“Vatska,” she said, steeling her voice against her fear. “I am a Marked woman.”
She felt him flinch. She’d never shown herself to him naked except in the dark when shadows concealed her secret. “Show me,” he said.
Marjan bowed her head so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. She lifted her skirts. The red and black swirl on her hip wasn’t like the ordinary blotches that sometimes marred other children’s skin. The colors whirled around each other, vivid and entrancing. In the presence of her own mother or daughter, the Mark would glow — in the days before there were kings in Dellosert, people had seen that glow and known they beheld a woman of power. Now the glow attracted priests’ blades.
Sometimes Marjan wondered what it would have been like to live before the Solitary God, when Marked pairs of mothers and daughters sat on three-legged stools in temple rooms, aiding supplicants. Now, only a few Marked women survived, scattered and separated from their kin. Isolated, they posed no threat to the Solitary God’s power — even Marked women could only perform witchcraft when they were united with mothers or daughters of their blood. When their Marks began to glow with power, the Solitary God’s defenders sought them without pity.
Marjan felt Vatska’s fingers, warm and probing. It was strange to be touched there. Strange to be seen.
She wondered for a moment that she wasn’t more fearful. He could slay her now. He might.
His voice was gentle. “Hush, Marjanka. Perhaps it will be a boy.”
Perhaps — but if she was going to bear a boy, why would her Mark have begun to glow like warming embers? She tried to tell him. He stilled her lips with his finger.
“We’ll find a way,” he said, bringing her close into the comfort of his arms. She savored the smell of his skin, fish and smoke and the dusky scent underneath that was nothing else but Vatska.
Now he was gone. Marjan and her daughter were at the mercy of her stern, critical mother-in-law, who prayed to the Solitary God every sunrise and sunset.
Iresna would have killed her if she hadn’t fled. Now the ice would kill her anyway.
She may do it all, but it all goes awry.
The snow fell so heavily that it blanketed Marjan and the mule as they rode. The donkey couldn’t progress against the driving winds. The air had the smell of a worsening storm, an emptiness that filled Marjan’s mouth and nostrils.
Marjan halted the mule and hunkered beside it, trying to share enough warmth that they could survive until morning. She dug at the snow to make an impromptu shelter. Another contraction hit. She nearly cried out, but muffled the noise with her mittened hand, afraid she’d spook the animal and make things worse for them both.
“Marjan!” A man’s baritone echoed across the snow, tumbled by the wind. “Marjan! Wait!”
Marjan scrambled to look out. The lantern-lit figures of Gavek and Iresna trudged through the snow. She felt a moment of hope at the prospect of rescue — but she couldn’t let them take her back.
“Go back!” she shouted.
“Stupid girl!” Iresna shouted back. “You married my Vatska for this? To steal from us and run?”
“You don’t understand!”
“What would you have me do? Leave you to freeze with our mule?”
“Vatska’s dead! We don’t owe each other anything! Turn back!”
Gavek swung his lantern toward her. “At least come off the river!”
Marjan looked about, startled. Surely, if the slight glow in the east was sunrise, this couldn’t be the river. She should have crossed long before.
“Stay off the ice, Mama,” came Gavek’s voice. “It’s too close to spring.”
Iresna trudged stolidly onward. She raised her arm into the gloomy dawn, mittened hand pointing at Marjan. “You, who married my Vatska. Get back on the mule and lead us home or we’ll all die here. Do you want to be my death as well as your child’s? This storm hasn’t even started! Stupid, stupid girl.”
“I won’t go home with you! You never wanted me in your house!”
Wind gusted, spattering ice onto Marjan and the mule. Another cramp gripped Marjan’s stomach.
“No!” she said to herself. “Not now!”
“What?” asked Iresna.
“Nothing! Go home — ” The peak of Marjan’s contraction twisted away her words.
“Your baby’s coming? Here? Now?” Iresna shook her head. “I hope you’re happy. Now we’ll all die.”
She moved quickly across the snow to Marjan’s side. Marjan tried to fight her off, but Iresna was not tired from long, futile hours of riding.
“Hold still, girl,” said Iresna. “We’ll argue later.”
Marjan laid back, in too much pain for further struggle. Iresna rooted through the mule’s packs, pulling out furs and blankets to drape around them. Gavek, uneasily watching his footing, came across the ice to help. They constructed something like a small, cramped tent over them, the close air smelling of hot oil and mule flesh.
“Close your eyes, Gavekska. These are women’s secrets,” said Iresna. She felt underneath Marjan’s skirts. “Ah, it won’t be long. Not the next moment, but not long. I don’t suppose you can walk.”
Pain blossomed on Marjan’s hip. Her Mark burned ever hotter, glowing like a candle flame through her clothes. She moaned.
His back to the women, Gavek peered out into the storm. “It’s getting worse.”
“Yes, yes,” said Iresna irritably. “And it will get worse than this, too. We won’t get home before the baby comes.”
Iresna made a cushion of blankets beneath Marjan’s hips. Marjan tried to pull away, to keep the woman’s eyes off her Mark. “Stop,” she said. “Sit with Gavek. I’ll do this alone.”
Iresna ignored her. “My son comes home with a woman he’s found at a village inn. A woman with no family, no money. Not a widow with children, to show she’d give me healthy grandbabies, but an old maid. I think to myself, what does my son want with such a woman? What does such a woman want with my son?”
She pulled Marjan’s skirts up to her knees and set the lantern closer. Marjan recoiled from the light.
“And the herbs,” Iresna continued. “Seasons go by with no children. I know what to think. But.” She settled on her haunches. “The seasons go by, and this woman takes care of my son. I am still suspicious, oh yes. But she cooks and sews and pulls weeds in the garden, and she never complains.”
Marjan’s voice strained. “I never meant this to happen. Irensa — ”
“I’m not such an old fool,” said Iresna. “Am I, Gavekska?”
“That depends,” said Gavek, “on whether we all die in this storm.”
Iresna went on, “You would have done better to refuse when Vatska offered to marry you. Even with herbs, this can happen. But then my Vatska would have been unhappy. And how can I blame you for loving him?”
“Iresna!” Marjan said, urgently. “Please, you and Gavek have to go. Don’t ask me to explain. It’s better you don’t know.”
“Marjan,” said Iresna, “how could I not know?”
The older woman’s eyes flickered down to the spot of brightness at Marjan’s hip. It was glowing brighter than the lantern now, bathing Marjan in scarlet light.
Marjan could hide no longer. Iresna would call the priests, and they would die, both of them, before the baby even began to live. She began to cry.
“Hush,” said Iresna. “This isn’t important just now.”
Before Marjan could protest, the pain and helplessness became overwhelming. She could hardly speak or even think. Redness, tightening, the reek of blood and exertion — and suddenly, though it seemed impossible, the baby was pushed from her and into Iresna’s outstretched hands.