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<h3 class="chapter-heading" id="c044"><a class="heading" href="contents.html#c044">CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN</a></h3>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent">We remade Mambura, that winter. As he grew, so did Zemiya’s baby. I remember these things as if they had been one: a single act of creation, horrifying and exhilarating. The long bones of Mambura’s fingers, bare, then wreathed in dark skin. Zemiya’s dark fingers kneading her sides, finding other bones, beneath. Mambura’s skull on the mirror room floor, fashioned from nothing; the curves of it, chin and cheekbones, brows and eye sockets. Zemiya’s belly, round and high. Her face and breasts fuller too; Mambura’s wet red muscles thickening with fat and flesh.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">It took us five months. We were slow and careful, and we used every Otherseeing tool we could, because Teldaru said this would make the hero stronger. Each tool made his Otherworld look different: the sky lighter and smaller when we used wax on water; the hills dim and further away when we used grain. Though when Uja stepped through the grain—when our blood spattered the marks she left with her tail feathers and talons—the Pattern was almost unbearably vivid: the colours, the yielding ground, the sharpened edges of lattice and roads.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The only thing we did not use was the mirror. “Wait,” Teldaru told me, as he had so many times before. “It will be last.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Selera lay in my old bed. She wore a silk gown—green, of course, which matched her eyes, beneath their blind white film. My own eyes were black.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">I did not notice this until Teldaru took my face between his hands one night and said, “Your eyes are fully Other; you are the Pattern’s now.” I leaned close to the hall mirror, before we left the house, and saw that he was right. As I met my own gaze I thought of Yigranzi and Chenn and then Bardrem, and I was glad when Teldaru drew me away.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Selera in my bed and Laedon in the chair beside it; the Flamebird of Belakao taking shape on the floor by the mirror. And Zemiya—<em class="calibre3">moabe</em>, queen, island witch—swelling with the child who would change everything.</p>
<div class="calibre1"><p class="center"><img class="sgc" src="dingbats.jpg" alt="break"/></p></div>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent">“An Otherseer must attend you when the babe is born.” Haldrin was holding one of her hands in both of his, and yet she seemed to be far away from him. She was sitting, looking out the window of the library. Her orange dress was loose around her legs and feet but taut over her belly, where her other hand lay.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“No,” she said.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Teldaru, who was standing beside me, sighed. Her eyes did not move from the snow, which danced and drifted in the partly shuttered window.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“It is our custom,” said the king.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“You mean Lord Derris wishes it.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Haldrin glanced at us. “Yes—of course—but it is more than that. An Otherseer must be present at a royal birth—to witness, and to say the words of welcome. It is right.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent"><span>Zemiya turned her head fully toward the window. All Teldaru and I could see was the back of her head: the tiny braids, the tiny shells. Haldrin could see more.</span></p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“I want my sister.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">I thought her voice had trembled. I wondered if there were tears—or maybe I just wanted them.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“You cannot have your sister, <em class="calibre3">moabene</em>.” He was quiet, for a moment; then he squeezed her hand, said, “Nola would be good company.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“No.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Teldaru, then. It must be one of them.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Zemiya turned her head. She looked from me to Teldaru. There were no tears.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Her, then,” she said. She spoke to Haldrin but was still looking at Teldaru. The hand on her belly was splayed and clenched, both. I wondered how it felt: the baby, twisting and grinding within her. I thought of silver roads wrenching at my blood and breath, and I wondered.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Mistress Nola,” the king said. He smiled at me as he always had, because he had never understood. “Will you do this for us? Will you see our baby born, and welcome him?”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">I bowed my chin to my chest. “Thank you both,” I said. “I will.”</p>
<div class="calibre1"><p class="center"><img class="sgc" src="dingbats.jpg" alt="break"/></p></div>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent">Haldrin summoned us again the morning after we finished Mambura.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent"><span>We had used the mirror, at last. Stood at the edge of it, our eyes leaping from the man-thing on the floor to the gold, and the blood that clung to it. The Otherworld rose around me like golden rain, falling up, pulling me down and away. Hills and sky were shadows behind blinding white; the snake-Paths were still black, but even darker than that. They breathed smoke, and Teldaru drew my hands into it so that it rose higher. It was cold at first, but it warmed as it flowed through our fingers, and very soon it was scalding. I cried out, and as I did the smoke turned from grey to silver and fastened itself to the roads. They shuddered, and they were silver too, and my veins coursed life into them, sending them out and out to where the white sky was deepening to red.</span></p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Mambura blinked his black eyes. His burnished chest—which was so dark that I could only see the purple blotches on it when I moved—rose and fell. His head was hairless and smooth. His arms and legs lay still. They were bunched with muscle; I expected them to flex and bend, to carry him up into a crouch or a spring.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“He is magnificent,” said Teldaru. I moaned, deep in my throat. I was too weary to speak. My own muscles were water.