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18
EVE
Ihadn’t noticed a thing, but Midwife Cleopatra knew this terrain much better than I did, and she stopped at a place in the woods that felt very much like any other place she’d dragged us through already.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“We’re close,” she said, whispering even more softly than I had, then looking down at me on the sled. “I…I don’t want to leave you alone, but if I go up that hill, I can get a good look at the lodge.”
The hill was covered in trees, and I doubted she could get the sled up there easily.
“Just go,” I said, “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
I couldn’t go up the hill myself, even if she’d let me get off the sled in the first place. The pregnancy felt almost like it was accelerating. As if the little half-Khetar babies in my womb could grow even faster the bigger they were. I was more tired than ever, and my belly was huge. I might have been able to walk a bit, but there was no way I could climb that hill.
Midwife squeezed my hand, and then she let go and started climbing. It was a pretty steep hill, and the same roots and trees that would have made it very difficult to drag my sled up there were the only thing Cleopatra had to grasp to prevent herself from sliding right back down. As she neared the top, she got down on her belly and crawled like on her knees and elbows the last few meters, stopping at the crest of the hill. She stayed there motionless and silently, for several long minutes.
The pregnancy was draining enough that I was always dozing on and off, and I felt my eyelids sink shut a few times as I waited for Midwife to come back. I jolted awake when some snow cascaded down the hill, and I looked up to see Midwife sliding—not so gracefully—down the hill. She got down and crouched next to me, worry etched on her face. “I don’t think it’s safe, Matron.”
“You saw pirates?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t see anything. Not at first. Then I saw clothes hanging out to dry.”
“You mean in that sunny spot behind the lodge? That’s good, right? It means women are still there.”
She nodded slowly. “I can’t be one hundred percent sure, Eve, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same clothes that were hanging up from when we left the lodge.”
I frowned. Trying to string thoughts together when I was so tired was almost as hard as walking, but we needed two heads on this, and I forced myself to focus. “If it’s the same women, then it’s going to be the same clothes.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s exactly the same. Bartender’s white blouse in between Chef Cynthia’s favorite pair of pants, and then Lodgekeeper Angela’s huge bra on the other side of the blouse.”
“Bartender’s blouse,” I whispered, suddenly understanding. Bartender hadn’t been there for over a week. Some other woman would have taken that blouse. They wouldn’t have just left a perfectly clean and dry blouse hanging out for so long.
Midwife nodded. “Either the women all left right after us, or it’s some kind of trap. I’d like to keep my eyes on it for as long as I can to make sure it’s not a trap.”
“They really might have left,” I said, “after seeing us leave. After seeing Tschenkar.”
“They’d leave without taking their clothes?”
I pressed my lips together. It probably was a trap, or something horrible had happened at the ski lodge. Maybe the pirates had moved on after that, but even then, did we really want to go in there and try to live there with no protection, just waiting for more pirates to come have a look and see if any women were still there?
“Do you think this spot is safe?” I asked.
Midwife looked at me and frowned. “It’s safe up here, but…”
“But we can’t survive here long.”
She nodded. We had almost no food left, and it was cold. Even with all the blankets and warm clothes, I still felt cold. Midwife must have been much colder than me since she had no blankets.
I lifted the blankets for her and gestured for her to come sleep next to me on the sled.
“Maybe later,” she said, “I’m going back up. I want to see if I can spot any movement before it gets dark.”
And so I slept there while Midwife braved the cold to keep me safe. While Tschenkar went off on his own to get supplies to keep me safe. While Thuliak tried to stay in orbit as long as he could…to keep me safe.
I didn’t feel like a Matron right now. I felt like a helpless victim. The only reason I could tolerate it was because the babies inside me were even more helpless than I was, and I needed to do everything I could to keepthemsafe, even if it meant accepting any and all protection.
Being awake and asleep had mostly merged together for me. It felt like I was lying there waiting for Midwife to come back for a few minutes, but then my eyes drifted back open, and it was dark already.
