Fey 02 - Changeling

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  The nurse smiled and nodded at her. Jewel nodded back. Carefully, because of her bulk, she moved around the toys, chairs, and tables to her son. Using a chair to brace herself, she sank down beside him and took his tiny hand in her own.

  His skin was cold.

  And hard. She had always thought a child's skin should be soft. The lack of sunlight in his life — and his mixed parentage — had left his skin a muted gray. Slowly he turned his head toward her. He had the solemnity of a man of eight decades.

  "Moth-er," he said in Islander, drawing the word out, speaking one of the few words he had mastered.

  "Hello, baby," she said, running a hand along his hard, smooth cheek. Just once she wished he would lean into the caress, acknowledge the warmth that a child should feel for his parent. But if she ever had to confess, her warmth for him had faded with his odd behavior. She went through the motions, but the love, once so much a part of her, had disappeared deep inside. "What have you been doing?"

  He shrugged, a movement as slow as all his others. No grace for him, no childlike impulsiveness, no curiosity, no quickness. Nicholas never even came into the nursery any more. He couldn't stand looking at Sebastian, knowing that this child would one day lead the Kingdom.

  "How's the heart today, Mistress?" the nurse asked.

  Jewel brought her right hand up to the space between her left breast and her rounded stomach. "It still aches," she said.

  For the last few days, Jewel felt as if her heart were hollow. The Islander healers blamed the constant ache on her pregnancy, but she believed something else caused it. She had felt a sharp piercing pain three mornings ago, so sharp that it had driven her to her knees and sent Nicholas's counselors scurrying for the Islander healers. Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the pain faded, leaving the dull ache.

  The Islander healers thought the ache meant she was ill and ordered her to bedrest. But she had never rested in her life. The Islanders had no concept of Fey. Fey women kept moving until the child was born, and often went to war with infants strapped on their backs. Just because she was living in the Islander stronghold did not mean that Jewel would act like a weak Islander woman.

  "Perhaps you should rest," the nurse said gently.

  Jewel didn't respond. Instead, she squeezed Sebastian's hand. His return squeeze, when it came, was strong and almost painful. "Did he show any change at all this morning?"

  "None, Mistress." They had been having this conversation for three years, ever since his naming day. Her father, Rugar, had warned her that giving a child an Islander name might rob him of his power. But she had made a deal with Nicholas. If Nicholas could show that the ancestral bearers of Sebastian's name were great men, then he would win the fight for the name. All the previous Sebastians were great kings. She wanted no less for her own child. She had agreed.

  And since that day, Sebastian had shown no interest in the world. He went from a bright-eyed, grasping infant to a listless, lethargic one in the space of a day. In desperation, she had taken him to Burden's colony in Jahn. Burden had formed a Fey Settlement in the city just after her marriage. Many Fey had been disillusioned by her father's rule and hoped that Jewel's marriage to Nicholas would improve their lot. But the Settlement was as much a prison as the Shadowlands had been, just in a different way.

  Burden had not taken many Fey with Domestic powers with him when he left Shadowlands, and the ones he had were not great Healers. They had looked at her with pity as if she had failed to understand something, and then they had said that Sebastian was not a natural child, a fact she had already knew. They said they could do nothing if she remained outside of Shadowlands.

  Her pride kept her from Shadowlands, kept her from asking her father's help. She would go, however, if this new child showed the same lack as Sebastian.

  Asking for help would be difficult. Fey did not give help readily, unlike Islanders. The Fey believed that if a person could not figure out something on her own, she lacked insight and intelligence. In seeking help for her children, she would diminish her position with her own people.

  She leaned over, kissed Sebastian, and smoothed the thin coarse hair over his forehead. He tilted his head toward her, moving so slowly that the movement was almost imperceptible, and then he smiled.

  A true smile.

  And her heart melted. She lived for these moments, when he actually reached to her, actually saw her. At these times, all the love and hope of his babyhood returned.

  She hugged him, and waited until he hugged back, feeling his tentative movements against her back.

  "Mistress?" A male voice ruined the moment. She didn't pull out of Sebastian's embrace right away — doing so always startled the boy — but eased her way out, then kissed his hands before replacing them in his lap.

  She turned without getting up. She hated feeling ungainly. She was more agile than Nicholas when she wasn't pregnant. Her loss of grace at these times felt like a definite disadvantage.

  The man in the door was one of the pages. He had seen no more than seventeen summers, but his voice already had a man's depth. He bobbed in an approximation of a bow when he saw her looking at him.

  "Mistress, 'tis yer presence His Highness requests. He says ta make haste."

  Normally she would have smiled and put the boy at ease. She had a way with the Islanders. They expected her to be fierce so she wasn't. She was charming, and that made them forget that she was taller than most of them, her hair black where theirs was fair, and her features upswept when theirs were square. They still noted her dark skin, and winced when she moved quickly — as if they were afraid she was going to turn them into hogs — but they had become more tolerant over time. She still couldn't train them to use her name, however, in the Fey manner. They insisted on a title, although she could not get used to the word "Highness." "Mistress" was the most she would tolerate.

