The Road to Hell

Chapter Thirty-Seven

March 8

Soolan chan Rahool settled into his familiar jungle cabin after another easy day of tree climbing and eating his fill of nuts and fruit. His arms still twinged a bit from building back the muscle mass lost during travel, but no gorillas had been waiting for him on his return to the chimpanzee clan.

The work of arranging transportation for any of the gorillas who chose to travel out-universe was done. Now he hoped they’d leave him alone. Larakesh had been a blast, especially meeting with the stevedores, but hunting up and down Ricathia to find the right gorilla clan to report to had been excessively like Ternathian Army work.

His own Minarti chimpanzees seemed much as they’d always been: dedicated to moving about in the triple canopy to follow the food supply while negotiating among themselves for the best and having as many baby chimpanzees as they could manage to feed.

He sat up fast nearly slamming his head on the guest’s bunk above him. Babies! A string of curses ran through his head until he fixed on the core problem. They’re nearly all pregnant. And that wasn’t normal at all. The Minarti clan grandmother was ironfisted about controlling the size of the clan to keep it within the resources available to it. As far as chan Rahool knew, the range territory hadn’t increased-and he was pretty sure he’d have been made aware of that minor fact if it had-but the clan was obviously growing, anyway.

The manual from Combined Simian Embassies was in the drawer under his bed somewhere. He tossed the detritus of study notes onto the floor, shoving crinkled papers and reports out of the way until he found the old green book with CSE printed on the cover. He was sure there’d been something in there about increased pregnancies, and that it was not in the “everything normal, don’t worry” section of the book!

He cut his finger flipping too fast through the front half of the book. The thing really ought to have been better organized. Calamity events should have been in the front. Or at the very least all together in one section instead of spread throughout the book as though some back-office CSE administrator imagined simian ambassadors were able to spend time reading this tome in the breaks between swinging between tree branches.

Ah! Here it is! He read the section carefully. Then he read it again, even more carefully.

It didn’t get any better the second time through.

CSE had documented several cases of primates and higher order monkeys increasing their populations without a change in food supply. In the seasons that followed the clans invariably began organized conflict. As a consequence, CSE “strongly advised” ambassadors to carefully monitor the fertility of their assigned clans and to advise clan leaders to limit procreation.

Chan Rahool snorted. Teach the Minarti clan grandmother to suck eggs why didn’t he? The bureaucrats had the worst ideas. Still someone needed to know about this.

He abandoned the mess in the sleeper half of the cabin to go write Dorrick a note. Dorrick needed to know about this immediately, but chan Rahool knew he’d have to find someone at CSE himself. He had to tell them about the pregnant chimps, and this wasn’t something that could wait for normal channels.

Of course, whoever he told about it was going to want to know why it was happening, and he didn’t have a clue. The Minarti had seemed peaceable towards Dorrick’s clan, which were their closest simian neighbors, and no humans had done anything idiotic lately, so why in the gods’ names was-?

Wait. Humans. Oh no! Arcana. Chan Rahool cradled his head in his hands. The Minarti clan grandmother was preparing to defend her holdings in case the Arcanans managed to get this far. But if the war didn’t reach them, the chimps would have to start a fight of their own to secure the resources their enlarged populations would require!

Chan Rahool grabbed his travel satchel and started throwing things into it. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

* * *

Cetaceans also prepared, though no stevedores had bought their human representative any drinks, and their ambassador hadn’t been nearly as warm to the TTE staff as chan Rahool had been. But then, she was also much, much harder to surprise.

The orca took that as a challenge.

Teeth Cleaver sprayed water in triumph to announce his arrival by the pier. Shalassar Kolmayr-Brintal, Cetacean Ambassador, reluctantly went out to meet the large orca.

‹I report. The large-minds hear. They will sing on it.›

Teeth Cleaver launched himself into the air to twist and look along the railway leading up to the Cetacean Institute. The rails were free of cars at the moment, but a large train happened to pass on the cross line visible in the distance while he was airborne, and he landed with a satisfied splash.

‹Three of those to start. With feed cars. My sisters and brothers must not arrive too weak to hunt in the new oceans.›

Shalassar tossed the black-and-white a fish from the feeding barrel by the pier. Teeth Cleaver swallowed it whole and opened a wide toothy mouth for the next installment. She tossed in a half dozen more.

‹I’d like to hear what the large-minds sing of this.› Shalassar said, finally.

The orca smiled. ‹They will sing and sing and sing. But in the end we orca will go.›

‹Do you know where to go?› Shalassar asked.

Teeth Cleaver said nothing. That was a no then. Orca didn’t care to admit ignorance.

