"Soon we'll be together - aye, really and truly, lying together in the same childbed. And all I ask is that if a chance comes for me to get away with my chap, you'll help me take it."
Susannah thought it over. In the wilderness of rocks and gaping crevasses, the hyenas cackled. The wind was numbing, but the pain that suddenly clamped her midsection in its jaws was worse. She saw that same pain on Mia's face and thought again how her entire existence seemed to have become a wilderness of mirrors. In any case, what harm could such a promise do? The chance probably wouldn't come, but if it did, was she going to let the thing Mia wanted to call Mordred fall into the hands of the King's men?
"Yes," she said. "All right. If I can help you get away with him, Iwill help you."
"Anywhere!" Mia cried in a harsh whisper. "Even..." She stopped. Swallowed. Forced herself to go on. "Even into the todash darkness. For if I had to wander forever with my son by my side, that would be no condemnation."
Maybe not foryou,sister, Susannah thought, but said nothing. In truth, she was fed up with Mia's megrims.
"And if there's no way for us to be free," Mia said, "kill us."
Although there was no sound up here but the wind and the cackling hyenas, Susannah could sense her physical body still on the move, now being carried down a flight of stairs. All that real-world stuff behind the thinnest of membranes. For Mia to have transported her to this world, especially while in the throes of childbirth, suggested a being of great power. Too bad that power couldn't be harnessed, somehow.
Mia apparently mistook Susannah's continued silence for reluctance, for she rushed around the allure's circular walkway in her sturdyhuaraches and almost ran to where Susannah sat in her gawky, balky cart. She seized Susannah's shoulders and shook her.
"Yar!"she cried vehemently. "Kill us! Better we be together in death than to..." She trailed off, then spoke in a dull and bitter voice: "I've been cozened all along. Haven't I?"
And now that the moment had come, Susannah felt neither vindication nor sympathy nor sorrow. She only nodded.
"Do they mean to eat him? To feed those terrible elders with his corpse?"
"I'm almost sure not," Susannah said. And yet cannibalism was in it somewhere; her heart whispered it was so.
"They don't care about me at all," Mia said. "Just the baby-sitter, isn't that what you called me? And they won't even let me havethat, will they?"
"I don't think so," Susannah said. "You might get six months to nurse him, but even that..." She shook her head, then bit her lip as a fresh contraction gusted into her, turning all the muscles in her belly and thighs to glass. When it eased a little she finished, "I doubt it."
"Then kill us, if it comes to that. Say you will, Susannah, do ya, I beg!"
"And if I do for you, Mia, what will you do for me? Assuming I could believe any word out of your liar's mouth?"
"I'd free you, if chance allows."
Susannah thought it over, and decided that a poor bargain was better than no bargain at all. She reached up and took the hands which were gripping her shoulders. "All right. I agree."
Then, as at the end of their previous palaver in this place, the sky tore open, and the merlon behind them, and the very air between them. Through the rip, Susannah saw a moving hallway. The image was dim, blurry. She understood she was looking through her own eyes, which were mostly shut. Bulldog and Hawkman still had her. They were bearing her toward the door at the end of the hallway - always, since Roland had come into her life, there was another door - and she guessed they must think she'd passed out, or fainted. She supposed that in a way, she had.
Then she fell back into the hybrid body with the white legs...only who knew how much of her previously brown skin was now white? She thought that situation, at least, was about to end, and she was delighted. She would gladly swap those white legs, strong though they might be, for a little peace of mind.
A little peacein her mind.
Nineteen
"She's coming around," someone growled. The one with the bulldog face, Susannah thought. Not that it mattered; underneath they all looked like humanoid rats with fur growing out of their bone-crusty flesh.
"Good deal." That was Sayre, walking behind them. She looked around and saw that her entourage consisted of six low men, Hawkman, and a trio of vampires. The low men wore pistols in docker's clutches...only she supposed that in this world you had to call them shoulder holsters. When in Rome, dear, do ya as the Romans do. Two of the vampires had bahs, the crossbow weapon of the Callas. The third was carrying a bitterly buzzing electric sword of the sort the Wolves had wielded.
Ten-to-one odds,Susannah thought coolly.Not good...but it could be worse.
Can you - Mia's voice, from somewhere inside.
Shut up,Susannah told her.Talking's done.
Ahead, on the door they were approaching, she saw this:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
New York/Fedic
Maximum Security