The Price of Spring

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Tor, who have made these into books with which I am deeply pleased.

Thank you all.

THE

PRICE OF

SPRING

PROLOG

Eiah Machi, physician and daughter of the Emperor, pressed her fingers

gently on the woman's belly. The swollen flesh was tight, veins marbling

the skin blue within brown. The woman appeared for all the world to be

in the seventh month of a pregnancy. She was not.

"It's because my mother's father was a Westlander," the woman on the

table said. "I'm a quarter Westlander, so when it came, it didn't affect

me like it did other girls. Even at the time, I wasn't as sick as

everyone else. You can't tell because I have my father's eyes, but my

mother's were paler and almost round."

Eiah nodded, running practiced fingertips across the flesh, feeling

where the skin was hot and where it was cool. She took the woman's hand,

bending it gently at the wrist to see how tight her tendons were. She

reached inside the woman's sex, probing where only lovers had gone

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