Chapter 421 - 420- Prayer of a Mother
’Two hours later.’
The garden stairs were stone, and stone was good for leaning against, and six women who had collectively decided that they were going to stand up and walk out of the garden under their own power were doing so in a chain of mutual support that was technically standing and technically walking and was, objectively, neither of those things in any conventional sense.
Helena had one hand on the garden railing and one hand on Mira’s arm. Mira had one hand on Helena and her other on the wall. Bella had both arms wrapped around Mira’s free side, tail curled around Mira’s ankle, and she was walking with the gait of a cat who had been in cold water too long — a kind of sideways careful shuffle that she would describe, if asked, as her normal walk. Kaida was beside Bella, spine impeccably straight, chin up, left leg slightly dragging in a way she appeared completely unaware of. Elara had both hands on Kaida’s shoulders and was using them as structural support. Olivia was at the back, hands clasped in front of her, moving in the specific even tread of a woman who had decided that dignity was a choice and was making it, one careful step at a time.
All six of them had their legs pressed together with the specific tightness of women whose lower bodies had reached a unanimous position on the subject of wide strides.
They came up the garden path in a slow, determined, slightly tottering column.
Viktor stood at the top of the stairs.
Rusty sat on his head. The amethyst slime had settled there at some point during the last hour with the satisfied permanence of a slime who had absorbed an enormous quantity of dense sexual energy and had chosen its victory position. He glowed with the deep steady violet of a well-fed thing. His small goggles caught the light.
Beside Viktor stood Gwen.
She had arrived. Her silver-blonde hair was somewhat wild from sleep. Her quiver was over her shoulder. Her bow was in her hand. Her pointed ears were forward. She was looking at the approaching column of women with the narrowing eyes of someone who was building a theory they hadn’t finished building yet.
She looked at Viktor.
He looked at Rusty. Rusty pulsed.
Gwen looked back at the women.
"What," she said, slowly, "happened to them."
Viktor said nothing.
"They’re— they’re walking like their—" She studied the collective gait. Her brow furrowed. The warrior’s read-the-situation instinct she’d inherited from her tribe was doing something. She looked at Kaida specifically, who was maintaining the best performance of normalcy and whose left leg had now given up its pretense. She looked at Helena, who was leaning on a garden wall and had the expression of someone who had recently been in a river and was only partially downstream. She looked at Elara, who was supporting herself on Kaida’s shoulder and whose pink tail was curled around her own waist for structural purposes. "Why do they look like they have—" she chose the most tactful phrasing available, "—waist injuries."
"’They simply,’" Vivian said, from Gwen’s left.
Gwen turned.
Vivian was standing by the garden wall with her hands folded at her waist and her chin up and her golden elven composure assembled with the careful precision of a woman who had had two hours to rebuild it from component parts. Her hair was pinned back. Her robe was straight. She had done an excellent job.
Her ankles were crossed.
"’They simply slipped,’" Vivian said, pleasantly. "’In the pond. Fell down.’"
Gwen’s eyes tracked from her mother to the six women and back.
"’All of them.’"
"’Yes.’"
"’Together.’"
"’It— yes. The— water was wet.’"
A pause.
Gwen looked at her mother with the sharp elven eyes of a daughter who had been read to sleep by this woman for fourteen years and could identify a specific pitch in her voice.
"’All of them fell together,’" Gwen said, very deliberately, "’in the pond,’" her gaze dropping briefly to her mother’s ankles, "’and all of them injured themselves,’" she looked at the column of supporting women, "’in the same—’"
"The one who comes last," Viktor said, "will be a pig."
Gwen’s head snapped to him.
The word ’’pig hit the morning air and everything else left with it — her theory, her argument, the careful architecture of her suspicion — replaced entirely by the immediate and specific outrage of a woman who had been called a pig.
"’YOU—’" Her hand went to her bow. "’YOU BASTARD,’" the full force of elven morning-fury directed at Viktor’s face, "YOU’ ARE THE PIG—’"
She moved toward him.
Viktor turned. Took two steps. His hand found her hip — both of them, actually, one on each side, his palms settling on the generous curve of her hips with the easy grip of a man who had developed extensive practical expertise in where hips were and how they moved — and pulled.
Gwen’s forward momentum carried her directly into his chest. Her bow arm went up. Her quiver rattled. Her enormous breasts — which were both present and currently pressed against Viktor’s sternum with the specific physics of things that had weight and were obeying it — made the contact that Vivian registered from six feet away as: ’that sound.’
