Free Brood of Bones by A.E. Marling

may address me as ‘Elder Enchantress.’ I have come on behalf of the priests and the divine gods to see to the safety of your daughter.”
    At the mention of her daughter, Faliti dropped a hand to her own pregnant belly, and despite myself, a flush of resentment crept up my cheeks. I swept past her, and she skirted away when one my gowns rippled past her legs.
    “By the Ever Always! Are your dresses quite safe? One just grabbed my ankle.”
    Lightening enchantments in my gowns caused them to undulate more than expected, lending them an appearance of animation. I saw no reason to put Faliti’s mind at rest and maintained my silence.
    “And you, er,” she said to Deepmand ,   “ your boots are cracking my floorboards, ant-ridden such as they are.”
    “My apologies, Madam. I will Lighten my step.”
    I walked through the rooms of the first floor, noting items of refinement, such as a tapestry of peacock feathers, amid otherwise bare furnishings. “Is Harend Chandur present?”
    Faliti tidied some sewing stuffs. “He’s meeting his merchant friends at the White Ziggurat, so he can lose more money.”
    “Then you may now introduce his daughter to me.”
    “I’m sure I would, but she’s recovering and bedridden, and I wouldn’t be a fit mother if I taxed her strength with visitors.”
    Argument required more mental dexterity than I usually commanded when awake, so I had little recourse than to repeat myself. “You have my permission to take me to her bedside.”
    “Alyla is not seeing anyone. She’s in no state to.”
    “She will see me. My presence is most salubrious.” I walked past Faliti as she ground her teeth.
    Finding no bedrooms on the first floor, I looked up a ladder leading to the second story. It had a gentle incline, similar to a stair, but stepping on the rungs would prove difficult with my oscillating sense of balance and inability to see my feet.
    Hoping I was not fated to fall once again in front of Faliti, I gathered as many of my skirts as I could and explored the first rung with my slipper. Stepping up, I tried to find the second rung, yet velvet and silk slithered around my foot. I had to step on my skirts, although this made me sway and tilt, my shoulder brushing the wall; letting go of my gowns to catch myself only aggravated my plight, with satin blocking any possibility of a subsequent step.
    I tipped backward and knew I would fall in a most dreadful and undignified way. Faliti had committed an act of negligence in employing this ladder, her disregard tantamount to assault with intent to injure.
    Gauntleted hands gripped my shoulders, and Deepmand carried me to the second floor in a leap that cleared the whole ladder. Relief made me gasp, and my knees knocked under my skirts as I strode down the hall, dragging my gowns out of the way so that the Spellsword could stop levitating and rest his feet on the ground.
    I avoided Deepmand’s gaze, ashamed that I had needed his assistance for the most simple of tasks. I wished, for a moment, that I could activate enchantments when awake as a Spellsword could. Of course, such a practice would be neither possible, for an enchantress, nor dignified.
    A voice quavered down the hall. “Mother, do we have guests?”
    I stepped into a bedroom and saw a girl sitting up between pillows, her swollen abdomen rising from beneath sheets. Her slender limbs caused her to resemble a pale spider with only four legs; her skin was waxy and sickly as white jade. The square chin she had inherited from Faliti sat at odds with her smaller frame and timid eyes, which were reddened and bulging.
    If fate had permitted then I could have married Harend, and Alyla might have been my daughter. The inside of my chest felt rubbed raw. I asked, “I wish to know, have you quickened?”
    After roughly a dozen blinks at my gowns, she still failed to find voice to answer.
    “Have you quickened, child? Oh, and I am Enchantress Hiresha.”
    She swallowed and said, “I’m