SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The door to Mayla’s rooms was open, and the heat rolled out of it into the corridor. Somebody had built the fire up until the whole room was baking. There were four women working in there, two he knew and two he didn’t, and a healer from the troops with his sleeves rolled past the elbow. Basins on every surface, cloth everywhere, and the air heavy with hot water and herbs and something underneath both that he didn’t want to name.

Mayla was propped up on the bed with her hair stuck to her forehead, and when she saw him in the doorway her whole face broke.

”You came.”

”Of course I came.” He crossed the room and took her hand in both of his, and she gripped it hard enough to hurt. ”I’m right here, Mayla. I’m staying with you.”

”It’s too soon.” Her eyes were wet and huge. ”Trafalgar, it’s two months too soon. He’s supposed to have two more months. He’s not ready yet, and I... I couldn’t stop it. I stood up and then it just started, and I couldn’t do anything.”

”Hey, you didn’t cause this.”

”He’s going to be so small.”

”I know.” He got his hand around the back of her neck and put his forehead against hers, because he had nothing else to give her. ”Then we’ll deal with small. He’s ours, Mayla. Let everyone else worry about getting him through this. You just stay with me.”

The head midwife, a broad woman in her sixties with her sleeves tied off at the shoulder, glanced at him once. ”My lord, I don’t mind you staying. In fact, she’ll probably be happier with you here. But sit where I tell you, and if I need space, you give it to me immediately. Deal?”

”Whatever you need.”

He sat where she pointed, and he stayed out of her way, and that was the whole of what he was permitted to do for the next several hours.

Out in the corridor, Cynthia and Aubrelle took the bench across from the door and did not move off it. ”She’ll be all right,” Cynthia said, though it sounded as though she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else. ”Mayla’s tougher than people give her credit for. She survived years around the Morgains before the rest of us even turned up.”

Aubrelle had her hands folded around the top of her cane, and Pipin sat on the back of the bench beside her ear. ”I wish I could stop listening,” she admitted. ”Every time it gets quiet in there, my head immediately decides something terrible has happened. Then somebody speaks again and I realise I’ve frightened myself for nothing.”

”Then try not to read into every little sound.”

Aubrelle turned her face slightly toward her. ”That’s very easy for you to say.”

Cynthia leaned her head back against the wall. ”It really isn’t. I’ve been doing exactly the same thing.” She turned her cup of untouched tea in her hands. ”And I keep thinking that one day it could be me in there, with all of you sitting out here waiting.”

She looked down at the tea for a moment. ”I want children. You know I do. I’ve wanted them for a while. But apparently wanting something and watching it happen to someone you care about are two very different things.”

”I want them too.” Aubrelle said it plainly. ”I’ve wanted that for quite a while, actually. I probably would’ve told him already if his life ever stayed quiet long enough for conversations like that.” Her chin lifted a fraction toward the door. ”Although after tonight, I may need a little time before I start telling myself how wonderful the whole process sounds.”

That got a weak laugh out of Cynthia.

”Two months early,” Cynthia murmured after a while. ”God, Aubrelle. Two whole months.”

”I know. I’ve been trying very hard not to count them.”

They sat with that for a while. Further down the corridor, well back from the door, Rhosyn stood against the wall with her arms folded and did not come any closer. Whatever was happening in that room was not hers to be near, and she had worked that out without anybody telling her. She stayed there all the same, hour after hour, and every time a sound came out of the room her head turned toward it.

Inside, it went wrong somewhere in the middle of the night. Trafalgar knew because the midwife stopped talking. She’d been keeping up a steady stream of it, encouragement and instructions and small ordinary chatter, and then all at once she wasn’t, and the healer moved around the end of the bed without being asked. The two of them said four or five words to each other that Trafalgar didn’t understand a single one of.

”What is it? What’s wrong?”

”He’s turned on us,” the midwife said, without looking up. ”I can fix it, but I need everyone calm.” She shifted closer to Mayla. ”My lady, listen to me. You’re going to feel me pushing quite hard. It’ll hurt, I’m sorry, but I need you breathing through it. Don’t push yet, even if your body tells you to. Wait until I tell you.”

Mayla made a sound Trafalgar had never heard out of her before. He held her hand and told her she was doing well and let her crush his fingers, and inside his own head he came apart quietly and completely.

There was nothing here for him. That was the thing that hollowed him out. He had spent years learning how to make problems stop, and every last piece of it was useless in this room. He couldn’t cut this. He couldn’t threaten it or outthink it or buy it off. All he could do was sit on a chair and hold his wife’s hand while other people saved her, and hope that the money he’d spent on the best midwives in Euclid had been enough.

’If she dies here,’ he thought, ’that’s on me. She’s in this bed because of me.’ He kept his face steady, because she had enough to carry without his help.

It went on. The fire burned down and somebody built it up again. At some point the healer’s hands started glowing and stayed that way, and the light on his palms began to shake with the effort.

Then the midwife’s voice changed. ”That’s it. I’ve got him. Mayla, look at me. One more push when I tell you, and this time I need everything you’ve got left. Come on. You’re almost there.”

Mayla gave everything she had, and the room went quiet.

Trafalgar’s heart stopped somewhere behind his ribs. The midwife’s back was to him and he couldn’t see past her, and nobody in that room was saying anything at all. He heard cloth. He heard the healer move. He heard his own blood in his ears and Mayla saying, ”Why isn’t he crying? Trafalgar, why isn’t he crying?” and not finishing it.

The quiet went on, and it went on far too long, long enough for a whole life to happen in it, long enough that Trafalgar was already standing up without any idea what he thought he was going to do.

Then a small, thin, furious wail cut through the room, and kept going.