Ire Taverness's Arc

Chapter 17 of 19

The months moved slower than any season Ire had worked through. Her body changed in ways she had not expected. Her ankles swelled by midday. The smell of ale still turned her stomach at seven months. Kael kept his word through every week of it. He held her hair when she was sick in the mornings. He rubbed her feet at night. He carried her up the stairs when her back gave out. She stopped fighting him on any of it. On the night her water broke, she was sitting at the corner table counting coin. She felt the warm rush down her legs and set the coin bag down slow. Kael was behind the bar. He looked up before she said anything. His ears turned toward her first. "Kael." He was across the room in three strides. He took the bag out of her hand and set it on the table. His face stayed level. His hand went to her lower back. "How long between?" he asked. "It just started." "Upstairs." He walked her up slow. The floor girl ran for the midwife without being told. The second cook took over the bar. The widow's boy stood at the foot of the stairs with his hands full of clean cloth and watched them go up. The labor took the whole night and most of the next morning. Ire gripped the bedpost until her palms bled. She cursed Kael twice and pulled him close a third time. He did not leave her side. He fed her water. He held her leg when the midwife told him to. His orange eyes stayed on her face through every wave. When she cried out that she could not do it, he put his forehead to hers. "You can," he said. "You are." The baby came just after the sun cleared the roof. A girl. She cried the second the midwife lifted her, a hard clean sound that filled the room. The midwife wiped her and set her on Ire's chest. Ire looked down at the small red face and could not speak. Kael sat on the edge of the bed. He put one hand on the baby's back and one hand on Ire's hair. His hand shook. She had never seen his hand shake. "She's here," he said. "She's here." They stayed like that a long time. The baby found Ire's breast on her own. Ire watched her nurse and felt her tail settle for the first time in months. By afternoon, the tavern was open again below them. She could hear the second cook calling orders and the floor girl laughing at a driver's joke. Her staff ran the room without her. Her daughter slept against her chest. Kael sat beside her and did not move. The life she had been working toward had arrived.