Chapter 25
Raevu
From the moment we’d gotten back to Juhl from picking up Eva, Acidi’s pregnancy had been bothering me.
What disturbed me was that before leaving Juhl for Earth, I’d decided it was time for our contract to be over and had Willem come over and subtly run some scans. Acidi had not been pregnant, and with great haste, I’d spoken to the Grand Mother to have her recall Acidi.
Later, to my shock, I’d gotten the news from Earth that one of the women who had volunteered for the Peace Opportunity Program appeared to be a viable option. While I was gone to fetch my life mate, Acidi had been recalled to the jalkavaima complex, and it was then that she had quite conveniently discovered she was pregnant—and with a girl, no less.
It all seemed much too contrived to me, too convenient. I didn’t know how she could have done it, but somehow Acidi had engineered this pregnancy situation.
And now she was in labor, a full two months early. This disturbed me as well. Ten weeks was a long time in the gestational period. It was a lot of growth and development this baby would be missing out on, and I hoped Willem could stop or slow down the labor.
After the labor news was relayed to me, I was also informed that Acidi didn’t want anyone but her own doctor and her brother in the room, but I wasn’t going to give her an option in this demand. I was pulling rank on this one and had notified the Grand Mother and located my most trusted medic. They would be in that delivery room with Acidi.
We reached the quarters where Acidi had been housed in the jalkavaima complex since her recall. I noted absently that her taste in decorating hadn’t changed—bright, clashing colors, lots of metallic glints from statuettes, and baubles scattered haphazardly about the room. It looked like an Earth magpie’s nest.
Eva’s taste ran more to the deep colors, and I’d noticed that if she said she liked something somewhere in the palace, it’d find its way to her rooms. I don’t think she ever requested or demanded, but she had a winning way with people that made them want to please her. If she said she liked something, A’dam or one of her Guard spoke softly to a passing servant, and that thing—be it tapestry or statue or ornament—appeared in her quarters.
I knew she had no idea that the painting she’d admired and that now hung over her chaise had been done by my three times great-grandfather, or that the small female statuette that now held a place of honor in the center of her guesting chamber was fashioned in the likeness of my mother.
Even the sentient Tovari tree seemed to have fallen for her. The light in Eva’s quarters always seemed softer and greener than it did in other places. The tree itself was filtering out our harsher light and warmer temperatures to keep her comfortable.
It troubled me that my life mate had been out of sorts lately. I wondered if it was due to the fact that she was on palace arrest thanks to the death threats. But even confined to her quarters, she still had an impact on my people. Any functionaries left the palace Tovari tree with stories of her. Brother Estijen sang her praises to anyone he ran into, and her Guard took turns going out into the community to talk about her and keep an ear out for further threats against her person.
The threats were becoming fewer and farther between as more males met her and realized what her coming to Juhl meant for us. A way to revitalize our female numbers, a means to overcome possible extinction as a race, a queen in name and also in office. And what did that mean to me? A life mate. So much meaning was wrapped up in just two small words.
Willem went directly to the room where the muffled screeches and crashes were coming from within Acidi’s quarters. I assumed it was her bedroom because I’d never been to these quarters. In the past, my nights with Acidi had been just like her personality…planned, systematic, and filled with a show of no emotions.
Eva’s instinctive passion and spontaneous gestures of affection toward me both touched and distracted me. Like now, when I should have been thinking of the child Acidi said was ours. Instead, I was always thinking about Eva.
A guttural bellow interrupted my reverie. “Get out!” Acidi’s usually modulated and temperate voice sounded distorted. “Aaromon and my doctor are the only ones who should be in here. Get out!” Another crash resounded throughout the space.
The Grand Mother herself strolled out of the back room just as Eva and Linnea rushed through the front door.
“What are you doing here?” I queried to Eva. One of her Guards stepped through right behind her, and I saw two more take up stations outside the apartment’s doorway. Immediately, part of me relaxed because I knew Eva had been safe the whole time she’d been on her way here.
“What’s going on?” Eva’s voice never failed to send an electric charge through me.
“Acidi’s baby is on its way,” I replied.
“Hello, my dear,” the Grand Mother said as Linnea rushed over to kiss her cheek.
“Hello.” Linnea smiled at her grandmother and stood at her side.
The Grand Mother announced to us all, “Acidi seems to be having a perfectly natural term birth. We’ll see in just a little bit if my suspicions are correct.”
We waited a bit longer as the moans and cries from inside the chamber grew closer together and more frenzied. We heard one long, anguished shriek wherein Eva stood closer to me, and I thought I saw her place her hand protectively over her belly, but surely, I was mistaken.
Suddenly, there was silence. I saw Linnea holding her mother’s hand, and I began to reach for Eva’s without thinking, when a shriek of outrage sounded from the next room.
“Impossible! What is that? Take it away! It’s not what I created! Aaromon, what did you do?” Unintelligible squawks and screeches followed from the back room, but once Willem entered our room with a small bundle, we paid no mind to the noises from the rest of the suite.
