The King's Blood (30 page)

The middle one was as forgettable as a cloud. She favored hiding under Tegria's train, clinging to it in the hopes she'd gain some respectability and not wind up wed to a fat, old man. This mostly worked in her favor, due to a freak accident claiming the Duke of Lancestor, she was instead promised to a boy only eight years of age at their wedding banquet.

But Maddy was different, the live spirit Aldrin knew he could never be. She'd curtsy politely to the visiting dignitaries come to pay tribute to their father, then turn about and drop needles down their backs during banquets. Even on her last night, while her handmaidens packed her bridal trousseau with lots of silk things none of them knew were for, Maddy -- outfitted in her traveling gown of blue velvet -- still picked up a wad of pudding on the plate she stole from the pantry and, sneaking up behind Aldrin, rubbed it in his hair. He spun about, dropping his head causing the gravy to smear all over her undeveloped chest, but she'd simply laughed and smooshed it in deeper.
 

"It's getting late, little boys should be in bed," she chided as she always did.

"So should little girls," Aldrin answered back, never taking much from the year difference.

"Ah," Maddy waved her pudding coated finger, before popping it in her mouth and licking the last of dinner away, "but married women aren't little girls anymore."

"Right," Aldrin's voice faded. He'd watched from the armory tower as his other sister's cavalcades of horses pulled through the gates for their new lives, typically while Maddy was wandering around with a helmet on her head, smashing into the pile of shields. He had no idea how to properly say goodbye.

So, his sister punched him in the arm, as hard as she could. "Ouch," Aldrin whined, pulling up his sleeve to inspect the damage.

Maddy laughed, "Every moment you see that bruise you'll think of me."

"Thanks, I think," Aldrin said ruefully.

"Now you really best be getting to bed. Mistress Porta's about and you know she'll steal your eyeballs and eat them if she catches you about so late."

"She will not," Aldrin said, laughing despite himself, and he turned to the doorway of her room. But it wasn't her room anymore, soon it'd be just another stateroom, or maybe a place to store excess candles that hadn't burned all the way down.

Words and complex emotions failing to materialize, Aldrin walked lonely to his bed. As he recited what little bit of his prayers he could remember from Bishop Fartsaton (Farthington to everyone who wasn't eleven) he climbed into his sheets, hoping the winds of fortune kept Maddy safe. As his skin slid across the sandpaper crumbles a cry of indignation fought against a sob. While raking his fingers across the crumbs worked deep into the blankets, tears started to fall from his eyes. It was the first time in his life that Aldrin lost the entirety of the sleeping hours crying.

Aldrin broke from his repose to look at Ciara. Her hair had expanded about five times its normal weight in the heady moisture of the melting bodies in the small caravan. It suited her, like a protective helmet of curls, but she was always trying to force it down and back into the boring shapes of the other women. "Do you mind if I ask what happened to your brother?"

Her fingers stopped trying to get through her mass and she focused her mile long stare upon Aldrin. The boy's nose had finally stopped running, and he had a color on his face other than about to freeze to death blue. Strange, in the candlelight he looked like he'd finally grown a jaw-line. "If it's all the same, I do mind."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to. I was just, I uh..." he started looking at his mug.

Ciara sighed and lightly touched his hand, "It's just one of those things that people never talk about and then hope will magically go away." Aldrin nodded, suspecting he had one of those sitting upon his heart right now. A giant tumor with the name "dead father" that he kept refusing to acknowledge even in the darkest of night while three other men snored beside him.

A knock thrice beat upon the door. "Master Medwin," Mitrione called from outside. "I need to speak with you."

"Come in and talk to me, it's far too cold to stand outside conversing," the blind man set his mug down, mostly full.

"I, uh," the blush could be heard through the door, "Is that girl in there with you?"

"Yes, this girl is," Ciara answered back as Medwin smiled to himself.

"Then I'd rather not, Sir," Mitrione stumbled, his weight upon the stairs pulling the caravan at a strange slant. Slowly a few of the poorly balanced tomes started to slide for freedom.

"What in the name of pagination, for?" Medwin was growing impatient; he thought they'd mostly gotten over their fear of being caught within the same five mile radius of Ciara.

"It's...if you come out here then you can see," Mitrione pleaded.

Medwin stepped carefully around the pair of teenage legs taking up space in his extra chairs and wrenched open the door, "Or you could simply tell me and then we can all go back to the business of keeping warm."

"I, uh," Mitrione stood on his tiptoes and whispered into the Chancellor's ear, "I was reading this book about perfectly normal things involving the Penelope Wars and the battle of Ther..."

Medwin waved his hand, trying to break off the river of facts, "Yes, yes, before we freeze to death."

"And," the blush covered the entirety of his balding head and was making for the back of his neck, "and there was somethin' dirty in there."

"Dirty," Medwin stood back, "you are well versed in cleaning and maintaining our tomes."

"Not that kind of dirty," Mitrione said, shuffling his toes.

Medwin leaned back, his head bobbing towards the teenagers who, of course, were listening intently, "Ah, I understand, yes. I shall join you in the second caravan then." And without explaining anything to Ciara or Aldrin, he grabbed Mitrione's extended arm and walked into the snow, tightly closing the door behind him.

As soon as he got ten steps into the snow, the two teenagers burst into giggles. "It's tempting to follow them to see what this dirty book is," Ciara said as she finished off the last of her grog.

"Judging by Mitrione's blush it must involve at least a couple heaving bosoms and lacy things," Aldrin said, who had a bit of a peek at the man's personal collection. They may be celibate, homeless academics, but they aren't dead.

