Chapter Title: Unnatural Selection
Prompt: sheep
Summary: But for Gemma's intervention, Fax would be dead.
Canon divergence, Gemma lives. The summary is a line Lessa thinks and not quite an actual representation of this fic, but summaries are almost worse than titles, so.
Gemma keeps her pain quiet. She chastises herself, later, for doing so when she hears of the rider's injury. An injury that her cry may have caused to be stayed - there are so few bronzeriders, and so little she can do, has been able to, for so very many long turns now, though she knows her duty - but Fax has never failed to add to her pain. And this pain may well be the end of her as Fax has long hoped it will.
Confrontation ignites between one breath and the next. While her eyes are tight against a spasm - she knows very well what her body is doing, it has been put through it often enough - Fax's knife is out and buried in F'lar's side. Could not have lived with self, had she witnessed, they have so few bronzeriders left - but his knife moves too, quick and through the throat, clean as a dispatched wherry.
The groan Gemma fails to contain is loud in the shocked silence after scuffle fades to silence and ragged breathing. Fax's men stand frozen, half off benches, and the dragonmen too, their hands hovering over belt-knives.
F'lar, closest to her, straightens to his full height. Though the pain of the move pulls his mouth into a grimace, his eyes are clear as he takes in the situation, and his voice when he speaks is calm.
"We need a birthing woman. Quickly! And a healer, if the Hold has one." The hand pressed to his side grows red. Gemma cannot help but watch the growing stain. It is that, or Fax's slumped form. And she is too glad for that.
Dragons roar on the heights above as the air in the room pulses.
She breathes out, relaxing - the reprieve is not long, but long enough for Gemma to watch the room, watch as Fax's men sullenly subside, and witness as a drudge - one of many, unremarkable, unremarked as they hover against the wall - shifts, her form blurring, features straightening from ( ... from?), though not one jot of the rags and grime disappears.
And then, like the strike of a blade against metal; "Fax is no more. I claim my hold." She is no drudge at all, though the dirt remains. It is a claim she will support, though her death might well be upon her if no birthing woman appears soon. Gemma is used to finding herself able to make only small acts.
"You have ... your mother's look ... about you."
The girl's startled gaze snaps to her, eyes dark and wide in a too thin face.
Gemma rides through the pain like the runnerbeast she had ridden in her youth. "Lady ... of Ruatha."