Willem walked sedately into the room from the back, holding a small, swaddled form in his arms. All of our attention centered on the squirming blue bundle he held so tightly. Eva stepped forward first.
“What is it, Willem?” She held her arms out to take his burden from him.
“It’s a girl. Acidi didn’t lie about that. She appears to be full term, which should be impossible. We’ve started some DNA tests that Raevu has requested, and she’s healthy otherwise, but…” His voice trailed off.
I’d walked over to see the tiny bundle in Eva’s arms, strangely touched by the picture she made holding a baby.
“But?” I asked. My hand cupped the infant’s entire head; it was so small and delicate.
“She has a birth defect. A clubfoot. Acidi is denying her now,” Willem said with a shrug.
Eva looked up at him, outrage evident on her face. “For a clubfoot? Trevor had that when he was born. It’s nothing. Completely correctable.” She held the babe closer to her chest. “This baby is innocent. She can’t help how she’s born. She is beautiful and perfect, damn it. Why is Acidi so hateful?”
“Oh, dear, we’ve all been wondering that for years.” The Grand Mother smiled and shook her head.
Looking down at the small figure cradled in Eva’s arms, I had to agree. This tiny creature was perfect. No one in his or her right mind would reject her, birth defect or not.
Eva smiled at the babe in her arms. The picture they made together struck me deep in my gut. I wanted to gather them both up, keeping them just as they were forever.
The silence we created as we watched Eva smile down at the babe in her arms shattered as we began to hear words shrieked from the next room. “It’s a monster! What did you do? Aaromon, I trusted you. This was the plan…but the baby is imperfect. Now I’ll never be queen.”
Eva glanced over at me at that last statement, and I shook my head ruefully. Acidi would never have been queen, just as my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother had never been queens. They were jalkavaima, and they retained that status even after bearing royal babies. Even though my mother had been special, as she had remained in the palace for a couple of years after I’d been born, she’d died when I was two years of age. Where Acidi had gotten the idea she’d ever be queen was a mystery. Maybe her mind had finally gone. I shrugged at the question in Eva’s eyes and asked if I could take her adorable burden from her.
Gently, she transferred the squirming bundle into my arms. Now it was Eva’s turn to stroke her hand over the small head. “Where will she go?” she asked softly.
The Grand Mother answered, “We may place her in a jalkavaima nursery nearby or somewhere else around the planet. When I get back to my office, I’ll see who has the most personnel at the moment.”
Her no-nonsense tone offended me. “If she is mine, she will stay nearby,” I said in a low voice.
“Females aren’t under the regular rules, Raevu,” the Grand Mother replied dryly. “We may do with them as we please if the mother doesn’t want them.”
Eva gasped, “She will go nowhere. If she is Raevu’s, then she will stay right here. As a matter of fact, she will stay with me in the palace Tovari tree.” Eva whirled and faced Willem. “How long will the DNA tests take?”
Her ferocity seemed to take Willem aback. I smiled down at the infant in my arms. If Eva was this fierce in defense of an unrelated infant, then her own would be in the safest of hands.
“Just a couple of hours. Not long, my queen.” He gestured to the infant. “They’re already started. We don’t usually question the paternity of our babies. DNA tests aren’t run terribly frequently here.”
Eva made a face at Willem and turned back to the bundle in my arms.
“Trevor, Ivy’s oldest son, had a clubfoot when he was born.” She gently stroked her knuckle down the baby’s soft green cheek. “Ivy told me that she and her husband were so scared, but the surgery was commonplace and an easy correction. I’d never have guessed Trevor had been born that way by the time I came into the picture. He played soccer and football and ran track. He was just an ordinary boy. Having a clubfoot is nothing. What’s wrong with Acidi that she thinks this makes her baby a monster?”
Linnea and the Grand Mother exchanged looks. “Acidi’s always been vain,” Linnea remarked.
I snorted. “That’s putting it mildly,” I commented, still holding the small, soft infant in my arms.
“Egocentric, immodest, conceited…” The Grand Mother smiled benignly at me. “I could go on.”
“Please don’t,” I interrupted. “I think Eva gets your point.”
Willem interjected, “She doesn’t want this baby. It’s defective in her eyes.” And there he paused. “Although I will tell you it’s full term. My scans have shown this. This baby isn’t two months early as we thought. It’s fully developed, and the only way it could be fully developed is if she had been four months pregnant before we left to go to Earth.” He shook his head. “She certainly wasn’t four months along when we left.”
I nodded. The baby wasn’t mine, and the tests would confirm it.
“As I suspected,” the Grand Mother stated. “Acidi’s pregnancy wasn’t natural. There’s information missing from her files that I suspect has to do with her fertility. We’re struggling more and more with that. A solution must be found soon.”
The Grand Mother held out her arms imperiously for the baby.
“No,” I said, “Not until we get the DNA results.”
Eva chimed in. “We’re taking her home with us. She’s ours.” She looked up and smiled at me before saying,” And her name is Hope.”