Ozzie dismissed those notions. “Naw, those Landingers will want their smart-ass engineers and arki-tects to fancify it for them with the proper mod cons.”
Cobber settled a helmet on his head and switched on its light. “Yeah, else some poor buggers get all closet-phobic.”
“Claustrophic, you iggerant digger,” Ozzie corrected him.
“Whatever. Inside’s safest with that farking stuff dropping on ya alla time. C’mon, Oz, let’s go walkabout. The admiral and the governor are counting on our expertise, y’know.” He gave an involuntary grunt as he settled the heavy cutter on his shoulder and strode purposefully toward the first tunnel.
Ozzie put on his own helmet and picked up a coil of rope, pitons, and a rock hammer. Thermal and ultraviolet recorders, comm unit, and other mining hand-units were attached to hooks on his belts. Lastly, he slung one of the smaller rock cutters over his shoulder. “Let’s go test some claustrophia. We’ll start left, right? I’ll give ya a holler in a bit, Telgar.”
Cobber had already disappeared in the first of the left-hand openings as Ozzie followed him. Alone, Telgar stood for a long moment, eyes closed, head back, arms slightly away from his body, his palms turned outward in supplication. He could hear the slight noises of disturbed creatures and the distorted murmur of low conversations from Ozzie and Cobber as they made their way past the first bend in the tunnel.
There was nothing of Sallah in that cave. Even the place where they had built a tiny campfire had been swept bare to the fire-darkened stone. Yet there she had offered herself to him, and he had not known what a gift he had received that night!
The sudden high-pitched keening of the stone cutter shattered all thought and sent Telgar about the urgent business of making the natural fort into a human habitation.
The hum roused Sorka and she tried to find a more comfortable position for her cumbersome body. Fardles, but she would be grateful when she could finally sleep on her stomach again. The humming persisted, a subliminal sound that made a return to sleep impossible. She resented the noise, because she had not been sleeping at all well during the past few weeks and she needed all the rest she could get. Irritably she stretched out and twitched aside the curtain. It could not be day already. Then, startled, she clutched the edge of the curtain because there was light outside her house—the light of many dragon eyes, sparkling in the predawn gloom.
Her exclamation disturbed Sean, who stirred beside her, one hand reaching for her. She shook his shoulder urgently.
“Wake up, Sean. Look!” Whichever way she turned, she felt a sudden stab of pain in her groin so unexpected that she hissed.
Sean sat bolt upright beside her, his arms around her. “What is it, love? The baby?”
“It can’t be anything else,” she said, laughter bubbling out of her as she pointed out the window. “I’ve been warned!” She could not stop giggling. “Go look, Sean. Tell me if the fire-dragonets are roosting! I wouldn’t want them to miss this, any of them.”
Grinding sleep out of his eyes, Sean struggled to alertness. He half glared at her for her ill-timed levity, but annoyance was replaced by concern when her laughter turned abruptly into another hissing intake of breath as a second painful spasm rippled across her distended belly.
“It’s time?” He ran one hand caressingly across her stomach, his fingers instinctively settling on the band of contracting muscle. “Yes, it is. What’s so funny?” he added. She could not quite see his face in the dim light, but he sounded solemn, almost indignant.
“The welcoming committee, of course! All of them. Faranth, love, are all present and accounted for?”
We are here, Faranth said, where we should be. You are amused.
“I am very amused,” Sorka said, but then another contraction caught her, and she clutched at Sean. “But that was not at all amusing. You’d better call Greta.”
“Jays, we don’t need her. I’m as good a midwife as she is,” he muttered, shoving feet into the shoes under their bed.
“For horses, cows, and nanny goats, yes, Sean, but it is expected for humans to assist humans . . . oooooh, Sean, these are very close together.”
He rose to his feet, pausing to throw the top blanket across his bare shoulders against the early morning’s chill, when there was a discreet knock at the door. He cursed.
“Who is it?” he roared, not at all pleased at the idea that someone might have come to summon him for a veterinary emergency right then.
“Greta!”
Sorka started to laugh again, but that became very difficult to do all of a sudden, and she switched to the breathing she had been taught, clutching at her great belly.
“How under the suns did you know, Greta?” she heard Sean ask, his voice reflecting his astonishment.
“I was called,” Greta said with great dignity, gently pushing him to one side.
“By whom? Sorka only just woke up,” Sean replied, following Greta back to their room. “She’s the one who’s having the baby.”
“Not always the first to know when labor commences,” Greta said in a very calm, almost detached manner. “Not in Landing. And certainly not with a queen dragon listening in on your mind.” She flicked on the lights as she entered the room and deposited her midwifery bag on the dresser. She had been a gangly girl who had turned into a rangy woman with hair and skin the same coffee color and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, very brown in her kindly face, missed few details.
“Faranth told you?” Sorka was astonished. A dragon speaking to someone outside of their group was unheard of.
“Not exactly,” Greta replied with a chuckle. “A fair of fire-dragonets flew in my window and made it remarkably plain that I was needed. Once I got outside, it wasn’t hard to figure out whose baby was coming. Now, let me see what’s going on here.”
I told them to get her, Faranth told Sorka in a smugly complacent tone of voice. You like her.
As Sorka lay back for Greta’s examination, she tried to figure that out. She liked her doctor, too, and had no qualms about him attending her delivery. How had Faranth sensed that she really had wanted Greta in attendance? Could Faranth possibly have sensed that she had always been friendly with Greta? Or was it some connection the golden dragon had made because Sorka had assisted Greta in the birth of Mairi Hanrahan’s latest, Sorka’s newest baby brother? But for Faranth to recognize an unconscious preference . . .
Sean slid cautiously onto the other side of the bed and reached for her hand. Sorka gave him a squeeze, laughter still bubbling up in her. She had so hated the last few weeks when her body had not seemed to be her own, when all its controls seemed to have been assumed by the bouncing, kicking, impertinent, restless fetus that gave her no rest at all. Her laughter was sheer elation that all of that was nearly over.
“Now, let me have a look . . . another contraction?”
Sorka concentrated on her breathing, but the spasm was far more painful than she had anticipated. Then it was gone, pain and all. She felt sweat on her forehead. Sean blotted it gently.
You are hurting? Faranth’s voice became shrill.
“No, no, Faranth. I’m fine. Don’t worry!” Sorka cried.
“Faranth’s upset?” Keeping her hand tight in his, Sean crouched to see out the window to the dragons waiting there. “Yes, she is! Her eyes are gaining speed and orange.”
“I was afraid of that!” Mutely Sorka appealed to Sean. Expressions flitted across his face. If she read them correctly, he was annoyed with Faranth, indecisive—for once—about what to do, and anxious for her. Then tender concern dominated his face as he looked down at her, and she felt that she had never loved him more than at that moment.