Birth: A Novella Read online

  CHAPTER 2: Sex and the City

  It wasn’t just sex or the lack of it that drove us apart in Eclipsia City. As my body grew big around the middle, and I had to pee all the time, and sitting or standing or lying down all began to feel equally uncomfortable, everything seemed to turn us against each other. Dominic had been proud of me at Aranyi, always wanting to show me off, rounded and full, ripe with his child: a primitive, masculine assertion of his power, which could persuade a gifted woman into the ultimate surrender. Here in the city we were surrounded by other ‘Graven and their women, all thin, exquisitely dressed, charming and witty and not so modest or shy as I had been told they should be. None of them wore burqas or even a light veil, and most of them were poorly guarded, if at all. However Dominic felt, I was intimidated by the contrast.

  They weren’t wives. They were mistresses, “companions,” the natural-born daughters of ‘Graven as I had once been thought to be. Legitimate daughters with strong gifts worked in a seminary; those with lesser gifts married and stayed home, bore children and kept house. These women were the female equivalents of the men Berend, the Aranyi steward, had talked about: gentry and half-caste ‘Graven with no responsibilities of Realm or family. They did not have to be guarded because they had no husbands to be dishonored by their violation, and were free to go to dancehalls and taverns and to sleep with men. They came to supper parties that Dominic gave, and invited us to theirs, and made brilliant conversation and drank wine and flirted and—

  “Amalie,” Dominic said one night on the way home from one of these gatherings, “it’s all right to laugh once in a while, to talk. I won’t divorce you for making a joke or saying something amusing.”

  “How can I?” I said. “They’re all so elegant and I feel so—pregnant.”

  “They envy you,” Dominic said. “Most of them are barren, or their lovers are sterile or impotent. You can outshine them all, but you just sit there looking bored.”

  After that, of course, I didn’t dare open my mouth, knowing that Dominic was paying attention to women’s conversation and expecting pearls to drop from my mouth.

  ***

  Magali comes running up the stairs and down the corridor, out of breath, big with her own pregnancy. “Oh, ‘Gravina,” she says, gasping and gulping between her words, her use of the honorific a sign of how worried she is, “if I had known– I was in the second cellar, that stupid boy said he saw rats– there’s so few servants around– I didn’t know—” My attempts to tell her it that it doesn’t matter, that it’s only just started, are lost under her rattling indrawn breaths.

  I feel safer already. Magali has given birth ten times, is carrying her eleventh. She will know what to do; things will be all right.

  It’s as if she reads my thoughts. “I always relied on the healer,” Magali says. Four of them died, she’s thinking, for all she did her best.

  “Where is Naomi?” Dominic slips in at the door behind her.

  “Home, Margrave,” Magali answers. “Like most of the staff. Home with her mother.”

  “Well, don’t stand there gossiping.” Dominic speaks brusquely, as he never does to members of the household. “Send someone to fetch her.”

  Magali shakes her head. “It’s a full day’s ride there, my lord, and another day back.”

  “Then the sooner he starts the sooner back.” Dominic turns away in dismissal. His eyes lock on mine; he seems to glide across the floor to me, communion flowing between us, smoothing the way like harness grease. My love, my lady wife. Come to me. But he comes to me, holding out his arms, enveloping me in an embrace that brings us into full communion. Forgive me. Oh, my love—

  Another contraction begins, and he takes it on himself, bending low, clutching his slender waist and hard stomach, crying out with the transformation from healthy man to woman enduring her greatest agony. He perspires in my arms, an odd mix of smells coming off him: hay and leather, the familiar salty tang of his own sweat and the off-putting odor of another man’s, horse sweat and harness grease and semen.

  When the contraction passes he straightens up. His face has gone pale with the pain, but he breathes deeply, color returning, getting a sense of the pace. “I’ll bathe now, while I have the chance. You should be all right for a few minutes, and I’ll be quick.” His boots and breeches are off before I can protest.

  “Don’t leave me.” My voice is the whimper of a child.

  “Come with me then,” Dominic says. “It’s no good starting out dirty. We’ll be covered in muck before this is over.” He sounds almost cheerful at the prospect, removing his shirt and flinging it away as he moves toward the bathroom.

