Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  “I haven’t got anything for you, little one,” I murmured, and it let out its little birdlike cry again, flailing tiny fists in frustration. I couldn’t take it back to the rabbit-hole like this; if there were any Vesuviani still around, the noise would bring them straight there. Finally, I sat down on the fallen anvil and offered the baby my breast, hoping that suckling would calm it down.

  The baby seized on my breast with a ferocity that almost scared me; my eyes opened very wide, but it didn’t precisely hurt. Before the war, back in Cuore, my bed had never been quite so consistently occupied as Silvia’s, but I’d taken the occasional lover and most had touched my breasts. The baby’s suckling felt nothing like a lover: the suckling was urgent, rhythmic, like a gasp for survival. Its suckling resembled loveplay no more than swimming to shore from a capsized boat resembled splashing in a hot bath.

  At any rate, though the baby had to be hungry, for now it seemed content just to suckle. I pulled my cloak over both of us and went back to the rabbit-hole.

  “It really is a baby?” Silvia said, disbelieving, when I showed her the tiny foot, blue with cold. “Girl or boy?”

  I checked. “Girl.”

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  I bent my face over the baby’s downy hair. Even in the midst of muck and ashes, she had the same sweet baby smell I remembered from my youngest sister. “Well, I’m certainly not going to put her back where I found her.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “When Gemino and Lucio return and bring us back to the main encampment, I’ll see if I can find something for her to eat.”

  “She’ll need a wet-nurse. You won’t find one of those at the Circle camp.” Silvia pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes. “Don’t get too attached to her. She’ll probably just die.”

  “I won’t get attached,” I said, tightening my arms around the tiny, warm bundle.

  I sat up through the night, stroking the baby and letting her suckle. My breasts grew a little sore, as the hours wore on, but I feared she’d cry again if I made her stop, so I put up with it. Towards dawn, she fell asleep in my arms, her lips parted, her hands limp against me. Lilla, I whispered in her ear. “I’m going to call you Lilla.”

  Gemino and Lucio returned in late morning, with a detachment of mages, and horses and food and even dry clothes for us. I checked the food stores first, but there wasn’t anything an infant could eat. “Milk,” I said. “Is there milk back at the camp?”

  “There’s cheese,” Lucio said.

  “That’s no good,” I said, and started digging for a dry blanket, at least.

  “Julia’s had a baby,” Silvia said. Dry clothes on, she was herself again: witty and sarcastic.

  “A what?” Gemino dismounted.

  “I found a baby,” I said, irritably. “She survived the ambush somehow, even though I think everyone else in her village got killed. I’m taking her with us.”

  “And why not?” Silvia said challengingly to the other mages, when one raised an eyebrow. “We’re allowed to have hobbies, aren’t we?”

  “There’s a village not too far from where we’re camped,” Lucio said. “There may be farmers who haven’t fled. You could try to buy some milk.”

  We had to ride slowly, because I didn’t want to jostle Lilla. I was glad to be rid of the wet clothes, but Lilla still seemed happiest against my skin, and I tucked her under my robe and cloak. When we finally reached the encampment, towards the end of the day, Silvia tumbled off her horse and shouted that her body could be claimed by any man who found a way to arrange a hot bath for her. I stepped down carefully and went looking for milk for the baby. I had to wheedle money, first, from one of the unit commanders, and then I walked to a farm, reaching it finally in the fading light. They sold me milk, and gave me a clean rag when I explained that I had a little baby to feed. “Would you show me how, signora?” I asked, realizing that I had no idea how to feed a baby this way.

  The farmwife sat me down and poured the milk into a bowl and warmed it. I pulled the reluctant baby away from my breast and let her suck milk off the rag as the farmwife showed me. “It’s best to find a wet-nurse for an orphan babe,” she said. “The Lady intended goat’s milk for baby goats, not baby girls.”

  I nodded. “That’s not really possible right now,” I said. “I wish it were.”

  Absorbed in my task, I heard the farmwife gasp suddenly. I looked up; she stared at my left breast, still bare. A single drop of milk trickled down, luminous as a pearl in moonlight.