"But there is something we should discuss," Aldrin said soberly. He'd been putting it off each time he saw Ciara as the Historians took it upon themselves to pointlessly play chaperone, always keeping a red robe or two in the midst of their conversations.

"Please don't tell me you know what Mitrione wears under his robes," she giggled to herself, the grog taking a greater hit than she expected.

"What? No, gods no. It's nearly been three months," Aldrin whispered as if there were spies hidden in the walls.

Ciara sobered at that. It wasn't that she forgot the promise she made to the witch, it was just another one of those tumors she hoped would take care of itself. "So?" she tried to say nonchalantly.
 

"We are very near Caddersten, and I overheard a few talking of a witch's cottage near by."
And most of them spit on the ground when they mentioned it.

"You aren't actually planning on going, are you?" Ciara asked plainly, her drunken euphoria quickly sliding into depression.

"It is never wise to anger a witch," Aldrin said solemnly.

"She might shove her broomstick where the sun don't shine," Ciara finished for him. "You don't believe in the magic stuff do you? The worst a witch can do is glower at you and refuse to let you buy her jam."

Aldrin's fingers rubbed over his wound. It still smarted whenever the weather shifted or someone kicked him. "It doesn't matter. I owe her for my life."

Ciara looked at the boy as if he were mad. He could very well be. Perhaps the witch mixed some herb that induced madness into his poultices. Or he'd always been off his nut. Seemed to be a requirement with royalty.

"Fine. If you want to risk your neck, we'll head to the witch's cottage next sun up," she rose upon her feet, trying to stretch away the sleep sinking in and gathered her coat. There was still a caravan to turn around, "But you're telling the red robes."

Aldrin nodded, fearing the tongue-lashings he would take for cavorting with witches, but they couldn't easily say no to the boy who could be king. Sliding his mostly dry boots back on, he opened the door and went back out into the world, prepared to offer himself up to a witch.

As Ciara shook her head, she couldn't help but wonder if maybe a preternatural sense to find the gullible was the witch's magic after all.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he smell of wine vinegar and mashed horseradish tried to overpower the rich iron scent of blood, sweat, and pig shit, but failed miserably. The bedroom, little more than a squat-in closet, was lucky to hold one person, never mind the two crowded around the woman herbed out of her gourd as a fourth tried to make its way backwards into the world.

Isadora set the fresh washbasin down upon her only nightstand and mopped at the poor woman's brow, occasionally plucking some straw from her hair and sighing. The local lore suggested a roll in the hay was a good way to get labor started, and most took that literally.

"Not even 10 centimeters yet," her mother said, nose deep into what was a typical Wednesday night. She placed a hand upon the woman's belly and palpated feeling for a small head, "Certainly a breech. It was a lucky thing I was here."

Isa nodded, trying to fight back the eye roll. She'd been seconding at breeches since she asked where babies come from and her mother helpfully guided her to a woman abandoned by her midwife. "From there," she said and proceeded to give another farm a fresh pair of hands.

"Ugh," Isadora didn't disguise her disgust as fresh discharge soaked into her sheets.
 

Technically, they weren't her sheets, nor was it her cabin, but she spent most of the summer working and massaging the small plot of land to the bone until it felt like hers. Some of the locals were even calling her by something other than "young hag."

Her mother, wrapping a towel around her head, poked at the green-yellow pus and drew her mouth into a line, "This is decay," she said and again laid her ear against the mother's throbbing stomach, "but there's still life within."

"Twins?" Isa asked.

"Most likely, one that failed to thrive. And this has been going on for some time," her mother said coldly, glancing out to the "waiting room."

"Superstitious, ignorant, thickheaded nümin!" Isa muttered. If he brought his wife to her days ago she wouldn't be slipping into sepsis. If it had been his prized milker, she'd have been dragged from her bed in the middle of the night, but for his wife -- something far easier to replace -- wait a few days and see if the problem corrects itself.

"Isadora," her mother warned, standing to her full six feet and inching around her to the washbasin. Leaving behind a red trail disseminating through the water, the towering woman patted her hands dry. She eschewed the birthing apron, preferring her old garb that looked like a rainbow threw up on her. It seemed unbecoming of a witch to wear more colors than an elvish rug.

While her mother was an amazon, towering above most men who came hat-in-hand to their residence of the month, with skin that darkened to a freshly hewn log in the summer she was the near complete opposite of her daughter. Probably because Isa wasn't actually born of her.

Her mother paused and tilted her head as if she were listening to something just out of range. "Go and check on our expectant father," she said, before sliding on a pair of boiled gloves. "And refresh the water and towels."

Bit late to start throwing those down now
, she thought bitterly. It was going to be a long night, made all the longer as she washed her bed sheets. Scooping up the blood stained basin, she walked out into the actual living part of the cabin. Most witch's cottages came standard having been built upon a committee vote ages ago, but a few differences marked them.

A few preferred stone tables to wood, others modern trappings (like a foot powered loom) to rustic (it was really a cave, they just called it a cottage on the zoning paperwork), and one witch really had a thing for little taxidermy mice. Girls who'd stared into the gaping energy abyss and didn't blink, would run screaming into the forest after spending one night in Mouse Hell.

At the far end, hovering near her herb-drying table, stood a man, about as nondescript farmer as one can get without actually imbuing a scarecrow with a soul. He worked his hat with his hands, worrying the edge into a fray. Shit clung to his pants legs as well as the cuffs of his coat; probably pig, but it was hard to tell with some of the common folk.

He wasn't used to all this excitement, most births were handled by the womenfolk while the men were off having a jolly good time forgetting what their wives were going through. But the war had swept through and called most of his fellow drinking buddies to duty. If it hadn't been for his game elbow, he'd have been right beside them.