‹The portal is at Larakesh. I’ve made arrangements with a team at the port there to load aquarium cars. If-› She held up a flat hand and gave it a wiggle to indicate a cetacean’s dorsal fin signing uncertainty-‹the large-minds sing that you should go. You’ll need to swim up through the Ylani Strait to get there, but it’s a deep ocean path and we can make arrangements to temporarily stop shipping.›

Teeth Cleaver made a dismissive noise with his blowhole. ‹Porpoises swam it. Scared little porpoises went there and back. Orca need no “stop shipping.”›

Shalassar considered him. The portals were hardly a secret, but she hadn’t expected an orca to consider logistics enough to have another cetacean do a trial run. And why had the porpoises been “scared?” Orcas seldom thought much of porpoises, but still-

A squeal distracted her, sounding in the distance and followed by white crested splashing from a fleeing porpoise pod. Teeth Cleaver’s tail twitched, and Shalassar saw a host of black fins rise in the incoming tide.

The orca whales were eating the distance at attack speed and crisscrossing their own wakes. Even from this far out she could sense something harsh about the group. These weren’t the playful types who routinely visited the Cetacean Institute out of simple curiosity.

‹Are these your sisters and brothers?› Shalassar asked.

Teeth Cleaver gave a tail and body wiggle of negation. ‹Cousins these. These hunt the white sharks. But sharks swim alone. These hope for shark pods in the new oceans. More fun better fight, say these.› The orca snorted water in derision. ‹Don’t eat all their kill, these.›

Shalassar furrowed a brow. Cetaceans were not normally so wasteful. What kind of outcasts were these? ‹Why not eat the whole shark?›

‹Taste bad.› He supplied. ‹Except liver. All liver tasty, even shark. Also these leave shark bits for smaller whites. Want small white shark eat, eat, eat so grow big and be strong for hunt again later.›

‹But not I.› Teeth Cleaver turned a large smile at Shalassar. ‹I, I shall eat all. Taste and sing of Arcana flesh. I swallow all.›

She was not relieved.

* * *

Lady Merissa had stopped wearing the excessively pungent citrus perfume. Andrin Calirath, Crown Princess and heir to the Empires of Sharona and Ternathia, was deeply, deeply grateful.

Her lady-in-waiting’s normally light scent had begun to stink. Or, rather, Andrin’s nose had become exceptionally sensitive. And of course Lady Merissa’s eyes had lit entirely too brightly when she’d first complained of the smell. Everyone but her was enjoying this.

It could just be a horrid stomach bug, but they were all utterly convinced a new prince or princess was on the way. Though “everyone” in this case was limited to those who knew: Howan Fai, Lady Merissa, her mother, her father…and Lazima chan Zindico and Munn Lii. The two lead bodyguards couldn’t be left out. One or two maids might also have figured it out, but if so, they hadn’t breathed a word of it. Andrin had even managed-barely-to keep herself from telling her sisters and writing letters to Eniath about it. She and Howan Fai would at least wait for a doctor’s confirmation. And they would once again pretend absolutely nothing was going on.

Andrin held the carved arm of her chair in a white-knuckled grip under the table, held her breath against the wave of nausea, and forcibly relaxed her upper body to nod politely at the courtier addressing her father. Parliamentary hearings lasted too long.

And more than any physical discomfort, Andrin was worried about what she knew was going to happen during the next recess.

Doctor Gynthyr Morlinhus had a minor appearance before the committee, but that wasn’t the real reason she was here today. Andrin had never doubted her father would move mountains to protect her, but this time it was Empress Varena who’d arranged to get one of the top doctors anywhere in Sharona into Tajvana and make it possible for her to examine Andrin undetected.

Publicly just a shadow of her husband the emperor, few people truly took Varena seriously. In many ways, the empress found that convenient, but the truth was quite different, and she was the one who’d insisted a board of the best medical practitioners be formed to study the needs of the new Sharonan Army and set policy for medical care of the sick and wounded. Even some of Emperor Zindel’s staff had questioned whether that might not be an overreaction of a grieving mother. Not even the miraculous healing abilities the Arcanans had used on Prince Janaki’s comrades at Fort Salby could have saved the prince, and no amount of healthcare policy improvements was likely to reduce deaths during battle.

But collecting bandages and assembling medicine kits gave the families left behind something to do, and maybe, just maybe, they could make an impact on the number of deaths after the battles. The recommendations so far from the new Imperial Board of Healers had been hugely popular. So much so that some were beginning to suspect Empress Varena of political savvy after all.

But no one seemed to have guessed that while all of that was useful, the true reason it had been arranged in that manner was to get Doctor Morlinhus to Tajvana once every four to six weeks expressly to see Andrin…very, very quietly.

As long as Chava could continue to claim that an unfruitful marriage was essentially unconsummated and thus legally void, Uromathian opposition to the Calirath dynasty stayed a broad threat, dispersed over a thousand ways to widow her, discredit her husband, or attack her father. Once it was known a child was coming, all plotting would focus immediately solely on her.

