Chapter 12

Wren's POV

"She'll pay ten times the usual," Hester went on, "and she knows you're near your time and oughtn't to be shaken about. But she says there's no one else within ten miles."

She was looking at my belly as she said it, and her mouth went tight. I was six months gone and carrying like a woman at term. Hester had borne children of her own, and she had said more than once, when she thought I was asleep, that there was more than one in there or she was no judge.

"Hester, she can't." Briar was twisting her apron in both hands. "Can't they send the gown here? She could mend it lying down, you know she could."

"I asked. Rowe says it's sewn all over with stones, and they daren't move it about in case something else comes loose. And by the time it came out here and went back, the moon would be up and the girl standing at the stone in a torn sleeve."

I put my needle through the edge of the cloth so I wouldn't lose it and set the hoop down.

"I'll go," I said. "We'll need Rowe's work for a long while yet. And I'd like a proper healer in the city to look at me, while I'm there. I can't keep guessing."

Briar opened her mouth and shut it again. Hester sighed and told her to fetch the good shawl.

I didn't tell either of them what I was really afraid of, which was not the cart or the road. It was a face in a Silverkeep street that knew mine.

Briar thought of it too. She went out to the walnut tree behind the privy and came back with a bowl of green husks, and she sat me on the stool by the door and worked the juice into my face and throat and the backs of my hands until my skin was the color of a field hand's at harvest. My freckles went under it. She bound my hair up flat in a coarse kerchief so not a strand of red showed, and I put on Hester's old gray dress, which strained at every seam.

"There," Hester said, standing back. "Your own mother would walk past you."

* * *

Rowe's boy Nat rode beside the cart on a tired brown cob. When we were past the last of the village, Briar lifted the flap and called to him that her sister was heavy and would he ask the carter to go gently, and whose house was it, please?

"A learned house in the upper town," Nat said. "Scholars, the lot of them. The eldest daughter's bound tonight. They're gentle people, you needn't worry." He glanced at the shape of me under the shawl and lowered his voice. "Only don't go having it in their yard, missus. Not on her binding day."

"She won't," Briar said quickly. "She's only big early."

A scholar's house, then. I let myself sit back. People who spent their lives over old papers would at least be reasonable.

The cart stopped in a back lane behind a tall house, at a side gate. A maid in a green apron was waiting there with her arms folded, and she came forward with her face already cross. When she saw what climbed down from the cart, she stopped.

"What's Rowe thinking, sending a woman in that state?" she said to Nat. "It's a binding day. You don't bring a big belly over the threshold on a binding day, everyone knows that. She's not coming in."

"Please, Mistress Tansy. It's the moonflowers on the sleeve. The silver's shaded in three colors. No one else in the shop could put it back so you'd never know."

Tansy chewed her lip and looked at my belly and then at my bent head.

"Wait here, then," she said at last. "Don't move a step." She turned to go, then turned back. "And I'll tell you now, every stone on that gown is worth more than your whole village. If one of them goes missing while it's in your hands..."

"She's the best we've got, mistress," Nat said, sweating. "And honest as the day."

* * *

Tansy came back with three older women carrying a long chest between them, and left them to stand guard over it while she went back in to her lady.

The light inside the cart was too poor to sew by, so Briar set me on the cart's step, out in the sun. It was so low that my belly came up between my knees and hid my lap, and I had to hold the sleeve up nearly to my eyes. One of the twin moonflowers had a broken thread of silver running through its heart, the petals puckered where it had been pulled. I matched the silver from my own roll, threaded the finest needle I had, and went in and out until the flower lay flat again.

The oldest of the three women turned the sleeve over and over in the sun. "Well, I can't see where it was," she said. "And I've good eyes."

"Thank you, mistress." My back was wet through under the shawl.

Briar folded the gown back into its chest and took my arm. "My sister's been sitting in the sun too long," she said. "If it's all done, we'll be on our way."

The tallest of the women put herself in front of us. She was polite about it, but she didn't move. "Not yet, I'm afraid. The bride has to see it with her own eyes and say she's satisfied. That's the rule in this house. Have a little patience."

"Of course," I said. "Please take it in to her."

Nat held the cart flap up for me, and I climbed back inside and sat down heavily. It was hotter in there than out in the lane. Sweat ran down from my hairline and I didn't dare wipe it, in case the walnut came off on my sleeve, so I only pressed my handkerchief to my temples and my throat and held it there. The pups were turning hard, one kick on top of another, as if the heat were bothering them too. I put my hand over the place.

I had started to be afraid before I heard the feet.

They came running from the house, a lot of them, and a woman's voice shouting over the rest.

"Where is she? Where's that seamstress? Get her out here!"

My hand closed on Briar's.

"A ruby's gone off the bodice! The one Lady Sabine sent her for a binding gift, from her own hand!" The voice was right outside now. "Hold them. Don't let either of them out of your sight. On my young lady's own binding day, thieving from her gown!"

"It'll be those two from the country," someone said. "Hands like magpies, that sort."

The flap was torn back. Hands came in, three or four of them at once, and took hold of my arms and my shawl.

"Let go of her!" Briar threw herself across me with her arms spread. "She's carrying, can't you see? If you hurt her, you'll answer for it!"

"The stone went missing after she'd had the gown." The woman in front was square and red-faced, with Tansy's chin. "Drag them out. Search them."

They pulled me down off the step. My foot found nothing, and I went sideways, and a pain went through my belly so sharp and deep that the lane turned dark, and the sweat went cold all over me at once.