The Daylight War (60 page)

Alone in her room, Leesha wept.

She did not fully understand the demon dice, their secrets of foretelling closely guarded by the
dama’ting
. The Evejah spoke of a ward of prophecy, but it was not shown, and Leesha did not think she would ever persuade a Bride of Everam to willingly let her examine a set.

But from what she gathered, the dice did not provide specific predictions, only facts that hinted at what the future might hold. Odds were Amanvah had not guessed the poison Leesha had given the
Sharum
, and its cure was tricky and time-consuming to prepare. Given the speed with which the warrior left, Leesha doubted she had done anything to aid him. In a day, he would weaken. In two, he would be dead.

There had been no choice. She didn’t know how Ahmann would take the news she meant to militarize the Hollow as a bulwark against him. She couldn’t keep it from him forever, but she needed time. Time to warn the Laktonians and Duchess Araine. Time to fill the Hollow and prepare, both for the coming Waning and for Sharak Sun. But that made her feel no less wretched as she crawled into bed, throwing the coverlet over her head.

For the first time, Leesha wished she’d never gone to Everam’s Bounty. Night, she wished she had never left Cutter’s Hollow, never gone to Hag Bruna’s hut and learned Herb Gathering. She’d have been a wonderful papermaker, and it would have made her father so happy.

But much as she would have liked to shift the blame, Leesha knew that was too easy, and a lie.

‘Why must I learn poison?’ she had asked, all those years ago.

‘So you can cure it, girl,’ Bruna told her. ‘Learning the mixtures and signs won’t turn you into some stinkhearted Weed Gatherer.’

‘Weed Gatherer?’ Leesha asked.

Bruna spat. ‘Failed Herb Gatherers. They sell weak cures and poison the enemies of nobles for coin.’

Leesha was aghast. ‘Women actually do that?’

Bruna grunted. ‘Not everyone is as sweet and moral as you, dearie. I had one of my own apprentices turn that way. Corespawn me if I let it happen again, but you need to know what you’re up against.’

I’m up against myself
, Leesha thought.
Killing
men
for
my
convenience. Am I any better than a Weed Gatherer?

She sobbed again, her body racked until exhaustion took her and she passed into slumber. Even there she found no peace, her dreams haunted with violence. Inevera, turning purple under her choking hands. Ahmann, standing by as his warriors killed Rizonan men and raped the women. Gared, his throat slashed by the blade of Abban’s crutch. Rojer, strangled in his bed by his own wives. Kaval, beating Wonda to death and calling it ‘training’. The Cutters and
Sharum
locked in a bloody storm of spear and axe as Arlen and Ahmann pointed them at each other.

A lone
Sharum
, dead on the road.

She woke with a start, her stomach roiling, and practically fell from bed in her desperation to get the chamber pot. It sloshed as she dragged it from under the bed, but she was not fast enough even so, and vomit mixed with last night’s urine on the floorboards. She knelt there, shuddering and retching, tears streaming down her face. Her eye socket ached, and she knew another cluster of headaches was on its way.

Oh, Bruna, what have I become?

There was a knock at the door, and Leesha froze. Dawn was only a purple hint outside the window. Too early to leave for the caravan.

Again the knock. ‘Go away!’

‘You open this door, Leesha Paper, or I’ll have Gared break it down,’ her mother said. ‘You just see if I don’t.’

Leesha stood slowly, her legs watery and her stomach still roiling. She found a clean cloth and wiped her face, then pulled a robe over her stained nightdress, cinching it tight.

She went to the door and lifted the bar, opening it a crack. Elona’s face, looking like she’d just swallowed a lemon, was never the first thing she wanted to see in the morning.

‘Now isn’t a good time …’ Leesha began, but Elona ignored her, pushing into the room. Leesha sighed and shut the door behind her, dropping the bar back in place. ‘What do you want, Mother?’

‘Thought you’d grown out of waking me and your father with your blubbering,’ Elona said. ‘Feeling bad about what you did, killing that boy?’

Leesha blinked. No matter how many times her mother read her mind and cut to the quick, it never ceased to shock her.

