Broken Lords: Book Two of the Broken Mirrors Duology

by A. F. Dery

  “I’m not receiving visitors, you fool,” Malachi said sharply. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  The servant tried again, tentatively. “My lord, forgive me, but I really think-”

  “I don’t recall the High Lord paying his servants for their thoughts!” Malachi snapped, but Margaret’s hand tightened on his.

  “Please, Edmund, just see who it is,” she murmured. “There can’t be anyone in the palace who doesn’t know what straits we’re in right now. If someone is trying to see you, there must be a good reason.”

  Malachi sighed. “Very well. I’ll get rid of them and be right back, my love.”

  Margaret nodded and closed her eyes. He saw this and thought, she’s already getting so tired. This can’t be good.

  Then banishing the thought, he strode from the room and into the outer chamber, his eyes already flashing, every fiber of his being ready to curse whoever-it-was to the hells for intruding, here and now, when his wife was no doubt merely hours from her death.

  Malachi wasn’t certain who he expected to find standing there in his sitting room, but Eladria’s Mirror certainly wasn’t it.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. “Eladria send you to rub salt in the wound? To say ‘I told you so?’”

  “My lord?” the Mirror said, tilting her head slightly and studying him from the corner of her eye. It gave her the look of an inquisitive bird. “I am not a messenger, my lord.”

  “I know what you are,” Malachi said flatly. “And we have enough of your worthless lot here.” As if on cue, Margaret’s thin scream pierced through the door behind him. He motioned to it eloquently. “See how she reflects the pain,” he said bitterly. “So what are you here for, then? I’ll not ask you again.”

  “My lord Eladria sends me to offer whatever assistance I can to your Lady,” the Mirror replied calmly. “It was evident earlier that she may be in need of more assistance than she is presently receiving.”

  Malachi stared at her, taken aback. “Are you kidding? Thane doesn’t like Maggie. She’s why we don’t speak. And you expect me to believe he sent you to help her?”

  Now the Mirror looked surprised. “I do not know the details of what you are referring to, my lord. But I know the breach between you and my lord gives him no joy. If I may be so bold to suggest it, whatever has passed between you in the past, it clearly is not of greater importance now to my lord than the welfare of your wife and child.”

  Malachi considered this, shocked to his core. If he lived to be a thousand, he would never understand that mad barbarian neighbor of his. He wondered if it wasn’t some kind of trick, but at the same time, he knew that wasn’t Eladria’s way, and wished again he had thought of that before that scathing letter he had written to the High Lord.

  Malachi’s mind raced. Oh gods, I’m still going to have to deal with that letter! No doubt Thane wouldn’t have sent the girl here if he knew of it, and yet, do I dare say no? If I send her back, the rift will continue…and it gives me no joy, either. More, perhaps if one Mirror doesn’t help, two will. How could I refuse Maggie whatever relief may be had? She will likely be dead when all this is over.

  Again he heard Margaret scream, and it decided him.

  “Understand this, girl. When we’re in there, I don’t want to hear a word from you,” Malachi said with a vehemence he didn’t really feel. “Your sister has been useless to us, and between you and I, the physician has told me that Maggie is not likely to survive this, nor the babes. There are two, you see.”

  “Twins,” the Mirror said, her eyes widening.

  “Yes, indeed. This happenstance has caused no end of trouble for my Maggie. In any event, these are likely my last hours with the woman I love. I won’t have any further disruption of them. You will…do what it is you do, and trouble us not.”

  “Of course, my lord,” the Mirror said, but her blue eyes were puzzled.

  Malachi ignored this and gestured to the next room. “Enter, then, and ply your trade,” he said dryly. And with a bow of her head, the Mirror obeyed.

  The room in which the Lady Malachi was to deliver was a spacious bedroom, paneled in oak and decorated with tasteful tapestries of sylvan scenes. Kesara knew by a glance that she would enjoy contemplating them: their rich greens and golds reminded her at once of the forests of Ytar.

