SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The road out of Thal’zar territory went faster than the road in, the way roads home usually do. They rode until the carriage reached the nearest Gate station, thanked the guide, and stepped through into Velkaris. The capital was doing what it always did, roaring away in every direction with a million people going about their own business, and none of the three of them had any interest in a single part of it today. They crossed the hub, paid the transit fee, and took the second Gate.

Euclid came up around them cold and white. It was snowing when they stepped out, thick slow flakes coming down over the plaza in front of the Gate house, already deep enough on the ground to squeak under Trafalgar’s boots. The lamps had been lit early because of the weather. Somewhere off past the square a bell was ringing for the end of a work shift, and the whole city had that muffled, padded quiet that snow puts on everything. Trafalgar breathed it in and felt the last few days come off his shoulders. Home at last.

”I’ve missed this,” Cynthia said, pulling her coat closed at the throat. ”Everything in Thal’zar smelled of stone.”

Rhosyn tipped her head back and let the snow fall on her face, which was about as close to enthusiasm as she got.

Something small and pale came out of the white. Trafalgar caught the movement a heartbeat before it reached him, a flicker of wings low across the plaza, and Pipin swept in and struck his shoulder hard enough to make him take a step. The bird got a grip on the side of his coat with his beak and pulled, wings beating, small crimson eyes fixed on him.

”Pipin?”

The bird didn’t let go. He hauled backward against the fabric with everything a body that size had in it, feet scrabbling for purchase on the wool, dragging at him toward the far side of the plaza.

Trafalgar’s blood went cold, because Pipin didn’t do this. In three years the bird had picked fights with him, stolen food off his plate, sat on his head to annoy him, and never once in his life had he grabbed hold of Trafalgar’s clothes and tried to physically move him somewhere.

”What is it? What’s happened?”

Pipin let go, shot ten paces toward the road, and came straight back to pull at him again. Cynthia had already gone still beside him. ”That’s not him messing around.”

”No, it isn’t.”

They started walking, and by the time they cleared the edge of the plaza they were running, and the carriage was already coming up the road toward them with the horses at a pace nobody should have been using on packed snow.

It stopped hard. The door opened before it had properly finished stopping, and Aubrelle was there in the frame with her cane in one hand and no coat over her shoulders at all, snow gathering in her hair.

Pipin left Trafalgar and went to her, and her head turned to find him the instant the bird’s eyes were hers again.

”Trafalgar.” Her voice was steady, which told him more than shouting would have. She kept it steady on purpose. ”Get in. Mayla’s waters have broken.”

For a second his whole head went blank. ”It’s early.” He heard himself say it. ”That’s two months early. That’s nearly two months early.”

”I know.”

”Aubrelle.”

”Get in the carriage.”

He got in the carriage. Cynthia was up behind him and Rhosyn after her, and the door hadn’t shut before the driver had them moving.

”When?” Trafalgar asked.

”Around midday.” Aubrelle sat facing him, both hands on the top of her cane, and now that they were moving he could see the grip she had on it. ”She was in the sitting room with me. She stood up to reach for something, and then she went quiet, and then she said my name in a way she doesn’t usually say it.” She turned her face toward him. ”It came on fast. There was a great deal of water, and it came with pain, which the midwives tell me is the part they don’t like.”

”Where is she now?”

”Her rooms. Cynthia’s old midwife is with her, and I sent for two more from the city and a healer from the guild.” Aubrelle’s chin lifted a fraction. ”I sent Pipin to the Gate hours ago. He’s been sitting on that roof since, waiting for you to come out of it.”

Trafalgar looked at the pale bird sitting on her shoulder with snow melting on his feathers, and had nothing to say to that at all.

He’d stood in front of Valttair. He’d taken a strike from Dravok with fifty percent behind it and got back up. Two hours ago he’d been telling the patriarch of a Great Family exactly where he stood in the order of things, and none of that was doing him the slightest bit of good right now, because there was nothing here for him to threaten and nothing to cut.

”Is she all right?” His voice came out wrong. He didn’t much care. ”Aubrelle. Is she all right?”

”She was frightened when I left her, and she was asking for you.” Aubrelle didn’t soften it, because she never did. ”The midwife says the baby is coming whether anyone likes the timing or not. That’s all anybody would tell me.”

Cynthia reached over and put her hand around Trafalgar’s wrist and held it there. She didn’t say anything. She was gripping harder than she probably realized.

The carriage came up the drive of the house faster than it had any business going, and Trafalgar was out of the door before it stopped.

The mansion was already moving. Every lamp on the ground floor was burning. Two maids came down the main stair with an armful of folded linen each and went past him without stopping, one of them calling something back over her shoulder about hot water. Another crossed the hall with a basin. A boy he half recognized from the kitchens ran out through the side door into the snow with a coat thrown on over his apron, heading for the road at a dead sprint. Nobody had needed telling. The whole house had been running for hours, and Trafalgar took the stairs three at a time.