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Now and again Liath tried to show interest in the baby, but she would drift off at the exertion of letting it lie on her chest or, worse, break into a wheezing, weak cry because she couldn’t feed it. Then the crying would exhaust her and she would slip into a cold sleep, her hands like ice.
The baby squalled and squalled. Sanglant carried her in a sling against his chest, or on his hip, or settled in a rocking cradle that Heribert had devised, and everywhere he went the servants crowded round, trying to touch Blessing, so wildly curious at this apparition that they neglected their labors and Severus complained peevishly that his bread was burned, his porridge cold, and the blankets left in disarray on his pallet when they ought to have been neatly folded after he rose in the morning.
At Meriam’s suggestion, Sanglant milked the goats, and they tried everything they could, heating the milk and dropping it in her mouth bead by bead, soaking the corner of a cloth in goat’s milk and putting it between her lips, molding a nipple out of sheep’s intestine for her to suck on. But she would only take a minuscule amount before turning her head away. Squalls turned to mewls and mewls to whimpers.
“Ah, well,” said Anne four days after its birth, observing the baby with equanimity. “It will die. That only goes to show that it was never meant to be born.”
He felt the growl slip from him, enough that his Eika dog stood and barked, enough that Anne’s new attendant, the black hound, growled and lunged for him.
“Sit!” said Anne, and the hound sat. She had not yet named it, nor did she seemed inclined to do so. But she only smiled at Sanglant, and it seemed to him that she was mocking him, waiting to see him fall apart in a rage as he watched the life leach out of his precious daughter.
But fear and desperation had healed him somewhat—he hadn’t had nightmares since the day Blessing was born—and now fury banished the old instincts. He set a hand on the head of his dog to calm it and looked Anne straight in the face.
“Do you have so little feeling that you would stand by and let your own granddaughter die?”
“God’s will is unknowable.”
“Then if you have so little love in your heart, think instead of the gold torque you wear at your throat. Don’t you have a responsibility to your kin to keep your lineage alive?”
Now she was far more interested than she had ever been in the child. “What do you mean, Prince Sanglant?”
“Since the day we met, I have wondered to which royal lineage you owe your blood. If I’m right, then it makes no sense to me why you would not make every effort to keep this infant alive. Is it possible that you aren’t Emperor Taillefer’s granddaughter?”
“What makes you think that I am?” she said, but he saw that he had surprised her, and by that reaction he saw that his blow had hit true.
“Who else could you be? You aren’t of Varrish kin because they’re gone except for my aunt Sabella, her daughter Princess Tallia, and her poor, idiot husband who isn’t fit to rule. You’re not of Wendish blood because I know all my kin. All the Salian princesses whether married or unmarried or given to the church were discussed by my father’s council after Queen Sophia died, from the eldest old crone of sixty to the girl of nine, because they wondered if there was one suitable for him to marry. A woman of your age and appearance was never mentioned. In Karrone they dare not wear the gold torque. Nor do the royal houses of the eastern realms decorate themselves in that way. The Alban queens wear armbands, not torques, to show their breeding. I admit you might be Aostan, but according to every rumor the royal house of Aosta was wiped out except for Queen Adelheid.” He smiled a little, thinking that if not for Liath, he might have been bedding Queen Adelheid now. Yet if not for Liath, he would still have been chained to Bloodheart’s throne, a madman. “Who else can you be? St. Radegundis was pregnant when Taillefer died. No one knows what became of the child born to her. But you do.”
She said nothing.
Blessing stirred and whimpered, head turning to the side, rooting at his breast, but he had nothing for her. Ai, God, he was so angry at that moment, feeling the tiny body cupped between forearm and chest that he could have lashed out and strangled this regal woman who regarded him with the cool stare of an empress surveying that which ought to be beneath her notice; ought to be, but is not, because he had piqued her by guessing the truth. He had pierced her smooth shell, and now he knew Liath’s secret.
Ai, Lady! He knew Liath’s secret, and he knew triumph. What was Queen Adelheid’s lineage compared to this? Henry would have to approve of the marriage now. Indeed, Henry surely would welcome this match, his own line bred and sealed with that of the dead Taillefer, greatest emperor the Daisanite world had ever known. If Henry sought for legitimacy beyond brute force to restore the Holy Dariyan Empire, this child was the one who would give it to him.
“Help me save my daughter,” he said, and this time his voice broke. He knew Anne would interpret it as weakness and would seek the soft opening so that she could plunge the dagger in. He understood at that moment as he faced her that she was always and had always been waiting to kill him. She was just more subtle than the rest.
“No,” she said.
“Have you no heart at all?” he demanded. “Were there no bonds of affection in your youth? Ai, Lord, who raised you?”
“A woman named Clothilde.”
“St. Radegundis’ handmaiden.” He recognized the story, although it was not at all clear to him how St. Radegundis’ lost child had managed to create a child in its turn.
“It is true Clothilde acted as Queen Radegundis’ handmaiden, but in all ways and in all her actions she was the loyal servant of Biscop Tallia. She did what had to be done, to face the greater threat. And I will do what has to be done, just as she taught me.
“How does letting this child die aid you in your cause?”
“Because she is your child, Prince Sanglant. She is blood of your blood, and I am sworn to see that your blood never again flourishes on this Earth. They have nurtured their strength out in the aether, where they exist closer to the Chamber of Light, from whence all strength flows. They mean to return to this world and rule it with a hand of iron and with their gruesome sacrifices. They mean to obliterate the Light of the church and blanket the world in the darkness of the Enemy, for they are creatures of the Enemy.”
He shook his head irritably. “Liath once told me that the Lost Ones were born of fire and light, and that if they are tainted by darkness it is only because all things that exist in this world are tainted by darkness. How am I any worse than you?”
“You are their creature, Prince Sanglant,” she said coldly, “and Liath is mine.”
“She is your daughter! Surely she means more to you than just a tool!”
“All of us are only tools, Prince Sanglant, but some of us are agents of God and some are agents of the Enemy. Do not ever believe that a child born of your kind will be welcome on Earth as long as I and my people are here to stop you.”
He had known despair once, and bitterly. He knew it now.
