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THE INTERIOR OF THE roundhouse was ripe with yeast and lavender and the faintest undertones of sweat and blood. Emme had brought out a bottle of scriv-wine and two small, delicate green glasses. Tabeth remembered them—the set had once had six glasses but time and children had reduced them to these last two. Emme had poured them each a few fingers of the strong wine and they sipped slowly. Prue’s breathing rattled into coughs every now and then, but except for the coughing and the thump of dough against wood, and the clop of moths bumbling into the windows to reach the fatcandle light, the front room of the roundhouse was silent, draped in sleep.
“I’m not fond of you making plans for me,” Tabeth said as she pounded the dough, stretched it. It was a familiar task, calming. The wine helped too, took the edge off her anger.
“And yet I did,” Emme said. “It’s all right to let people help you every now and then, rat.”
“I know that.” It was deep into the night, and Tabeth was back from saying her goodbyes to Inna and her daughters, and gathering the few things she needed. Now she and Emme sat at the kitchen table in the roundhouse, the only ones still awake, preparing for the next morning’s journey. Leorn and Prue were sharing the cot nearby, their snores tangled together. Tabeth had looked in on Gil and Ade soon as she’d come back. Gil was on Leorn’s narrow bed, and Ade on a rolled-out mattress on the floor. She didn’t think those arrangements would stay that way long, not with the way Gil was doing his best at acting like a love-struck girl in one of the street-operas, and Ade was slowly realising there was more to living than hanging on his dam’s every word. She wasn’t bitter, just annoyed because she couldn’t thunk their heads together and get this idiot courtship over with.
And Gil was going to make things unpleasant. He’d been fine when he was nothing more than Vinnia’s little card-sharp artist rake, when he was just a piece to use, but now he was getting himself all dug into her business whether he knew it or not. She pushed the dough she’d been kneading away from her. “It won’t have time to rise,” she snapped. “I don’t even know why we’re bothering.”
“We’re bothering, because it will have time to rise, and I will wake in time to bake it. Stop jumping about like a spring cricket and settle down.”
She’d watched the boys for a while. Ade was worrying her—half there the one minute, and half-gone the next. Asleep though, all of that was wiped away. He just looked like any man. Only the silver crawl of the mark across his cheek to make him stand out. That and the short flick of his hair, the faint rasp of spark, almost not-there. Gil, on the other hand.... Even in the dull green-grey of the night and moon light, he had looked terrible. His hands were mittened with gauze and his face a mess of bruising and split skin. The face would heal, maybe leave him a rake’s scar or two, but—
“Gil’s hands are fucked.” Watching him eat warm porridge with butter for their last supper at Emme’s roundhouse had been painful. The cards had been bad enough, but that she could pretend took dexterity no one could expect right after having their hands smashed up with a Sharif’s truncheon, but sitting and doing nothing while the stupid Lammer had spilled porridge all down his front because he couldn’t hold a spoon had been...frightening.
People in the Stilts and Swartmarch were losing their homes and maybe their lives, and the thing that bothered her most was some idiot Lammer’s hands? She was losing her mind. “Fucked,” she repeated. “And you’ll have him picking oranges.”
Emme pressed her hands to her temples, elbows leaned against the table. “They are ruined, yes.”
“He’s a card-sharp,” Tabeth told her.
“Not any more, he’s not.”
“And what the fuck am I supposed to do about that? Take him in and spoon feed him?”
“Do you feel guilty?”
“No,” Tabeth snapped. “Of course not. No one forced him to throw his cap in with us in the first place.” Not forced, not exactly. Persuaded, maybe, made him think it was all a bit of a lark.
“He’s pretty enough,” Emme said slowly. “There are always things for a pretty boy to do in Pelimburg. The bats will take him, if nothing else.”
There was a thought. Tabeth didn’t care much for the bats, but they kept to themselves and at the least they paid the ones they fed on. Good coin, if badly earned. There were a few women in the towerhouse who made their way every now and again to the three houses on the hill side, and came back in the morning; hands full of brass, blood on their neck scarves, their eyes flooded with dreams. Never got much sense out of them once they started, but it was no worse than scriv. And no one paid you to take scriv. “It’s addictive.”
“It’s a life.”
“Not much of one, I’ve seen the ones who end up with them, playing food for the vampire houses. They live, but they’re not alive. Just waiting for the next party, the next bite.”
