Page 64 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

TWENTY

T YBALT SET ME VERY gently on my feet, keeping one hand on my waist until I managed to get my balance back. I shot him an appreciative look before moving to sit down atop a nearby crate and turning my attention to the others.

“Find weapons,” I said. “Whatever you can.”

“There’s only three of them,” said Walther.

“Yes, and they’ve already managed to take us all out once. I want us armed,” I said. “If anyone can find the fount that cures iron poisoning, that would be a nice bonus.”

I wanted the iron out of my system before it could do more damage than it already had. It wasn’t good for me, and if it wasn’t good for me, it certainly wasn’t good for the baby.

The others nodded and moved away, Tybalt staying close by my side. I turned to look at him. With me sitting up on the crate we were very nearly the same height, which made it easier than it might have been. There was a glint of worry in his eyes that I didn’t like.

“Still can’t touch the Shadow Roads?” I asked, as lightly as I could manage.

He shook his head. “I cannot. October—”

“These are some nasty wards,” I said. “Dame Altair said she has an artifact that’s setting them for her, something that was probably made to protect against the Court of Cats.”

“Such a thing was made, once, but it was lost very long ago, and we believed it had been broken and destroyed forever,” said Tybalt. “We would have gone to war against all the Divided Courts to destroy it had we known that it was still loose in the world.”

“And I believe you would have won,” I said. He was still looking at me, the worry not fading. I blinked. “What is it? Do I look that bad?”

“You have a scratch on your cheek,” he said.

“And you almost ripped Madden’s face off! Is a scratch really something worth worrying about?”

“Do you think I didn’t hear May say that you had been poisoned with iron, or your request that we find a treatment as quickly as we could?

I worry because you’ve had a scratch on your cheek since you opened the door to the room where I was being held.

” Tybalt reached over to run one fingertip gently down the line of my jaw.

“It’s just near here. It isn’t healing at all. October, precisely how bad is this?”

“It’s bad,” I admitted. He stiffened, pupils contracting to slits that almost vanished against the green of his eyes.

I sighed. “Dame Altair had me bound in ropes of rose and iron, like the stuff she hung on the back of your door. Every time I struggled, I got more exposed. Walther bled me—for good reasons, I promise—and there was so much iron in the flask that it looked like the end of the world. Couple that with how much energy my body’s putting into this pregnancy, and I’m guessing it doesn’t have the strength left to do much of anything else. ”

Tybalt snarled, lips pulling back from his teeth in a distinctly feral expression. “We need to get you out of here.”

“And that begins with finding weapons,” I said. “Go. Find them. I’ll stay right here.”

He eyed me, clearly reluctant to move. I grabbed his hand and brought it to my lips, kissing his knuckles before I let it go.

“When Dame Altair captured me, she took my knives and my phone,” I said. “I don’t know if this is where she’s been putting everything she steals for Janet, but if it is, I’d bet my dearest grandmother considered them hers. I want them back. Find them for me, please?”

Still reluctant, he nodded, and stepped away. The others followed, all but May, who moved to stand beside me as the four of them moved off among the aisles of stolen treasure and ancient artifacts, skimming through the piles as they searched for things we could use against our captors.

She waited until they were out of earshot before she lowered her voice and asked, softly, “How bad is it really, Toby?”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I understand why you wouldn’t want to tell Tybalt the full extent of it, but this is me. You’re pregnant and you’ve got a raging case of iron poisoning. How bad is it?”

“I…” I stopped, taking a deep breath, and reached inward, trying to feel the state of my own body.

It ached and burned, more than it should have after a break this long.

I’d been sitting for almost five minutes, and my knees still felt like they were in open rebellion, and like any attempts to stand up would not be met kindly. I exhaled. “It’s bad,” I admitted.

“How bad?”

“Bad enough that I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk out of here,” I said. “If we can restore Tybalt’s access to the Shadow Roads, he can probably carry me home—not that he’ll be willing to, under the circumstances. Too much chance of doing further damage. We need to find that fount.”

“We do,” said May, with obvious concern.

“Your magic normally repairs any damage you take, as soon as you take it. But right now, it’s not just taking care of you, is it?