  “Then why bother?” I ask.

  “Come on!” He won’t waste time explaining but drags me through to my bathroom, arms enfolding me, hands caressing me. “You know about the dangers of infection, the importance of sterile surroundings. And you should be naked, too.” He tries to pull my dress up over my head, gets entangled in the petticoats and camisole, and looks for help. “Where’s what’s her name, the little sexpot, Katrina?”

  “Home,” I say. “With her husband. She’s pregnant too.”

  “Bloody hell.” Dominic goes back into my room and sticks his head out the door to the corridor. “Tariq!” he shouts. “Where’s Roger?”

  Tariq is close by. “Lord Roger,” he says, “is in the Zichmni Suite, bathing.”

  “Good,” Dominic says. “When he’s done, have him come to my room. You too.” He lowers his voice, speaks instead of thinking, so I can’t catch his words.

  Tariq, who has been cold and distant, changes at Dominic’s words. “Yes, Margrave,” he says. “I understand. Yes, of course I will.”

  “And send Magali back in here!” Dominic calls after him. “And find a housemaid!” Assuming there are any females in this house who aren’t breeding, he mutters to me in communion.

  ***

  And then there was Inauguration Day at the ‘Graven Military Academy. The new cadets, all who have passed their probationary period, along with officers and men who have been promoted, are confirmed in their positions. It’s a jubilee, a joyous celebration, and nobody likes to miss it. When I wanted to go out on the first sunny day in two weeks, there wasn’t one male over the age of fifteen free to escort me. I decided that, with everyone at the ceremony, no one would know whether I was indoors or out or even in the city at all. “Come on,” I said to Katrina, “let’s take a stroll, just the two of us.”

  “My lady!” She was shocked, and delighted. “What will Margrave Aranyi say?”

  “Expressions no lady should use,” I said. “But he won’t know. We’ll be home again before he’s decided which cadets to deflower next term.”

  We spent a long, tiring morning wandering through the stalls in the market and following the wide streets leading from ‘Graven Fortress as they narrowed through residential neighborhoods. It was not the anonymous freedom of a city walk I remembered from my life on Terra. People recognized me. Not because they had ever met me, but because of my third eyelids and my gray wool cloak with the Aranyi cipher woven into the pattern, and because of my shape. It had been the hot topic of the season that Margrave Aranyi had married and that his bride was pregnant.

  Everywhere we went people stared and whispered, the braver ones asking if I needed help, and all trying to sell me something. They expected payment too, not like the shopkeepers in the town outside La Sapienza seminary. This was Eclipsia City, and ‘Graven must pay like the rest. Men eyed Katrina, made rude remarks; some even touched her, until I ended up walking with my dagger in my hand, much like a man prepared to draw his sword. I let the prism in the handle show above my clenched fist, ready to angle the sunlight into my eyes if necessary.

  Now that I had sinned so obviously, I refused to admit defeat. We were almost at the Terran Sector. Things would be better on the other side, where no one would know me in my new incarnation. What fun, I thought, to revisit the scenes of my first weeks here, before I met
Dominic and changed my life forever. How wonderful it would be to see from the outside, as ‘Gravina Aranyi, the cage that had so imprisoned me as Amelia Herzog. In the back of my mind was the suspicion that I had merely exchanged one cage for another, but I wouldn’t let the thought penetrate all the way through to my consciousness.

  I had forgotten the checkpoint. It’s like two countries side by side, the old Eclipsian residential city and seat of government, and the new Terran Sector for commerce and cultural exchange. Guards from both sides staff it, veteran Eclipsian officers who can be counted on to know who’s who, and young men and women in Terran uniforms learning to tell nobleman from commoner, trader from tourist, industrial spy from environmentalist. Terrans are rarely allowed across from their side, while Eclipsians are free to come and go, but we must check in when leaving and again when returning. Unlikely as it seems, it’s theoretically possible for a Katrina to go out and a Terran imposter to come back in her place.

