Aalis continued her examination, pressing the heel of her palm below Hannalinde’s navel and holding it there. “Have you felt movement?”
She nodded. “Flutters, like a bird trapped in a jar.”
“They will strengthen. A gargoyle infant is stronger than a human one. It may push so hard that you bruise, here and here.” She pressed the spots on either side of her abdomen. “Your body will accommodate it, but you’ll be sore.”
“I remember that too well,” Cléa said, smiling. “If the hatchling is anything like Rikard, you will have little sleep in your final weeks.”
“Training to be a fighter even before he was born,” Aalis chuckled.
Hannalinde swallowed. She’d tried not to think about the specifics of what was happening inside her. She ate when she was told to eat, drank the tonic Betje had prescribed, and let her belly expand without examining the process too closely. But the way Aalis spoke made her think about the baby and what it was doing in there. Who it might become.
Would it be her enemy, like its father?
“The birth itself,” Hannalinde said, clearing her throat. “What should I expect?”
“I will be frank with you. You should expect pain.” Aalis climbed back on her roost with a grunt, her thin tail curling around one ankle. “It will be more difficult than a human birth because of the child’s size and claws. But it is possible. Human bodies are resilient, and I will be there to tend you. I’ve delivered gargoyle whelps for two hundred years. Three who had human mothers, not including yours.”
“One was my friend Idabel,” Hannalinde guessed.
Aalis nodded. “The other two were in the cliffs long before you were born. One mother died, but the child survived. One child was stillborn but the mother survived.”
Both mother and child survived in only one of three births. A chill ran over her skin, and Cléa must have felt it too, because she gripped Hannalinde’s shoulder, squeezing it. “All will be well.”
Aalis nodded. “I don’t tell you this to frighten you, but so you understand that, though I have centuries of experience and will do my best for you, there are still risks. You will need a human midwife as your friend had. It should be someone who can attend you during my daysleep, understands your anatomy, and can help care for the child while you recover after the birth.”
Hannalinde nodded. “I have hired the apothecary Betje as a midwife.”
Aalis gave an approving nod. “Good. How is your health in general? What are you eating?”
Hannalinde recited her daily intake, which had improved since moving into the eyrie. Now she had meat at every meal, and plenty of fresh fruit from the forests of the north, which had always been too expensive on her mending budget.
“Not bad. You will need to eat more minerals or the child will leach them from your bones. Add powdered stone to your food when you can stomach it.”
“Eating stone seems bad for the teeth,” Hanna mused.
“If you don’t eat it, the baby will leach minerals from your teeth, too.” Aalis dismounted her roost and fetched a bottle of sparkling, gray dust from one of the shelves. She handed it to Cléa, who tucked it into the pouch at her belt. “That will keep you both healthy.”
Hannalinde pressed her hands to her belly. The fluttering was there, faint and restless, a small creature rearranging itself beneath her ribs. “Is the child healthy now?”
“From what I can feel, yes. Strong heartbeat. Good size for the stage.” Aalis paused, tilting her ancient head. “You don’t seem happy. Why not?”
The question was so direct that the answer fell out before Hannalinde could catch it. “I’m terribly lonely.”
Cléa sucked in a wounded breath.
“During the day,” Hannalinde amended to a version of the truth, not wanting to hurt her. “When you and Rikard and Roul are asleep, I have no one to talk to. The keepers visit the eyrie, but they won’t speak to me. I visit my friend and go shopping when I can, but the climb takes more out of me every week, and I can’t spend every afternoon in someone else’s rooms. All I have otherwise is my embroidery and my windowbox.”
She stopped. She was saying too much. The Nadir’s wife shouldn’t confess unhappiness only weeks into her marriage. She should be happy as a new bride and new mother. Grateful for her new home and the safety it afforded her.
“I don’t mean to complain. You have been so kind to me,” she assured Cléa, who was still recovering from the revelation. “It is just…an adjustment.”
Aalis watched them with a shrewd expression. “It’s natural. You are a diurnal creature living in a nocturnal household. Of course you’re lonely. You must have a companion. A human one, awake during your hours, who can keep your mind occupied.”
“Humans can’t visit the Tower,” Hannalinde reminded her. “Only keepers and residents.”
Cléa straightened. “You could ask your friend to move in!”
“Carlijn?”