Glimpses were strong, clear, and utterly unforgettable. What she was having now weren’t Glimpses, unless they were some kind of spillover from an unformed Talent that might or might not be growing in her womb. That happened occasionally with the Calirath Talent…or so legend said.

Andrin had seen in fitful nightmares hundreds of ways Chava might attack her to try to kill her or destroy her unborn babe. Those panicky dreams lacked the eerie clarity of a Glimpse, thank the Gods. But still Andrin had her nightmares and woke to Howan Fai holding her and whispering her sweetly back to sleep.

But before Uromathia could threaten the child, there had to be one. So far all she knew for sure was her monthly flow was late by several weeks. Lady Merissa had gone so far as to bring in a jar of pig’s blood and soil the linens normally used during Andrin’s monthlies so any spies working in the palace laundry would have misinformation to report.

She’d need to repeat the subterfuge again in a week…unless Andrin simply started bleeding again on her own. That did happen, her mother had warned. Sometimes a pregnancy simply didn’t hold. Though Empress Varena always added with a prayer to the Mother, she hoped that never happened to any of her daughters.

The hearing break was called and Andrin left for the restroom several doors down the hall. Behind her, the closest women’s facility immediately formed a line, and Doctor Morlinhus was snatched from the end to follow a servant to another facility being opened.

The doctor walked through the door, which was immediately-and firmly-shut behind her, and took one long look at the Crown Princess.

“I should’ve known that palace staff wouldn’t go out of their way to help a random visitor find a lady’s restroom.” She looked plaintively around. “I do really need to go.”

“Of course, Doctor.” Andrin bit down a demand that the woman tell her first what her Talent showed and pointed at the carved screens that shielded a line of necessities.

The Grand Palace did do luxury remarkably well. The Order of Bergahl had maintained that aspect of it in their centuries long stewardship. A small fountain in the waiting area filled and drained hand pools, offering easy wash-ups and a soft splashing that also covered any undignified noises those using the necessities might need to make. After what seemed like an eternity, Doctor Morlinhus reemerged and set to washing her hands thoroughly.

“I’m sorry to rush you, Doctor,” Andrin said, “but we’ve only got a few moments before this meeting starts to look suspicious. I believe my mother explained that she needed you to give me an exam.”

“She said a woman in need. She did not say the Crown Princess and Heir to the Throne of Sharona carrying the next Heir to the Throne of Sharona.”

“Really? I’m pregnant?!”

“Of course you’re pregnant.” Doctor Morlinhus shook her head. “Everything feels fine. Just one mind in there though. I hope you don’t expect me to try to make it two or change the gender for you. No one can do that.”

“Oh no. Of course not! But can you tell what I’m having?”

“Too early. In another month maybe, depending on the growth between now and then. And even then I might get it wrong.” Doctor Morlinhus gave her a sharp look. “I expect the Empress will be arranging a reason for me to come back regularly?”

“I expect.” Andrin agreed softly.

“Yes, dear,” Doctor Morlinhus softened. “You’ll do fine, Your Highness. It’s just hard work expecting. Don’t wear yourself out too much pretending not to be.”

Andrin crushed the woman in a hug.

“My Talent only covers so much. All I can do is listen to how the little ones are feeling and measure how developed their minds feel. Do try to maintain a healthy level of exercise and keep away from sick people. I can only See how things are going, not what will happen if you do foolish things. Make sure to eat a good quantity of fish. It’s poor people’s food here, but it’s good for you. Lots of vegetables too. I’ll give your mother a list if she doesn’t have one already.”

“Of course. Thank you, Doctor!”

Lady Merissa knocked once on the door, and Andrin left with her, in a hurry to get back to the council chambers before anyone realized she’d just had a prenatal consultation with one of the universe’s most Talented doctors. Lady Merissa had to remind her to slow to a calm walk lest she return out of breath.

* * *

That night Andrin dreamed of waddling.

In the fuzziness, she couldn’t see her feet. Then the dream took on crystalline, almost Glimpse-like clarity and she saw a great mound of belly hid her feet from view unless she stuck them straight out. She wiggled the tips of her toes at herself. They were clean, scrubbed and painted in delicate pastels to match the baby’s sleeping room. The playroom, she was suddenly certain, had a much bolder more vibrant paint scheme, inspired by the lush plant life and bright ocean colors of Eniath, for all that the room was here in Tajvana.

A dark shadow blocked the sunlight streaming through the window. Glass shattered and knives struck her even as she turned to shield the precious bump with her back and spine. The movement was too slow with heavy weight wrapping her body in an aching layer of sustenance for her child, and hideous scarlet splashed the sundrenched playroom.

