Birth: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

bother?” I ask.
    “Come on!” He won’t waste time explaining
but drags me through to my bathroom, arms enfolding me, hands
caressing me. “You know about the dangers of infection, the
importance of sterile surroundings. And you should be naked, too.”
He tries to pull my dress up over my head, gets entangled in the
petticoats and camisole, and looks for help. “Where’s what’s her
name, the little sexpot, Katrina?”
    “Home,” I say. “With her husband. She’s
pregnant too.”
    “Bloody hell.” Dominic goes back into my
room and sticks his head out the door to the corridor. “Tariq!” he
shouts. “Where’s Roger?”
    Tariq is close by. “ Lord Roger,” he
says, “is in the Zichmni Suite, bathing.”
    “Good,” Dominic says. “When he’s done, have
him come to my room. You too.” He lowers his voice, speaks instead
of thinking, so I can’t catch his words.
    Tariq, who has been cold and distant,
changes at Dominic’s words. “Yes, Margrave,” he says. “I
understand. Yes, of course I will.”
    “And send Magali back in here!” Dominic
calls after him. “And find a housemaid!” Assuming there are any
females in this house who aren’t breeding , he mutters to me in
communion.
    ***
    And then there was Inauguration Day at the ‘Graven
Military Academy. The new cadets, all who have passed their
probationary period, along with officers and men who have been
promoted, are confirmed in their positions. It’s a jubilee, a
joyous celebration, and nobody likes to miss it. When I wanted to
go out on the first sunny day in two weeks, there wasn’t one male
over the age of fifteen free to escort me. I decided that, with
everyone at the ceremony, no one would know whether I was indoors
or out or even in the city at all. “Come on,” I said to Katrina,
“let’s take a stroll, just the two of us.”
    “My lady!” She was shocked, and delighted.
“What will Margrave Aranyi say?”
    “Expressions no lady should use,” I said.
“But he won’t know. We’ll be home again before he’s decided which
cadets to deflower next term.”
    We spent a long, tiring morning wandering
through the stalls in the market and following the wide streets
leading from ‘Graven Fortress as they narrowed through residential
neighborhoods. It was not the anonymous freedom of a city walk I
remembered from my life on Terra. People recognized me. Not because
they had ever met me, but because of my third eyelids and my gray
wool cloak with the Aranyi cipher woven into the pattern, and
because of my shape. It had been the hot topic of the season that
Margrave Aranyi had married and that his bride was pregnant.
    Everywhere we went people stared and
whispered, the braver ones asking if I needed help, and all trying
to sell me something. They expected payment too, not like the
shopkeepers in the town outside La Sapienza seminary. This was
Eclipsia City, and ‘Graven must pay like the rest. Men eyed
Katrina, made rude remarks; some even touched her, until I ended up
walking with my dagger in my hand, much like a man prepared to draw
his sword. I let the prism in the handle show above my clenched
fist, ready to angle the sunlight into my eyes if necessary.
    Now that I had sinned so obviously, I
refused to admit defeat. We were almost at the Terran Sector.
Things would be better on the other side, where no one would know
me in my new incarnation. What fun , I thought, to revisit
the scenes of my first weeks here, before I met Dominic and changed
my life forever. How wonderful it would be to see from the outside,
as ‘Gravina Aranyi, the cage that had so imprisoned me as Amelia
Herzog. In the back of my mind was the suspicion that I had merely
exchanged one cage for another, but I wouldn’t let the thought
penetrate all the way through to my consciousness.
    I had forgotten the checkpoint. It’s like
two countries side by side, the old Eclipsian residential city and
seat of government, and the new Terran Sector for commerce