She scowled. It was her window, she was sure of that, in the room she shared with Kerrec. And here was this stranger, who might be a servant, but what was she doing with a suckling child?
Morag’s tall and robust figure interposed itself between Valeria and the girl. “Good morning,” she said. “Breakfast is coming. Come and have a bath.”
Valeria sat up. She had been dreaming that the baby was born and she was her slender self again, riding Sabata through a fragment of the Dance. The dream had been sweet, but her mood was strange.
She felt heavier and more ungainly than ever. The bath soothed a little of that. Breakfast was more than welcome, but her appetite faded as fast as it had risen. She ate a few mouthfuls and pushed the rest away.
In all that time, Morag had not explained the girl by the window. The child finished nursing, clambered down from the girl’s lap and came to stand with his thumb in his mouth, staring at Valeria with wide brown eyes.
“This is a rider’s son,” Valeria said. “Is that his mother?”
“That is Portia,” Morag said. “Portia is deaf and mute, but she’s quite intelligent. She’ll nurse your daughter when you go back to being a rider.”
“She will not!” Valeria said fiercely. “I’ll raise my child myself. I don’t need—”
“Of course you do,” said Morag. She dipped a spoonful of lukewarm porridge and cream. “Here, eat. You’re feeding the baby, too, don’t forget.”
“Are you trying to make me sorry you ever came?”
“You’ll be glad enough of me before the day is out,” Morag said. “Finish this and then we’ll walk. You want to visit your horses, don’t you?”
Valeria glowered, but there was no resisting her mother. “This argument isn’t over,” she said. “When I come back, I want that girl gone.”
“I’m sure you do,” Morag said, unperturbed. “Eat. Then walk.”
Morag was relentless. Valeria did not like to admit it, but she was glad to be up and out. She was not so glad to be marched through the whole school and half the city, then back again. She was a rider, not a foot soldier.
At least the long march included the stable and her stallions. Sabata and Oda were in the paddocks behind the stallions’ stable. Marina was instructing a rider-candidate under Kerrec’s stern eye.
Orontius was a competent rider, but he was profoundly in awe of Kerrec. That awe distracted him and made him clumsy. He almost wept at the sight of Valeria.
She forgot her strange mood and her body’s sluggishness. “There now,” she said. “Remember what we practiced yesterday? Show us how it went.”
Orontius breathed so deep his body shuddered. Then, to Valeria’s relief, he remembered how to focus.
Marina’s own relief was palpable. A stiff and distracted rider was no pleasure for any horse to carry, even one as patient as the stallion. As Orontius relaxed, his balance grew steadier and his body softer. He began to flow with the movement as a rider should.
Kerrec would hardly unbend so far as to laugh in front of a student, but his glance at Valeria had a flicker of mirth in it. He knew how he seemed to these raw boys. Sometimes it distressed him, but mostly he was indulgent.
Valeria could remember when he had been truly terrifying. He was merely alarming now. He was even known, on rare occasions, to smile.
She slipped her hand into his. His fingers laced with hers, enfolding her in warmth. She knew better than to lean on him in front of half a dozen rider-candidates and their instructors, but his presence bolstered her wonderfully.
Orontius finished his lesson without falling into further disgrace. Lucius was waiting his turn, holding the rein of Kerrec’s stallion Petra. Valeria caught his eye and smiled.
“I’ll teach this one,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Kerrec asked.
He was not asking her. His eyes were on Morag.
Valeria’s temper flared. She opened her mouth to upbraid them both, but the words never came. She felt…strange. Very. Something had let go. Something warm and wet. Something…
Kerrec swept her off her feet. She struggled purely instinctively, but his single sharp word put an end to that. She clutched at his neck as he began to run—biting back the question that logic bade her ask. “Why carry me? Can’t I ride?”
She knew what his answer would be. Not now.
The baby was coming. Not this instant—Valeria was not a mare, to race from water breaking to foal on the ground in half a turn of the glass. Human women were notably less blessed. But the birth had begun. There was no stopping it.
She had thought she would be afraid. Fear was there, but it was distant, like a voice yammering almost out of earshot. The pains were much more immediate.
They were sharper than she had expected, and cut deeper. They wrenched her from the inside out.
Kerrec was with her. He would not let her go.
A very remote part of her was comforted. The rest was in stark terror.
The pains were too strong. They should not be like this. They set hooks in the deepest part of her, the part that she had buried and bound and prayed never to see again.
The Unmaking had roused. Absolute nothingness opened at the core of everything she was.
All because she had read a spell in an old and justly forgotten book, not so long ago. It had been quiescent since she came back to the Mountain from the war and the great victory. She thought she had overcome it.
She had been an idiot. It had been waiting, that was all, biding its time until she was as vulnerable as a human creature could be.
She should be riding out the pains, guiding her child into the light. Instead, all the power she had went into holding back the Unmaking.
She did not have to panic. Her mother was there. So was Kerrec. They would keep the baby safe. She had to believe that.
She could feel Kerrec around her, holding her. His quiet strength brought comfort even through the terror that was trying to swallow her. It was always there, always with her, no matter where she was or what she did. It was as much a part of them both as the color of their eyes or the shape of their hands.
She leaned back against him. It was a strange sensation, as if she moved her body from without with a third hand while the rest kept a death grip on the Unmaking. His lips brushed her hair, a gesture so casual and yet so tender that she nearly wept.
She had no choice but to hold on and be strong. No one could help her with this. No one here even knew.
They could not know. If they did, they would try to help—and the Unmaking would lair in them, too. She would rather give herself up to it than destroy them.
That hardened her heart. Her grip had been slipping, but now it firmed. She walled the Unmaking in magic, calling on the strength of the Mountain and the stallions who were always within her.
She would never have dared to do that if it had not been for the three whom she protected—not only her lover and her mother but the child who struggled to be born. The Unmaking must never touch them. That was a great vow, as deep as the Unmaking itself.
Valeria lay barely conscious against Kerrec’s body. Pains racked her, but her spirit was elsewhere. She had gone far inside herself behind walls and wards so strong he dared not break them for fear of breaking her.
“Is it always this way with mages?” he asked her mother.
Morag’s frown was etched deep