She appears today, smiling as she always does. She hums as she enters my bathroom, and I hear the water flowing as she prepares a bath in the enormous tub. She insists on waking me, making me leave the room to eat and exercise. But I’m a zombie, thinking only of Rys, a cold stone of fear in my stomach everywhere I go. Rys seems like the strongest Kerz, and for that matter, the strongest humanoid I have ever seen or even imagined. But Zethki is politically powerful, and no physical weakling. The risk of this ‘plan’ going wrong seems very high. I can think of nothing else.
“Today,” Trasmea says cheerfully, coming into the room and pulling the curtains—which are sheer and let all the light in anyway—aside, “I have asked the cookers to make a very large breakfast ofzetlot,carib, andprakhratameat, and the milk of wildbortm.”
She announces this with relish, standing at the foot of my bed as I rise slowly and blink at her, wiping sleep from my eyes. It has been fourteen rotations since theza’kryukdeparted, a measure of time that seems equivalent to the system measurement of an Astrogodan day. Three Earth weeks, give or take.
“That sounds… really… rich,” I say. “For breakfast. Can you… tell them not to? I think I just want bread.”
She is still smiling, and moves her head playfully in the negative. Grinning.
“Trasmea,” I say, exasperated. She really can be overly helpful, and a thorn in my side. I like her—I’m grateful for her, because she does always seem to be on my side, as much as she can be. But the last thing I feel like eating right now is six kinds of weird meat and some even weirder milk.
She has a really obnoxious look on her face that reminds me of my mother as she comes around the bed and sits down on it, smiling even more broadly. “You must eat it,” she says authoritatively, still happy. “You will see.” She points to my abdomen. “Kerz baby will eat it all.”
I flush and look down at my abdomen, as if the answer might reveal itself through my skin. A wave of intense fear, and then nausea, rolls over me.
But for some reason, the nausea stops abruptly, as does the fear. I know she’s right: I’m pregnant, I’m as sure of it as she is as soon as she says it. It’s true—and yet, it can’t be.
“How…?”
I put it all together too late. Iampregnant, and so this is Rysethk’s baby.
I have a huge problem. My head spins, and I start to panic, no matter how much I tell myself to trust Rysethk, who surely knew that this was a possibility when he was making his plans.
Trasmea rolls her eyes at me.
I put my hand on my stomach. “I mean, I knowhow,” I tell her, and she laughs. “I just…”
Now Trasmea gets a different look on her face, one of superiority, authority, the look that a keeper of secrets and gossip gets when they know more than they have let on. She leans close to me and touches my stomach. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “By the time theza’kryukreturn, no one will be able to count the days as I have.”
My eyes go wide, and fear plunges through my chest again. Ice water fills my veins. “What?”
“This is not Zethki’s baby,” Trasmea says casually, shrugging. Then she narrows her eyes. “Unless you mate with the Krezat before your wedding? Did you?” She gets a gleam in her eye. “He is impatient,” she says agreeably.
I stare at her, my mouth open. I have no idea what to say.
Trasmea grins. “This is common,” she says diplomatically. “Among Kerz. But it’s best for Zethki not to know. They say he’s… what is the word?” She looks up at the ceiling. “There is no word in Kerz. Loving you?”
I let my mouth fall open a little more.
“Okay,” she says, smiling again. “You have Zethki’s baby, yes? If you say so. I’m the only one who knows… how long the baby is… inside. But now you must eat. Because…” she looks down at my womb again, “Kerz eat a lot of food. Come.”
I shake my head listlessly as she takes me by the hand, trying to process it all. I realize that I don’t know if anyone but Zethki knows about this supposed prophecy.
I am really in over my head. For a moment I consider taking everything into my own hands, but when I think of my last meeting with Rysethk, a calm comes over me and I decide to—for the first time in my life, probably—put my fate in someone else’s hands.
I sure as heck wasn’t capable of managing this level of intrigue.
Trasmea is annoyed. “You take hot bath now,” she tells me. “Come.”
“No, you’re not supposed to take hot baths,” I say, my mind a million miles away.
She snorts derisively. “Maybe not with human baby,” she says, and holds up my hand. I realize suddenly that I’m ice-cold. “But Kerz baby steals heat. And eats meat. So, hot bath.”
* * *
There isn’t very much to do but eat, sleep, and take hot baths. Trasmea definitely had it right: the baby inside of me is hungry and steals heat.
“Probably male,” she said, the last time I complained.
