Elmery

Chapter 01

Bright leather shoes were beginning to pinch. It was a better pain than the Lady was having; knelt atop her bed and groaning like a heifer about to calf. Still, it pricked at Elmery's attention and stirred the pool of resentment under her ribs.
Who gives birth in a library?
The room had the same dark polished shelves as her Father's study, but the books had been chased out of their cubbies for the impending child. Sealed out of the room along with the men, husbands of the lady and the onlookers, for the long days of her confinement.
As she surveyed the hollowed cases, Elmery reasoned it was to spare their pride. The couple's home was more of a bloated cottage than a manor. No doubt their books were thin and ancient, but this was they belonged. They should never have been cast out.
The Lady screamed. Elmery watched the clutch of admirers sigh and sway with the braying woman, and tucked her arms closer to her chest. She could have been working. If they had only kept their books in their rightful place, she may have salvaged some of her time. But, no. Here she was, in the gloom of another woman's birthing. Trying not to curse the unborn babe for its parents' social climbing.
'You're sighing,' Lyona looked up from the square of silk she was stitching.
'Pardon?'
'You're breathing like a hog,' she skewered Elmery with a glance, coiffed piles of hair tilting precariously. 'I'm trying to concentrate.'
Elmery had hoped the sting would fade out of her voice in the days of tight silence since they'd arrived. It seemed not.
'I'm sorry.'
'You're the one who wanted to be here. Saints know why.'
The needle and thread paused between her hands. Lyona's eyes scoured across the room of older noblewomen, stealing glimpses of the straining woman through the crowd.
Elmery studied her sister's profile, watching the glower soften into craving. The needle pierced back through silk and Lyona fed her frustrations into another perfect row in another perfect flower.
'If you want to step out-'
'Some of us will be mothers one day, Elmery. This is a necessary education.'
'But you don't need it.' Raising in a smile in the hope she would turn back to her, Elmery said, 'You have me.' 

Lyona's warm arpeggio disrupted the musty air around them. A few skirts twitched as the ladies remembered the looming sisters, but none dared turn to see Lyona smirk.
Elmery braced for whatever barb had pricked the laugh out of her sister. It lingered in the pull of her mouth, coaxing her expression into unflattering a-symmetry. But instead of sharing, Lyona savoured it; smiling to herself while her needle pierced and pulled and pierced the silk again.
The imminent mother reared up and sent a bowl shattering across the floorboards. The closest lady mopped up the mess and the crowd surged to soothe her, murmuring while she roared and clutched the bedclothes.
Safe behind a wall of turned backs again, Elmery sat down on the ledge beside Lyona, her wool skirts grating against voluminous layers of peach. Lyona's hands stilled, and her eyes turned back to the bearing.
'I have a theory…'
Lyona wet her lips. 'El,' she warned.
'I've been thinking about it since I knew we would come here,' Elmery insisted. 'You've been curious about what Devin and I have been discussing-'
'I don't dwell on your fits of interests. They pass soon enough.'
There was enough truth in the accusation to flare Elmery's hands. 'I know you were surprised when I told father I would come. So was Devin.'
'You're mistaking embarrassment for surprise.'
Lyona's words stuffed the narrow space between them until it was bursting.
Elmery ran her hands over her borrowed skirts and let her nails stubble over the rough grey. She knew now that the invitation didn't extend to both daughters. Their father read the invitation over dinner but only his reaction told her it had been efficiency and not a kindness. 
But, still, some good might come of her lapse in attention.
'Happily…' Elmery rallied herself to persist, 'it has posed a new question. We could both consider it to pass the time.'
It was Lyona's turn to sigh.
Elmery turned her knees towards her sister's and focused on the polished skin of her hands. She settled the words in her mind until they were sturdy enough to speak aloud.
'If nothing makes us into sorcerers, we must arrive that way,' she said.
'Congratulations.'
'That isn't…' Elmery's eyes flit up to Lyona's face, but she was still intent on the swarming frock coats and carefully rigged curls of the women. After another moment, she went on. 'I suppose my theory, in its entirety, is that the power comes at birth. Perhaps we take it with us from the place we're first made.'
'You think sorcery lurks under every woman's petticoat?'
'There's something in us that creates. Something inexplicable and powerful enough to forge a body and a soul. A destiny.'
Lyona's hooded eyes finally turned to her.
Elmery knew this was a moment to redeem herself: for heat to swarm under her freckles or a tremor to seize her lips. Her steadiness dulled Lyona's attention. It was habit more than interest that made her ask,  
'And what part do men play in all of this?'
'Base material.' Elmery's hands flared once more before they threaded together. 'Sorcery can't affect what doesn't exist. Women can't forge life without that initial…source of life.'
The glint returned and Lyona raised her infuriating smile. Pink and full: a silent gloat held just below the surface ever since she had abandoned Elmery at the festival and crept in at dawn. Her hair loose; her new ribbons missing.
Satisfied, Lyona went back to her embroidery. 'I wonder how Devin would feel to hear you speak like that.' 

Elmery wasn't sure how to respond. She waited until the humour wore out of Lyona's face again, gently nudging the floorboards with her heels. Soon, she was keeping a rhythm with the grunts and groaning from the bed. Somewhere, the textbook she'd scanned in their coach sat up and told her it wouldn't be long.
As the woman cursed went back to her grunting, Elmery picked up her voice again.
'If I'm right, if all things were equal, and we all had a choice to become… what I am,' she glanced back to her sister, 'it poses a question.'
'It poses several.'
'True. But my first question would be… what stopped you?'
'What stopped me?'
'If you could have taken that source of life and magic, why didn't you? Why come out the way you are, instead of like me?'
Lyona set out her feet until the toes peeked out from her silks. She crossed her ankles and considered her answer; her smile brightening with every thought.
All at once she drew her feet back and turned to Elmery, their knees pressing together.
'It's hot in here, don't you think?'
'I suppose so,' Elmery agreed.
'Do you see that woman? The one who can't keep her four-strand braids steady?' Elmery looked across the women until she saw the strips of uneven hair. 'I'm concerned about her. She seems pale.' When she looked back, Lyona's eyes were ready to seize hers, 'I'd hate to see her fall and disrupt the midwife. Wouldn't you?'
There was another screech from the bed. Lyona scowled at the sound.
Elmery watched and, true to Lyona's word, the pale woman slowly withdrew from the scurry of activity around the bed. As she backed out from the crowd Elmery saw the fear staining her jacket; sweat pinning navy blue wings to her back.
'Poor dear,' Lyona clucked. 'Is it my eye, or is she swaying?'
On another day, Elmery may have questioned her sister's empathy. If the books still lined the shelves, she may have been occupied enough to avoid speaking at all. As it was, Elmery was transfixed; moved at the sight of a weak stomach strapped into fine clothes. With a tilt of her head, she walked straight into Lyona's trap.
Like the hard snap of linen to shake out a crease, or the moment pressure became a sneeze, things changed.
The woman still stood before them, but in the space of a blink she was different. She turned, hair un-mussed, her clothes dry and pressed as the moment she'd bought them. The heat was out of her body, but she flushed a deep red; a furious crimson at the sudden, all consuming touch.
As a baby was gathered up into eager arms and its thin wail wound about the room, Lyona joined the woman and stared at Elmery.
Her mouth twitched at the corners, 'In answer to your question…' she waited as the lady balled horror and fury into her fists and away from them; deep into the crowd. 'See her reaction?'
Elmery turned so they were eye to eye, 'Yes?'
With a fresh smile, Lyona set out a finger and tapped Elmery's nose.
'That's why.'