Chapter 207 Sharing the Table

Lora had forgotten one thing: the inside of a tent is black as a hat. Between the lot of them they wrestled the canvas up on one side, and at last there was light enough to work by.

Truffle, after all she'd been put through, had lost every scrap of her spirit. She sat hunched, back bowed, as if only so could she bear the pain down.

Everyone washed their hands. Vet Zach brought out a little vial, and Lora asked: "Is that the Sleeping Draught?"

"This is numbing powder. Draughts by the mouth are a tricky business in beasts — the dose too hard to hold. This is aconite, wolfsbane, arum, pinellia, and Riverlands pepper, ground fine together. You dust it into the cut itself; the flesh goes numb, and the pain never arrives."

Lora took up a pair of scissors, meaning to clip away the fur on the middle of Truffle's belly — and Vet Falk stopped her, producing a razor, smiling:

"The young lady need only direct, ma'am. The hand-work is ours."

In plain truth, it wasn't that they didn't know how. It was this dog — too particular a dog, in too particular a palace; the weight on their shoulders had been past standing. Lora's getting Truffle carried out of the palace had taken half that weight off before ever a knife was lifted.

With what the conditions offered, they opened Truffle's belly; and Lora, trembling with excitement, reached out and received her first pup.

Cord tied off and snipped, Lora wedged her forefinger between the little one's jaws, bent over, and swung the pup — once, once, once, in steady time — until it began to squirm in her hand. Only then did she stop.

The second, the same. The third, the same.

That was to fling the birthing-water out of its mouth — just as with a newborn child, you must have it crying.

She handed the pups to the maids to dry, and turned back to Vet Zach, who was about to begin Truffle's suturing: "One moment. Take the womb out whole. It spares you bleeding points inside when you close her — and she'll never come to this pass again, never carry a litter into hard labor a second time."

The two vets traded a look. Never in their lives had they done such a thing. But turned over in the mind, it held: a dog like Truffle, bred again — the same risk again.

So Truffle had her Caesarean, and her sterilizing thrown in with it.

One layer the less to suture — only the flesh and skin to close — and their hands went twice the speed.

In surgery under canvas, speed is the whole of it: the quicker the closing, the smaller the chance of the wound turning. When the last mulberry-bark suture was snipped, everyone in the tent let their breath go together.

The numbness had not worn off Truffle's wound; and the draught poured down her before the work began had knockout drops in it, and held her down yet — tongue lolling out, the whites of her eyes still showing.

A maid sponged her legs over and over with warm water, keeping the warmth in her body, calling her name the while.

At last Truffle's eyes rolled round, the tongue drew back in, and a small whimper started up out of her.

The two maids fell on each other's necks, laughing and crying together.

Lora didn't know it: when she had said the pups were too big because Truffle had been fed too well, the pair of them had gone white as their own handkerchiefs.

NovelPhoenix authors don't post on scraper sites. If you're reading this somewhere else, the chapter was stolen.

The daily feeding of Truffle was theirs. If the dog had died of it — even with the Queen Mother sparing them — the King would have had them down into the palace's penal quarters.

Now three fat little Truffles alive, and Truffle alive, and their posts at the Serene Palace kept — it was escape with their lives whole, and nothing less.

The two vets went over the waking Truffle: organs, reflexes, all as they should be; the strangeness of the place had her anxious and striving already to stand.

The six of them had gone out of the palace into bright morning sun; now it was afternoon, and the palace banquet opening — and Lora discovered she was hollow to the spine with hunger.

The maids got Truffle settled into a basket and let her pups squeeze in to nurse — and only then did they find their spirits again: "Young lady, look at them — eyes shut, nursing away. Aren't they the dears?"

"Mm! And when they're bigger, running all over the floors — dearer still."

The tent stood half-raised, and they never saw what the maids couldn't: up on the Left Silvergate's tower, the Queen Mother and the King had long since caught sight of them, laughing over the pups in the basket.

One look at those two maids laughing so free, and no one needed to ask — mother and litter had come through.

Roland, standing behind the King, fell back a step, then went off down the gate-tower at a run. Not far off, Linn was pushing Leon's chair, waiting for him:

"That grin of yours — she's done it?"

"She's not back inside yet, but by the look of it she's safe for the present. Ah — the fearless little thing. You turn your back one minute, and she's hunted up another errand for herself. Thank heaven she carried it outside the gates — had it gone wrong inside the palace, who was to carry that weight?"

"That's why everyone loves her. Wild as she is the livelong day — at the pinch, it's other people she thinks of."

When the word first came that Lora meant to deliver a dog in hard labor, Leon and Roland had both gone cold to the bone. The King had sent Voss to see to the beast precisely because, if it went bad, there'd be no time to get it out of doors.

Lora would save the dog — but she had pitched her saving outside the palace walls, and so she had dug the trapdoor out from between the Queen Mother and the King.

The King had already made up his mind: dog dead or alive, she was to be rewarded.

And she had gone and saved it!

Like that reversible poem — one more astonishment handed round the feast: new life come into the world on the King's Birth-Feast — what, under heaven, could be luckier than that?

Before long the Silver Shield came and opened the palace gate, and Leon watched the well-known figure come toward him from a distance — and could not have said whether it was joy in him or dread.

The Queen Mother saw Truffle lying in the basket with her own eyes, three pups packed in against her, nursing — and she was as glad as a grandmother with her first grandchild, and pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.

The King laughed: "Mother — what's come over you? This is great good fortune, and here you are crying."

"I'm glad, that's all. Have Lora brought to me — I mean to reward her properly."

Lora came and made her bow, smiling: "It was the two vets' doing, every bit of it. I only stood at their elbows and cheered them on. If Your Majesty means to reward, then reward them. We keep two dogs ourselves at home — I'm only better acquainted with dogs than most, no more."

"I may not reward — but the King must. You've set a fine thing on the top of his Birth-Feast; he can't very well look the other way at it. Lora — presently, sit with your mother. Don't go squeeze in among the young ladies again."

The Queen Mother having spoken, there was nothing for it but to go find her mother.

At the palace banquet, the young ladies kept to the side hall; but the married women of the royal kin sat at table with the King and the Queen Mother.

Two long tables down the great hall, two rings of people seated round them: the King at the head of one ring of men, the Queen Mother at the head of the other of women.

Lora sat with the Countess a little off to the side — but at least she could see across the crowd to him, there at the front of the men's table. She was staring, gone clean out of the world, when Leon happened to look over her way — and down went her head like a shot.

The Countess, watching her daughter duck all at once and grab up a pastry, followed the line of her eyes — and caught Leon in the very act of turning his head.

Ah! Her daughter's heart had grown a heart in it.

At the banquet in the great hall, over and above the three grand princesses, only Lora sat there still unwed.

So every aunt and cousin of the kin, seven aunts and eight if they had them, had their eyes trained on those four.

The Dowager Lady Elena, seated at the head of the women's table, beckoned Lora over. Lora hesitated, pointed at her own nose; the Dowager Lady nodded.

Lora looked to her mother; and the Countess had nothing for it but to nod her off.

And as Lora rose on this side, away across the room, at the men's table, Prince Ambrose rose at the same moment.

And came, likewise, toward his lawful mother, the Dowager Lady Elena.