Thunder booms over the house, shaking stone and rattling glass.
Veloni switches her chill glance to Freya. “You will leave us in private.”
Freya starts, her eyes widening. She touches her forehead and hurries from the room. The bedroom door closes, but it’s thin enough that she can hear if she tries. And she will. We’ve always looked after each other.
I take a seat without being asked. It is my house, after all. The cushion is still warm from where Freya rested. It smells faintly of jasmine, her favorite flower. With a gracious wave I invite Veloni back into what is usually my seat.
Her lips thin for a moment, but she sits on the edge, her spine straight. Leather creaks beneath her. I deliberately relax, trying to ignore the heavy thudding of my heart, certain it must be audible in the silence between growls of thunder. A log cracks sharply in the fireplace, spitting sparks. My muscles tense but I keep my calm expression of inquiry.
Let her speak first. I will not be the supplicant again. Not until I’m a master. It’s been made clear to me, many times, that I’m below notice until then. The Council can’t be changed from the outside.
Veloni breaks our locked gaze first and brushes at her skirt, wiping away invisible obstacles to order.
“It has come to our attention,” she begins without looking at me, “that there are twenty-three children in the three villages you service.”
I suppress a smile and wait. Of course there are children, I resist saying. It’s my job.
She clears her throat. Her eyes—the tannin brown of deep forest pools—lift to mine. She examines my face like a panther waiting for the right moment to pounce. Waiting for me to make a mistake.
But I won’t. I’ve worked too hard for this. She’ll see I’m right. They all will.
Leaning forward, she narrows her gaze. “Twenty-three unsouled children in your villages.”
“And?” I lift both brows and allow a small smile to curl my lips. The Council can do nothing now. The children are too old to be soul-takers and their designated soul-bringers died at the births, believing their souls had been passed on to the newborns. But I crushed the pieces and scattered the glittering fragments of finished lives into the air. They floated, sparkling dust in the sunlight.
“Why would you do that?” Veloni’s tone is sharp. A frown pulls her thin brows close. She points vaguely at the cottage front door. “Why would you risk everything the Council has achieved since the fall of the unsouled cities? Everything we’ve planned?”
I grip the chair arms, my fingertips white. “Because you don’t listen.”
“Pfah!” She dismisses me with a wave. “We listened. Over and over. To you and to your grandmother, before. You want to let children be born without them receiving the souls of their elders. It is you who have not listened.”
My control breaks and I rise, standing over her. “I do. I listen to grandparents cry as they give up their souls and their lives too early. I listen to their families sing with voices strangled by tears. I listen to the sound of my scissors cutting the throats of children who have no soul-giver. Then I listen to their mothers cry in my embrace. And I have no comfort to give them but to say ‘The Council rules it so.’”
I rest my hands on her chair and push my face close to hers, whispering because my chest is too tight to hold enough breath for a shout.
“You,” I say. “You and the Council make me murder children for want of a soul they do not need. And I’ve proven that. Those twenty-three unsouled children are perfectly fine. Healthy. Happier than soul-takers, even. Their eyes are eager and innocent, not weighed down by tired old souls that have lived through too much loss.”
Veloni’s eyes glitter. Her jaw hardens then she opens lips stretched into thin slits.
A muffled cry of pain sounds from the bedroom. Something thuds against the door, then the floor. Another cry. More like a scream.
“Freya!” I rush to the door and push it open against a heavy weight on the other side. A watery, pinkish liquid smears across the flagstones.
Freya is slumped on the floor, arms wrapped about her belly, weeping. Darkness stains her shift.
“It’s coming, Jen,” she says, gasping. “But it’s too early.”
“No,” I reply, trying to sound soothing. “It’s fine. Only a couple of weeks. The babe will be fine.” But my heart stutters. She can’t lose the child as well as Redil.
I help her onto the huge bed we share and hurry about preparing hot water and cloths. My mind races. I had planned for her child to be unsouled, but how can I do that now, with my mentor in the room?
Veloni hasn’t left. She stands in a corner, watching, impassive, arms folded.
She speaks when all is ready and I am checking Freya’s progress. The babe is crowning already. But Freya is pale and disoriented, babbling and crying for Redik to come to her.
“Who is the soul-bringer?” Veloni’s voice is calm, dispassionate.
“There is none,” I say, countering her heavy sigh with a glare. “And I will not kill my sister’s child because of the Council’s blindness.”
Veloni shakes her head. “Then we must find one.” Thunder crashes and rain drums so loud on the patched metal roof I can barely hear Freya’s cry of pain.
I grin savagely. “There is none close enough to get here within the required half hour after birth.”
Her gaze narrows. “Boy or girl?”
I hesitate, but, in the end, there’s really nothing she can do to stop what’s coming. The child will be unsouled. Veloni will see there is no harm in such children. That they are the way of the future. The way to stop all this unneeded killing.
“Girl,” I say. “The babe will be a girl.”
Triumph gleams in Veloni. “Then Freya must be the soul-bringer.”
A gasp escapes me. Standing between my mentor and my sister, I pull out my blue-metal scissors. “No! She’s too young. You, yourself taught me that only those over fifty can be soul-bringers!”
Veloni tilts her head. “Do you know why that rule exists? Do you really understand what breakers and masters do? What the Council does?”
“How can I? The Council holds their secrets too close.” My words are bitter, my clutch on the scissors tight. She will not have my sister or my niece.
“Exactly,” she says, her mouth drooping. “But did you ever wonder why?”
I glance back at Freya. Her brow is beaded with sweat, her skin too pale. “We can speak of this later. I need to save my family. Do what you will with me after.”
Veloni grips my wrist, wrenching the scissors from me. She shoves them at my face.
“You fool. You don’t understand and that is why you will never become a master. Just as your grandmother failed to.”
I fold my arms and glower. “Go ahead. Explain it, then. What won’t I understand? Why won’t I become a master? I can’t wait to hear how the wise and all-knowing Council has decided my fate.” I check Freya. She has fallen into a light doze and the babe’s head has slipped out of sight again. I have a little time. Anything Veloni says I can turn against the Council when I am brought before them.
As I will be, for this birth and the other twenty-three.
I am beyond caring. Their rules are madness. Outdated, two-hundred-year-old laws for controlling the few souled folk who lived through the unsouled civilization’s collapse. The laws need to change if we are to thrive, not just survive in this miserable, hand-to-mouth existence.
Veloni’s lined cheeks sag and she sinks onto the bed edge. She looks at Freya with a weariness beyond her sixty-five years.