The dream reset. She’d moved the baby’s chambers to an inner suite. No windows this time, for better security. Attacks still happened, as she’d expected, but the Guard stopped each of them before they could reach the nursery or her. She rested easily with the large tummy. No elaborate painting on the toes this time, but she still wiggled them back at herself.

She sat down to a breakfast tray delivered by Lady Merissa. Some berries Andrin didn’t yet recognize filled half the tray. Somehow she knew they’d quickly become her favorite food, during her pregnancy-she’d want them day and night for their mix of tartness and sweet lusciousness-for all that they were seasonal and increasingly difficult to procure.

Fast work with the spoon emptied the entire bowl. She only barely noticed the off flavor at the end. Then the cramps came sharp and hard. Blood splatter coated the hands she tried to use to hold the bleeding back and stop the too early, far too early birth. She vomited bile mixed with breakfast, but too late. Vomit and blood clogged her senses as she lay weeping on the matted child’s rug.

The dream reset a dozen more times. Until finally she gave it all up for utter secrecy. No suite prepared, no special food requests. She vomited, normal healthy vomit, multiple times a day and hid it. Lady Merissa increased her makeup to hide the sallow tinge to her face. Her middle sister, Razial, pretended a renewed love of sweet jams and included the favorite berries in the mix. But the jar was tested carefully and measured out a bit at a time in no more than the consumption rate a boisterous young princess could reasonably manage. Andrin bore the pregnancy in deepest stealth. She had to keep this child alive.

And still she failed. Again and again, she failed.

She rose from the depths of sleep, weeping, and her tears stirred Howan Fai awake beside her. She hadn’t wanted to do that, but she clung to the strong, loving comfort of his embrace as she poured out the horrible dreams. And not simply because she needed his comfort. These weren’t Glimpses; she knew what they looked like entirely too well, and only Death Glimpses revealed the fate of the person to whom they came. She did die in some of the nightmares, but in most, she survived to grieve bitterly over the yawning ache of her murdered babe. Yet they were more than simple nightmares induced by anxiety: she was equally sure of that. She dared not trust the details of the fast changing dreams to paper, yet she needed to be sure they were remembered properly in the morning, and so she poured out her nightmares to him in a bare whisper while he held her sobbing body.

“It will not happen, my love,” he told her sternly, kissing her earlobe while he stroked sweat and tear-soaked hair from her forehead. “Upon my life, it will not happen! We will keep our child safe and your pregnancy secret. Chava and his accursed agents will learn of it only when our babe is born!”

Andrin nodded against his shoulder, limp with emotion, wrapping his love and his promise about her like another blanket. The Caliraths had already given up one heir to the throne, willingly and at great cost, she thought. But she and Howan Fai would see that this child reached Janaki’s years.

“We can keep the secret for a while without too much trouble, I think,” she said after a moment. “If we’re careful, it’ll be at least two months, maybe three, before anyone’s going to notice anything just looking at me. But you know Chava’s watching like a hawk for any sign of something like this, and I’ll still have to attend state dinners. Won’t he start to wonder if I suddenly stop drinking the wines at them?”

“No doubt you’re right about that viper,” Howan Fai agreed grimly. “But I think the solution to this problem is near at hand, Sister of White Fire. We will get you a Taster. Your father has Kallen, and as rare as Precogs are, Tasters are among the more common. They only need to Know food and drink with a Precog range of a few minutes, and you are the heir. We should already have assigned one specifically to you, too, and no one will be surprised if we correct that oversight. The Taster can switch any wine for juice of the right color, and with enough care we’ll be able to keep the news from leaking that way.”

“Yes. That should work.” Andrin hugged him. “Thank you. I’m so worried, but you’re right. We can make this work. But what about after that? I’d hoped that because I was tall the baby would just sort of stretch out lengthwise, but that doesn’t seem to be this child’s intention. In all my dreams, I get huge.”

Frustration and dismay mingled with the worry in her tone, and Howan Fai chuckled and kissed her fingertips.

“Large you may get, My Lady, but you can never be anything save beautiful to me. And how could you be anything but lovely in my eyes when you carry the child of both our hearts beneath your own? But even if you are to become ‘huge,’ it need not present an insurmountable difficulty. We could take a honeymoon cruise. Go visit Eniath maybe? My mother’s family’s island is closer to Uromathia, but it’s isolated and a virtual citadel. We can defend it, and keep the wrong people out much more easily than we can here at the Grand Palace. I think we could keep you safe. Were any of the nightmares in an island fortress?”

Andrin pondered that.

“No. I recognized all the rooms. Every time we tried another place it was within Tajvana. We could do that. We should do that. Take me home, Howan. I just need a safe place to have this baby. I don’t know why this can’t be made to work at Tajvana, but there doesn’t seem to be a single way to have the child here safely. And in some of the dreams a lot of the Imperial Guard die, too.

“They serve to save us, but they shouldn’t die for nothing.”