Chapter Text
The brooch pinned onto my lapel with a tiny tink of delicate metal hitting more delicate crystal. If such deep mourning wasn't to be seemly, then I'd seem to not. My fingers brushed the soft velvet of nearly-bare skin over an ear, plunging through the glamour there. My work was good. The practical glamour ended at or about the chin; a perceptive sphere helped cover any jerky movement at the ends and a hat to cover what was too solid above.
Seemly.
"Doctor Terne! Doctor!" Shouting at the door was a more common occurrence at my father's house than, perhaps, others. Still, it elicited a certain quickness. My village did not scream unless it was prudent, usually. Father would need a moment to dress and rouse; what had once been Mama's duty was now mine. I pulled the door open.
The screaming may have been not unheard of, but the source certainly was. Behind the houndsman's son were two hethllot, one carried by the houndsman himself. The second was wizened for Platinum - mistlike in her decomposition. Eyes that had likely been violet or soft mauve in her comparative youth were sunken deep into her skull and clouded as white as the younger one's lips and hair. The stable men crashed past me, tossing me against the swinging door and crushing my nose with their hips. The plats in the even smaller village between the silver farms and the river mill didn't come into this town. They didn't come, because they weren't particularly welcome. Clearly, though, the Srebron men had made the invitation, and extended it right into Father's front room.
Uncertain, I reached a hand out to the ghost of a woman, who hadn't followed through the door. "Madam, do you need help to find the way?" The woman took my shoulder, stabbing shockingly solid spears of fingers into the flesh.
"What's happened?" Father's voice echoed from the back study, accompanied by the sound of a door slinging open.
"She has holy twins. They are flipped inside her, and their legs are tangled together. All three are dying," the grandmother - no, Platinum didn't have those - stated, her voice as sheer as the rest of her, but also as adamant. "It's beyond my skill."
"You have to help, Doctor. The Twins won't forgive if we allow twins of their dearest to die before breath," the senior Srebron boomed.
The Srebron stables at the furthest reaches of the village - closer, truly, to the plat hamlet - produced the one thing our town was known for; hounds of enchantingly smooth gait and exceptional speed. The stables also produced, though, the most zealous Gefendur faithful of an already pious community. Fredric Srebron commanded the highest respect of the community here. His word was short, if that, of law. The Platinum didn't have many resources of their own, small in number and short of time as they were, and a doctor was a luxury our village shouldn't have been afforded, never mind theirs. My father's face tightened, and he rolled his sleeves higher. Both Frederic Srebrons balked as Father threw the writhing girl's skirt up and out of his way. They mustered what little composure they could while walking back to the door, prayers on their lips as they went.
"Where is the father?" Father said, already to the knuckles in the girl.
The elder's answer floated past, from a seat I couldn't imagine how she found, "he serves on the lines. He left the morning after their wedding."
Father's face hardened. The girl let out a guttural howl, jolting back to life as his wrist slipped into her. "Get on her shoulder!" he snarled at me. He'd once or twice called Mother to assist him, but she had had a lifetime to see his work and learn what he might need. I put my hand on the girl's shoulder. This was the first time I really got a look at her. These briefest of my countrymen were unknowable, but she looked barely twice my age. With such a minute timescale, perhaps she was. The shining silver girls I knew that age mostly couldn't even bear children yet. Father smacked my hand away, leaving a tortured red smear on my arm, "Your knees, girl, your knees!" I was already half on the table when I processed what he was telling me to do and got a swallow in to steel myself. The white wisp under my dimpled caramel knees started wheezing. I tried to look to Father for instruction, but my gaze instead caught on - in - her gorged belly. Her insides were black and red and violet. They didn't seem possible for something so white. Her chest and shoulders heaved, and I felt a gummy wet pop under my shin. Her arm went limp; I looked into her face and saw she was screaming. No sound was coming out. Her eyes matched her insides, with just a faint shimmer of lavender between the violet black spreading across them and the tiny pricks of her pupil.
Father's hand reappeared and took a blade from under the tabletop I'd never seen before, "write the boy that his wife is dead," he said grimly, wiping his other hand on the blue skirt.
The other hand, the legs, and the eyelids were as still now as the one I was sitting on. The knife disappeared into her belly, showing through, for just a moment, where the opacity was stripped away. She didn't flinch. Even though I knew she wouldn't, I still braced, expecting her to. "He needs blankets," came the echo from the stool, tighter now. I stumbled back and fell off the table on my back. Now wasn't time to cry, I chided myself, rolling over and grabbing a handful of clean rags from the shelf down there. When I stood up, Father was cutting one baby's throat. My view resolved, and I realised he was cutting its neck free. It hit my hands like trying to cup water. I rolled it into the blanket as Father's hands plunged back in for the other. "Bring it here," I didn't know how she knew it was freed, "now!" but not that I was already handing the bundle into her hands. She pressed and rubbed the baby, needle-fingers sure and steady as they had been taking my shoulder. The tiny wet organ of a person hiccuped, then let loose a shriek to tell Yerta herself that it was alive. I looked over my shoulder to see Father dig the palm of his hand into the other's back, blood and tubes of flesh scattered around his feet and table. A vein jumped on his forehead, a tendon on his neck, and a muscle on his forearm. He shuddered, leaning weight against the table. "One more, Doctor," was the subtle murmur. Father bared his teeth in a curse at this stranger in his home, but tensed his back and shoulder again. The second baby spat out a mass of blood and joined its sibling in atrocious harmony.
Father scooped the tiny baby into one hand and wiped it with a towel. Their brand new skins were even thinner, more transparent than the elder's. They were almost like the speculatory pymaric had plunged too far and covered them all over. "Your village is blessed. Twins to please the Twins, and two fewer girls' mouths for your elders to feed," he laid the baby next to her sister on the plat woman's lap before straightening himself, "Elder mistress Albaea?"
Albaea raised her chin in answer.
"I truly am sorry I couldn't save your daughter."
"For a light like hers, even our thirty years was too many to be kept from the Twins," came the measured answer, somehow pushing through the shrilling in her lap. "My twin condolences to you, for your wife and son."
Father's jaw tensed and he looked away. "One of my neighbors has a wife whose child is ready to leave her breast. My daughter will go now to ask if she might spare some mercy to these two until the shrine can make the trip," I didn't need to be told that was an order, "and please, if you or your family need a doctor, come straight away. Sultet be damned, we are neighbors."