Jadio had defeated, beheaded, and skinned him, then drove the Archabbot’s armies out of Lirhu and into the Wayward Swamps.
In the turmoil of their retreat, the Holy Soldiers abandoned a most singular object: a glass coffin bearing the sleeping Princess of Leressa, whom no spell could wake. This, too, they had discovered in the ruins of the drowned city. Jadio claimed the princess as a prize of war but did not destroy her as he had her brother. He would have sent the coffin back with the bearskin (it was explained) but he feared some harm might befall it on the road.
The bearskin made me sick every time I saw it, so I avoided the great hall and took my meals in my rooms.
When at last the hour of the birth came upon me (and an early hour it was, sometime between midnight and the dusk before dawn), I bolted the door to my room and paced the carpet like a she-wolf.
I wanted no one. No chirurgerar with his bone saws and skully grin. No Prickster midwife with tainted needles and an iron key for me to suck that I might lock up the pain. I’d do this alone or die of it. Mam survived my bursting into this world, after all, screaming blood and glory. Mam survived fourteen years of me before she up and snipped her mortal coil from the shuttle of life.
“Mam!” I pressed my back hard against the bedpost. “Please. Let Jadio’s spawn be stillborn. Let him be grotesque. Let him be soup, so long as I don’t look on him and love him. I don’t want to love this child, Mam. Don’t let me love this child.”
After that I screamed a great deal. And once I fainted. I seem to remember waking to a voice telling me that this was not the sort of thing one could really sleep through, and for the sake of my cows, my house, my hope of the ever-after, would I please push?
If he hadn’t’ve called me Milkmaid in all that begging, I might’ve chosen to ignore him utterly. But he did, so I didn’t.
Some hours later the babe was born.
“Give her over, mister!”
“That your rancor may cast her forth into yon hearth fire?”
“I did not know she would be yours! Come on! Give. She’ll need to feed.”
“Had I tits, Milkmaid, I’d never let her go.”
I smirked sweatily, winning the spat. His cradling arms slipped her into my lap, where he had arranged clean sheets and blankets, a soft pillow for her to rest upon. She was a white little thing. White lashes, white lips, white eyes. Silent when she looked at me. No mistaking her for a mortal child. A Gentry-babe through and through.
“What’s your name?” I asked my daughter. She blinked up from her nursing, caught my eye, grinned. Gentry-babes are born with all their teeth.
The little crooked man laughed. “She’ll never tell.”
“Not even her mother?”
He laid hands on my belly, and the bleeding stopped. Aches, throbs, stabbing pains, deep bruises—all vanished. Warmth spread through my body. He stroked my hair once before walking quickly to the hearth, turning his hunched back to me. I stared after him. Best, perhaps, he could not see the look on my face.
“That you are her mother does not matter,” he muttered. “There is war between our people. The Gentry have learned never to speak our names out loud. Not to anyone. Too much is at stake. Our lives. Our souls.”
“You have those, then?”
No answer. He crouched near the hearth, poking at the blinding green flames there. In my lap the baby choked.
“What’s wrong?” I yelped. I lifted her, tried to burp her. “Did I—I didn’t curse her, did I? When I was giving birth? And all those times before. Little one, my sweetest girl, I didn’t mean you! I meant Jadio’s son. Never you.”
My friend came to my side. “It isn’t that. It’s the milk. The more magic flowing through a Gentry-babe’s veins, the less able we are to suckle at a mortal’s breast.”
“She’ll starve!”
“Nay, sweet,” said he, “for do I not have the prize cow of cream-makers in my very barn?”
The panic clenching my heart eased. “She can drink cow milk?”
“She’ll suck it like nectar from Annat’s udder. It’s what we like best.”
“But—” I stared at my baby’s still white face, the bead of milk trembling on her lip. I wiped it off quickly, for a rash of color spread from it across her skin, along with a feverish heat.
He touched one finger to her mouth. The rash vanished. “She must eat. She will die if she remains, Milkmaid. You owe me her life.”
“What?”
“Our bargain.”
“You said Jadio’s—”
“I said your firstborn.”
“You didn’t say ours.”
“Nay, but it mightn’t have been.”
“You!” I picked up the nearest pillow and threw it at his head. Another and again—until the bed was in disarray. “You swindler! You cheat! You seducer of innocent maidens!”
My arm was weak, but he did not duck my missiles. Pillows bounced from his fine black clothes. He stood very still.
“Take me with you!”
“I cannot.”
“Why?”
“You are wed to another.”
“As if Gentry cared for such mortal nonsense!”
He shrugged. By this I knew he cared.
“I was sent,” he said softly, “to fetch three things from the mortal realm. My quest is done. When I return to the Veil, the Ways will close behind me, and I will breathe this cursed air no more. You cannot follow.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “You came to me. To help me. You took the Ways. I’ll take the roads. I’d chase you to the Valwode itself, mister, no matter that it’s forbidden. Into the Fathom Realms, even! Do you think I fear the drowning?”
He shook his head again, more slowly this time, as if it wearied him. Then he approached the bed and lifted up our daughter from my arms. She sighed deeply, whether content or dismayed no one but she could say. My tears fell onto his sleeve. When they touched him, they turned to diamonds. None of my doing, I’m sure.
As he made to leave, I grabbed the tail of his velvet jacket, fisted it hard as I could and yanked. I knew it could shred to smoke the instant he desired it. Velvet it remained.
Desperately I cried, “A bargain! I’ll bargain for the chance to win you. Both of you. It doesn’t work without a bargain, you said. Let me…”
Before I’d blinked, he’d turned back ’round again, his free hand flush against my cheek. His fingers were cool, except for the silver ring, which burned.
“Gordie Oakhewn,” he said, “you have seven days to guess my true name. If on the seventh day you call it out loud, the Veil shall part for you, and I will pull you through into my household, where you might stay forever with the child, with me—as, as my—in whatever capacity you wish. This is our bargain. Do not break it.”
I pressed a frantic kiss to his palm. “Call you by name? But you said Gentry never—”
Smoke.
The Gentry leave semblances of the children they steal. My semblance was a red-faced boy-brat who squalled like a typhoon and slurped my breasts dry. For two days he kept me awake all hours and scratched me with his hot red hands. On the third day he sickened and turned black. We buried him in the garden of Jadio House. A peach tree shaded his grave. I wondered if any lingering levin of Gentry magic would affect the taste of its fruit.
The chirurgerar assured me that sudden deaths were not uncommon among firstborns, that Jadio’s was a virile enough appetite to populate a dozen nurseries, that it was none of my fault. It was kind of him. His grin seemed less skully than sad. He left me with a soothing draught that I did not drink. I had packing to do. Maps to consult. Lists to make. Lists of every name I ever knew or could invent.