Chapter 21: Dawn of the War-Mothers
Steam, thick as wool, swallowed us whole the moment the bronze door sealed behind us. The heat was a physical weight, a sudden assault after the armory’s bite. It pressed against my skin, invaded my lungs, left a mineral tang on my tongue from the volcanic springs deep below. The Royal Baths were a marvel of forgotten engineering, all the more precious for its decay. Moonlight filtered through a high, frosted oculus, catching the slow, constant drip from icicles that hung like crystalline teeth from the domed ceiling. It fell onto milky, turquoise water that swirled around carved marble steps.
Ellie led, a pale goddess in the mist. She shrugged off her woolen over-robe, letting it puddle on the wet floor. Her tunic followed, sticking to her damp skin before she peeled it away. The swell of her pregnancy was a profound curve in the blue-tinged light, her breasts full and heavy. She didn’t look back. She just stepped down into the pool, a sigh escaping her lips as the hot water embraced her.
Mary and Nancy followed, a silent ballet of shedding clothes. Nancy’s curls were already clinging to her neck and shoulders. Mary moved stiffly, her practical mind perhaps still ticking over barrel stresses and charge weights, until the water hit her skin. Her sharp exhale was the only admission of relief she’d give.
I was last. My own clothes felt like a prison of grit and cold sweat. I peeled them away, the air cool on my skin until I stepped into the water. It was almost painfully hot at first, then a deep, penetrating solace that unknotted the cords of tension in my shoulders, my back, my soul. I sank up to my neck, letting the buoyancy take the weight of my child, of my anger.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of dripping water and our breathing. The delegates’ voices were ghosts here, shriveled by the steam.
Then Ellie was just there, her body a warm solidity sliding through the water against mine. Her skin was slick and hot. She didn’t say a word. Her hands found my hips under the water, turned me gently until my back was against the smooth, submerged stone ledge. Her body pressed flush against mine, the hard curve of her belly meeting mine, her swollen breasts soft against my smaller ones. The intimacy was absolute, a reclamation.
“They don’t get to have you,” she murmured into the crook of my neck, her voice low and fierce. “Not your mind, not your spirit. Not today.” Her mouth found my skin, not a kiss but a claiming, her teeth grazing my shoulder.
A soft, shuddering gasp came from nearby. I turned my head. Nancy had guided Mary to a shallow shelf where the water lapped at her chest. Mary sat, her head tipped back against the stone, eyes closed. Nancy knelt in the water before her, her face nuzzled into the side of Mary’s breast. Her hand was cupping the other, her thumb stroking slowly over the peaked nipple. Then Nancy’s mouth opened, and she took the dark areola inside, sucking gently.
Mary’s breath hitched. Her hand came up, not to push Nancy away, but to cradle the back of her head, fingers threading through the wet curls. A soft, thin stream of milk escaped the corner of Nancy’s mouth, tracing a white path down Mary’s breast into the water. The sight was profoundly intimate, a function of their bodies twisted into something both nourishing and deeply carnal.
“Fuck,” Mary whispered, her hips shifting slightly.
Ellie watched them, her eyes dark with a deep, shared hunger. Then she turned her focus back to me. Her hands left my hips, sliding up my sides, over my ribs, until her thumbs brushed the undersides of my breasts. “You’re so quiet in here,” she said, her voice dropping to a raw whisper only I could hear over the water’s gentle lap. “All that brilliant, furious noise in your head. Let me in. Let it out.”
Her mouth crashed onto mine. It wasn’t tender. It was desperate, a clash of teeth and tongue and shared breath. She tasted of lavender and salt and her. One of her hands slid down my belly, through the coarse hair below, and found my clit. She didn’t tease. She pressed the heel of her hand against it, a firm, unyielding pressure that made my spine arch out of the water.
“Ellie—” My voice was a broken thing.
“Say it,” she growled against my lips, her fingers beginning to circle, relentless. “Tell me what you want. Tell me what you wanted to do to those smug, fucking men in their robes.”