  ***

  “I HEARD YOU rescued a baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “Admirable of you.” Martido, the High Commander of my Circle detachment, did not sound particularly admiring. “You do realize, of course, that this cannot excuse you from your duties. We are at war; you are a mage.”

  “I understand that.” As one of the lesser mages, I was supposed to be as expendable as a pack-horse, capable of going anywhere, anytime, regardless of the danger. But with an infant at my side, I couldn’t be sent anywhere that silence was necessary, and we both knew it.

  “Then you’ll understand that obviously this baby can’t stay with you. I’ve started a letter to the High Circle, explaining the situation; someone back in Cuore will arrange for a wet-nurse. You can send the child back to Cuore for the duration of the war.”

  A lump rose in my throat, looking down at her sweet, sleeping face, and I shook my head.

  “Are you refusing me? This is not a request, this is an order. She isn’t even your kin. Besides, you can’t count on finding milk for her. If you want her to live, she needs a wet-nurse.”

  “I have milk for her,” I said.

  Martido slumped back in his chair, frustration clear in his face. “That’s what the rumor said. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”

  I bared my breasts and squeezed out a drop of milk; since Lilla had just been nursing, it came out in a spray, like a jet from a tiny fountain. “Believe it,” I said. The expression on Martido’s face made me fall back a step, but I clutched Lilla to me and hardened my voice. “Why would the Lady send me milk if She wanted me to send away my daughter? Kin or not, She sent this baby to me, and She wants me to keep her.” I licked my lips, trying to decide whether to try this next argument. “I think the Fedeli would agree with me.”

  At the name of that order—the fearsome priests and priestesses who enforced the law of the Lord and the Lady—Martido’s lips tightened. As a mage, he didn’t really need to fear the Fedeli—but that didn’t mean he wanted to take them on directly. “The Fedeli aren’t here,” he said.

  “Silvia has a friend back in Cuore,” I said. “A Fedele priest.” She didn’t, but everyone knew that Silvia’s selection of “friends” was both broad, and broad-minded. Martido’s lips tightened even more.

  “In that case, you can trust in the Lady to protect your child,” he said. “It’s often enough that silence is not important; you can take the baby into battle with you, or find a temporary caretaker back at the camp when you go. You’re dismissed.”

  I retreated, uncertain if I’d won a victory or been maneuvered into the worst of all possible corners.

  Battles became frightening in a way that they had not been before. Before, I had feared for my own skin, hoping that if I died under enemy magefire, it would at least be quick; I knew that death by fire was painful, but I figured I could endure a few seconds of anything. Now, though, I had Lilla with me, every time. Silvia, in one of her more sympathetic moments, helped me make a sling to carry her in, and as I clasped the hands of the other mages to summon power, I could feel Lilla’s breath in the cold winter air. To imagine Lilla consumed by magefire was unendurable—but I didn’t dare leave her back at camp. There was no one there I trusted to take care of her, not if Martido decided to arrange a tragic accident. If Lilla was going to die, it was better that she die next to me. She never seemed to be afraid, even when magefire lit the night sky like blazing d
awn; the only thing that made her cry was when I gave her to someone else to hold, so I kept her with me.

  On our way back to camp after one set of battles, Lilla started to sneeze, then cough. By nightfall, her face was flushed, her breathing labored. Though we would have only a few hours to rest, I couldn’t sleep; I lay awake listening to Lilla’s rasping breath. The Lady wouldn’t give me milk for her, only to take her away from me, I told myself, trying to make myself believe it. Lilla napped fitfully, her cough sounding like a dog’s bark. I remembered my own mother soothing my coughs with steaming teas, but I had nothing to offer Lilla. Despite the noise, Silvia slept like the dead. Towards dawn, Lilla’s cough seemed to ease a little, and I was able to doze for a bit. I woke to find her tiny hand patting my cheek. I stared at her woozily in my own feeble witchlight, and saw her baby face light with a hesitant, luminous smile for me.

  I had feared that if Martido heard that Lilla was ill, he’d send us out again as soon as possible. But the following day, he announced that our entire camp would be moving north. Silvia and I rolled our blankets and took down our tent. “You don’t look pleased,” I said to Silvia.

