thristas and its inhabitants.

  He watched as Madlen walked off with her father. She glanced back right before they rounded the corner of the tunnel, waved and smiled at Korin. He waved back, and as she disappeared from sight, he considered his options. Unfortunately, he basically had none.

  He rubbed his pouch, felt the baby shift, and he sighed. He couldn’t imagine getting up on a horse, much less riding one from here to Garla. But he knew Ondra had dire intentions. He supposed he could write a letter, but two possibilities stopped him. First, it might not arrive in time. And second, it might be intercepted, and then where would he be? Labeled as exactly what Ondra suspected—a Garlan spy.

  He made his way back to his quarters and settled in for the day. He didn’t feel like eating; suspicion had soured his stomach. Little one, he thought as he slipped his fingers into the pouch and touched the top of the girl’s head. If only you were ready to show yourself now. Then he realized. If he were to be of any help to this baby’s mother, he’d have to locate a nurser because he certainly couldn’t take the child with him if he rode over the Rim. He fell asleep considering that plan—a plan in need of a great deal of refinement—but he would come up with something.

  The son she had eagerly awaited looked up into Lorain’s eyes in the morning light, and she smiled. Only thirty-six days out, and this child, her Elor, still filled her heart with joy. She hated feeling this vulnerable. She would have thought that by now this overwhelming mood would have dissipated. She wasn’t nursing. Physically it was as though she’d never pouched a child. But still, the sentiment overpowered her.

  Shan, Elor’s nurser, a large man slightly older than Lorain, stepped into her bedchamber and reached out to her.

  “My lord, it’s time for him to feed,” he said.

  Lorain stood up from the bed and carried her baby into her antechamber and to where Shan had sat on the couch, handing Elor to him. The man pulled his pouch open to allow her baby’s head to reach the teat, and Elor immediately began suckling. Lorain watched as Shan slipped into a quiet place which she might have envied if she were less herself. Let him do the nursing, she thought. I have plans I need to nurse.

  This was how she spent her days—watching Shan suckle her son and then his daughter, while she shuffled papers, made lists and gleaned whatever she could from outside the Keep. These days, inside spies were hard to find.

  She looked up at a soft knock on her door and rose to answer it.

  “Yes?” she said through the closed door. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

  “Liberty,” a male voice responded from the other side, and Lorain’s breath caught in her throat. For two months she’d awaited this, and she’d eventually come to believe that the Thristan woman who had promised her all she desired had proved incapable of delivering on her pledge. But Lorain had undervalued the woman’s commitment, for here was the magic moment that could lead to the realization of her dreams.

  “Go,” she whispered to Shan and gestured him from the room. “Take the baby into the bedchamber and close the door.”

  He rose, Elor’s suckling undisturbed, and left her alone in her antechamber. As soon as she heard the bedchamber door latch, she opened the door to the hall.

  Before her stood a man dressed as any Garlan of the lower classes would dress—plain beige tunic, leggings, boots. He didn’t look Thristan at all. He didn’t even wear the single braid; instead, his brown hair fell barely to his wide, heavy shoulders. In fact, everything about him was large.

  He stepped past her without invitation and forced the door closed behind him. He looked around the room, then glared at her.

  “I know your nurser’s in the bedchamber,” he murmured softly, “so listen close. There’s not much time.”

  “Of course,” she replied, but he put a finger to her lips.

  “No, just listen.”

  Unaccustomed to taking orders, Lorain clenched her jaw to keep herself from smacking this man verbally for his impertinence, and she listened.

  He spoke briefly, telling her that the Empir was about to head out on her daily ride in the park. He described every detail of the preparations customarily preceding the Empir’s outing and then described Lorain’s part in the plan. When he finished, he asked her politely if she understood, and she said she did.

  “Then do it. The rest will take care of itself.” He opened the door and urged her out in front of him.

  Determined to see the usurper ousted, whatever it took, she stepped into the hall and heard the door close behind her. She paused to look back and saw the man standing there, waiting for her to leave first. Heart pounding against her chest, she stepped past the guard at the old palace door and hurried across the plaza towards the Keep. But, instead of going up the Keep’s stairs, she veered off towards the east in the direction of the stable.

  Uneasiness aside, she reveled in the opportunity to participate in an action that would put her son on the throne. The Thristan had detailed her part in the operation thoroughly, assuring her that they had set it up this way to keep her contribution to the scheme as invisible as possible.

  She reached the stable and paused to catch her breath. She must appear calm and nonchalant. Thankfully, she’d never found it difficult to play a part before, and she certainly wouldn’t find it difficult now. She entered through the side access, an entrance large enough for people but too small for horses. The Thristan had told her this would be the least conspicuous, and the guards she sought would likely be in that door’s vicinity rather than elsewhere. The stable hand preparing the Empir’s stallion would be working around the corner in an area reserved for the royal beast, so at least she wouldn’t present a problem.

  Inside, Lorain found exactly what the Thristan had described—two guards, both male, equipping their horses for the Empir’s morning ride. Lorain fluffed her hair, pinched her cheeks to add a little color and stepped forward to make her move.

  “Oh, is this the place?” she cooed. Both guards turned to look at her, their looks stern until the taller one of the two recognized her.

  “My lord, forgive me,” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  She stepped closer to the man, knowing full well that even after a month, she still exuded the seductive scent of the recently pouched.

  “I hope so. I’m planning the presentation of my son to the Empir. As you know, I’m expected to include two guardians for him within my group of attendants, and what more perfect guardians could I include than actual members of the Guard?” She smiled sweetly, and the guard she’d targeted shrugged, turned to the other guard and que
ried him with a look.

  When no reason to decline emerged from his companion, the first man returned to her and said, “We would be honored, my lord. When is the ceremony?”

  “Splendid. Could I take your names and let you know?”

  “It would help if we had a little warning, you know, to notify the Commander.” The second guard maintained caution.

  “I will inform her myself personally. Now, your names?” It was all too easy, luring them into losing focus.

  “Sergeant Haf, my lord,” the first one offered. “And Corporal Alron.” The other one nodded.

  “Good then,” she said, knowing her blue eyes twinkled as she spoke—they always twinkled when she was scheming, or that’s what people told her. She lowered her voice and leaned in closer to them as she continued. “Now make me a promise. As you ride today, remember the little Heir of Garla you will be protecting.” She pulled back and spoke more normally. “Now, off with you.”

  She smiled her best smile and tilted her head to one side. Both men smiled back, and she knew she had succeeded. She had diverted their attention to the point where they would likely be thinking about Elor and herself rather than about their current assignment, leaving them vulnerable, as required. She turned and left the stable, returning to the old palace by the side entrance. No point in emphasizing her involvement to the guard at the front.

  She smiled as she got to her door. Soon it would all be hers—the Keep, the regency, the throne. She had no idea what the Thristans intended. She didn’t want to know, but she hoped the usurper’s fate would be drawn-out, painful and, ultimately, final.

  As she pulled on her boots, Ariannas’ thoughts returned to this morning’s dream. More snakes and more babies, but this time Pharaoh had stood between them. She’d awakened shaken and didn’t like it.

  She missed Malaki and their rides together during Council. They’d tried to make time at some point during the brief gathering of the privy council a few weeks ago, but they’d been too busy, and now he wouldn’t return until November. Oh, well, she thought as she stood up from the chair in her bedchamber. At least I still get to ride nearly every day even if I am alone. She loved the wind and the sun and the smell of summer, and she loved that big lug of horse.