“But the Court at this time is no place for a child.” And he gestured.
The cloak that he wore fell away, its weave a weave invisible to the eye. When it was gone, a small child stood at his side. She was, to Emily’s eye, perhaps three years of age, pale and slender, her hair still blonde, eyes still blue, in the way of children. She did not speak. She did not touch her father.
“This—this is—”
“This,” he said turning to look down upon the child’s head “is Veralaan. She is, as your spies may have told you—”
“I play no games in your Court—”
“Not all spies are paid, Mother’s Daughter. Some come to you because they feel they are doing the right thing. They have hope of you, of your Order. They do not understand that you are content to sit, as dogs, if you are given the appropriate bone.” It was an insult.
She smiled anyway, and the smile was genuine. It annoyed the Baron.
“She is,” he continued, “my only daughter. The child of Alanna, my third wife.”
The child said nothing at all.
“Your wife—it is rumored that she died in childbirth.”
“Ah—that is the word I was looking for. Rumor. Yes, that was rumored.” A shadow crossed his face. It was a terrible thing, that shadow; it spoke of death, in every possible way. And had it been on another man’s face, she might have been moved to pity. As it was she struggled with self-loathing, because there was a part of her that enjoyed his pain.
“It was not, as rumors are often not, entirely true. But it is true now.” He put a hand on the top of the child’s head. His fist was mailed.
But gentle, she thought, and again she was surprised. “Go,” he told the girl. “This woman, she is your new mother. Her name is Emily, but everyone here will call her ‘Mother’s Daughter.’ You must learn to call her that as well.”
The child did not speak. But she was, as were any of his subjects, obedient. She crossed the marble floor, her stride small enough that the hall seemed truly grand. Truly empty.
“You are weak,” the Baron said to the Mother’s Daughter. “It is because of your weakness that I am uncertain of my choice. But it is also entirely because of your weakness that I feel that my child will be safe here. You do not understand politics, Mother’s Daughter, and you have been wise enough not to play.
“Therefore no one will tempt you, and I believe that even were the child my only heir, were the child a son and of use, you would still protect him with your life and the resources that I have chosen to leave at your disposal.
“Do not fail,” he added softly. He turned from the hall.
The child started forward. “Daddy!”
He hesitated. She thought he might turn back, but the hesitation was his only show of weakness—and at the risk of exposing even that, he had sent all of his men away.
She caught the child in her arms, and the child kicked and screamed, as children will who understand that they are being abandoned.
* * *
Iain was appalled. Amalyn was bitterly, bitterly angry. Norah was silent, and the silence was chilly. “Melanna?” Emily asked quietly. She held the child in her arms, for the child’s terrible frenzy had, at last, given way to an unshakable sleep.
Melanna, wide, round, her cheek scarred from a different life, looked at the child’s sleeping back. Her face was entirely composed; no hint of humor, of desire, of hatred, marred her expression. It made her, of the Priests, the most dangerous. Hard to deal well with things that one could not see.
“His men killed my son,” she said at last. “When he was but two years older than this girl.” What did not adorn her face informed her words.
“We have been ordered to protect her,” the Mother’s Daughter said carefully.
“We serve the Mother,” was the perfectly reasonable reply.
The child stirred. Emily began to shift her weight from side to side, her arms around the child. The warm child. She, Mother’s Daughter, would bear none. Had never thought—until this moment—that she might find solace in the act.
“We have no experience in raising children,” Iain told them all. But his eyes were now upon Melanna. “The Mother has not seen fit to grace us—”
“No,” Melanna said. “I will not do this.” She turned from them and strode out of the small common room, her hands in tight fists.
Iain watched her go. “Mother’s Daughter, is this wise?”
“Wise? No.” Her arms tightened briefly. “It is not wise. But less wise is refusing the Baron’s request. Inasmuch as he can be, he is fond of this child. I believe…he was fond of her mother.”
Amalyn snorted, and Emily frowned. “She is but three years old. If she is her father’s daughter, she is also her mother’s. We cannot judge her. And she is no son; she is merely a daughter, and without value.”
“He has shown himself to be without mercy when the children of others are involved.”
She knew. She remembered. “And will we show ourselves to be, at last, a church made in his image? The Mother will turn her face from us, and without her blessing, without her power, what then can we offer the people?”
“Justice.”
“We are not the followers of Justice,” the Mother’s Daughter said firmly. “Nor of Judgment.”
“Melanna will not accept her.”
“Melanna is the only woman here who has borne and raised children. She has served the Mother for ten years. Perhaps this is her test.”
* * *
But she had not been truthful with her priests, and this was its own crime. She took the girl to her room and laid her in the small bed, staring at her perfect child’s features, at a face which would change, again and again, with the passage of time. Would she be beautiful? It was impossible to tell.
She had prayed for a child. But not this one.
What will we do with you, Veralaan? What will you become to us? She understood Melanna’s desire. She felt no like desire; death was not her dominion.
