A lady must take her moments when they come. Running her business was a difficult proposition at the best of times, and these days the influx of new girls wanting to join her establishment was heavy. Hollow stomachs wished to be filled, and a woman could not be faulted for plying a trade. The Lady looked over the reports Tananger had written up, marvelling at the girl’s precise print. The Lady had not been born in the lands of the valley, but rather in the west country far from the valley. She recalled learning the way of letters years ago in her middle age. It had been a fool’s errand, or so she thought, until she found herself here.
The Lady had notes from a half dozen lordlings asking for extensions of credit, which were always ignored. Hard coin for soft times, a girl could not be fed on a note of credit. She saw the requests for new bed linens and winced, knowing prices were going up every moment she waited to place an order with a factor. Silk was out of the question, and even the soft spun linens of the deltafolk were becoming more and more rare as the War waged on. Soon her girls would be plying their trade on straw mats and corn husk sheets, unless something was done. And then there were the supplies for the part of the business that gave the Ward its name. Herbs, poultice makings, gauze and hundreds of yards of catgut. Soft vellum sheeting for wrapping burns, and the leeches and maggots needed fed.
The Lady had known something of the healing arts on her arrival in the valley, and had learned more since. She considered herself a competent midwife, a skill sorely lacking in madams who would rather brew a wasting tea and let the girl kill the life inside of her. While she could be cruel at times the Lady had her limits, though if Tananger had her way the Lady’s mothering girls would be out on the streets with a clipped copper and a boot to the backside. The Lady knew there were men who would pay well for a mother’s touch, the deltafolk traders considered such a woman touched by their goddess Bajit, whose milk flowed constantly as the clouds in the sky and whose touch was said to save a man from siring a stillborn boy.
The Lady kept her own counsel on choices for girls, but knew the tastes of men. Tananger, her hair the color of spring wheat and those eyes of brightest blue would be beloved in the Lady’s homeland, where she would have been named after the god of merriment, the laughing blond Maruk. She loved to tell the girl of her homeland’s myths and stories, and the girl would tell her Lady of this place’s gods and heroes. The story of Tyn the Wise, sometimes Tyn the Brave, and his bird of a thousand colors. The love songs of Mamarit and Pardu, Mother River and Father Mountain. The girl would tell tales of her family sometimes, the silliness her young brother Oriole, lost to sickness years ago, would get up to, and how he had a small scar just where a man might cut his lip shaving.
When the Lady once pressed for tales of their father as they sat on the Ward’s roof Tan had stared into the night sky and stayed mute for nearly a month. The Lady knew some stories were too hard to tell to just anyone, and some stories meant for just one other set of ears.
She idly ran her hands along her shelves. A set of birthing tools, reeds and potions, her perfect knife for cutting the gate when a mother was too small to bear the babe out, or the mother was lost and a child could live. A statue of a black bakti sat atop a box carved in whirling shapes. Bakti, the ship’s mate hunters that of her homeland were rare as an eagle’s cry in the rat-strewn streets of the Barrow. The piece had been a gift from a woman of her homeland who had born five dead children only to bring a screaming girl into the world with help of the Lady’s hands. She touched the carved box and thought of a long lost girl. The Lady moved the statue and opened the box slightly, a sad smile playing across her face at the light from within.
The knock at the door was Tananger. No other woman in the Ward would pound so loudly. She thinks she’ll wake the dead, in a house full of ghosts. The Lady set the lid back gently before going back to her desk to do her business, memories of the happiest year and saddest night of her life fighting for purchase over the business of the day.
“I am ready for you Tan.”
When the watchman entered she tensed. Then listened. Then grabbed for her kits.
The compound made the Ward look small by comparison, its grounds were far better appointed. Trees ripe with the spicy pears the people of the valley called Mother’s Gift and the small sour pitted berries the girls would love. Perhaps I could ask for a basket of them for payment, Leech thought. She knew the bitch would never give anything unless she could be sure to pry it out of your dead hands. Even though Leech hated the woman, the Lady remembered when a girl named Naset had come with her across the water. In her heart she could not blame her sister putting on airs as she rose to her position as Lady Squab Hill.
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The youngest Lady had used an unfortunate watchman for her dirty work. She must have taken some sick pleasure in sending a watchman on to the Ward for her. The Watch may turn an eye from the work the Ladies did, but that did not mean a man could roam into a brothel in full uniform without being tossed from their post. The man seemed nonplussed by travel in the deathcoach, making the Lady wonder how deep a grip on his coins her old friend held.