  When we approached, the Terrans were all set to wave us through. Just another dowdy little Eclipsian, pregnant like most of them, despite having a full-grown daughter.

  What? I wondered, looking around. Who? They thought Katrina was my daughter, I discovered with shock and wounded pride.

  Amazing she isn’t barefoot, the female guard was thinking of me with scorn.

  I couldn’t resist. “My husband is very kind,” I said in Terran. “He lets me wear shoes on the cobblestones.” Her startled, involuntary glance to my boots and her shamefaced smile lifted my mood temporarily.

  The Eclipsian in charge was incredulous until he had registered the design on my cloak and seen my face, third eyelids protectively lowered and at full silver strength. “‘Gravina Aranyi!” He bowed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion, worried at so strange an occurrence, not knowing what to look for, but sure it was trouble. “Does Margrave Aranyi– Where are your guards?”

  “At the ‘Graven Military Academy, of course,” I said. “For Inauguration Day. How come you got stuck on duty?”

  “Bad luck,” he said, “and strong drink.” He attempted a fatherly smile. “Margrave Aranyi would have my head, and I’d hand it to him on a plate, if I let you through on your own.”

  He was certain I remembered him from somewhere. It’s the curse of ‘Graven: we’re so few, and easily recognizable, all the ungifted think we can tell them apart, can recall a face or a name seen or heard in a brief presentation, even years in the past. But the crypta helps. Dominic had taught me the officer’s trick of getting the name from their thoughts, letting them think we knew it all along. I attempted to escape my fate. “Honestly, Kojiro, I’m not alone. My maid, Katrina, is with me.”

  Kojiro looked at her, not yet seventeen, with the angelic face and perfect little figure of any heroine of ballad or romance. “Oh yes, ‘Gravina,” he said, rolling his eyes, “fine protection indeed. No bandit or street thug would dare to tangle with a dangerous one like her.” He winked at Katrina, pursed his lips to steal a kiss. “One glance from those big brown eyes and the toughest brigand would be your slave. I suppose you’re spoken for.”

  Katrina giggled but shook her head, not understanding the heavy-handed lowland humor. “No, I’m married.”

  Kojiro pretended to have been stabbed through the heart, clutching his chest and staggering. “A child like you! Have they no shame in the mountains?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Listen, Kojiro. If we go home now, can we dispense with the guards? You don’t want to leave the post unmanned.” We were speaking Eclipsian, so it was safe to add, “You know the Terrans aren’t much use in an emergency. They don’t even know who I am.”

  “Too true, my lady,” Kojiro said. “That’s the reason you need the escort.” He turned to the other Eclipsians, a boy of sixteen on punishment detail, and an old man of seventy filling in for the day. “Escort ‘Gravina Aranyi to her quarters. And not just to the entrance of ‘Graven Fortress. To the door of the Aranyi Suite. Is that clear?”

  ***

  Dominic rejoins me in my bathroom and runs hot water in the tub, filling the room with steam. He steps in, holding me at arm’s length when I start to follow. “No, it’s too hot for you. Let me get clean, then I’ll sponge you down if you like.”

  He washes quickly and towels off, helping me while I slowly remove every piece of clothing. “Whom have you been using for a maid?” he asks. “You mustn’t do without, not now.”

  “Katrina’s here sometimes,” I say, defensive, embarrassed to admit I have let so many people go on extended vacation. But I had felt guilty at our unannounced reappearance right at Midwinter, when the servants had been counting on freedom until spring. It’s worse in a way for those who live at Aranyi, like Magali and her husband, Harald, who had been enjoying the run of the castle with no master or mistress. “Magali helps me when she can, or one of her daughters.” She has two who are old enough to be of use, but neither one has Katrina’s deft gentleness that I have come to take for granted, and I rarely ask for them.

  Dominic shakes his head at my thoughts. “You are ‘Gravina Aranyi,” he says. “You must get used to that fact. It’s your prerogative to return to your home at any time and expect maid service. Of course you don’t want to be capricious or thoughtless, but by the balls of Erebos, Amalie! This close to your time! The poorest laborer’s wife wouldn’t be left to cope by herself.”

