Page 118 of When the Sky Breaks

Kadish shrugged. “A few? Usually if people don’t have someone local they just travel. Now given Iksura seems to be deliberately depriving you lot of healers? Travel probably won’t help.”

“No more travel,” I muttered.

“Pregnancy not agreeing with you, Lady Sorcha?” Kadish asked, crouching in front of me.

“We’re on day four without her vomiting,” Neal said. “It’s a record.”

“I’m cold and fed and stationary,” I said. “It’s a new sensation, takes the edge off.”

“You’re looking like what, twenty-two weeks?” Kadish asked me.

“Twenty tomorrow,” I replied.

“Big baby,” Kadish replied.

“Good,” I said. “That’s the goal.”

“And how many of those have been spent on the road?”

“Fifteen and a half,” I replied.

Kadish shot Neal and Ansel a glare. “You dragged her across a continent and an ocean like this?”

“In our defense we didn’t know we’d be traveling when she conceived. And we didn’t know it’d taken before we started traveling,” Ansel said.

“Alright, you two, out,” Kadish instructed. “I’ll check her over. Check baby over. Send you a bill. I’ll be back every month until she’s due. Questions? Complaints?”

Neal stiffened. “You want me to go?”

“I do,” Kadish replied. “You’re nervous. It’ll make her nervous. We don’t need an audience. Go make her tea. Fluff linens. Be useful.”

And with that he shoved Neal and Ansel out the door into the hallway.

Fifty-Three

Neal

It was the beginning of week three in Edinburgh when the final research on local cult activity came through. Ansel and Sorcha were expecting a missive. A couple of letters. They got three of Ansel’s top intelligence contacts standing around her desk wringing their hands and looking concerned. It wasn’t technically in my purview, but I had too much personal stake to hear this secondhand, so I stood with my back to the door as they gave their report, Sorcha seated behind her desk and Ansel pacing in front of it—glaring.

“We thought it’d be limited,” the first man said. He was older. Swarthy skinned. Greek if I remembered correctly.

“It has been most of northern Europe,” the second added. This one was younger. Pale. Nordic of some kind.

“But?” Sorcha prompted.

“Most of the city? Barely anything,” the first man said. “We’ve got a couple police reports. A few portal openings. One actual incident where a farmer filed suit against his neighbor because one of those eldritch things with the spindly fingers disintegrated his prize hog.”

“But there’s a bit of a headquarters,” the third agent said. This one was female, human, elderly. Unremarkable in the best possible way for a spy.

“Elaborate,” Sorcha instructed. She was like a different person when she was working. Sharp, decisive. I was so damn proud.

“There’s a mansion northwest of town near Queensferry,” the woman said. “No official police reports. But people go there for help. And most don’t come back. And their garbage? Too much offal for ten times the people that come and go each day.”

“Would you like us to investigate?” the first man offered.

Sorcha shook her head. “We’ll do it.”

Had she really just said that?