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">A few hours later I was sleeping so soundly that Leylen had to shake me awake. I flailed at her, saw her duck away from my fists before I realized that they were mine. My eyes swam with purple spots, like the ones on Mambura’s body.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Mistress,” she said breathlessly. “The king is asking for you.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Teldaru was already sitting at the library table when I arrived. Lord Derris was there as well—and Zemiya, looking out at the seers’ courtyard again but standing, this time. Haldrin was hunched over in his chair, his elbows on the tabletop, his forehead in his laced-together fingers.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“There has been another incident,” he said when the door had shut behind me. He did not look up. “A Belakaoan merchant has been murdered by another merchant. A Sarsenayan—his neighbour. I need counsel from all of you before I decide what must be done.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Obviously we must punish the murderer,” Lord Derris said. “We must prove to King Bantayo that we do not condone such actions, no matter what the provocation may have been.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“In that case,” Teldaru said, “the murderer too must die.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Lord Derris’ eyes went wide. “No! Master Teldaru, that would be too much. Only the murderers of noblemen are put to death. Our people would be angry; there would only be more bloodshed.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Teldaru and Haldrin were gazing at each other. “Perhaps,” the king said slowly. “But it would be more dangerous to anger Bantayo. He is already threatening to break our alliance. If we act swiftly now, he may be reassured. Zemiya, tell us—what will he think?”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">For a moment she did not move. I could see her face, this time; she was looking at the trees, but her eyes were half-lidded, as if she were trying not to fall asleep. Her hands were pressed against her belly.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">She licked her top lip. “It will not matter what you do. He hates Sarsenay now. Even if he forgets why, this will not change.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">She closed her eyes and leaned into the windowsill with one hip. She bent forward. Her fingers went pale as they tightened.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“My Queen,” I said, and took a step toward her. I was dizzy—awake but not fully; moving through space smudged with crimson and black.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Zemiya turned her head and looked at me. The others were on their feet, coming up behind me, but I saw only the gleaming whites of her eyes and teeth.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Are they pains?” I heard Haldrin say. “How long have you been having them?”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“All night,” she said. Her breath caught, and the words trembled. Her eyes did not leave mine. “And now it is time.”</p>
<div class="calibre1"><p class="center"><img class="sgc" src="dingbats.jpg" alt="break"/></p></div>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent">She did not make any sounds at first. No cries or screams, anyway, which I had heard so often from the brothel girls, and even (if I allowed myself to remember) from my own mother. Zemiya did moan, when the pains had her, and her breath was deep and ragged-edged between them, but otherwise she was quiet. </p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“It will be an easy birth,” the midwife whispered to me while the queen moaned. She was squatting in her bathtub, her arms rigid along its lip. Jamenda was pouring more warm water in. The girl’s eyes darted from me to the midwife, who lowered her voice further. “Yes—easy, because island women are made for birthing.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent"><em class="calibre3">The midwife is too young to know this</em>, I thought. <em class="calibre3">How many Belakaoan births can she have attended? How can she sound so certain, </em>be<em class="calibre3"> so certain, as she puts her hands into the water and kneads at Zemiya’s belly?</em></p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">And yet she was right. Only a few hours after the queen had left the library she finally cried out—a high, unwavering sound that brought the king to the doorway and the midwife back to the side of the tub.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Out you get, now,” the midwife said to Zemiya as her cry turned into a low, guttural grunt. “The baby’s coming.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The queen raised her head. Her eyes were as black as if she had been Otherseeing. I wanted to push past Haldrin and run, but the Pattern I longed to flee held me there.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“I know,” said Zemiya. “And I am staying. Here. This place has no tides, no currents . . . no waves. But my child will be born in water.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">She closed her eyes. Lowered her head back down against the tub’s rim and groaned again, again, pausing only to take breaths that drew her whole body up.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“My king,” Lord Derris called from the other room. “Come away—leave them.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“No.” The word was loud, but it shook. I saw the king’s shadow leaping on the wall where all the other shadows were—the fish bones and crab shells and seaweed—but I did not look over my shoulder at him.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Zemiya threw her head back and gave a yell that became a laugh. The midwife’s hands and arms were in the water; she pulled them out, and she was holding a small, limp, dripping thing. She grasped it in one hand by its ankles, and with her other hand reached for the length of ribbon she had set beside the tub hours ago. I moved forward to help, but the midwife was already looping it around the cord that joined the baby to Zemiya. The midwife grasped at the ribbon with her teeth and fingers and suddenly it was a knot, cinched tight around fleshy stuff that pulsed and then did not. She took hold of the knife that had been next to the ribbon—a little knife, just a sliver of blade. She sawed at the cord until it separated with a gout of dark blood. Zemiya was still laughing, softly now. The whites of her eyes were webbed with red.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The baby was a girl. When I saw this I felt a rush of relief, thought, <em class="calibre3">Of course that dream I told the queen of was false; that child was a boy.