Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

62. Things I Didn't Want to Know

For the first time in my life, my body failed me. The garden of my Char-Kermen manor blinked. All the colors of the Knowable World changed to the shades of gray. The horizon tilted... Next thing I saw was the pebbles of the gravel path in front of my nose. I gritted my teeth and pushed from the ground, willing the shakes in my elbows to stop. There was a bench to my right. It was right there, three paces at most, or however long it took me on all fours. I should have woken the nurse who nodded off by my sick bed before descending into the garden, but I was so tired of being lifted, turned and propped by others. I made it down the staircase on my own, chased outside by the piteous cries of my newborn daughter.

The shakes calmed down, replaced by a powerful crump in my calf. I could crawl with that. So I crawled through the flower-studded grass, in the shade of a gigantic mango tree, and pulled myself up on the bench. I couldn't help my third child, but I could make it to the bench. Another glorious triumph of Ismar, Who Kills Elephants. Hurray!

I swallowed tears, despite being in the right place to spill them. Before me was Gala's shrine threaded by vines that over years split the bowl of tears in pieces. It chipped away the owl's wings of the Divine of Wisdom and Mercy. The rainwater still collected in what was left of Gala's vessel, dripping in a meditative rhythm. Ancient calm wafted from it more than it would have from a newly carved stone. The older the shrines, the more spiritual assurance they gave a troubled soul.

Here, the smell of medicines couldn't distract me from the thoughts about the River Vash, but all I could think of was Basilissa. My eldest, Marezhka, pushed her way into the world ready to eat the bleeding livers of her enemies. Xenophonta has never been a problem until she started reading, practically at the same time as she started talking. But Basilissa wouldn't suckle.

My milk dried up. She wouldn't suckle her wet-nurse either. She threw up the goat's milk. The High Scribe was now dribbling meat bone broth into her petulant mouth, mixed with sweet herbs. My body failed me. She was my daughter and my body failed her. 'Thrive,' I prayed, 'thrive.'

A weight landed on the other side of the bench.

"Should you be outdoors?" said the last person I wanted to see. How could Taffiz be an assassin? With the stink of Ashanti coating him, the only place where he could sneak upon unsuspecting victims was the Halls of the High Scribes.

"I should," I replied firmly. This was not the time to be bedridden. "I just need to clear my head and I'll be fine." Then I'd go back inside and make my daughter survive. Somehow.

Even through my closed eyelids I felt his doubting glance on me.

"What do you want, Taffiz?"

"I came to meet the youngest daughter of the family I serve. She has all the fingers and toes," he said.

His tone made me shrink into the bench. The husky quality of his voice always insinuated something. I didn't know what he knew, what he had guessed and what he was trying to pry out of me.

"And," he finished, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the air, "she is a tiny copy of her father. All but his tattoos."

"The cursed magic has nothing to do with my daughter being born sickly. Don't you dare breathe as much as a hint of suspicion in Parneres' presence," I warned him. "He is wracked with guilt as is. It'll destroy him!"

My stomach lurched with a horrible guess. I didn't want to believe it. Paneres and Taffiz were friends, lovers even... but Taffiz wanted to be my husband, and I could only afford to keep three.

I fixed him with a glare. "What poisonous barb did you plant in his mind?"

"Me?" He shook his head slowly. "Think, Ishmara! Think!"