Free The Pattern Scars by Caitlin Sweet Page A

did not enter the room, though, or even cluster at the door as they usually did. They gathered in knots along the corridor and would not come closer, even when I screamed at them to help me.
    Only Bardrem came, long moments later, when I was hoarse and gasping with tears. I was kneeling beside her, trying to roll her over or straighten her, but mostly gazing at her own closed eyes. She must have known me, for the high, terrible whining had stopped, though the gurgling continued.
    “Here,” I heard Bardrem say, “I’ll hold her under her arms and you take her legs—just there—good—now
lift
.”
    She was too twisted, and her hump was too big; we had to settle her on her side. I covered her with a blanket, which the beating of her feet soon dislodged.
    “Yigranzi,” I said, “what is it, what happened?”
    She clung to me with trembling, digging fingers, as if these things would give me my answer. She choked and coughed, and spittle ran from the corner of her mouth—but no words.
    “Help her,” I said to the Lady, when she finally came. “Send for a seer from another brothel—an old one, because she might know healing, like Yigranzi does.”
    The Lady looked away from Yigranzi’s straining, stranger’s face, at me. She did not look back at the bed again. “No,” she said, lifting a hand to curl a strand of lank hair behind her ear. Her rings winked colours and metal. “Her Pattern is ending and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”
    Bardrem reached over and put his hand on my arm. He must have seen my anger, or felt the wave of words I was about to speak. “Nola,” he said, “it’s true. Look at her.”
    I did not. I glared at the Lady, who seemed impossibly tall just then. She towered above me, her head nearly touching the bundles of herbs that hung from the beam.
    “In any case, child,” she said, “the end of her Path means the widening of yours. You will take her place as Otherseer and we will all benefit. For now,” she continued, turning so that the velvet dragged into a tangle around her feet, “you may stay with her. Come to me when she is dead.”

    I stayed. For three days I ate only because Bardrem told me to, and slept only for moments, sitting forward with my head beside Yigranzi’s on the pillow. Everything blurred: rug hues, volcano rock, a clay crab that somehow scuttled from mug to floor and up my bare leg. I did not flinch. I watched daylight and darkness on Yigranzi’s sunken, twitching cheeks, and on the eyelids that fluttered but still did not open.
    “Look,” Bardrem said once, “the mirror—what’s it doing here?” It was on the table among the combs and pots of oils; it was bright, polished, wrong.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It shouldn’t be here”—only in the tree, or in the Lady’s receiving chamber, but how could this matter now?
    I dripped water from a cloth onto Yigranzi’s lips, which trembled and cracked; the water useless, soaking the bed beneath her head, but I imagined she would drink it, anyway. I touched her face, her shoulder. I had never touched anyone so much before, but I had to show Yigranzi that I was there. I did not speak, though, to show her this—not until the dawn of the third day, when I bent and whispered, “I need you; don’t go.”
    Later that third day the room was flooded with sun. “You must sleep,” Bardrem said. “You must eat. It’s hot in here, and it smells—come with me
now
.” I only hunched closer to Yigranzi. I heard him leave, and then I heard nothing but her breathing. It was just as loud as it had been before, but there were more spaces in it, so it seemed quieter. I put my hand on her hair, which was the last remnant of before: thick and crinkly, filling my palm.
Still here
, I thought with every one of her halting, slower breaths.
Still here
.
    I was nodding asleep when Yigranzi thrashed once, violently. Her fingers raked my arm and I started awake. I leaned forward again, ready to comfort, to reach