  She looked surprised. “Surely you heard the rumors,” she said. “No, I suppose not—you’re the one person who wouldn’t. There’s a story going around that in the heart of where the fighting was, no one can do magery.”

  “How would you even know? What’s left to burn?”

  “Not even witchlight,” Silvia said. “Some of the more sensitive mages swear it’s harder to draw magefire down now, even at the edges of the fighting. I haven’t noticed that, myself. But we’re moving north, away from the where the battles have been held, and apparently the High Circle and the Emperor are sending messengers south to negotiate a truce.”

  “A truce.” I straightened up, Lilla in one arm and blankets draped over the other. “That’s good news, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes,” Silvia said. “That part’s good news.”

  Our new camp was deep in friendly territory. The other mages celebrated the hoped-for truce with late-night feasts and dancing; some even made fireworks, colored witchlight in the sky, to entertain the people in the nearby villages. I wasn’t in the mood to make fireworks and didn’t want to take Lilla to the parties, so I mostly stayed in my tent, dozing with Lilla curled up against me.

  After a few days I felt something I recognized as the craving for magery, blunted a bit by the fact that I still used everyday magic like witchlight. Despite my exhaustion, I decided that perhaps I was in the mood to make some fireworks after all. Tucking Lilla into her sling, I pulled my cloak around both of us and went in search of Silvia. Tent walls are thin, so I walked through the damp field listening for the sound of her voice.

  “—with Julia,” I heard Silvia say. “And Julia’s babe.”

  “Oh yes.” The tone of the young man’s voice stopped me cold. “I’ve seen Julia out with her—pet.”

  “What a pity she couldn’t have found herself a kitten instead,” a young woman’s voice said. “Kittens are cute. They’re soft. They purr instead of crying, and they clean their own bottoms.”

  “You can’t pretend you’re a kitten’s mother,” the man’s voice said. It wasn’t Martido—I would have recognized Martido’s voice—but his tone held contempt that I’d never imagined any of my compatriots felt for me. Shaking, I turned away and went back to my tent. No magery was powerful enough to make me face the person who’d spoken about me that way. I curled up with Lilla and lay awake for a long time, my face against her hair. I did sleep, finally. When I woke up, I had a headache and my mouth tasted foul, as if I’d overindulged on wine the night before. But the craving for great magery, the desire to draw down magefire or create fireworks, had eased.

  Silvia had also returned, and when she woke in early afternoon she looked at my face and asked, “What? What is it?”

  “My—” My voice tightened, and I touched Lilla’s hair “—pet.”

  “You heard that?” Silvia shook her head, raking her long hair back with her hands. It was almost clean, now that we were living at camp most of the time. “Don’t let it bother you. Don’t you know they’re jealous?”

  “Jealous?”

  “Of course. You must have left last night or you’d have heard me tell them that, and you’d have heard their response.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They denied it of course. ‘Jealous? What would I want a squalling, prating, stinking babe for?’” Silvia nodded with evident satisfaction. “If I said you were jealous of my way with men, you wouldn’t feel the need to deny it in quite those terms, now, would you? I don’t think you’d say, ‘Ugh! What would I want a trail of hulking, stinking, snoring men for?’ You’d just laugh. And the lady I was talking with last night—trust me, Julia. She did not laugh.”

  Lilla laughed for the first time a day or two later. I had been laying on my side playing with her little toes, a game I remembered my mother playing with my baby sister: “This lamb plays in the meadow. This lamb stays with the fold. This lamb is warm and cozy; this lamb is out in the cold. And this little lamb is the sweetest lamb and we give her to baby to hold. Let’s chase her back to the barn: chase chase chase chase chase!” On the last little lamb, I moved my fingertip to Lilla’s palm, and then tickled her up her arm, under her chin, and back down to her foot. Lilla looked startled when I tickled her under her chin, and then giggled out loud and kicked with her feet. “You’re laughing,” I said. “Oh, my sweet Lilla, you’re laughing!” I wished, suddenly, that my mother were somewhere nearby, so that she could hear Lilla’s laugh, as well.

