Seven weeks along. All I have to do is ask. Huw said he’d sort everything out. She held the thought like the key to a prison cell as she paused on the threshold of the examination room, and the guy with curly brown hair sitting at the desk turned to look at her and then rose to greet her. “Hello? Are you Miriam? I’m Dr. Price, Alan Price.” His eyes tracked past her. “And this is . . .”
“A friend.” She practiced her smile again; she had a feeling that if she was going to go through with this she’d be needing it a lot over the next weeks and months. “Hi. I understand you’re an OB/GYN.” She shuffled sideways as he gestured towards a chair. “Have you ever worked with Dr. ven Hjalmar?”
Price frowned. “Van Hjelmar . . . no, doesn’t ring a bell.” He shook his head. “Were you seeing him?”
“A different practice.” Miriam sat down heavily, as if her strings had been cut; a vast weight of dread that she hadn’t even been aware of disappeared. “I really didn’t like him. Hence this, uh . . .”
“I understand.” Price leaned over and dragged a third chair into position, then waved Brilliana towards it. His face assumed an expression of professional interest. “And your mother, I gather, suggested? . . .”
“Yes.” Miriam took another deep breath. “My fiancé is, uh—”
“—He died last month,” Brill picked up without a pause.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Price sat up. “Well, that probably explains it.”
“It was a shooting accident,” Miriam said tonelessly, earning her a sharp look from Brill.
“Eh.” Price glanced back at his computer screen. “Alright. So you were on his HMO plan, but now you’ve moved to—oh, I see. Well. I think my receptionist’s got the new release forms through—if you can sign one and get your old practitioner’s details to us we can take it from there.”
“Okay.” Miriam nodded.
“Meanwhile? . . .” Price raised an eyebrow.
“Well.” Miriam managed to get a grip on her breathing: mustn’t start hyperventilating. “I’m pregnant.” It was funny how you could change your script and the person who you were talking to would fall into a new pattern of their own, she thought as she watched Price visibly tense as he tried to keep up with the conversation: from polite sympathy through to curiosity to a quickly suppressed wince. Brill glanced sidelong at her again: You’re laying it on too thick, back off! “It wasn’t planned,” she added, not backpedaling exactly but trying to fill in enough details to put Price back on ground he was comfortable with, that wouldn’t raise any questions. “We were going to wait until after the wedding. But . . .” She shrugged helplessly.
“I see.” Price was visibly trying to get a grip on the situation. “Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “Have you used a pregnancy test kit?”
“Yes. I assume you’ll want a urine sample so you can verify? . . .”
“Yes.” Price opened his desk drawer and removed a collection jar. “If you wouldn’t mind? The rest room is through there.”
When Miriam returned she placed the collection jar on the desk as carefully as if it were full of nitroglycerin. “Here it is.”
“Right.” Price looked as if he was about to say something else, then changed his mind at the last moment. “I’ll run it right now and then we can take it from there. Is that okay?”
Miriam didn’t trust herself to reply. She nodded jerkily.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.” Price pulled on a blue disposable glove, then stood up and carried the sample jar out through a side door.
Miriam looked at Brill. “How discreet is he going to be?”
“Very. He’s on salary. Our dime.”
“Ah.”
They sat in silence for five minutes; then, as Miriam was considering her conversational options, Dr. Price opened the door again. He was, she noticed, no longer wearing the glove. There was a brief, awkward silence as he sat down again, then: “It’s positive,” he confirmed. Then he picked up his pen and a notepad. “How long ago did you last have sex?”
The question threw Miriam for a moment, bringing back unwelcome memories of Roland. She was about to say “at least eight months ago,” when suddenly she realized, that’s not what he’s asking. “Seven weeks,” she said. A little white lie; sex had nothing to do with her current situation, except in the most abstract imaginable sense.
“Well. You’ve made it through the riskiest period—most spontaneous miscarriages occur in the first eight weeks. So the next question is—I’m assuming you’re here because you want to continue with it?” He paused, prompting.
Miriam could feel the blood pounding in her ears. No matter how she unpacked the question it didn’t quite make sense to her: It felt like the introduction to a much larger question, monstrously large, an iceberg of possibilities. I could say no, she thought. Get this over with right now. Quit the game. Mom might disapprove, the duke might object when he recovered, but they couldn’t stop her if . . . Miriam opened her mouth. “Yes,” she heard herself whisper hoarsely. She swallowed. “Yes,” she said again, louder; thinking, I can change my mind later. There’s still time. “I’m assuming you’re going to want to schedule an amniocentesis appointment, for,” she swallowed, “things like Down’s syndrome and hydrocephalus? Will you be able to check on the—my baby’s—sex?”
“Eh, we can do that. It’s a bit early for amniocentesis right now, though, if it’s only been seven weeks. I’d like to start by asking some questions about your family and medical history. Then I’m going to take a blood sample to get started with, while we’re waiting for your old records to arrive. Shall we begin?”
Oath of Fealty
After they left the clinic, Brill drove Miriam back to the motel. Miriam could hear the questions tumbling over and over in her head: The silence was so loud that it roared. And now, the talk, Miriam thought, keyed up and tense. It had to come to this sooner or later. . . .
“You said you wanted to talk,” Brill said into the abrupt emptiness that flooded the car’s interior as she turned off the ignition. She studied Miriam in her mirror, carefully avoiding eye contact.
“Yes, yes I did.” Miriam opened her door. “Do you have time to come in?”
“Of course.” Brilliana looked as if she were walking on eggshells. “I imagine this must be hard to adjust to.”
“That’s the least of it.” Miriam held her tongue as they entered the lobby and walked to her door. “Come in.”
Brill had rented a suite for her; Miriam took the sofa, and the younger woman perched on the armchair opposite. For a few seconds they stared at each other in silence. Finally, Brill cracked. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Miriam kept her eyes on her. “I have three questions, Brill.”
“Three? Is that all?”
“I think so.” Because if you can’t convince me I can trust you, then . . . well, that was an interesting question, and not one Miriam wanted to consider just yet. “You work directly for Angbard, don’t you? Tell me, are you sworn to him personally? A vassal under his patronage?”
Brilliana looked at her warily. “You never asked before.” She rubbed her cheek thoughtfully. “What makes you ask?”
Miriam licked her lips. “I’d like a straight answer. Please.”
Suddenly Brill’s expression cleared. “Oh!” The penny had clearly dropped. “I am ranked as a sergeant in the Clan’s Security, that is clear enough. But you have the rest of it, too: His grace swore me to his personal service.” She looked Miriam in the eye. “To be discharged by death, or his word.”