Kaylin dressed in a rush of panic. “Where do I need to be?”
Helen’s answer did not make things any clearer. The familiar landed on Kaylin’s shoulders as she leapt out of her room and headed down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time until she could leap to the ground below without breaking anything. She headed straight for the only room in the house in which mirrors actually worked. Even then, there was a delay while Helen evaluated incoming communication for safety purposes.
Helen keyed the mirror to life; its center filled, without fanfare or visual effects, with a very familiar face, its lines structured around an equally familiar expression. Marya was the head of the midwives guild, the über den mother. She had a temper that was constantly being challenged by the stupidity and the unfairness of the universe, although she claimed to be far mellower now than she had been in her youth. Kaylin was grateful she had never met Marya in that youth.
“Where,” she demanded, before Marya could open her mouth, “do I need to be?”
Marya said, “Keira is there. It’s not—” Her lips thinned. It wasn’t going well. Of course it wasn’t. They didn’t call Kaylin for normal births. They didn’t call her for difficult births often, either. But catastrophic ones? Yes. “It’s near Highpost.”
Highpost. Kaylin closed her eyes. “How long ago did Keira mirror in?”
Silence.
Kaylin wheeled, turning on Helen in a kind of helpless rage that almost demanded it be passed on or shared. “Howlong agodid the message arrive?”
Helen was unflappable. “Less than half an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t youwake me up?”
“Dear, I did.”
Kaylin was tying her bootlaces. The familiar was slumped across her shoulders, indifferent to the panic and the fear and the desperation that were fighting for control of her mind. She wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t going to make it in time.
Teela had never understood this particular panic, although she’d seen it a few times; she’d been at Kaylin’s apartment when the mirror had started its blaring appeal for attention. The midwives were not the Hawks; Kaylin’s survival did not depend on them in any way. They didn’t pay her; her work for the guild was strictly voluntary.
The women who were in the midst of a delivery that the midwives thought was likely to kill them were strangers to Kaylin. She didn’t know them. She owed them no loyalty. She owed them, in Teela’s opinion, nothing. She could understand the mortal need to be of use—although this stretched the definition of the wordunderstand, in Kaylin’s opinion. She couldn’t understand the panic. She couldn’t understand the dread weight of guilt that accompanied the thought oftoo late.
That had been an early argument. If Teela still didn’t precisely understand it, that didn’t matter; she knew what it meant to Kaylin.
Kaylin opened the door with so much force it would have bounced against the nearest wall had it been a normal door, a normal wall. Because it was part of Helen, this didn’t happen. She made a beeline for the front door, stopped, and rolled up her sleeve. The bracer was clipped around her wrist like a dead weight. It wasn’t—but it was going to be worse than dead weight tonight. She pressed the studded gems across the bracer’s length, and when it clicked open, she removed it and tossed it over her shoulder.
“Are you certain you should be doing that?”
She had her hand on the door handle; she had the door open a few inches. Turning only her head, she looked up the stairs to see Moran. She was not dressed for the office—which, in the past few days, meant very colorful clothing—but she was also not yet dressed for bed. She looked like her normal self: Hawk sergeant, undisputed ruler of the infirmary.
“I have to,” she said. “I’ll explain later.”
“You don’t need to explain later. Helen told me what’s happening.”
“Good. I’ll be back when I’m back.”
“Wait.”
Kaylin wanted to shriek in agonized frustration. She waited instead, but it was very, very hard.
“I’ll take you there.”
“What?”
“I’ll fly.”
A different panic struggled for expression and attention, but failed to gain enough of a foothold that it formed an actual thought. “You can’t.”
“According to Evanton—and you—I can. I’ll take you. That’s not a request.”
The desire to argue came and went, streaming past before Kaylin could catch it. “Fine. Buthurry.”
* * *