“The bats pay well.”
Tabeth pushed herself away from the table with a snort. “That they do. High-class prostitution, that’s all it is.”
“A comfortable enough trade.”
“Fuck. You’re right. It’s not like I don’t have some tower people who make money that way.” Tabeth put her head on her crossed arms. “It might not come to that, anywise. His hands could heal fine, or we could discover he has some otherwise unmentioned trade, Ade could decide they’re mad in love and go marry him and whisk him away to a grand life delivering babies and sucking the magic out of their heads.”
“And what about your own?”
“He wouldn’t fucking dare. I’ve the measure of young Ade, and truth is I don’t think he’s going to cut it as an Onnery. Their time’s over. She should have killed him. Smothered the boy when he was born. I guess the old bitch is sentimental after all.”
“And in that, I suppose you share a common streak.”
Tabeth peered at Emme without raising her head. “I’ll ask you to keep the insults to yourself, Em.”
“Insults, heh.” Emme pushed the loaves to one side and covered them to let them rise. “There’s nothing more that needs doing now. Come wash your face and hands and try get some sleep.”
“In here?” Tabeth went to the single small couch, with its torn and patched upholstery and the knitted multi-coloured throw. It was as good a bed as any, and she was used enough to sleeping anywhere she could. These past few days had been rather like going back in time, to a world where she was not safe in her own rooms, with her women and packs around her, the towerhouse creaking comfort in the sea wind.
“You can take the couch, if you like, but my bed’s wide enough for both of us. And I don’t snore. Or at least, not as much as those little beasts.” Emme ducked her head in the direction of the two sleeping children, who were in fact snoring, though not loudly. Not enough to keep anyone awake. There was another offer there unspoken, one that ran under the simple one of a pillow and a blanket and a firm mattress.
Tabeth hesitated, glanced back at the couch, then nodded quickly, and opened the door to Emme’s room.
It was much as it had been all those years ago, the same paintings on the curving walls, the same bed—wider than a single cot, but not by much. Even the coverlet was familiar, though there were new touches: a blanket in azure wool, some children’s simple clay toys, made by small and inexpert fingers—gifts, probably. But the room still smelled like Emme and lavender and wax.
She washed quickly, pouring ice-cold water from the pitcher into the glazed clay bowl. This too was familiar, and Tabeth ran one finger along the darkened rim.
“You could have lit a fatcandle,” Emme said, and closed the door.
“I like the moonlight best, and I can see well enough.”
“Always did have good night-vision, didn’t you?” Emme bustled about, stripping the blankets open giving her sheet a quick shake. She joined Tabeth by the water bowl and rinsed the last traces of flour from her hands. “I’ve a sleep-shift you can have. It doesn’t exactly fit me these days.”
The two women stripped and dressed into clean sleep shifts, Tabeth feeling strange and younger, wearing Emme’s old clothes, the fit comfortable and comforting, like being enveloped in a moment’s temporary embrace. Memory and warmth. “I forgot how cold it got here nights, even in summer.”
“It’s not summer proper yet, rat. You’re forgetting nights where it was so hot you had to sleep on top of the covers wearing nothing respectable.”
Tabeth lay still as Emme got in next to her. It was suffocating, a good suffocation—a dream of drowning in warmth. She’d convinced herself she needed to leave MallenIve, all those years ago. She couldn’t even remember why her need had been so fierce. She’d been eighteen, true, and fiery with spark and wanderlust and the need to prove herself her own person. It all seemed so far away now. Everything was different, the world turning and making its own plans. Tabeth shifted, her hand resting alongside Emme’s soft belly, thicker now than it had been eight or nine years ago. “What happened to their father?” she asked.
“Fathers,” said Emme. “They’re around, living their own lives. Grinningtommys never take husbands.”
Tabeth vaguely recalled that. It was, like all Hob names, a lineage of women, but one that didn’t even bother with tying itself to male family. And the lineage was more than one in name when Emme had the voices of her female ancestors in her blood.
“Does she speak to you?” Tabeth asked, whisper soft. “Your mother?”
After a long moment had passed, Emme sighed. “No.”