</em> But my relief ebbed as I looked at <em class="calibre3">this</em> child. She seemed to have no bones. She only moved because the midwife was rubbing her with a piece of cloth (soft and thick and white; it came away yellowish-green). The midwife stopped and leaned close to the baby. She swept her finger inside the tiny mouth, pressed gently on the chest, puffed breath between the parted lips. The baby lay splayed and glistening and still did not move.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Moments passed. Haldrin was next to the tub. His hands were on Zemiya’s shoulders because she was clawing at the metal, trying to rise. She was sobbing words that I did not understand; Jamenda, behind them all, was speaking the same ones. Zemiya sagged back into the water when the midwife folded the cloth over the baby’s face.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Give her to me,” the queen said, as firmly as if she had never been sobbing.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“My Queen,” the midwife began, and Haldrin said her name, but Zemiya snarled, “<em class="calibre3">Give her to me now</em>,” and the midwife did. The baby was a formless bundle until Zemiya unwrapped her and tossed the cloth on the floor. She held her just above the water. All I could see was the head, with its wet black hair, and two curled hands that rested on Zemiya’s breasts.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Leave me,” the queen said.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“No.” The midwife was twisting her hands in her dress, just as Jamenda might have. “There is still the afterbirth; I must attend you until it comes.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Zemiya cupped her hand over the baby’s head as if she did not want her to overhear. “I will take care of myself. You have been here long enough.” She looked at everyone in turn. “All of you—leave me.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The midwife backed out of the room. The king hesitated by the tub, one hand hovering, as if he could not decide where to put it. He did not notice me when I knelt on the wet floor near him. The queen did not notice me. I picked up the knife. I watched the king’s face, as I did; saw his lips making silent words.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Go, love,” Zemiya said.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Haldrin whirled and walked into the other room and Jamenda went after him.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">I pierced the tip of my own forefinger.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“You.” The queen sounded weary, disgusted, but I rose up on my knees and leaned close to her.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“<em class="calibre3">Moabe</em>. Please give me your baby.” </p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Another laugh, this one incredulous.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“My Queen, please. I must look at her—just for a moment, and then I’ll give her back to you.” Zemiya did not move. “The Patt—<em class="calibre3">isparra</em> will show me more than anyone else could see. Your sister would know this. You know it.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">Zemiya’s hands came up out of the water. They supported the baby’s head and bottom, but the rest of her hung.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">I took the body. It was slippery and smooth and warm, but only from the water. I arranged it on the cloth and crouched over it so that Zemiya could not see. I watched a thread of blood ooze from the stump of the cord that was attached to the baby’s navel. A thin thread, barely pink, but it would be enough. I touched the baby’s palms, which were lying open on either side of her head. I gazed at the bloody smudges my fingertip left on the pale, creased skin. I gazed at the rows of ribs that jutted in the swell of chest.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent"><em class="calibre3">Princess</em>, I thought, <em class="calibre3">we must be quick—</em>and then the room melted around me<em class="calibre3">.</em></p>
<div class="calibre1"><p class="center"><img class="sgc" src="dingbats.jpg" alt="break"/></p></div>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent"><em class="calibre3">Her Otherworld is small and dim. Not dark or glaringly white, like the dead places I have already been. Just vague, shrouded in red mist that parts every time I breathe, so that I can see the little hills and the low, curved sky. I feel the seeping of my blood, and hers too, and I watch it eddy in the air before me. Two streams, mine and hers; I reach for them and fill myself with metal and wind and I breathe and weave until the mist blows away completely and the bones of the hills are covered with green.</em></p>
<p class="chizine-body-no-indent">I opened my eyes. I was kneeling exactly as I had been.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Mistress Nola.” The midwife’s voice; her shadow looming, and Haldrin’s behind her. I blinked at them. I looked down and blinked at the blur that was the baby.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“There is no point, Mistress—nothing can be done. Here, now. Let me take the child. And my Queen, I see that the afterbirth has come; I’ll—”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The baby gurgled. Perhaps the sound was from her stomach, or perhaps her lungs, but all that mattered was that it was loud enough to silence the midwife and stop everyone moving. Everyone except Zemiya, who pulled herself out of the tub in a surge of water and fell to her knees beside me.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">My vision was already nearly clear. I saw the rise and fall of the baby’s chest. I saw the thick milky froth that poured from her mouth and nose. I saw my fingers wiping at the liquid and then resting on the lips, which twitched and pursed.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Pattern protect us,” hissed the midwife.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">The baby’s eyes opened. They were smoky grey beneath a translucent layer of white. They blinked back at me, even though I knew they could not see me.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“What have you done?” Zemiya murmured. I might have been the only one who heard her. I did not look at her, or at Teldaru when he called my name from the doorway. I did not look at the king, who was kneeling too, and sobbing.</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent">“Welcome to your place,” I said, steady and strong, as the baby began to cry. “Welcome to the Path that is yours.”</p>
<p class="chizine-body-indent"><em class="calibre3">Only it is not yours</em>, I thought. <em class="calibre3">You were dead and I remade you, and the only Path you have now is mine.</em></p>
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