The image flashed: the delegate’s sneering mouth. The cold specs of the anti-tank gun. Ellie’s hot, demanding touch. “I wanted to… to fucking ruin them,” I gasped.
“How?” Her fingers dipped lower, pushing slowly inside me. I was already slick, the heat of the water nothing compared to the furnace inside me.
“With… with what we’re building. With the guns. With our… our fucking children.” The words were torn from me, crude and true.
“Yes,” she hissed, her fingers curling, stroking a place that made my vision blank white for a second. “Create and destroy. That’s what we do.” Her pace quickened, her thumb working my clit in tight, wet circles. “Now come. Come on my hand. For us. For what we are.”
I couldn’t fight it. The orgasm rolled through me like a detonation, violent and silencing. My cry was swallowed by the steam and the stone. My legs shook, the water sloshing around us.
As the waves subsided, I became aware of other sounds. Smacking, wet sounds. Hungry whimpers. Nancy had both of Mary’s breasts now, her mouth moving from one taut nipple to the other, drinking greedily. Mary’s head was thrown back, her throat working as she moaned, one hand gripping Nancy’s hair, the other working furiously between her own legs under the water.
“Look at them,” Ellie breathed, her fingers still gently inside me, her other arm wrapped around my chest, holding me up. “Life feeding on life. Strength taking strength.”
She shifted then, turning me in the water until I faced Mary and Nancy. “Go to her,” Ellie whispered, nudging me forward.
I moved through the water, its resistance feeling like a dream. Mary’s eyes, glazed with pleasure, focused on me as I approached. Nancy unlatched with a soft pop, a trickle of milk on her chin. Without a word, she shifted to the side, making space for me between Mary’s spread thighs.
I knelt in the water. The sight was brutally open. Mary’s sex, swollen and glistening in the strange light. My own need, coiling again already. I leaned forward and put my mouth on her.
Her taste was familiar, musky and sharp. She gasped, her hips lifting off the stone shelf. I held her down with a firm hand on her belly, feeling the hard curve of our child beneath my palm, and licked into her with a focused intensity I usually reserved for a complex problem. I found her clit, a hard, eager bud, and sucked.
“Oh, god, Amy—” Her voice was ragged. Her hands fumbled for my head, my short wet hair offering little to grip.
Nancy watched for a moment, her lips parted, her own hand stroking her breast, thumb rubbing her nipple. Then she moved behind me in the water. I felt her hands on my hips, her body pressing close. Her mouth found the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder, biting softly. Then her hand snaked around my front, her fingers sliding through my own wetness before finding my clit again.
We were a circuit. A closed system of touch and need. Mary bucked against my mouth, her cries echoing off the icy dome. Nancy’s fingers drove me higher, her breath hot on my back. Ellie watched from a few feet away, her hands moving over her own body, her eyes drinking us in.
Mary came first, a series of sharp, choked cries, her body tightening and flooding my mouth. The taste of her release was the final trigger. Nancy’s fingers, Ellie’s gaze, the memory of cold steel and hot anger—it all coalesced into a second, shuddering climax that ripped through me, leaving me weak and panting against Mary’s thigh.
The silence that followed was profound, broken only by the drip of water and our ragged breathing. The steam seemed thicker, warmer.
Ellie waded over. She didn’t speak. She simply gathered Mary and me into her arms, our pregnant bellies pressing together in a tangle of limbs and spent passion. Nancy curled against my back, her front slick against my skin.
We floated there, a single, exhausted organism in the ancient water. The humiliations of the day were scorched away, burned off in the heat of our own defiance. We had drawn a line here, in the steam and the milk and the shared, pounding blood. They could judge, they could sneer. But they would never, ever touch this. This was ours.
The icy runes on the walls glowed their steady, faint blue, bearing witness to a different kind of forging. Not of steel, but of a bond that would, we knew in our bones, outlast any weapon we could ever dream into being.