  That night, I woke late to find Silvia shaking me. “What is it? What is it? Are they sending us out?”

  “No, Julia. The truce is holding.”

  I sat up. The tent was lit by Silvia’s bright witchlight. Lilla, sleeping in my bedroll, turned her face to look for my breast, but fell back asleep when she didn’t find it.

  “A woman came to the camp today. A woman with the same color hair as Lilla.”

  I stroked Lilla’s red-brown fuzz and said nothing.

  “She says that she heard there’s a mage here with a baby, and she thinks that baby is her niece. She wants to take Lilla. If she’s Lilla’s kin, Martido will say it’s her right.”

  My hand closed over Lilla’s tiny one, and I swallowed hard. “If she’s Lilla’s aunt, where was she when the rest of the family was killed? Why did it take her this long to come looking?”

  “She’s a musician; she has a post in Pluma. She said she came as soon as she knew.” Silvia bit her lip. “I thought you had a right to know. I heard they were going to wake you this morning and just take her. I figured at least—” Silvia reached out with one finger to stroke Lilla’s downy head—”At least you have the right to keep a lock of her hair.”

  I had never cut a lock of Lilla’s hair, to keep in a pouch by my heart. There had never been the need; she was with me night and day anyway. Silvia had found a pair of scissors before she woke me, tiny silver shears for cutting thread. Lilla had very little hair, but I cut a little of her fuzz, slipping the hairs into the pouch that Silvia held out for me. Once they were safely inside, my hands began to shake so hard that Silvia had to slip the thong over my head for me.

  “When are they coming?” I whispered.

  “Morning, I expect,” Silvia said.

  If the woman was Lilla’s kin, it was her right. I knew what the Fedeli would say, if any were here: that the Lady had given me milk to keep the baby alive for her kin to reclaim. I loved Lilla; that didn’t matter. Lilla had taken me as her mother, after she lost her own; that didn’t matter, either. I turned my head so that my tears wouldn’t fall on Lilla’s cheek and wake her up. The Law of the Lady was clear.

  Lilla was still sleeping. Her lips puckered and she sucked briefly in her sleep, then smiled, dreaming of milk. A moment later she startled; her eyes flickered open and she flung out her hands. As soon as her hand found mine, though,
she relaxed back into sleep.

  “I don’t care what the Lady says,” I whispered. “You’re my daughter. I’ll give up anything else, but I won’t let them take you.”

  Silvia had curled up in her bedroll and closed her eyes, but when she heard me moving around the tent, she sat up. “You’re leaving with her, aren’t you?”

  “You probably think I’m crazy,” I said, tying my blankets and robes in a roll with my belt. “Deserting the Circle, giving up power, giving up being a mage—all for a baby that isn’t even my own kin.”

  Silvia touched her finger to the back of Lilla’s hand. “No,” she said. “She is your kin. I understand that.” She looked up at me, her own eyes clear and her face calm. “You’d probably be best off fleeing to the south, into the parts of the country where magery doesn’t work. They won’t look for you there. If you think you can stand it, not using magery.”

  For Lilla, I could do anything. I nodded my head quickly.

  Silvia fished a small velvet pouch out from the blankets of her bedroll. “Take this with you.”

  “What is it?” The pouch was heavy and lumpy, and made a clinking sound when I took it into my hand.

  “Gifts from admirers.” Silvia’s voice was offhand. “If you sell it a piece at a time, you should be able to support yourself and Lilla for a while. At least in the style to which you’ve lately been accustomed.” She gestured at the tent. “Wait a few minutes, then head east out of the camp. I’m friends with that guard, and I should be able to keep him distracted for you.”

  I clasped Silvia’s hand. “Silvia—”

  “It’s going to be dawn in another hour,” she said. “You’d better let me go if you want to do this. We don’t have much time.”

  I slipped out of camp unchallenged in the last deep darkness of the last part of night, Lilla sleeping in her sling against my heart. I listened for Silvia’s voice as I passed the guard’s post, but heard nothing.