either.’ He turned to Mernorad. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
The physician pointed. ‘Your weapon,’ he said. ‘The lady Sam-lane has been
distraught. Not an uncommon thing for women in her condition, of course. She,
ah, attempted to have her condition, ah, terminated some months ago …
Fortunately, we got word before … And even though she has since been watched
at all times, she, ah, with a spoon … Well. I’d simply rather that -things
like your knife – not be where the Lady could snatch them, lest something
untoward occur…’
Within the bedroom, a bronze bar creaked as it was lifted from the door slots.
Samlor drew his long dagger and laid it on an intaglio table. Only the edge of
the steel winked. The hilt was of a hard, pale wood, smooth but wrapped with a
webbing of silver wire for a sure grip. The morning room had been decorated by a
former occupant. In its mosaic battle scenes and the weapons crossed on its
walls, the room suited Samlor’s appearance far better than it did that of the
young Rankan lord who now owned it.
The door was opened inwards by a sour, grey-haired woman in temple garb. The air
that puffed from the bedroom was warm and cloying like the smell of an overripe
peach. Two branches of the sextuple oil lamp within had been lighted, adding to
the sunlight seeping through the stained glass separating the room from the
inner court.
If the midwife looked harsh, then Samlane herself on the bed looked like Death.
All the flesh of her face and her long, white hands seemed to have been drawn
into the belly that now mounded her linen wrapper. A silk coverlet lay rumpled