  On a large, rumpled bed lay the Lady herself, heavily pregnant, sweat soaked, and panting, even though Kesara could sense she was not presently suffering a birthing pang. She looked exhausted, her eyes heavy-lidded and ringed with shadows, her body nearly rigid with tension beneath the messy blankets. She fears the next one, Kesara observed, feeling pity for the poor girl.

  For she looked like little more than a girl to Kesara’s eyes, now that she was seeing her up close. She looked so terribly young and frightened that it made Kesara’s throat ache.

  On a couch by the wall, the other Mirror, Elsbeth, was nearly doubled over, gripping her own belly and giving the occasional weak rasp of a cough. She looked as terrible or worse than Lady Malachi herself.

  The man Kesara took to be the the High Lord’s personal physician was seated at a table in the corner of the room furthest from the Mirror, where there was a fireplace close to hand with flames stoked high. He was tinkering with the implements in some kind of wooden case, probably the tools of his trade. Kesara suppressed a shudder at that thought, recalling other implements, in other hands, before she pushed the thought savagely away. Despite the flames in the hearth, the one window on the other side of the room was cracked open, and the air was an odd mixture of smothering warmth and cold breeze, heavily scented with sweat and tinged with the acrid aroma of some kind of chemical. Kesara had smelled it before in the surgeries of her training, and identified it with little thought as some kind of cleanser that the physician was using on his tools.

  She felt a certain skepticism at the thought of this male physician assisting a difficult birth, but having been warned against speaking, she obeyed. She knew she must do nothing to deepen the rift between Thane and Malachi; she must make things better, not worse, or she would be angering him in vain.

  And I don’t want him to remember me with anger, she told herself, for she did not doubt he would be upset when he learned what she was doing, in his name and without his approbation. However good her intentions were and however good the results, she feared her actions would offend his strange sense of honor. She felt a twist of anguish inside herself and quickly pushed those thoughts away as well. She thought her heart would shatter if she thought of him too much, now; and she must not shatter yet. She must do all she could for him, first.

  She approached the Lady’s bedside and smiled with all the warmth she could muster. Lady Malachi stared up at her with exhausted, and wary, eyes, but smiled faintly back, as though out of habit.

  She’s a nice person, Kesara thought, with a tinge of surprise. She smiles because it goes against her grain not to return a smile. I wonder what it is she did that apparently caused all these problems between her lord and mine?

  “Who are you?” Lady Malachi asked, in a voice hoarse from screaming. “Aren’t you the other Mirror? The Dread Lord’s Mirror?”

  She calls him by that title as though she does not know him, and yet he supposedly dislikes her. Kesara filed that away in her mind for later reflection. It seemed the more she learned, the more confusing everything became. She looked cautiously to Lord Malachi, who had stepped to her side and taken the Lady’s hand.

  “Yes, Maggie, you have it right. Eladria sent her to help you, if she can,” Malachi said carefully. Kesara noted the if she can with an odd feeling of wounded pride and stiffened a bit despite herself.

  She wrapped her fingers around Lady Malachi’s wrist, below where her husband held it. At once, she felt the pain clamoring for her attention, but it was what she expected to feel, but didn’t, that shook her, almost causing her to drop it.

  There is no bond. Nothing. Kesara’s eyes went involuntarily to t
he other Mirror. The woman appeared to be suffering greatly, and Kesara turned her focus back to Lady Malachi. No, wait, there is something. It was a temporary bond, greatly splintered, its strands weak and failing, yet still sufficient evidently to cause the other Mirror such trouble.

  I don’t understand this, thought Kesara, deeply confused. But she could not consider the implications now; she felt Lady Malachi tense as another wave of pain began to build in her belly. Kesara let her eyes fall closed and reached out to the pain, grasping it to herself, and felt the strands of the other Mirror’s temporary bond disintegrate into nothingness.

