Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(87)

“What have you given her?” I asked Poe.

“Nothing,” the mousy girl said. “She won’t take anything from me. She shouts if I go near.”

“Is there anything in this that will help?” Nismae asked, flinging my satchel into my arms.

“Yes,” I said, hugging it to my chest and feeling a quick burst of gladness. I never thought I would see it again. I dropped to the floor and started rummaging through it. “How long has she been in labor?”

“Since early this morning,” Nismae said. “Is this normal? Should she be like this?”

“She should be all right unless the baby is breech or something else has gone wrong,” I said. “I’ll have to examine her.”

Ina moaned again from the back of the cave, where she was submerged in a pool of water. I hurried to her side and tested it with my hand. Not too warm. At least they’d had the sense not to let her get into one of the hotter pools.

“Hal, set aside some of that boiling water and let it cool a little so I can wash my hands.”

He obeyed as quickly as if we’d been back in our easy rhythm of setting up camp. My heart squeezed uncomfortably at the memories.

“What can I do?” Nismae trailed anxiously behind me.

“Get over here and help her out of the water. If she has another contraction, support her under her arms so she can squat,” I said. “You’ve got two working hands, unlike some of us.”

Nismae ignored the jab, seemingly grateful to have something to do. She helped Ina out of the pool and wrapped her in a blanket, then lowered her over the straw they’d laid beside the pool.

“You’re here,” Ina said. Tears sprang to the corners of her eyes. She grasped my hand, sending uncomfortable twinges up my injured arm thanks to the damaged nerves. For the first time since leaving Amalska, she looked like the Ina I remembered. One who relied on me, who had a sweet side to balance her ambition and fierceness.

I felt nothing.

The vulnerability in her eyes didn’t sway me as it once might have. I wanted to help her, but I wasn’t enslaved by that desire. I left the job of hovering and soothing to Nismae, who stroked Ina’s brow and whispered comforting things in her ear, only to earn a glare and a yell during the next contraction.

“These contractions are coming close together,” I said. “Poe, heat more water and make tea.” I flung several sachets of herbs at her and listed out the proportions of each. She rushed to do it, looking more confident now that someone else was in charge.

As soon as the contraction subsided, Nismae helped Ina lie down, propping her up with stuffed cushions and folded blankets to support her back while I washed my hands in the hot water Hal had prepared.

“Is it all right if I examine you and check on the baby?” I asked Ina.

She nodded, breathing heavily, strands of her sable hair sticking to her face.

I examined her, trying to ignore the strangeness of revisiting such an intimate part of her for such different reasons.

“Ina.” I returned to her side. “It’s time. Push when you feel ready.”

“All right,” she said, her voice a raspy whisper.

Poe rushed over with swaddling blankets and fresh rags. Nismae helped Ina into a squatting position again, even as Ina moaned and cursed and gnashed her teeth.

After fifteen minutes of Ina continuing to labor to no avail, Nismae spoke up. “Is this supposed to take so long?”

“Be quiet and hold her up,” I said, and Ina and I bestowed her with matching glares. “The baby will come when the time is right.”

Ina’s contractions continued to intensify until she couldn’t get comfortable. She alternately cursed us and demanded we do something about her situation. I stayed steady, familiar with this phase of childbirth, while Nismae looked half-panicked.

A few minutes later, I held Ina’s son.

“Look at you!” I said to the baby.

He let out a good healthy cry.

I couldn’t help but smile at the miracle of him—his tiny hands, his angry scrunched-up face, so unhappy to be out in the world. While I no longer felt anything for Ina, looking at this baby flooded me with emotions I didn’t entirely know how to manage. I wanted to hold him close and keep him safe, to tell him every day how perfect he was.

Instead I enjoyed the few minutes I had, humming him a lullaby as I carefully wiped him clean. I swaddled him, then moved to put him on Ina’s chest, where he could rest until she delivered the afterbirth.

Ina put up her arm. I thought she was reaching for the baby—until she spoke.

“No,” she croaked.

That one word cut me to the bone.

“What?” I asked. Stupefied, I knelt beside her with the baby in my arms, instinctively holding him closer to myself.

“I don’t want to touch him,” Ina said. “Get him away from me.”

This couldn’t be happening. She wouldn’t do this.

“You have to. He needs to nurse. He needs his mother!” I pleaded with her to understand, to look at how tiny and helpless he was. How could she not see how much he needed her? How could she deny him the comfort of resting on her chest, of hearing her familiar heartbeat to welcome him to the outside world?

“I’m not his mother.” She turned her head away.

“But—”