Some goat's milk, perhaps." She met Cara's gaze. "I'll arrange all this."
"That would be wonderful," said Cara. "I'll attend to Tess."
There was a pause. Then Sonia took hold of Cara's hand, briefly, and let it go. "There is no healer in this camp I would trust as I trust you," she said. Charles waved her forward and she preceded him out.
Cara crossed through into the inner chamber. The room lay swathed in cloth, which draped the counters and shielded the table readouts. Two holographic lanterns lit the space, suspended from the corners. "Increase illumination," said Cara, and the light brightened.
Tess lay on the table with her eyes closed. Tears streaked her face. "Oh, God," she said. "All for nothing."
"Hush, child," said Cara. She smoothed Tess's hair down tenderly and let her hand linger on Tess's cheek. "Let's get these clothes off you."
"One's coming," said Tess. "Shouldn't it hurt more than this? It doesn't really hurt at all."
"Except in the heart, my child. David, can you help me with her trousers? We'll need to prop you up, Tess, here at the end of the table, for the delivery. Maybe David can just sit behind you."
"What about Jo?" David asked.
Cara shook her head. "At the rate Tess is dilating, Jo may not get here in time. Gloves. Stool."
"Another one," said Tess.
"David, go get Aleksi." David dashed into the other chamber, called outside, and ran back in. "I'll need a second covering, here at the end of the bed," Cara continued as if he hadn't moved.
"It's changing. It's going lower. Cara, is this what's supposed to happen?"
"Yes. Breathe evenly. Lay back, I've got to examine you. This will be uncomfortable. David, uncover the counter and start the procedure that's listed on the monitor." Bells tinkled. Aleksi and Jo came in together. "Sterilize," said Cara, and they went out and came back in. "Jo, thank goodness." Jo nodded and went over to the counter. "Aleksi, sit with Tess."
David moved aside to make room for Jo and looked back to see Aleksi staring at them in amazement.
"Where's Ilya?" Tess asked. "Another one."
"He'll be here," said Cara. "He'll be here."
"But the men are supposed to leave camp," said Aleksi. "It's bad luck for a man to watch a child's birthing."
"Aleksi, you may leave if you wish. I need your help, and jaran customs aren't our customs. Which will it be?"
"Oh, stay, Aleksi," said Tess, and Aleksi went to her at once. She let out her breath all at once, and her voice took on a sudden intensity. "Cara, I have to push."
David watched, feeling useless. Jo worked on with efficient fury, linking equipment, setting up the IV. Aleksi helped Tess sit up, leaning into her, linking his arms under her arms and over her chest, so that she could prop herself up on him. Cara waited.
It didn't take very long for the baby to come, and it was no wonder. In two pushes the head crowned, and on the third the body eased out into Cara's waiting hands. Its skin had a strange bluish-gray color, smeared with some whitish substance, and the body was perfectly formed: miniature fingers and toes, testicles, button nose, and perfect rosebud lips, crowned by a shockingly black crop of hair. It was a tiny little thing, so tiny.
So still.
Aleksi buried his face against Tess's hair.
Cara cut the cord.
Tess stared. "Cara," she said. "It's so hot in here. Could you get me a blanket, I'm freezing." She shuddered, all through her frame. Her eyes rolled up, and she sagged back against Aleksi.
"David! Take the baby. I've got to deliver the placenta."
"I can't!" Still and dead, the baby barely stretched longer than Cara's cupped hands. It was bloody, too, streaks of it that echoed the streaks of blood along Tess's thighs.
"You must, David." Cara's voice cracked over him, and he obeyed blindly, through tears, taking the tiny thing from her and wrapping it in a white square of cloth that
Jo handed him without looking at him. The body was warm and soft, cooling as he held it. One little hand peeped out of the cloth, each minute finger tipped with a white nail. He covered it hastily, binding it in under the cloth.
He felt dazed. A numbing roar descended on him, and he watched as through a haze while Cara and Jo fussed over Tess, hooked her up to this and that, flicked on the modeler, cut off her tunic, set into a glass dish the strange veined blood-red creature that was the placenta. Tess's image appeared, floating in the air at the foot of the bed, turning, pulsing critical red all along its length.
Voices sounded outside. Cara did not even look up. David shook with exhaustion and realized that he was squeezing the bundle in his arms. He was filled suddenly with such revulsion that he thought he might well be sick.
"Think, you idiot," he said under his breath. Bells chimed.
"I don't think-" someone said, protesting.
"I will see Tess!" said Bakhtiian.
Without thinking, David stepped to the curtain and eased himself through so that the curtain sealed shut behind him. "Don't go in!" he said. And came up short, facing Bakhtiian.
Rajiv stood wringing his hands a pace behind the other man. "Oh, thank goodness, David!" he exclaimed. Then, like a coward, he turned and hurried back outside.
David made himself look at Bakhtiian, but Bakhtiian only stared at the bundle in David's arms. He smelled of smoke and dust, and his clothes still bore the impression of his armor. His face was ashen. Slowly, he held out his hands. David gave him the child.
He cradled it against his chest. Easy enough, that was, since the bundle did not reach from his elbow to his hand. With the other hand, carefully, he unwrapped the cloth. The hair showed first, all course and black, and then the impossibly perfect face, still and shuttered. The tiny arms, the fingers, the chest, the legs, and the tiny tiny little toes. He said nothing; he did nothing but breathe. Then, more carefully than David had, he wrapped the little body back up and hugged it closer against him. He raised haunted eyes to David's face.
"Tess?"
"I don't know," said David. "I don't know. Dr. Hierakis is with her. We can't disturb her." He braced himself for a torrent of protest, but Bakhtiian said nothing. David glanced back toward the curtain. He heard Cara and Jo, speaking terse, quiet phrases that David himself barely understood and Bakhtiian certainly could not understand: IV, anesthesia, transfusion, systolic pressure, basal temperature, placenta abruptio, antibody sensitization.
In the middle of the room, Ilya Bakhtiian stood silent, crying, holding his dead son.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jiroannes sat under the shelter of his awning, a blanket over his legs, his torso and arms encased in a fine brocade coat, and watched the glow in the west where the sun sank down over the hills and blended its light with smoke and fire from distant Karkand. He sipped at hot tea. Steam rose from the porcelain cup; this cup alone, of all that Syrannus had so carefully packed back at his uncle's villa, still remained fit for him to drink from. All the others had been chipped or broken or stained. Vines and peacocks circled the rim, a delicate round of painting. The aroma of the tea soothed him. Around him, the camp was quiet. At last.
He shuddered. He had not known that a woman could shriek that loudly, or that a woman who so clearly feared his attentions in the bed would show such anger when he informed her that he intended to visit elsewhere that night. As if it was any right of hers to dictate where he found his pleasure. But perhaps Syrannus had been right all along. The old man had, in his mild way, cautioned against the marriage. And yet, Laissa's audience with Mother Sakhalin had proved successful, or at least, so Laissa had reported. With the Habakar king in the hands of Bakhtiian, Habakar merchants streamed to Jiroannes's camp to beg for an audience with the princess Jiroannes had married. No, Syrannus had been wrong: The alliance would serve him well.