Blood and Secrets

[Iome]

Agmara Brightstone took a step back from the birthing chair and stared at her hands in mute horror. Blood. Spurting. Seeping. It coated her hands, the front of her apron, and filled the room with a coppery sweet smell. This wasn't the first time Agmara had assisted on a difficult birth. And it wouldn't be the first time she'd lost a woman put in her care either. She peeked over the hips of the writhing woman strapped to the chair and bit back a sigh. But Yliena was only thirteen years old. Too young to be having a baby and too young to be dying for it, as well.

Agmara patted Yliena's knee and forced a cheerful tone as she said, "I'm just going for some more water, darling. Don't push anymore until I come back." She lifted her eyes to the girl's mother and said in a slightly more terse voice, "Keep feeding her the bacca root broth." The woman nodded and ran a hand over Yliena's sweat-drenched hair. She'd seen the blood, too.

Agmara tucked another towel between Yliena's legs to staunch the bleeding and waddled towards her assistant, who had been tending a kettle over the hearth, but now looked upon her with those brilliant blue eyes flat and lifeless as the waveless sea. Agmara removed the kettle and poured some boiling water into a basin. As she did, she murmured under her breath, "We're going to lose the mother, Iome. I need you to help me remove the child lest we lose it, too."

She felt the tall woman's body go taut as a lute string beside her. Agmara replaced the kettle on the hearth and said, "Fetch my knife from my satchel and follow me. I'll need you to hold her down." Agmara lifted the basin from the table and moved to waddle back to the birthing chair when Iome's slim, cool hand on her forearm stopped her in her tracks. Suddenly, all the sweat on her body dried up like she'd been blown over with a cool breeze. Iome moved her hand quickly and looked away.

"That won't be necessary. I can help." She stood and Agmara remarked on the woman's sheer height. Being rather demure of stature, even for a dwarf, Iome left Agmara feeling little better than a child around the blue-eyed elf.

Agmara narrowed her eyes and murmured, "Help how? The girl is bleeding. We'll be lucky if we can save the babe."

"Just trust me." She moved away and Agmara felt the stifling heat of the birthing chamber engulf her again. She followed behind and watched in perturbed silence as Iome removed the rags Agmara had used to staunch the blood flow and probed gently. Yliena gasped and whimpered, too exhausted to scream. The girl had been in labor for hours without a cease in pain. Even the bacca root wasn't alleviating it by now.

Iome frowned and wiped her blood covered hand on the front of her smock. "Mistress, hold her down."

Agmara set the basin aside and scrambled atop the stool she'd placed near the head of the chair. Across Yliena's sweat-covered body, Agmara met the mother's eyes. She found only despair. The dwarf gripped Yliena's small, child-like hand in hers and squeezed gently.

Iome took in a breath and closed her eyes. Yliena found the strength to scream and Agmara could only hold on as the girl writhed and nearly threw off both women holding her down. Agmara muttered a prayer under her breath, but before she was through the first stanza, a piercing wail broke through the stifling air.

Iome sat up straight, teeth gritted as she cradled a squalling, bloody bundle to her chest. Her face was paler than usual and Agmara could trace the taut line of her clenched jaw with her finger. Yliena collapsed back and moaned once. Her mother stared at Iome, her own tension making her look twenty years older. Iome took a breath in and said in her soft, gravelly voice, "Girl. The child is a girl."

[Iome]

Agmara leapt off the box and snatched the screaming baby from Iome's arms minutes before the elf collapsed as well. Agmara passed the child to Yliena's mother and tended to Yliena. Not a sign of anything horrible having happened to the girl at all, save for bruising. Agmara's gaze strayed in Iome's direction. The elf was pale and shaking, eyes tightly clenched.

Once the mother and child were both cleaned up and resting in a huge feather bed, Agmara began to clean up her tools. She smiled through the mother's profuse thanks and promises of payment. With the crops dwindling for lack of sunlight, Agmara knew she would be delivering quite a few free children in the coming months. Even for nobility such as Yliena was. Once packed up and cleaned up, Agmara moved for the corner and touched Iome's shoulder lightly. "Can ye stand?"

Iome opened her eyes, pupils swallowed in the dimmed cerulean of those fathomless eyes. She nodded and struggled to her feet before hobbling outside into the corridor. Agmara bid her goodbyes to Yliena and her new baby before dragging Iome outside. The normally graceful elf staggered and swayed as if she were drunk… or in pain. Outside, Agmara gave the good news to the happy father and grandfather, both of a similar age. Yliena's husband had the gall to look disappointed when she told him the baby was a girl. Agmara left quickly to keep from relieving the man of his testicles.

They wound their way through the modest manor and once outside, Iome slumped against the stone structure and took in several deep, gulping breaths. Agmara wrapped an arm around the taller woman's waist and said, "Come. Let's get you home and cleaned up. Then you can tell me what happened."

The walk was mercifully short and once inside the rambling farmhouse, Iome allowed Agmara to strip her and bathe her without a fuss. Blood coated Iome's arms to her elbows and had soaked through her apron to leave scarlet spatters against her chest. But, when Agmara saw the blood that coated Iome's thighs and had dyed her white underclothes red, she gasped and stared at the elf sitting with her eyes closed in a tubful of lukewarm water.

"What happened in there? That child was dying. I've never seen anyone lose that much blood and live, yet she does and fairly thrives. What did you do?" Agmara crouched near the bottom of the tub and willed Iome to look at her.

The elf lolled her head to one side, blonde hair clinging to her shoulders and floating on top of the water like seaweed. "I healed her. You're right, she was going to die. I did what I had to do."

"And what was that?"

Iome sighed as if irritated and fixed those startlingly blue eyes on Agmara. "I took her wounds on to myself, Mistress. I'm sorry. She was just so young…" She looked away and sponged water over her face.

Agmara sucked in a breath, her head spinning. She'd known there was something odd about the elf, odd in the way that she could make things freeze with a touch or cool a room with a breath. She had questions, so many questions, but seeing the dark bruises taking shape beneath Iome's eyes, she bit them back and stood slowly.

"Tis a rare gift you have then. A rare gift. You've been blessed"

Iome chuckled and glanced back at her, eyes sharp and filled cruelty. Agmara suddenly knew that it was for her. Iome saved that level of hatred for herself. "I also have a rare gift for killing, Mistress. I do it quite well. Does that make me blessed, too?"

Agmara sucked in a breath and stood straighter. "Perhaps. Maybe you were given both talents to teach you a lesson. The Old Gods never made choices for you. They only give you the tools you need to make choices for yourself."

"My gods are dead."

Agmara back towards the door and smiled. Iome's face was hard and cold again and she could see ice crystals forming over the surface of the bath water. "You should clean up and get some sleep. I'll check on the children." She left Iome sitting in a tub of freezing water as Agmara stumbled out of the kitchen and towards her shrine in the garden. Even she herself needed to pray. Needed to make sense on why the gods would put a natural born healer and a natural born killer within the same body.