  Fine. More for me, then, Kesara thought, a little tartly. She held the pain tightly, and it writhed and struggled like a wild beast in a cage. By the time the rush had passed, it was hers, body and soul. She touched at the temporary bond, testing it, and it appeared strong. So the other bond failing was no fault of Lady Malachi’s. She knew there was the odd, very rare, occasion where a person was not capable of being bonded with, for reasons that her teachers could not explain, but this did not seem to be one of them.

  She released Lady Malachi’s wrist with another smile. Lady Malachi stared at her in obvious wonder.

  “There was another one, Edmund,” she said. “But I didn’t feel anything, but..a tightening, a pressure in my back. It didn’t hurt at all, not anywhere.”

  Kesara felt Malachi’s eyes on her, scrutinizing her…for what, she couldn’t imagine. She cast her eyes around for a place to sit, though she began to feel it would be best if she absented herself entirely. She turned to Lord Malachi, and gave him her best beseeching look, eyes wide and fluttering.

  He blinked, visibly startled, and said, “What?”

  “May I speak, my lord?” she tried.

  “Er…all right,” he said, still looking stricken.

  “May I sit in the next room?”

  “Er…don’t you need to be in here with her?” Malachi asked, eyes narrowing.

  “Strictly speaking, no, my lord,” Kesara said. “I mean, a certain proximity is required, but I don’t need to be in the same room, the sitting room would be sufficient. If she worsens, I may have to come back in here, but surely you’d prefer your privacy at a time like this.” She added in a low voice, “Elsbeth can leave, too. She is not doing anything for your lady now.”

  “Was she before?” Malachi asked her in an equally low voice, but his tone, and his eyes, smoldered. She struggled against a sudden stab of anxiety, knowing the menace she saw there wasn’t really being directed towards her.

  “Yes, my lord, but the bond she formed with your wife to help her was failing. She was not strong enough to maintain it. More than that, I do not know,” Kesara murmured.

  “I see,” Malachi said, but the two words were laden with meaning that was beyond Kesara’s grasp. “Yes, please go into the sitting room. Return whenever you have need. And you-” this he directed to the servant who had answered the door for Kesara, who had apparently come in behind them- “take that other Mirror to her own room. She does not seem to be in any condition to move herself at the moment.”

  The servant murmured assent but hurried back out in the sitting room. Kesara followed her out, and settled herself in a chair, watching as the servant left the room by the outer door, then returned with a guard, apparently to carry Elsbeth.

  I can’t even imagine what’s going on with that one, Kesara mused. Once the guard had carried the other Mirror out, the servant returned to the bedroom and Malachi came out.

  “She keeps having them,” he said, almost accusingly. “But she feels fine.”

  Kesara just looked at him, not sure what he expected her to say to that.

  “The servant is helping clean her up and get her comfortable now. The physician said the pains must get closer together before he can do anything. We are hoping she can get some rest before it reaches that point.”

  Why is he telling me all this? Kesara wondered. He had seemed initially hostile to her presence, but now he was convinced? What, if anything, had Elsbeth managed to do to leave him with this poor impression of Mirrors?

  “My lord, my advice is worthless, but still, I think perhaps you should summon a midwife to assist the High Lord’s physician. I have been at births before, and I came away with the understanding that it is of no good to have her on her back like that,” Kesara suggested, doing her best to appear humble and subdued. “Surely a second opinion couldn’t hurt anything in a case such as this, or a second pair of hands?”

  Malachi nodded slowly. “The physician seems to think that a midwife would be a distraction to him, he said they are superstitious.”

  “They often are,” Kesara agreed. “But that doesn’t mean they don’t know their trade. I strongly suspect that even the most superstitious village midwife has delivered more babies than the High Lord’s physician. In Ytar, even high born Ladies do not permit men to touch them once labor starts. Birth and death and pain are mean to be the work of women.”

  “Death, too, eh? You think more women kill than men do?” Malachi asked, but there was no rancor in his voice, only fascination.

  “No, my lord. I said death, not killing,” Kesara said. “Who attends the dying? The same who attend those being born, generally. And these are women.”

