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Seasons of War

Seasons of War

Titel: Seasons of War Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Daniel Abraham
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woman said. ‘When it happened. Just six summers old.’
    ‘I was fourteen,’ Eiah said. ‘How many months has it been since you bled?’
    ‘Six,’ the woman said as if it were a badge of honor. Eiah forced herself to smile.
    ‘Is the baby well?’ the man asked. Eiah considered how his hand wrapped his wife’s. How his gaze bored into her own. Desperation was as thick a scent in the room as the vinegar and herb smoke.
    ‘It’s hard to say,’ Eiah said. ‘I haven’t had the luck to see very many pregnancies. Few of us have these days. But even if things are well so far, birthing is a tricky business. Many things can go wrong.’
    ‘He’ll be fine,’ the woman on the table asserted; the hand not being squeezed bloodless by her man caressed the slight pooch of her belly. ‘It’s a boy,’ she went on. ‘We’re going to name him Loniit.’
    Eiah placed a hand on the woman’s arm. The woman’s eyes burned with something like joy, something like fever. The smile faltered for less than a heartbeat, less than the time it took to blink. So at least some part of the woman knew the truth.
    ‘Thank you for letting me make the examination,’ Eiah said. ‘You’re very kind. And I wish the best of luck to you both.’
    ‘All three,’ the woman corrected.
    ‘All three,’ Eiah said.
    She walked from the room while Parit arranged his patient. The antechamber glowed by the light of a small lantern. Worked stone and carved wood made the room seem more spacious than it was. Two bowls, one of old wine and another of fresh water, stood waiting. Eiah washed her hands in the wine first. The chill against her fingers helped wash away the warmth of the woman’s flesh. The sooner she could forget that, the better.
    Voices came from the examining room like echoes. Eiah didn’t listen. When she put her hands into the water, the wine turned it pink. She dried herself with a cloth laid by for the purpose, moving slowly to be sure both the husband and wife were gone before she returned.
    Parit was washing down the slate table with vinegar and a stiff brush. It was something Eiah had done often when she’d first apprenticed to the physicians, all those years ago. There were fewer apprentices now, and Parit didn’t complain.
    ‘Well?’ he asked.
    ‘There’s no child in her,’ Eiah said.
    ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But the signs she does show. The pooled blood, the swelling. The loss of her monthly flow. And yet there’s no slackening in her joints, no shielding in her sex. It’s a strange mix.’
    ‘I’ve seen it before,’ Eiah said.
    Parit stopped. His hands took a pose of query. Eiah sighed and leaned against one of the high stools.
    ‘Desire,’ Eiah said. ‘That’s all. Want something that you can’t have badly enough, and the longing becomes a disease.’
    Her fellow physician and onetime lover paused for a moment, considering Eiah’s words, then looked down and continued his cleaning.
    ‘I suppose we should have said something,’ he said.
    ‘There’s nothing to say,’ Eiah said. ‘They’re happy now, and they’ll be sad later. What good would it do us to hurry that?’
    Parit gave the half-smile she’d known on him years before, but didn’t look up to meet her gaze.
    ‘There is something to be said in favor of truth,’ he said.
    ‘And there’s something to be said for letting her keep her husband for another few weeks,’ Eiah said.
    ‘You don’t know that he’ll turn her out,’ he said.
    Eiah took a pose that accepted correction. They both knew it was a gentle sarcasm. Parit chuckled and poured a last rinse over the slate table: the rush of the water like a fountain trailed off to small, sharp drips that reminded Eiah of wet leaves at the end of a storm. Parit pulled out a stool and sat, his hands clasped in his lap. Eiah felt a sudden awkwardness that hadn’t been there before. She was always better when she could inhabit her role. If Parit had been bleeding from the neck, she would have been sure of herself. That he was only looking at her made her aware of the sharpness of her face, the gray in her hair that she’d had since her eighteenth summer, and the emptiness of the house. She took a formal pose that offered gratitude. Perhaps a degree more formal than was needed.
    ‘Thank you for sending for me,’ Eiah said. ‘It’s late, and I should be getting back.’
    ‘To the palaces,’ he said. There was warmth and humor in his voice. There always had been. ‘You

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