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“Lifestring? Quaint. Your sister didn’t cut it herself?” she asks in surprise.

“You lot do that?”

She frowns. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“I just thought you had doctors. Morphone. Crystal glasses to sip from.”

“Please. Only Pixies use morphone and the only person I had in my room when I gave birth to my three girls is the man that put them inside me.” She softens and laughs. Maybe she realizes we’ve got something in common after all. “Hilarious really. I’ve seen that man pull a knife out of his own eye and keep running. I’ve seen him face down a Stained and smile. But he was shaking like a leaf soon as he saw me dilate. Like he’s never been down there before. Men. If I asked him to cut the cord, he’d probably faint. It’s the mother’s job. You should know that.”

“My sister chose who got to cut it,” I say. “It’s an honor.”

“Oh please. It may seem insignificant, but it’s enfeebling. It’s saying she’s too weak to do it herself. It’s important to finish the things you start, Blister. Remember that when you have a little squirt. What statement does it make to your baby if you let someone else do it? Lying there with women sopping your brow with wet cloths and preening over you like you’re a plague victim?” She wrinkles her nose and juts her jaw upward. “Tigresses don’t need nursemaids. Neither should we.”

“My sister wasn’t weak.”

“Maybe not. But she let others convince her she was.”

“You do realize we’re not all you.”

“I’m dreadfully aware of that.”

“Act all high and mighty. Fact is you can afford to be brave. If that’s what you wanna call it. Bet you had doctors on standby. A whole team, right? It was bloody scary seeing my sister screamin’ like that, not knowing if she would die. No blood bags, no plasma.”

“Did she hemorrhage?” Victra asks.

I nod. “I didn’t know someone had that much blood.” Victra says nothing. “I loved her so much. You know? I was afraid. My hands were shakin’ on the scissors so bad I thought I’d take out my own eye. Sister’s bleedin’ there, I thought they’d shoo me out. But all those women were looking at me, waiting for me to do my part. And she was smiling, pale as milk. Of all those women, she chose me. Me.” I shake my head. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak to ask for help. But we’ll do it your way.”

I head to the door.

“Harmony has reason to hate me, and you,” she says. I stop and turn slightly. “My mother knew of a radiation leak in her clan’s mine. Deeming it advantageous from a tax perspective, she chose not to make immediate repairs. Radiation medication was distributed to the Gammas via the Laureltide boxes. As I understood it, the intent was for them to sell it to the other clans. Instead, the Gammas hoarded it while the others died due to tribal grudges. I thought my mother’s p

lans derailed. Then she told me that their greed was exactly according to plan. I remember her words to this day. ‘They’ll be too busy hating each other to ever hate us.’ She came down to distribute medicine herself a month later. Benificent.”

“And you just let it happen?” I ask, unsurprised by the cruelty of the logic.

“I wasn’t who I am now. Why didn’t you tell Volga to shoot Harmony? She killed your family. Was it because you thought I would kill Volga before she could pull the trigger?”

“Would you have?”

“Yes. I protect mine above all else, because no one else ever does. So?”

I discovered the truth to her words in my cell.

I’ve chewed on the question she asks for days as we scrambled across the highlands. I didn’t know at the time why I told Volga not to shoot. There was too much anger and confusion to really suss it. But it wasn’t fear. “Harmony will pay the debt she owes me,” I say. “Not your baby.”

She measures me a long time before speaking. “Revenge is best dealt with a patient hand. With what Fig gave you when she died, you won’t have to wait long.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“I don’t know, not entirely. But it was what made Fig…different. I am different. I know that. I had things you didn’t. But I saw evil too. Only difference is you saw the bottom, I saw the top. I wasn’t born the woman I am. I made me. That’s the problem with your people. You’re arrogant. So busy preaching you need a clan to do everything. But you take the clan away, and you fall apart. Like you did in that cell. So easy to blame others for failing you, for leaving you, for mistreating you.” She sets her hands on her belly, grimacing at the pain as a spasm flickers across it. “Some things are about the power of one. With what you have in your head, you need to know that. Now, if you can exist without tormenting me with sympathy, I’ll show you what a woman can do by herself. But first, be a dear, and tell Volga to tie up our hosts.” She smiles nastily. “As an unctuous girl once said: we don’t know them.”

* * *

—

Victra hunches over as the storm rattles the windows, consumed with and by her labor so that nothing exists in the world except the life inside her. Her triceps flex as her hands grip her muscled thighs. Her feet are planted on the stone floor over a thin layer of linens, like she’s about to take flight. Her razor waits by her foot.

She is not invulnerable like I thought. She feels the pain. Sweat beads on her upper lip and dangles there, dropping only when a low moan escapes her. It melts into the sound of the storm as it howls through the chimney in the common room. She rolls her head like a fever victim, breathing heavily, scraping her feet on the ground. Muscles spasm in her lower back and around her taut belly. A huge contraction racks her, forcing her to a quarter squat. She tenses there, exhaling a low, primal moan that lasts and lasts until a gush of liquid ruptures out from between her legs and becomes a slow dribble. A tuft of matted hair peeks out. She brings her right hand back behind and between her legs, her left to the front to spread herself as she continues to push. The crown of the baby’s head juts through, trickling liquid onto the floor.