Lupi 04 - Night Season

only in her dream they’d won through and eaten everyone. She’d probably dream again. And again.
    Cynna had had close calls before. She knew how it felt afterward, the way her heart could start pounding when memory ghosted by. She knew the need to grab at life, prove she’d survived and life still raged inside her in all its heat and confusion. If there had been even a smidgeon of privacy on this damned barge, she’d have done her best to celebrate their survival with Cullen.
    Only this time was different. It had hit her when those monsters swarmed out of the forest: she wasn’t alone in this body now. A tiny rider needed the air she breathed, the food she ate, her very heartbeat to survive. If she died, so did the little rider.
    Cullen’s hand slid up to cup her breast.
    â€œHey!” She moved it. “I thought you weren’t seducing me right now.”
    â€œI’m weak, and your breasts are temptation enough to trouble a eunuch.”
    â€œPretty talk.” He smelled familiar. She hadn’t realized she knew his scent. It was disconcerting. Maybe that’s why she blurted out the question that had kept her awake for a long time after she woke from the nightmare. “Does it look like a baby yet? Are there arms or fingers?”
    â€œYou’re eight weeks along, so the fetus is about the size of a pinto bean.”
    â€œGod. That’s…I knew it was little, but that’s tiny. ”
    â€œBut the heart has divided into two chambers, and there are buds that will become arms and legs. The arm buds have little elbows.”
    Cynna absorbed that for a moment. “Sometimes it’s annoying, the way you seem to know everything. Sometimes it’s handy. If I were at home, I could look it up on the Internet. Here…”
    â€œHere you ask me?” His mouth crooked up. “The tip of the nose is present, and folds for the eyelids, but it doesn’t yet have what we’d recognize as a face. The head is very large. The brain’s developing and other organs are starting to, and in another week or so it should start moving.”
    She stared at him. “Moving! I thought it didn’t do that until lots later.”
    â€œWomen don’t feel the movement until the baby is bigger and more active. That’s called the quickening, and it’s usually between three and four months.”
    â€œYou really did go to medical school.”
    â€œI really did.”
    That, she decided, was extremely reassuring, under the circumstances. “We’ll be home a long time before it’s born.”
    â€œBefore he is born. Yes, I trust so. Long before.”
    â€œYou said you couldn’t—”
    â€œAchoo!” someone called out. Or something like that. Cynna had picked up a few words in what they called the Common Tongue, but mostly it still sounded like gargling to her.
    All four sea oxen rolled to the surface at once, each with its scaly rider. One of the smaller boats—long and narrow, with people rowing it—was coming straight at them. The two crew members who’d stayed on board the barge were suddenly very busy with ropes and things.
    They’d reached the City.

FIFTEEN
    G ETTING off the barge took a while. First an old man in a green robe arrived to take charge of Marilyn Wright. He was a healer, but not the VIP healer who’d eventually care for her. He was just supposed to keep her going until the chancellor’s own healer could see her.
    At least, Cynna thought the healer was a man. His hair was long and stringy, his face narrow and pointy with tiny scales where she’d expect to see whiskers. He didn’t speak, not at all, and the robe hid his body. But he moved like a man.
    The little gnome with him did all the talking. She didn’t speak English, but she’d brought some of the translation disks with her, which were supposed to be standard for all newcomers to the City.
    What was supposed to be true didn’t always match with reality, especially with Bilbo in charge. Cullen accepted the disks for all of them. His shields would protect him from any tampering.
    â€œWeird,” he said after a moment of holding one in his hand. “A little voice is whispering in my ear, giving the English translation of every word spoken nearby. But it’s the same voice for everyone. The lack of directional or volume cues makes it hard to sort out who’s saying