But she had in her hands a child born to power, a child born with the blood of Barons in her veins. It was true that the Mother’s Daughter had never become involved in the politics of court—why would she? Between one contender and the other, there was only the difference of competence; there was no difference of desire or ambition, no intent to change, merely to own. What matter, then, whose hand raised sword, lowered whip, signed law?
But here: here was temptation.
It was not only Melanna who was to be tested, but also Emily Dontal, the child who had become woman in the streets of the city, on the day that Lord Halloran had become Lord Breton, Baron of the Eastern Sea.
A child was unformed, uneducated. A clean slate.
And upon such a slate as this, so much could be written. She had not told her most trusted servants the words of the Witherall Seer.
Mother, she thought. Guide me. And she lowered her face into shaking hands, because it wasn’t a prayer for advice; it was a prayer for absolution.
* * *
The child would not eat for three days. She would drink milk and water, and Iain informed the Mother’s Daughter, with increasing anxiety, that he was certain she shed them both with the volume of her tears. Those tears had ceased to accompany loud wails, desperate flights toward the door; they became, instead, the silent companions of despair. She did not like the robed men and women who ruled the temple; she did not acknowledge the men and women who labored in the Novitiate. She was not allowed to sit when the congregation gathered, but Iain was certain she would take no comfort from the hundreds of strangers who made a brief home of the pews either.
In the end, it was Melanna who took the girl in hand; she was not gentle. Not with the child, and not with the slightly anxious men and women who gathered around her, almost afraid to touch her unless she had finally exhausted herself and lay sleeping.
“You’d think the lot of you had never laid eyes on a child before!” It was custom to lower voices when exposed in the cl
oisters. Melanna often flouted custom when in the grip of disgust, and as she had come late to the Novitiate, she was often forgiven this flaw. “I can understand her, at least—she’s just been abandoned by her only living parent. The rest of you?”
“It’s not our custom—”
“And when the Mother grants us her child, what then? Will you leave all the cleanup to me?”
“Melanna—” Iain began again. He retreated just as quickly, his hands before his chest and palm out in the universal gesture of placation.
“You’re a man,” she snorted.
He had the grace to roll his eyes when she wasn’t looking, and she the grace to pretend she wasn’t actually looking. “Damn you all. I’ll take her.”
* * *
Daughter of the Mother, and not daughter of the god of Wisdom, Emily Dontal observed. It had taken two weeks, a mere two weeks, before Melanna intervened. Emily had intended to allow it, for she wanted Veralaan to feel isolated, and she could think of no better guardian than Melanna in that respect.
And for a while, it worked. But it was a short while.
* * *
She came upon Melanna in the smallest of the chambers used by the Novitiates for quiet contemplation and prayer. As Melanna was no longer a Novice, she was surprised to come upon her there, but not nearly as surprised as she was when Melanna looked up, and the dim lights of the brazier shone across her wide cheeks.
Even in the darkened shadows of the room it was clear that her eyes were reddened. She lifted shaking hands and made to rise, and the Mother’s Daughter gentled her by lifting her hands in denial.
“Why are you here, Melanna?”
Melanna said nothing.
The Mother’s Daughter waited, and after a moment, she drew closer. Melanna was upon her knees; she had surrendered the advantage of height. Of more.
She said, “I wanted the Mother’s guidance.”
Emily nodded.
“The child—Veralaan—”
“I know it is difficult—”
“No, Mother’s Daughter, you don’t.” Her voice broke. “My son was older,” she added. “Older than Veralaan. I thought—” She lifted her hands to her face again, callused hands.
“If it is too difficult a task, Melanna—”
But the woman shook her head and rose. “I can manage her. She’s just a child.” Her tears had dried.
The Mother’s Daughter watched her go.
* * *
But she came to understand, as the days passed, what the difficulty was. It was not in caring for the child of the man she most hated; it was the child herself. Although Veralaan was still quiet, sullen and easily frightened, she understood that Melanna had been appointed her caretaker, and she clung to Melanna whenever they were together. Melanna would extricate herself as she could, bending to free the folds of her robes from the three-year old’s fingers.
But she would stop, spine curved, as the child spoke; no one else could hear what Veralaan said. Melanna would speak harshly in reply; harshly and loudly. The child would cringe. But she would not let go; once dislodged, she reached, again and again, for the comfort of this angry attachment.
* * *
When Melanna almost missed dinner for the first time—and it would have been a disaster, because the Priestess supervised the chaos that was the kitchen—Emily Dontal knew.
Melanna came late to the kitchen, Veralaan in the crook of her right arm. It was the first time that she would carry the child with her in her many headlong rushes from one place to another, but it was not the last. She tossed young Ebrick off his stool without ceremony, paused to criticize him for removing half the potato along with the peel, and then set Veralaan down in his place.
The child started to cry, but the tears were quiet.
“Veralaan,” Melanna said, shoving her hands through her hair, “I don’t have a choice. If I leave this lot to cook, we’ll be eating dirt and burned milk for the next three days!”
Veralaan nodded, folding her hands together; they were small and white. But she still cried.
