Thirty-Eight The Midwife

THIRTY-EIGHT

The Midwife

SAMUEL

I did not die of blood loss in the hour that Grant and I spent staggering out of the hills, though the impling's claws had turned my forearm to ribbons. Grant, demonstrating an admiral resourcefulness, charmed a wide-eyed midwife into stitching me back together in a little house set high on stilts outside one of the villages that clung to the bay.

"Ostchen is the safest city in the north, they say," the woman said once Grant had finished his dramatic recitation of how he and I, visitors from the Mereish South Isles, had encountered the ravening impling while searching for a view of the sea. "But so many creatures come here. They say that is because of us , that we are not careful enough to mark our lintels and ward our gardens."

At this, she gestured flippantly to a symbol carved into the wood of her fireplace. The same one stood over the windows and the door, along with pinned sprigs of what looked like holly.

"But we do. Still, the creatures come. I say…" She tugged the thread still embedded in my flesh, making me wince. Grant, sitting next to me on a narrow settle, leaned forward to meet her, conspiratorially. She happened to be rather pretty and only a few years our senior. "It is because of the ships. So many ghistings and mages. Things from the Other—they seek what is like them, do they not?"

"Is this a new occurrence?" I asked, grateful for the distraction. The sight of her curved needle approaching my splayed flesh again did not help. I looked pointedly past her shoulder to a hanging on the white-painted wall embroidered with Mereish words and a fawn in a meadow.

Around the edges of my vision, the Other still blurred like tears.

The woman nodded. "Yes, this season, since the ships began to return. They say tonight will be the worst for the beasts, as it is the first Black Tide. Not to mention the flooding."

Her words were delivered lightly, but I was deeply affected. Somewhere on the road, I had lost track of the day. Hastily, I ran back the nights in my head and reached inevitable agreement.

Tonight was the first Black Tide, second only to its successor, next month, when all four moons of the Other and the human world united in darkness.

Perhaps, then, the vestiges of the Other lingering around my vision were not wholly due to my corruption or Hae's summoning.

Perhaps.

"Which ships returned?" Grant asked. "The fleet?"

Another nod, though this one was more uncertain. "I have never seen such a thing. Over one hundred warships, the whores say. They row out, every night." She gave a wry smile. "I will have much work this winter."

The entirety of the Mereish Fleet was suspected to be some three hundred warships, spread between the North Isles, the Mereish mainland and the Southern Isles. But there should have been no more than two dozen active vessels in the vicinity of Ostchen at one time, a small percentage stationed while the rest came and went.

If there were a hundred warships near Ostchen, in addition to the other vessels in the harbor, no wonder the lights in the Other were so blinding.

"Done," the midwife said, clipping her last stitch and winding a clean bandage around my arm. She tied it off and patted my knee maternally, then sat back and held out a hand. "Three dettes."

Grant paid her and we left. As the scent of the sea and the prickle of fog replaced the woodsmoke and herb aroma of the house, I nodded Grant back towards the bridge that led to the mainland, though I was too slow to take the lead, lightheaded and still feeling drained.

The tide had swept back to reveal acres of tidal mud, piles of refuse and boulders and posts clung about with sea fauna and mussels.

"We may not have time to find Hart ," I said. Our boots echoed too loudly on the bridge, wide enough for a cart but with more than a few rotting boards and a rail white with gull droppings. The responsible birds spun overhead, shrieking as the sun neared the western horizon and the sky began to blossom with pink and orange. "Our escaping with word of that fleet is now paramount. The Mereish must be on the cusp of invasion, and with their new magecrafts? We are helpless."

Grant paused to let a man and his clutch of children pass. A trail of day laborers came behind them, grimy and chatting away in a dialect so thick I hardly understood.

"What do we do, then?" Grant asked. "If we cannot find Hart … We need a ship."

"We take one." I rubbed the back of my neck with my good hand. "Damn, circumstances could not be worse. Though the darkness of the first Black Tide will certainly be an advantage, if we time our escape properly. Otherwise, we may be stranded longer."

We joined the main road heading back into Ostchen, going against the flow of workers and shoppers returning home. A few curious glances came our way, but the closer we came to the jumbled rise of buildings, docks and little islands, the more ignored we were. I began to note figures in the dark everywhere I looked, down beneath stilt houses and docks. Scavengers, recovering what they could and tapping mussels off the supports of their homes.

"It could get better," Grant pointed out with a wry grin. "There are so many ways it could get better."

A chittering snapped my gaze to the shadows between two barrels, where an impling crouched. Not the one with the collar, but the juvenile I had sent to look for Hart .

Hastily I beckoned Grant off the road and behind the barrels. The impling vanished and reappeared, thin talons clacking, and looked up at me with a disturbingly earnest face.

"I have found the stag." The creature's voice was high and frail, somehow both branches scraping in a high wind and the hiss of water through a cracked hull.

Grant made an undignified, choking sound. "It speaks ?"

I spared him a glance. "Apparently so." I crouched slowly in front of the diminutive monster. "Where is the ship?"

The creature blinked its small, burnt-orange eyes and pointed north. "With the ships."

"Can it be more specific?" Grant asked.

The impling's tiny gaze moved to him and narrowed even further.

Hope ignited in me like oil-soaked tinder. "Please lead us there, but discreetly. Can you do that?"

It nodded eagerly and flickered half out of sight. When it spoke again, its voice was the hushed rasp of sand, falling through open fingers.

"This way."