  He throws open the door leading to the Margrave’s bedroom and walks in. A housemaid has been found and she’s laying a large fire in the hearth. “Have someone bring more wood,” Dominic says to the startled girl who attempts a curtsy and goes red in the face at seeing the master naked. “We’ll need to keep it burning all night.”

  Magali is made of sterner stuff. She barely glances at Dominic but continues her work of laying sheet after sheet on the bed on top of the relatively clean ones already there. Every so often she intersperses a large towel.

  Dominic leads me out of the bathroom and Magali runs to help, each taking one of my arms and crossing their other arm behind my back. “I can walk,” I say, but only for form’s sake. I enjoy the support of their arms, the comfort of the bodies on either side. We have passed over, from the neutral territory of bathroom, to the significance of the Margrave’s bedroom. How many Aranyi women have taken this walk, I think, assuring the legitimacy of their children, bearing them in the bed where they had been conceived. Generations of Aranyis, begotten and born in this room, probably this very same bed. Even though this child has been conceived elsewhere, the tradition will be upheld with her birth.

  I wasn’t conceived here either, Dominic confides to me. He has gone into memories of his own, the transgenic mother singing to the little almost-human boy she had borne, telling him the facts of his conception and birth, stories he was too young to understand then, but recalls in adulthood, like dreams or visions. A chance meeting, the handsome, gifted ‘Graven lord out hunting, and the beautiful, alien creature, capable of both male and female manifestations, surprised near its home in the deep woods, changing abruptly, violently, into its female form at the sudden sexual attraction. The man and the “woman” have rendezvous in the woods, or on the Aranyi grounds, formalized eventually into marriage when she proves to be fertile.

  And I wasn’t born here, Dominic says. My mother preferred to be outdoors for her ordeal.

  Another contraction hits and I go rigid, then limp, leaning back against the crossed arms.

  Dominic stiffens with me in the communion. “Breathe like this,” he says, demonstrating, panting in funny little bursts. I have seen it so many times, in the hologram shows. Every time there’s a birth scene they always show this breathing. I laugh until the pain starts up again. “It’s true all the same,” Dominic says, resenting the reference to the Terran entertainment. “It helps.”

  He helps, more than anything. Each contraction, he suffers it for me. He can’t really take it all; communion cannot make pain disappear, or lessen it. But by sharing it, undergoing it with me, it s
eems as if I need bear only half. I curse as for a minor ache or mishap, gritting my teeth, sweating and trying to breathe as Dominic has shown me. It is the worst agony I have ever known, but I tell myself I am getting only half of it, that it is manageable because I don’t have to experience the full amount.

  I can do this, I think, surprised. I smile into Dominic’s pain-wracked, grimacing face. Communion has given me strength and confidence. My love, I say, I can do it.

  ***

  It would have been all right if Dominic had not decided to inquire, at the end of the shift at the checkpoint, if anything he should know about had happened during the inauguration. With the most trustworthy guards occupied elsewhere, it was a prime opportunity for trouble, and Dominic is always thorough.

  I sensed his anger all the way across town, felt it drawing near as he returned to ‘Graven Fortress and stalked toward the ‘Graven family suites, outpacing the other officers, telling them to go on ahead, he would meet up with them later, he had some urgent business at home.

  I wasn’t going to start being afraid of him, I decided. When he banged open the front door I was ready for him, my dagger unsheathed and in my hand.

  “Put that away,” Dominic said. “And go to your room. What I have to say is not fit to say in front of the servants.”

  “But it’s fit to say to me?” I went for sarcasm, to cover my nervousness.

  He touched his own dagger, remembered my condition, and thought better of it. “In your room, Amalie. Now.” I had been prepared for hot anger, not this cold, hard shutting out, a wall in the mind.

  When I didn’t obey, he took my arm, pushed and pulled me into my room and slammed the door behind us, making my ears pop. “You went out, all the way to the checkpoint, with no escort apart from a pregnant girl who’s a walking invitation to every man with a working dick. You’re not stupid, Amalie, and our communion has functioned adequately until now. And I know you understand the Eclipsian language. So I can only assume you have a death wish.”