“Hazel, what do you think you’re doing with that? The milk will just cake the bottom of the pot! Pay attention! Veralaan, we can go back upstairs when I’ve finished. I won’t forget the rest of the story. But I—EBRICK!”
Emily had never seen her quite like this, and watched in silence from the safety of the door.
Veralaan said something, and Melanna bent to catch the words. Her face froze a moment, and then she smiled, but it was a tight, tight smile.
“Yes,” she told the child, lowering her voice. “His mother finds him, and brings him home.”
Small hands were entwined in the fabric of the older woman’s robes before she’d even finished her sentence. “Veralaan, I’ve told you a thousand times not to do that. Not where people can see you. These are the Robes of the Mother; they’re to be treated with respect.” She was busy prying those robes from small fingers as she spoke; it was a losing battle.
In the end, she sighed and hefted the child again in her right arm, lodging the bulk of her weight against her hip. She turned and resumed the marshaling of her beleaguered forces, carrying Veralaan as if she were some sort of precious mascot.
* * *
“I don’t understand it, Iain,” the Mother’s Daughter said, over the same dinner.
“What don’t you understand?”
Had they not been quite so isolated, she would have guarded her tongue; she was the Mother’s Daughter, and inasmuch as she could be wise, she was expected to personify wisdom. Given that there was already a god that did just that, she thought it a tad unfair.
“Melanna.”
He was quiet for a moment, which was often a dubious sign. At last he put his knife down and pushed his plate an inch forward. “Emily,” he said quietly. Her name; a name he almost never used.
She met his gaze and held it. But he did not look away. Had she desired it, he would have. Or maybe not, she thought, as his expression continued to shift.
“Was that not your purpose in giving the child to Melanna to foster?”
“What purpose?”
“She will never have another child,” he said quietly. “The injuries she sustained made it certain.”
“I know. I was there.”
Grave, now, he said, “You have given her the only child—save perhaps one, if we are blessed—that she will ever be allowed to raise in peace.”
“I gave her,” Emily replied coolly, “the daughter of the man responsible for the slaughter of her family.”
“Yes, and so, too, did she see the child.”
“And she cared so little for her son that she could—”
“That is unworthy of you, Mother’s Daughter. Worse, it is a thought unworthy of the Mother.” Not since she had been in the Novitiate had he dared use that tone of voice on her. It brooked no argument, allowed for none; he was rigidly certain.
“I do not know what you intended. I do not wish to know. Leave me with the illusion of your mercy. Melanna will grow, from this. She will remember things that will hurt her, but once she is past the pain, she will remember things that will define her.”
“She will love this child.”
“In time, Emily, accept that we will all love her.”
“She is the daughter of—”
“She is a child. Whose child has yet to be determined; it is not in blood and birth that such decisions are made, but in the life itself.”
“Iain—” She held out a hand. It shook. “I have looked long and hard at this city, harder still at the Baron who rules it; I have evaluated, as I can, the foreign Barons who bark at the gates. They are of a kind, Baron Breton and the others; if he loses his war, there will be death and slaughter, before and after. I cannot see a way out of this darkness if not through her. If blood and birth matter little to the Mother, they matter to those whose power destroy our people, generation after generation.
“I saw her as a gift. As an opportunity—perhaps ou
r only one. I thought to be a weapon-smith.”
He placed his hand across hers. “Have you spoken with the Mother?”
She shook her head. “I know my mother. I know what she’ll say.”
His frown was edged with humor. “There are other ways to fight,” he said at last.
“In stories,” she replied bitterly. “In song. But in song, the god-born walked freely among the villains, carrying the blood of their parents, and using the power it granted them. Where are their like now? We do not even have a god-born child of our own—” She choked back the words, the bitter fear. “I have seen those who would be heroes. They were not gentle men, and they were not kind, but had they succeeded, they might have been better rulers. If she is soft, if she is weak, what favor have we granted her? What good have we done ourselves? She will be killed by her own naivete. Had she stayed with her father, she would be capable. If we love her, will that not in the end make her a victim?”
“Let the definition of weakness be made by men like Baron Breton, and you have already lost; make of her a woman who can stand against him upon his own ground, and you will simply make another like him. Perhaps she will be beholden to you; perhaps she will kill you, as Baron Breton killed his father. I cannot say.”
“If we—”
“But if we have no hope, Emily…”
“Hope did not save Melanna’s child.”
“No,” he said quietly. He did not speak again during that meal.
* * *
Prayer afforded hope to those who gathered at the Mother’s altar; it afforded little to the Mother’s Daughter. But in the end, she was the Mother’s Daughter. She watched as Veralaan grew, claiming, as Iain had predicted, the love and affection of the Priests, the Priestesses, and the Novices. Melanna was her protector and her guardian, and each time the child was introduced to a newcomer, it was by the side of the ferocious Priestess, whose grim and loving demeanor made clear what would happen to those who judged her for her father’s crimes.
In a different world, this might have produced a different child. But in this one, not even Melanna—as she had learned so bitterly once—was capable of protecting a child completely.
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