“No?” But the previous Grinningtommy was gone, passed on to her Long Sleep, her voice should have joined the others, been a guide for Emme. Tabeth pushed herself up on one arm so she could look at Emme’s face. “But, that—”
“I know.” Emme was staring up at the ceiling. “I know. Things are changing, faster than I could have imagined. There was you, grown up despite everything, and Ade who shouldn’t exist, and now, though no one but me knows—” She smiled briefly, a flick of shared truth. “—and you, the voices of the Grinningtommys are ending. They grow softer one by one, and soon there will be only silence.”
“That can’t be— What’s going to happen?”
“Oh, Tabeth, I’ve never seen the future—only a thousand pasts, old women’s memories.” She shifted her head to look straight at Tabeth. “That’s all it’s ever been and now even that is over.”
Tabeth leaned in and kissed Emme. The touch was soft, gently hesitant, and Emme wasted no time in responding with equal tenderness. It was a different motion, a sweep of sweetness and heat. Nothing like the awkward, eager-hateful nervousness of Ade, clumsy as a puppy. Emme had always known how to kiss her.
They turned together, pushing shifts up from thighs and breasts, fingers skimming skin and Tabeth sighed at the first brush of Emme’s mouth, warm and wet against a nipple, the gentle bite. She ran her palms down Emme’s side, up against the belly softened and wrinkled slightly by pregnancy, though she could feel the muscles beneath firm from constant work. Heat radiated, pulsed from her groin, and there was answering slipperiness against her thighs. The women shifted, finding a comfortable position, taking turns to kiss each other, to suckle and slide their fingers against soft wet folds. Emme’s breasts still leaked milk, and Tabeth let the sweetness fill her mouth.
The warmth rose in steady pulsing waves, a slow build of tingling crushing heat that started at her groin but sent thin wires of pleasure to every extremity, to nipples and arms, and shooting along her scalp, under her soles. She could hear them both, panting and moaning softly against each other, and the bubble rose, filling her chest with a sharp sob.
Later, far later, she woke cradled back to belly against Emme, the sound of cockcrow and rattle of the nightsoil man’s handcart. “Do you think the queens did this, with their Grinningtommys, back before the Lammers?” Tabeth asked dreamily.
“I don’t need to think, I know.” Emme moved away, leaving a cold space at Tabeth’s back. “Sleep, love, I’m just going to start the fires.”
“You’re coming back?” Tabeth mumbled. The dawn was not yet there, the sky translucent pale, as though readying itself for the sun. It felt like dreaming, still.
“For a while, yes.”
Tabeth turned into the empty spot, soaking up the warmth where Emme had been. She was waking, like it or not, and waking meant leaving. Meant spending who knew how much time with Ade and Gil, reminders that she had twisted and used them both. Ade with his confusion and broken spark, and Gil with his smashed fingers, his bruises and welts. It was worth it, that’s what she told herself. She laced her fingers over her belly. How did one know—did women feel it when the get took, when life started.
Some women at the towerhouse said they’d known almost as soon as their man had left them that this was the one, the moment where life brightened and bloomed. Others said they’d not even known for months, just thinking their bleedings had gone thin, their bellies rounding from better food. Tabeth sighed in irritation. She’d be one of those, she could tell. It would suit the universe for her to spend the next few months never sure if she’d taken. She smoothed one hand across her belly. No way of knowing. Some girl took from just one quick fumble in the dark, and others stayed barren.
Wouldn’t that be a perfect irony? Tabeth snorted. No, the Casabi wanted this, because it was time for the world to change. And Tabeth was going to be the stone that struck it off to a new course.
The door clicked, and Emme’s shadow moved across the room.
“Emme?”
“Hmmm?”
“I’m thinking...may be that you should cut my hair, just to be safe.”
“No.”
Tabeth sat up. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what’s coming for you, but I’m also not a fool. Whether you’re wanting to admit it or not, the spark is weaker.”
Tabeth said nothing, allowing Emme to continue talking.
“You pulled down half the bloody Sharif building, and you’ve done more besides. We’re not like the ones that came before, and perhaps that was your great grand magic, the thing you were meant to do. You’ve less left than you’d like, than I’d like. Keep what you have, don’t take chances.”
“I won’t.” Not with spark, and not with sparking the baby. She’d have to convince Ade to another night, or another, and keep it out from under Gil’s nose. Tabeth gritted her teeth. Bloody Gil, he was turning into more of a burden and a worry than she’d ever wanted. She’d thought if anyone was going to keep her sleepless, it was going to be addle-headed Ade, but it seemed that he was the least of her worries.