‘Well don’t,’ Elona snapped. ‘You did what you had to, and that boy knew what he was getting into when he picked up his first spear.’

‘It’s not that simple—’ Leesha began.

‘Pfagh!’ Elona waved a hand dismissively. ‘How many Rizonans you think he killed when they took the city? How many lives are you saving by keeping him from telling tales?’

Leesha felt her legs giving way, and fell to a seat on the bed, trying hard to make it seem as if she had meant to sit all along. Her stomach felt like a boiling pot, stirred too quickly and threatening to foam over the rim. ‘I wouldn’t have done it otherwise, but that doesn’t mean I should be proud of it.’

Elona grunted. ‘Maybe not, but for what it’s worth,
I’m
proud of you, girl. Know I don’t say it as much as you deserve, but there it is. Didn’t think you had it in you to stand up like that. Glad to see something of me in there, after all.’

Leesha frowned. ‘Sometimes I think there’s too much of you in me already, Mother.’

Elona snorted. ‘You should be so lucky.’

‘Why the change of heart?’ Leesha asked. ‘You were the one pushing me to marry Ahmann and let him make me a queen.’

‘Had a better look at his rule since then,’ Elona said. ‘Ent no way I’m spending the rest of my wrinkle-free days with everything except my eyes wrapped under seven layers of cloth.’ She hefted her breasts, barely contained in a dress with a swooping neckline. ‘What’s the point of having paps like these if you can’t put ’em on display and laugh as men drool and women simmer?’

Leesha raised an eyebrow. ‘Wrinkle-free?’

Elona glared, daring her to say more. ‘Letting that warrior go would have jeopardized everything you’ve worked for. You might have laid the drama on a bit thick, but there’s no denying this trip was good for the Hollow. You bought a conditional peace, scouted the enemy camp, whispered wisdom and doubt into the ear of its leader, learned of those mind demons and bone magic. All that, and you got your toes curled in the process. Hag Bruna was still around, she’d be prouder than Jan Cutter showing off his prize bull.’

Leesha smiled wanly. ‘I hope so. I was just thinking I’d disappointed her.’

Elona turned to the window, looking over her reflection with a critical eye. Though there were no men to see, she reflexively straightened her hair and smoothed the bosom of her dress. ‘A bit, perhaps. Any apprentice of Bruna – night, any daughter of mine – should have been able to enjoy a few rolls in the feathers without making a child.’

Leesha felt her face flush red. ‘What?’

Elona pointed to the disgusting mixture on the floor, making no effort to help clean it. ‘Seen you throw your hysterics a lot of times, girl, but ent never seen it sick you up. Night, I can’t recall you sloshing up ever. You got more than Mum’s paps and posterior. You got my iron belly.’ She smiled, patting her stomach. ‘But I was sick as a cat the whole time I was carrying you.’

Leesha felt her boiling stomach freeze over. She tried to swallow as she ticked off the days since her last flow, but the lump in her throat prevented it.

Could it be true?

With more desperation than she had reached for the chamber pot, Leesha went for her pocketed apron. Like a Jongleur’s coloured balls, she juggled herbs and instruments, grinding and mixing until she had a tiny vial of milky fluid. She swabbed at herself and put it in the vial, holding her breath.

Her lungs gave way well before the time the chemics took to react. She turned pointedly and began to count by thousands to mark the minutes until she could turn back and see if the chemics had gone from milk white to pink.

One
thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand …

‘You already know what it’s going to say,’ Elona said. ‘Quit biting at your fingers and figure out what you’re going to do about it.’

Leesha raised an eyebrow. ‘Do?’

‘Don’t play dim with me, child,’ Elona snapped. ‘I was apprenticed to Bruna as well. You could flush the problem right out if you wanted.’

‘Really, Mum?’ Leesha asked bitterly. ‘You, who’ve pushed me to have children my whole life, would tell me to kill the child?’

‘Ent a child, it’s a notion,’ Elona said. ‘And a bad one, at that. Doesn’t take a genius to see that babe would be a gap in our wards big enough for the mother of all demons to ride through.’