"’YOU ARE DEAD,’" Gwen said, her voice muffled by his chest, her face turned sideways against it, which was where it was because that was where momentum had put it and she had not yet resolved the geometry. "’You are completely dead, I will shoot you from— Viktor—’ let go—’"
"I’m teleporting you," Viktor said. His voice was entirely calm. Rusty pulsed, satisfied, on his head.
"’You’re—’ ’WHAT’—"
"You’ll be late."
"’I’m not— you’re— your ’hands’—’"
"Hold on."
"’HOLD ON TO WHAT, YOUR HANDS ARE ON MY—’"
The garden did the thing that gardens do when Instant Recall activates. It simply continued existing, unchanged, as the two people in the center of it were replaced by slightly disturbed air.
’Whoosh.’
Silence.
The flowers bloomed. The water settled.
Rustina, at the pond edge, bounced twice in the specific celebratory manner of a slime who had just witnessed something she approved of.
Vivian stood in the garden.
She stood very still.
Her hands were at her sides. Her golden eyes were looking at the space where Viktor and Gwen had been standing — where her daughter’s hips had been gripped by both his hands, where her daughter’s chest had been pressed against his sternum, where Gwen’s voice had been muffled by Viktor’s chest in the specific way of someone who is being held and is furious about it and is not entirely sure what else to do about it.
Where the air was still warm from him.
Vivian breathed.
Then she turned to the six women at the garden path.
The six women who were, at this precise moment, giving up the performance of standing in favor of the garden grass. They arrived at it in stages — Helena first, lowering herself with both hands on her knees, her enormous breasts swaying as she settled, her pregnant belly rounding soft in her lap. Mira sat beside her, drew her knees up, pressed her forehead to them. Bella simply lay down on her back, tail spread flat, golden eyes open to the garden ceiling, purring with the specific frequency of done. Kaida sat with her back against a garden stone, spine straight, chin up, and closed her eyes. Elara and Olivia arrived beside each other and sat in the grass and said nothing for several seconds.
All six of them were arched, slightly. Their lower backs had an opinion that the grass was only partially answering.
Vivian looked at them.
They looked at her.
"He would be gentle," Vivian said.
Her voice was measured. The voice of an elven mother who had asked her share of hard questions and survived the answers. "On my daughter. When he— if he— he would be ’gentle’."
She waited.
The garden was quiet.
Six women — pregnant, exhausted, grass-sprawled, lower-body-numb, completely spent — looked at Vivian with the same expression.
Then six mouths opened.
Six sighs came out.
Identical sighs. The sigh of women who had a great deal of relevant firsthand information and were organizing it into the most diplomatic possible response.
They looked at each other.
They looked at the Worldtree at the garden’s edge — Helena’s Gaia-blessed centerpiece, the tall silver-barked trunk that had grown straight and impossible out of the garden floor, its canopy spread wide and still above them.
They looked at Vivian.
Mira spoke first, because Mira always spoke first when the answer was going to be uncomfortable. Her green eyes were level. Her voice was completely sincere.
"’You should pray,’" Mira said, "’that he finds many women in the capital.’"
Vivian blinked.
"’Many,’" Bella added, from the grass, golden eyes at the ceiling. "’Several. A ’lot.’’"
"’Before he comes back,’" Kaida said, from the stone, eyes closed, voice flat.
"’So that,’" Elara said, small and certain.
"’Your daughter,’" Olivia finished, quietly, her blonde hair still slightly unresolved from the morning, her golden eyes carrying the very specific depth of a woman who had arrived naive and was no longer that, "’does not get’—"
All six said it together, with the warm exhausted unanimity of women who had shared something that had no other word for it:
"’—banged to death.’"
Silence.
Vivian looked at them.
She turned.
She faced the Worldtree — that impossible silver trunk, that spreading canopy, the thing Helena’s goddess-proxy had grown from nothing in a dungeon floor in a border town — and she looked at it for a long moment.
Her hands pressed together.
Her golden eyes closed.
"’God,’" Vivian said, to the Worldtree, to the garden, to whatever divinity Helena had apparently invited to live in the bark and roots of this place, her voice the soft precise voice of an elven woman making a sincere request, "’just— hand him as many women as women possible and save my daughter.’"