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I flushed with sheepishness and peeked at my friends. They hadn’t caught on to my look yet, but knowing them, they’d figure Agnes and I had fooled around within seconds.
“Has something happened to Agnes?” I asked as the man brought A jug of water and six glasses over to our table. “She seemed well when I was here last summer.”
As soon as the men set the jug on the table, he blinked, then gaped at me. “You!” he said, suddenly indignant. “Well, you should know how she is, shouldn’t you, after the way you left her.”
My mouth flapped open. “I…I couldn’t exactly take her with me,” I said, sending a wincing look to my friends, who were all starting to grin at me. “I barely knew her, and I was going all the way to Royersford to join a course for healers at the college there. She was sweet, but it was just that one night, and she climbed into my bed. I didn’t ask her to come.”
For whatever reason, those were all the wrong things to say. The man looked at me with furious indignation, then snorted and shook his head.
“Well, it’s your doing and your problem, one way or another,” he said.
I was about to ask him why when a loud, pained cry sounded from the floor above the common room.
My blood suddenly ran cold, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was a woman’s cry. It was the sort of cry I’d heard a handful of times at the infirmary, when the midwife couldn’t do anything and a healer was needed.
“No!” I said, my eyes going wide.
“Yes,” the man snapped back at me. “Poor thing.”
I jumped up before I’d really had time to rest, my head spinning. “Where is she? Take me to her. I’m a healer.”
I knew the way upstairs, so I didn’t wait to be told where to go. I scrambled away from my chair, stumbling a bit as my body had decided it wanted to sit there for a few hours, and I was making it do something it didn’t like.
Appius and Mara jumped up after me, shedding a few more pieces of their packs and climbing equipment as they did. The man from the bar didn’t bother to keep up with us, so the three of us clamored up the stairs and around the corner to the rooms above the common room ourselves.
I skittered to a halt just in time to avoid a young woman leaving the room with a basin containing water and blood in her hands. She gasped when she saw me and looked like she might scream.
Another scream sounded from the room, from Agnes, though, so I ignored the woman with the basin and rushed in.
“Pretty!” Agnes shouted as soon as she saw me, her eyes wide and glassy.
She looked like a pale, drenched, ghost of the woman I’d left behind in the summer, without even saying goodbye. Her once-soft hair was soaked and matted to her head. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips were cracked, as if she’d been parched and screaming for more than just the few minutes since we arrived at the inn.
She looked so small on the bed…the bed that was stained with blood between her spread and trembling legs.
“You!” Larth’s wife gasped, standing and staggering away from the bed. She looked like she’d been through a wringer, and her face was streaked with tears as well as sweat and grime. Her hands were covered in blood.
“I’m a healer now,” I said without a second thought, rushing to the bed and sliding between Agnes’s legs, trying to get a good view of things. “I’m here, Agnes, I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“She’s dying, that’s what’s wrong,” Larth’s wife said, grief already sharp in her voice. “It’s been nearly twenty-four hours now. The babe isn’t coming.”
I put everything else aside, all thoughts of Agnes’s condition and how she’d gotten that way.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told Agnes, taking her damp hand when she reached weakly for me, grief in her eyes. She closed her eyes and slumped against her pillows, a faint smile on her face as I squeezed her hand. “Bring me a lamp,” I ordered over my shoulder. “I can’t see if the baby itself is in distress.”
“She’s been in labor for twenty-four hours?” Mara asked as Appius snatched a lamp from a side table and brought it to hold so I could see what was going on. “That’s not good for the baby.”
“If it’s caught in the birth canal,” Appius said.
I let go of Agnes’s hand and went to work. All three of us were suddenly steady to the point of being cold as we assessed the patient and the job in front of us. I’d been dispassionate with patients before at the college’s infirmary, but I’d never been in any sort of state of exhaustion or distress before treating those patients. It was more like when we’d all been sent to tend to the soldiers from the new army coming back from the mountain pass, but even then, it hadn’t been a matter of the life and death of a woman I knew…and a baby I was very probably responsible for.
“What instruments do you have?” I asked Larth’s wife as I tried to clean away the blood that was flowing too freely so that I could see if the baby was close to being born or caught somewhere.
“Instruments?” Larth’s wife said.
The confusion in her voice told me everything I needed to know. Without waiting for anything else, I wiped my hands on the sheets, then probed into Agnes to see how far along the baby was. I already knew it wouldn’t matter whether I’d washed my hands or not.
“I’m going to do everything to save the baby, Agnes,” I said as Agnes groaned with discomfort. “I’ve got you.”
