At the beginning would be the logical choice. I can hear my old commander's voice on the
wind, there. Any time someone made their
report and started in the middle of things, he would wait for the initial burst
of steam to run out, then dryly suggest that beginning at the beginning would
be the logical point. I hated those
words, hated them until I heard them coming out of my mouth one day when my
sleeve had the stripes.
So. The beginning,
when the Lady ended her confinement at last, and the heir to Schadelthron was
finally brought into the world. I was
honored to be standing guard outside her chambers while the Master was inside
viewing the new life. I remember when
the door cracked open and he gestured me inside. Placed the tiny bundle in my hands. I was so shocked I nearly dropped it; he did
me far too much honor.
"I wanted your face to be one she knows as well as her
mother's or mine." She yawned, face splitting wide, and then her eyes
opened again, that perfect newborn's grey, that no color from nine months of
looking at the red darkness. Her skin
was perfect, her head was round. The midwife had done an excellent job bringing
her into the world gently. The only sign
of the animal source of birth was a smear of blood on one cheek, and Mistress
came and wiped it off with a cloth.
"Should you be up?" The words were curt, but his voice was tender
as he looked at his wife, forgetting me for a moment, standing there with all
his hopes, his future in my hands.
"Nonsense," she said firmly. "Everything went just as it should. I'm fine.
Our little girl is fine. There's
no reason I should lie there as if I'd foaled like one of the bears -- and even
you wouldn't question one getting to her feet and starting to lick her cub
immediately afterwards." She kissed
him on the cheek, I remember.
Then the penny dropped.
Her. Little girl. For a moment, I thought I understood my duty;
that he was asking me to do the necessary work, to take this little mite out
into the snows and lay her to rest on a hillside so they could grieve, then try
again for a more fitting heir. I thought
for a moment of my sons, grown men, possibly grandfathers --possibly great- or
great-great-grandfathers by then, and I held the little one closer for a
second. It wasn't my place to refuse an order, nor my place to speak and
volunteer. So I waited, and each flutter
of her heart made doing what I would have to do just that much harder.
He saw my thoughts in my eyes, I think, and nodded
once. "That. That's why I need you."
"Yes sir."
For that moment I hated him, hated him for giving in to the wishes of
his peers. No better than the masses, for all their power. I wanted to hide her someplace safe, to take
her away with me, away from service. If
I walked far enough, I might find a place where the deformed giant and his tiny
charge could live in peace. I'd raise goats or cows, feed her on their
milk. I'd done that before, in another
life, when I had a family of my own, between campaigns. A soldier-farmer, then a soldier, finally
back to a farmer, to live out my long days.
A useless fantasy, simply getting through the country my
master controlled without being hunted down and destroyed would be futile with
an infant. A stolen infant, if one went
so far as to be clear about it; even though her father's intent was to expose
her on a hillside did not mean that she could then be claimed by the next
person to come by. That was no
different, in the eyes of the law, than stealing the infant from its crib, or
the loving arms of its mother.
I waited for him to dismiss me, to tell me to go and do my
duty, hold his wife back as I left the rooms and the castle. But instead, he stroked her head, and laid
his hand on my arm.
"I need you to help keep her safe," he said. "You and I both know there will be those
who take . . . exception . . . to a girl
child as the heir to the throne. She will need to lean on your strength until
she develops her own."
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