Song of Susannah

“This is where they brought them,” she said. “Where the Wolves brought the twins they stole from Calla Bryn Sturgis. Where they—what?—operated on them.”

“Not just from Calla Bryn Sturgis,” Mia said indifferently, “but aye. And once the babbies were here, they were taken there. A place you’ll also recognize, I’ve no doubt.”

She pointed across Fedic’s single street and farther up. The last building before the castle wall abruptly ended the town was a long Quonset hut with sides of filthy corrugated metal and a rusty curved roof. The windows ru

In front of this building was a sign on a rusting steel plate. It read:

“It’s another Dogan, isn’t it?” Susa

“Well, yes and no,” Mia said. “It’s the Dogan of all Dogans, actually.”

“Where the Wolves brought the children.”

“Aye, and will bring them again,” Mia said. “For the King’s work will go forward after this disturbance raised by your friend the gunslinger is past. I have no doubt of it.”

Susa

Mia flushed, but was able to meet Susa

“It’s wonderful how everyone seems to think they know just what ka means for them,” Susa

“I think you’re trying to make jest of me because you fear,” Mia said levelly. “If such makes you feel better, than aye, have on.” She spread her arms and made a little sarcastic bow over her great belly.

They had stopped on the boardwalk in front of a shop advertising MILLINERY & LADIES’ WEAR and across from the Fedic Dogan. Susa

“I’m not making fun,” Susa

Mia shook her head angrily, her inky hair flying around her ears and brushing at her shoulders. “I did not make their fate, lady, nor did they make mine. I’ll save my tears, thank you. Would you hear my tale or not?”

“Yes, please.”

“Then let us sit, for my legs are sorely tired.”

In the Gin-Puppie Saloon, a few rickety storefronts back in the direction from which they’d come, they found chairs which would still bear their weight, but neither woman had any taste for the saloon itself, which smelled of dusty death. They dragged the chairs out to the boardwalk, where Mia sat with an audible sigh of relief.

“Soon,” she said. “Soon you shall be delivered, Susa

“Maybe, but I don’t understand any of this. Least of all why you’re rushing to this guy Sayre when you must know he serves the Crimson King.”

“Hush!” Mia said. She sat with her legs apart and her huge belly rising before her, looking out across the empty street. “’Twas a man of the King who gave me a chance to fulfill the only destiny ka ever left me. Not Sayre but one much greater than he. Someone to whom Sayre answers. A man named Walter.”

Susa

“You know the name, I see. Well, maybe that’ll save some talk. Gods know there’s been far too much talk for my taste, already; it’s not what I was made for. I was made to bear my chap and raise him, no more than that. And no less.”

Susa

As if picking this thought up, Mia said: “I am what I am and I am content wi’ it. If others are not, what’s that to me? Spit on em!”

Spoken like Detta Walker at her feistiest,Susa

After a pause, Mia went on. “Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say that being here brings back…certain memories. Yar!” And, unexpectedly, she laughed. Just as unexpectedly, the sound was beautiful and melodic.

“Tell your tale,” Susa

“Do you say so?”

“I do. Tell me.”

For a few moments Mia just looked out at the street with its dusty cover of oggan and its air of sad and ancient abandonment. As Susa

It’snotime, a voice inside her whispered—she knew not whose.This is a place between, Susa

Then Mia told her tale. It was shorter than Susa

And it was still going on.

“Look out there, may it do ya fine,” said the big-bellied woman sitting beside Susa

Susa

Then, slowly, a misty figure formed. It was that of a nude woman. Her beauty was blinding—even before she had come fully into view, Susa

“That’s me when I came here,” said the pregnant version sitting beside Susa