“My womb’s water. Now I will deliver the baby.”

“Eiya! What if it slips out and falls into the water?”

“It won’t come right away. My womb’s passage has to open. How long until we reach Olossi?”

“I am not flying over the sea all night with a laboring woman whose baby might drop out at any time.” He tugged on the harness and the eagle began a low slow curve. The other reeve signaled with flags, querying, and Mai saw Priya dangling, like her, and staring toward her, trying to read the situation. “The hells! The nearest village is south, but there might be agents of the Red Hounds in hiding there. The Ireni Valley lies too far north through barren, uninhabited, rough country, not a place I want to have to set down. May those cursed Sirniakans have their balls eaten off by demons! Could they not have waited to attack?”

She began to laugh again, because she had never imagined him the kind of man to start raving. Then another pain caught, and he swore, and she rode it out by measuring each breath in four counts and out four counts, trying to picture the peaceful altar of the Merciful One, who brings ease to women in the throes of birth.

“Mai? Mai!”

“Oof! No, it’s just—it’s fine. What about that valley? The Naya Hall reeves say it can only be reached by air.”

“True enough, and it’s not far as the eagle flies. Aui. I’ve only been there once, though, and not so late in the afternoon as this with the cursed sun going down. The hells. Gods rot it, what choice have we?”

They swung around, flying toward the setting sun and the dull red gleam of far distant mountains. The female reeve followed, and for a while they flew in silence with the marshal breathing raggedly while Mai counted off the intervals between her pains. Not too close together, enough that she began to get tired of counting. Yet Joss was right: They could not fly all night over the water, with a chance the baby might drop before they reached Olossi.

“What can I do?” he said after pain had ripped away her breath again. “I’m cursed useless.”

“Eh! Ah! The hells.” She pressed a hand to her head as the pain receded, relieved she had a respite, however brief. “Get us put down in a safe place. The pains will come more quickly, and be more severe. We’ll need a fire, boiled water, scraps of cloth or grass for the bleeding afterward. Priya knows a tea to brew for the pain, but she hasn’t any with her, never mind.” On she talked, because it kept him quiet and her mind busy, sorting through her memories of births she had attended, only one of which had ended in a mother’s death.