One
hundred
thousand. One hundred and one thousand. One hundred and two thousand …

Leesha shook her head so hard she felt it rattle. ‘No. If it’s far enough along for me to be sick, it’s a life, not a notion. You complained I missed my most fertile years, Mum, and you weren’t wrong. If this is how the Creator wants to give me a child, then I’m going to take it.’

Elona rolled her eyes. ‘You picked a bad time to go all Canon, girl.’ She shrugged. ‘But if you’re not going to flush it, you’d best seduce someone else, quick and public, to buy yourself time.’

Leesha felt her mouth fall open. ‘I swear, Mum, if you so much as say Gared’s name …’

But Elona surprised her with another disgusted wave of her hand. ‘Pfagh! You can do better than Gared Cutter! Have another go at the other Deliverer, now that you have the knack. It’s clear as day he’s pent and needs a draining. Do him as good as you did the demon of the desert, and you can have the both of them eating out of your hand and brought to heel by winter.’

‘Or brought to blows, all our respective men behind them,’ Leesha said.

‘That’s gonna happen no matter what, and you know it,’ Elona said. ‘Best you can do is guide the where and how.’

Leesha grimaced. ‘There is nothing in this world I hate more than when your words make sense, Mother.’

Elona cackled.

‘Making the Painted Man think it’s his might not be possible,’ Leesha said. ‘He won’t touch me any more. He’s terrified of making a child tainted by his demon magic.’

Elona shrugged. ‘So tell him you’re taking pomm tea. Leach some leaves and leave them out where he can see. Tell him it’s just a release.’

Three
hundred
fifty
thousand. Three hundred and fifty-one thousand. Three hundred and fifty-two thousand …

Leesha shook her head. ‘He’s not that gullible, Mother.’

‘Demonshit,’ Elona said. ‘He’s a
man
,
Leesha. Every single one of them needs his pecker put down now and again. Lure him back by using your mouth on him once or twice. Make him feel safe, then get him drunk and pounce. It’ll be over before he knows what hit him.’ She smirked. ‘Do a good enough job, and he’ll even be back for more.’

Leesha felt her stomach roil again. Was she really considering this? ‘And in less than a year, when he sees the child has an olive tint to its skin and an upward twist to its eyes?’

Elona shrugged. ‘Never know. Babe might take after you. There’s nothing of Erny in you that the eye can tell, and that’s for the best.’

‘Better I got his heart,’ Leesha agreed. ‘And what’s between his ears.’

‘Ay, but you got my stones,’ Elona said, ‘and you can thank the Creator for that. The day the Krasians come to the Hollow, the only thing Ernal Paper is going to do is piss himself. You ent helpless, but when the time comes, you’re going to want a strong man at your side.’

Leesha wanted to shout at her, but could not find the energy. Her mother had been making more and more sense of late. Was she changing, or was Leesha?

Seven
hundred
thousand. Seven hundred and one thousand. Seven hundred and two thousand …

‘I don’t trust the Painted Man any more than the demon of the desert,’ Leesha said.

Elona shrugged again. ‘Then find another. I was wrong about the fiddle-boy. He’s got power and would stand by you even if the babe came out with Jardir’s forked beard, but you’ve missed your chance there – unless you want to play a dirtier game.’

‘Rojer’s marriage is in enough trouble without my help,’ Leesha said.

Elona nodded. ‘There’s really only one other choice, then.’

Leesha looked at her mother, and saw a triumphant smile on her face. ‘Mother …’

Elona held up her hands. ‘You told me not to say his name and I won’t, but you think on it. He’s strong as an ox and braver than any other man in the Hollow. The Cutters all look to him when the Painted Man ent about. And he loves you. Always has, in his own brutish way. All that, with a pea-sized brain. You could rule the Hollow through a man like that.’

One
million
, Leesha thought, turning to look at the vial.

Her heart fell.

A handful of herbs leached in boiling water calmed Leesha’s stomach, but nothing she dared take had the slightest effect on the throbbing pain in her head. When she and Elona finally emerged from her room, they found Gared, Wonda, and Erny in the taproom already, waiting by empty bowls of porridge.