Page 6 of Kingmakers, Year Four

She thought it was indigestion. As the cramps worsened, she considered that perhaps she was about to have the long-delayed period in spectacular fashion.

It was only when the pain overtook her to the point that she could no longer stand that she began to realize how deserted the long section of beach really was, with barely a gull in sight, let alone any humans.

She wondered if her appendix was the issue, or her gallbladder. The sight of blood in the salt pool disgusted her more than it alarmed her. She forced herself to hobble down to the ocean instead, where the waves would wash her clean.

The steady surf was immensely soothing to her, the rhythm of the waves as familiar as her own heartbeat.

And then, out of nowhere, the irresistible impulse to bear down . ..

The birth itself took less than ten minutes.

She reached between her legs and felt the curve of the infant skull—my skull—with comical surprise. She made a sound halfway between a shriek and a laugh of pure astonishment. It seemed like I had played a trick on her, appearing out of nowhere, uninvited, and unexpected.

She lifted me out of the water, as if it were the sea that had birthed me. The placenta she left for the crabs to eat.

Though she had never seen it done before, she successfully knotted the cord and severed it with the edge of a scallop shell.

When my father returned an hour later, triumphant with a bloody boar carcass strung up on a pole, he found his new bride sitting topless in the sand, her shirt wrapped around the infant at her breast.

I was small, having arrived, by the doctor’s estimate, at least a month early.

My father thought it was just as good a joke as my mother.

He marveled at my copper-colored hair and appetite all out of proportion to my size.

He wanted to name me after his grandmother.

But my mother had already named me Nix, the word for a water sprite that can shift back and forth to human form.

My father liked that even better. He said, without any evidence to the contrary, and whether I shared his red hair or not, he couldnever be entirely sure that my mother hadn’t found me on the beach.

That’s the first bedtime story I remember: the story of how I was born.

It was my favorite, and I begged to hear it again and again, though my father had dozens of tales to tell, all equally full of mystery and adventure. He’s a fantastic storyteller to this day. Even his men shout for their favorites when they’ve all been drinking together.

My father’s stories center on himself and his soldiers: legendary tales of bravery, bloodshed, and revenge, epic in scale and rich in detail.

My father looks like he should be carved on the side of a mountain. He’s seven feet tall with a ginger mane of hair and a flaming red beard. He’s ferocious and clever. All girls idolize their fathers I suppose, but none with better reason than me.

Right now, however, we’re in a hell of a fight.

He doesn’t want me going to Kingmakers.

It’s not the first fight we’ve had, but it’s the most vicious.

It’s not like the time I broke the ankle of his favorite horse, or the time he said I ought to stay a virgin until I was married and I laughed in his face and told him that ship had already sailed.

This time, it seems that we’re both ready to defend this particular hill until all else is a flaming ruin.

“I told you, I won’t discuss it again!” he roars at me, storming around the oak-slab table in the huge farmhouse kitchen.

I’m leaned back in my chair, arms crossed, feet propped up on the table to annoy him.

“It doesn’t need any more discussion,” I say. “Because I’m going.”

“Good luck getting on the ship without my fingerprint on that contract!” he growls, disdainfully flinging down the handwritten list of rules and regulations to attend Kingmakers.

I leap to my feet, knocking my chair backward on the flagstone floor.

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