  "Did he say what had happened?"

  The boy shook his head. "Tis something terrible, Mum. He cried out when he heard it."

  Her hand was still over her heart. She pressed, just a little, wondering if her body had foreseen something her mind had not. Visions had been miserly in this place. It bothered her that she had not had one about her son.

  "Is he in audience?"

  The boy nodded.

  "Tell him, then, that I will be there as soon as I can."

  The boy did not wait for her, but bobbed his head again and ran off. Jewel took a deep breath before placing her hands on the chair and levering herself up. Sebastian was still watching her, but it didn't appear that his dark eyes saw her.

  "I'll be back, Sweetness," she said to him. Then she glanced at the nurse. "See if you can get him to do more than stare."

  "Yes, Mistress."

  Jewel took a deep breath and braced her hand at the small of her back. The baby would come any day now. For that, she felt a great relief. She knew this ungainly stage of pregnancy was only temporary, yet on a deep level, it frightened her. She — the most agile of all the Fey, the best swordsman in the Infantry — unable to make quick movements or bend easily. Sometimes she feared that her agility would never come back. She would lose a great part of herself to the child within.

  Yet that had not happened with Sebastian. If anything, his birth had made her more agile. She actually practiced swordfighting with her husband. She and Nicholas had met in battle and were evenly matched. When his swordmaster died during the year of the war, he had no one to turn to. Practicing with Nicholas was an exercise in physical strength and mental prowess since they were evenly matched on all sides.

  The King, of course, had opposed that from the beginning at first afraid that Jewel would use the practices as an excuse to kill Nicholas. When it became clear that she would keep her bargain, she was warned by the King's advisors (never the King himself) that such behavior was unladylike. She countered that sewing was unFeylike, although that wasn't true. If she had been raised a Domestic she might think otherwise, but she was the Black King's granddaughter,
a Visionary and a Warrior, and she had never held a needle in her life.

  The corridor was cool compared to the heat of the nursery. The nursery was on the floor she shared with Nicholas. Theoretically, they were supposed to have separate suites, but they had never managed it. They slept in his. The nursery was off her suites.

  What she called a corridor, in parlance she had learned in the Great Houses of Nye, was actually a gallery by Islander standards. It was as wide as many rooms she had lived in and ran the length of the floor. Portraits of Princes and their wives, all looking solemn and square, lined the hall. Her portrait was painted shortly after Sebastian's birth, and even though she still carried weight from the baby, she looked gaunt compared with Princesses of old. Dark and exotic. All of the others had been cut from the same mold — blonde, blonde hair, pale blue eyes, bone white skin ("alabaster" Nicholas had once called it in a moment of levity) and rosy round cheeks. When her portrait was hung next to Nicholas's, the religious leader, the Rocaan, had remarked under his breath that Jewel looked like a demon in a field of angels.

  She looked at the chairs lining the corridor longingly. If she hadn't known that they were the most uncomfortable chairs in two continents, she would have stopped for just a moment. But the page had said to make haste, and the quicker she found Nicholas, the quicker she would be off her feet.

  She turned before reaching her own portrait, and took the stairs down, using the railing for balance. The stairs were carved of stone, and very sharp. She had nightmares about falling down them, pregnant and unable to get up, bleeding from wounds on her back and sides, the baby dead within her.

  Because the nightmares came when she slept, she knew they were not a Vision.

  At the landing, she paused. The baby chose that moment to kick again. Jewel placed her hand over the movement, feeling the fluttering —

  —and suddenly she was in the west wing. A young girl Jewel had never seen before sat in the window seat, looking down at the garden below. The girl had black hair and skin not quite as dark as Jewel's, but when the girl turned and glanced around the room, her face had a suggestion of Nicholas. Jewel crept closer. The girl wore flowing robes. A maid hovered near the dressing table, exhorting her to get dressed, but the girl leaned out the window, watching something move through the garden.

  Jewel stood behind the girl's shoulder. The garden was bright — sun-dappled, the flowers huge and overpowering. There, among them, was a boy only a few years older than the girl. Tall, and thin, and graceful, with black, black hair —

  And then Jewel was back in the stairwell again, leaning against the stone wall, her breath coming in large gasps. The stone was cold against her back, but the ache in her heart had receded.

  A Vision. The girl in the Vision had the look of Nicholas with Fey features. And her face was alive, her eyes bright with curiosity, her movements quick, just as Sebastian's were not. A Vision. About her second child, and not her first.

  She closed her eyes, and felt relief flood through her. This child would be all right. This child would have all the promise that Sebastian did not have. This child had even provided a Vision. Already. Such powerful magic at work. Visionaries rarely had Visions about babes in the womb.