It’s trying to protect that baby. It can’t cure iron poisoning—your line isn’t that powerful, thank Maeve, or you’d be ruling us all inside of the year—but it can spend itself on filtering the iron before it gets to someone smaller than you, with a lower tolerance. ”

Her eyes dipped to my stomach, then back up to my face. “This is just going to keep getting worse, Toby. If the guys don’t find that fount, and soon, we may need to consider—”

“No,” I said.

“But—”

“No,” I repeated, louder, and wrapped my arms around my stomach for good measure, glaring at her. “The baby isn’t ready. It’s not time yet.”

“You’re over eight months along, and you’re too calm right now,” said May. “Annoyed at me for saying this, but still calm. That means you know something I don’t. What do you know?”

She kept watching me, scanning my face for signs that I was holding something back from her.

If she’d been anyone else, I would have said she wasn’t going to find them.

I’m a pretty good liar when I need to be.

But May knew all my tricks, all my techniques for bending the truth.

I’d been an adult when she was created, and she knew everything I’d known at the moment of her “birth.”

“Dame Altair poisoned me to knock me out,” I admitted. “But the baby’s fine. They managed to clear it all without taking any damage. That means they probably heal the same way I do.”

“So a few weeks early isn’t going to be a big deal,” said May.

“The big problem with premature births is their lungs. They’re not fully developed yet, so the babies can’t breathe, but your baby is close enough to full term that they should be able to breathe just fine—and even if they couldn’t, a baby that heals like you do wouldn’t have that issue.

They’d just grow new lungs if they had to. ”

I leveled a flat look on her. “Healing isn’t painless, May. Regrowing lungs would feel like drowning, over and over and over again. I’m not doing that to my child unless there’s no other choice, and right now, there are other choices.”

“That won’t happen to them, but you may not have another choice for long.

Because Tybalt’s right. That scratch on your face is still there.

I’m not sure your magic can keep trying to protect you and protect the baby at the same time.

If you don’t want to risk dying and leaving your child an orphan, I think you need to be ready for an emergency delivery. ”

“Go help them find the fount,” I said, leaning back on my hands. “I’ll stay here and keep this box from floating away.”

“But—”

“Go.”

May has a lot of my memories, but we’re not the same person. She caught the warning in my voice and stepped back, looking at me flatly.

“Just… think about it,” she said, and turned to vanish into the aisles, following the sound of voices into the distance and leaving me, finally, alone.

I rubbed my stomach with one hand, willing the baby to kick.

Just once, just so the sudden fear May’s words had woken in me would stop growing so quickly out of control.

Because she wasn’t wrong, was she? I wasn’t supposed to heal this slowly, wasn’t supposed to still feel the ache in my knees or the scratch on my cheek.

The wounds on my wrists and hands had sealed over, thin layers of new skin keeping the blood inside, but they weren’t healed , not all the way down to the bottom like they should have been.

They hurt as I flexed my fingers, sending rotten throbs up my arms. Some of them had red streaks around them, implying the onset of infection.

Oak and ash, that was something I hadn’t needed to worry about for a long damn time.

I looked at my hands, then at my stomach, and tried to figure out how I was supposed to get out of this one.

It wasn’t just the fear of what an early delivery would do to the baby, although that was a big part of it.

It was the fear of what an early delivery would do to me .

If they didn’t have the fount that would clean the iron out of my body, I might not be able to recover from whatever we had to do to get the baby out and into the world—and if they did have the fount, it wouldn’t be necessary in the first place. There was no easy answer.

And for once, I really didn’t want there to be.

Getting the baby out to protect them was the right thing to do if that would work, but it would also make them more vulnerable if Janet wanted to try and snatch them away from us.

I sort of wanted to see her try, with Tybalt standing by and anxious from his current inability to access the Shadow Roads.

But if she tried while I was busy bleeding to death, he might be too torn as to which of us he needed to protect to react the way he needed to.

There were no good answers here. I rubbed my stomach again, and this time I was rewarded with the smallest of kicks, more like a gentle push, as the baby reacted to the motion. I sighed, relieved. At least one thing hadn’t gone wrong yet.