“Do you know how far along she is?” the Lady asked, prying softly for information.
“I’m just a messenger, Lady Leech. The Lady Hill is our mutual friend, and when a friend calls — ” the man shrugged, showing he lied by naming the Lady friend.
“May I have your name, kind sir? I do like to know the handsome men I invite into my chambers on a first name basis.” the Lady smiled at the guard.
“Captain Crow, m’lady. At least that’s what they call me in the Roost.”
A captain? Surely the Lady needed her quick if she had called a captain into their work.
“I am charmed. You are so kind to use my nickname. I know we will be fast friends, Crow.” the Lady tried not to sneer. She could accept Leech in her mind, but there was a cruelty in its use to her face.
The two kept quiet as the coach trundled to their destination. The Hill was quiet as a tomb, a state the Lady found fitting. She let the dusky image flow past her, passing by the obelisks and cenotaphs of a thousand dead nobles the city had long forgotten. The people of the valley burned their dead, while the diggers of long ago had left their marks in stone. The Lady wondered, and not for the first time, what those who came before the diggers had left behind.
Squab Hill was waiting on the steps of her family home. When Leech had known the Lord Hill he had feared for her once friend’s safety. Now the Lady walked unmolested through the districts of the city in the clothes that fit a washerwoman and it seemed to suit her fine. The last two of their generation, they stared at each other on the steps for a moment before Squab rushed to Leech, grabbing her tight and sobbing into her shoulder.
“It’s Posy. She decided to go riding, and she was so heavy with child… she… she’s screaming. There’s so much blood. Please for the love of — please?” tears soaked into the simple linen dress the Lady had chosen as Squab’s grip grew tighter. The physician pried the emotional matron from her side and looked on through the eyes of memory. A full head shorter than her sister, Squab was a fat and miserly sort. The emotion worried Leech. It was out of character. And Posy may be in real trouble.
“Darling, I know. Come with me. Do you have another cutter, anyone who has some skill with the body?” the Lady brushed Squab’s hair away, flinching from the oil and dirt she found streaking her fingers.
“Ma’am? I was a medic in the War. And her guard, he knows something of setting bones if our reports are correct.” Crow spoke up, pushing himself forward. The captain grabbed a thuggish man dressed in a chain shirt so rusty it looked ready to fall off his body.
“Aye, I know a set, can make a pot to knock out a man for a day with clean breathing.”
“That won’t be necessary. If it is as Na… the Lady says, we must make haste.”
They cut a path through the waiting throne. Lady Hill blubbered behind, and the sensible among the Temple’s inhabitants turned a blind eye to their Lady’s weakness. Rumor was the Lord Hill had killed every man in the room when his first wife had died abed of crypt cough, and none wanted a repeat if the Lady looked around to find who had seen her in her moment of weakness. Leech called out for supplies, hot water and a basin to wash in as she walked, coming to the door where muffled screams could be heard.
The bed was a ruin. Posy laid in a pool of sweat mixed with blood and sick. Her leg was broken, sitting crooked on her body. One arm seemed to have been nearly ripped from the body, and her face was a mass of bruises. One eye focused on the Lady, and the breathing calmed somewhat.
“Uht hrssh.”
“I know, love. I am going to wash myself, and we’re going to help.” the Lady turned away and looked the two men in the eye, motioning for them to come with her to the corner of the room.
“She’s dying, Lady.” the Captain whispered, blunt as a club.
“Ma’am, I know ya loved Posy, but the ratfuck cutter is right. Can ya save da beb?” the cutter asked, his face linen white and eyes fearpricked.
“If it comes to it, we will. If the babe is… is healthy, we are bringing it out. Either way, we must try to save the mother.”
They set to preparation. The guard stripped out of his mail and into a puffed shirt of fine linen that still showed his chest. A dandy’s shirt, and if Posy wasn’t dying the Lady would have laughed to see it. The thug looked like a fat fish dressing to meet the King. He ripped strips of cloth to bind Posy’s unbroken limbs in place while Crow and Leech washed themselves thoroughly.
“You did serve. Ever open a man up?”
“I cut my fair share of limbs, cracked a skull to relieve pressure. Put the Lord Somethingorother’s guts back in, though,” he paused, his face flushing, “it didn’t work out as well as I would have hoped.”
The Lady finished cleaning herself, then stood for a moment in silent prayer.
Hsith, Beauty of the Reeds, Mother of Mothers, Keeper of the Gates of Life, let me bring this woman and her child back from the brink of Your brother’s lands. Steady my hand, guide my knife and spare these under my care.