  “I’d like to argue with you,” Malachi said, with a slight smirk. “You are an interesting creature, not like that other one. In fact, you look just the same now as you did coming in, though I suppose that part might take more time. She looked more-or-less fine for a while, too, and you saw how she ended up.”

  “It’s regrettable that happened,” Kesara said. “But we are not all the same, my lord.”

  “Good thing. I was thinking there was no point or value to creatures such as yourself, up until now.”

  Kesara didn’t know what to say to that, so she made a point of silently studying a tapestry on the wall opposite her.

  She heard a quiet chuckle, then Malachi returned to the bedroom.

  Pain, pain, and more pain. The hours passed; night dwindled into dawn. Lady Malachi’s rushes grew closer and more intense. Kesara reflected that the worthiest pain to bear must be that of bearing children. That was fruitful pain, pain that brought forth life instead of destruction. She allowed herself to doze on her chair between the pangs, conserving her strength. She wondered how Lady Malachi was doing, but her husband did not re-emerge, and the physician, too, remained where he was. One servant went back and forth, but scarcely looked at her.

  Finally, with daybreak, the servant returned from an outing with a grizzled old woman trailing behind her.

  Ah, he took my suggestion, Kesara thought, and wondered if this was a sign things were going badly. She could hardly be an objective judge.

  The old woman disappeared into the bedroom, and shortly after, there were raised voices. Kesara tensed at the sound of that, hoping her little suggestion wasn’t going to cost whatever fragile accord her presence here was buying. But after a few minutes, the voices quietened, and she heard no more until a very pale Lord Malachi came into the sitting room over an hour later.

  He looked at her with pity in his eyes, and she suppressed a sigh.

  “Mistress…er…” he seemed to be wracking his brain for her name.

  “Please call me Kesara, my lord,” she volunteered. “No need for such formality.”

  Lord Malachi gave her the suggestion of a smile. “Kesara. It is…not going well.”

  “No, my lord?”

  “No.” He paused, studying her. “You still look fine, though.”

  Kesara tilted her head, watching him sharpen into better focus. Yes, that was definitely pity.

  “Look, Kesara, the midwife says I waited too long to call her…she has tried to help reposition the babe in front, it didn’t work, it will be born breech. She thinks the one above it is…sideways or something.” Malachi sighed, rubbing a weary hand over his face. “The physician said…he might have to cut her open to get it out. I thought you should know
that.”

  Kesara watched him start to pace, then he turned back to her and said bluntly, “I argued with myself, whether I should even tell you. Or if I should just let it happen, let it take you by surprise. I don’t know what we’d do if you left now.”

  “But you decided to tell me anyway, my lord?” Kesara decided in that moment, he’s an ass, all right, but not a complete ass.

  “Well, yes.” Malachi stopped pacing and looked at her directly. “You’re his, not mine. I don’t know why that matters, but it does. I can’t think about it right now.”

  Kesara accepted that with a slight nod of her head, feeling her heart beat a little faster. I am his. And it matters.

  “In any event, I thought you should know,” he repeated. “The physician said he can drug Maggie, that he would do it without question if you were not here. It would supposedly dull the pain of the knife.”

  When he said nothing else, Kesara supplied gently, “Yet the drugs carry risks.”

  Malachi nodded mutely.

  “What do you tell me this for? Are you asking my consent?” Kesara forced herself to smile. “I’m a servant, my lord. It is not well done of you.”

  “I could live with it,” Malachi told her quietly. “I could live with the knowledge that I withheld the drugs, no matter what it did to you- if it drove you mad, if it killed you even. But Maggie? She is innocent. She would not be able to live with herself, if something happened to you because of her that could have been prevented. She would resent me for making such a choice, even if it meant her survival, and that, I could not live with.”

  Kesara decided to reconsider her earlier judgment of him. It was entirely possible that this man’s only redeeming value was his love for his wife, and it would be food for contemplation about whether this was enough to salvage him from being a complete ass after all. “It will not drive me mad, my lord, and it will certainly not kill me,” Kesara informed him dryly. “So withhold with a clear conscience and my blessing, if that is what you seek.”