  Jewel continued down the stairs, disoriented from the intensity of her Vision, unable to move swiftly because of her bulk. They probably started the meeting without her. They had done that when she was pregnant with Sebastian. A pregnancy that early had been a mistake. She should have kept her strength in the first few years, not lost it to children and tradition. She was here to unify the Fey and the Islanders, and she was still having trouble. The Islanders did not consider her part of government, merely a wife of the heir to the throne. Only Nicholas felt differently, and he was Prince, not King.

  She had other problems as well. Her own people would not work in the palace. A few tried, but left when threatened by Islander poison. She suspected that the Islanders often did not initiate the threat, that they were responding to something, but she fought a losing battle. Her friend Burden established a colony outside Shadowlands, but it had become merely an isolated Fey community with sunlight instead of grayness. Those Fey were unable to become part of Island society as well.

  Fears. She was battling fears and a prejudice she hadn't even known existed when she made this pact. And to have Sebastian be a dullard made matters worse.

  She cradled her stomach, glad for the first time for this child. This baby would prove that the match between Fey and Islander was not a mistake, that the two cultures would integrate. And they had to integrate for the rest of her plan — the plan she had once proposed to her father — to work.

  When she had married Nicholas, she had believed that the Fey and Islanders would mingle on Blue Isle. They would become a united community. Then when her grandfather, the Black King, finally decided to conquer Blue Isle, he would arrive to discover that the Isle was already part of the Fey Empire. Instead of being conquered by force, it would be conquered by intermingling, by families composed of both Fey and Islanders.

  The stairs led directly to the wing with the audience chamber. For once, she was glad for the proximity. It saved her endless walking.

  She hurried as best she could through the Great Hall. Her wedding banquet had been held here, one of Nicholas's favorite rooms. The hall was long and wide and had arched ceilings because it connected two towers and had no floor above it. The arched windows matched the ceiling in design, some of the few windows in the palace with rare glass.

  The hall was the least Islander place in the palace. Swords hung from the inner wall, and none were ceremonial. The Islanders were not a warlike people — they had never been invaded until the Fey arrived — but they had had their share of uprisings and revolts. The hall had an air of power the rest of the palace lacked.

  Still, she didn't linger. A sense of urgency that she hadn't really felt when the page summoned her was growing within. She went through the door that led to the corridor which housed the audience chamber.

  Four guards stood in front of the oak door. They were Islander, of course, and did not acknowledge her as a member of the royal family. But two of them did move in unison to pull the door open as she approached.

  Nicholas stood inside, his hands clasped behind his back. He wore his long blond hair in a queue. He was as tall as she was — a rarity among Islanders — and, although he was broad, his build had strength. He wore a blouse gathered at the wrists, but untied at the neck, and tight breeches that tucked into long black riding boots. His eyes were red-rimmed and he had a tight expression on his face that she had never seen before.

  Lord Enford stood beside him. Enford wore breeches as well, something Jewel had never seen. He was covered with dirt, his hair matted against his skull, strands pulling out of his queue. His eyes looked more sunken than usual in his gaunt face.

  Instinctively, Jewel put a hand over her stomach, guarding the child within. Then she stepped inside the chamber.

  "Nicholas?" she said, even now disdaining the formal forms of address the Islanders insisted upon.

  He stared at her as if he didn't see her, as if he were someone else. The thought sent a shiver of fear through her. The Fey had ways of taking over a person — some of them direct, such as a Doppelgänger who absorbed the person, soul and all; and some indirect, such as suggestions made by strong Charmers. Her father couldn't have sent a Doppelgänger to take over Nicholas; all the Doppelgängers had died in the first year on the Isle. No Charmers had come with them either. Still, she went up to Nicholas, took his chin in her hand, and turned his head toward her. His eyes were lined with red, but no gold — the sign of a Doppelgänger — glinted in them. It was Nicholas, but a part of him that she did not recognize.

  He moaned at her touch, and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her as close as he could. The babe kicked in protest — did that child never rest? — but he didn't even seem to notice. Jewel held him tightly, glancing over his shoulder at Lord Enford. Nichol
as had never been this demonstrative in public. It was something she frowned upon more than he, but he had always honored that. Until now.

  Except for Enford, they were alone in the large room. The guards that usually stood beneath the ancient spears lining the walls were gone. On the dais, the throne was empty, which didn't surprise her, since Alexander was on a tour of the countryside—

  With Enford.

  She returned her gaze to Enford, taking in the brown smears on his traveling clothes. Not all of the stains were dirt. A chill ran through her so strong that she shivered.

  Nicholas apparently felt the shiver and pulled away. He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing its look, a gesture reminiscent of his father. Nicholas walked over to the throne, and stared above it, at the coat of arms that decorated the wall behind. Jewel had always found the fact that the royal family had a coat of arms curious. She found it even odder that the design was of two swords crossed over a heart.