Chapter 57: Desperation

Chapter 57: Chapter 57: Desperation

Allan looked at the countess. "May I?"

She nodded.

He lifted the infant slowly, carefully. For a moment he wondered if it was his own strength, or if babies were simply this slight. No. That wasn’t it. She had no weight at all.

"Why is she so..."

He meant to say light, but the word never made it out. The weight arrived first, sudden and dense. His elbows took the load before his mind did, and he shifted his stance without meaning to. He looked down at her, a little thrown. She lay heavy and still in his arms. Through the blanket, heat pressed against his palms, far too much for a child. That metallic smell was back.

Then he noticed the cradle. The oak rail on the near side had a crack running along it, bound with a strip of linen.

Dark, overlapping lines surfaced beneath the skin of her forearm and lingered for a few seconds. When he tilted her toward the window they vanished. He tilted her back, slowly, and they returned, fainter. From one angle it looked like a birthmark. From the other, the lines were too orderly. They ran in rows, one beside another, as if something had been drawing them under her skin.

He recognized it. That was the problem.

He kept his voice flat. "Show me where it starts."

Mary stood a few steps off with her hands folded at her waist, her nails digging into her own fingers. "The left arm, wrist to elbow. The healers called it a mark of birth."

"When did it darken?"

"In the third week. Before that it was pale."

"I see." He touched it lightly. "Is it warmer than the skin around it?"

"Yes." She hesitated. "The wet nurse stopped coming. She said her hands hurt afterward."

Allan pressed two fingers beside the mark. The skin under them was hot. The child’s face didn’t change, but her fist closed around his collar and the seam gave with a soft rip.

"How many healers have seen this?"

"Eleven."

"And they all said birthmark."

"They said it very quickly, Lord Oakwood. None of them looked longer than it takes to say a prayer." Her mouth tightened. "I noticed that. I just didn’t know what it meant."

He laid the child back in the cradle, and it took a moment before his arms would straighten. "I need to speak with you alone."

Mary’s face changed before he’d finished the sentence.

"Is it something serious?" She was already crossing to the door herself, telling the guards to wait at the end of the corridor. Once the latch dropped, all that reached them from the hallway was the faint scrape of boots retreating. She didn’t come back to her place. She stayed by the door.

"The healers are wrong," Allan said.

"No. They were certain."

"I can’t make you believe me. But I’m telling you anyway."

Mary gripped her own knuckles. Her hands trembled.

"Then what is it? Tell me."

He didn’t answer.

"Lord Oakwood. What is wrong with my daughter? Tell me."

"It..." He cleared his throat. "It isn’t an illness."

"Not an illness? But she’s sick, Lord Oakwood. What do you mean?"

"It is... part of her constitution."

"Please. Just say it plainly. Can my daughter be cured or not?"

"No."

Mary’s lips shook. She turned her face toward the door so he couldn’t see it, and for a moment she stood perfectly still, taking it in. "Then what is happening to her? If it’s not sickness, what is it? There must be something. Anything we can do."

"It’s called Dragon Syndrome."

Mary said nothing at first. Then, quietly: "I’ve heard that once. In a corridor. One physician said it to another, and stopped when he saw me."

Allan nodded. "It starts in the body. Weight, heat, the pattern under the skin. You’ve already seen all three."

"And then?"

"Then it sets. The traits lock into flesh and bone. After that she won’t pass for human. A cloak won’t hide it. Neither will keeping her inside." He glanced at the cracked rail. Mary followed his eyes. Her expression changed.

"And after that?" Her eyes were wet now.

"If she’s guided, she becomes something armies would follow." He stopped. "If she isn’t, people die."

Mary’s hands came apart at her waist. "Of the cases on record, how many were allowed to reach adulthood? You must know, Lord Oakwood."

Allan was silent for a moment. He already knew the answer. Saying it was another matter.

"None."

"I see." She walked to the window and stood with her back to him. Down in the courtyard a servant crossed with a pail. She watched him all the way to the stable door.

"The healers never lied to me," she said, without turning. "More than once, quietly, they told me that if scales appeared, I was to report the child to the Imperial office. I thought they were being careful. They were being kind." She turned around. Her face was very pale. "For days I’ve watched strangers look at my daughter and pretend not to know what they were looking for."

She crossed to the cradle. Her sleeve shifted, and a thin knife slid into her palm.

Her hand was steady. Allan saw where she was looking and understood. She leaned over the child, whispered something too low for him to hear, and lowered the blade.

"What are you doing?" Allan’s body moved before the thought did. His hand closed around her wrist so hard that the point stopped a finger’s width from the infant’s throat. Mary pulled against him, and her voice stayed level.

"I’m saving her."

"Put it down, Lady Mary!"

"Let go of me."

He didn’t. She pulled again. This time her voice cracked, and whatever formality remained in it disappeared.

"They burned them. Every last one. Burned them, hanged them in the yard, before they ever reached a second year. I’ve read the ledgers. I sent for them. They don’t treat it. They don’t study it. They just get rid of it." Her breath tore. Tears ran down her face. "If it has to be done, let it be my hand and not a stranger’s. Let her be asleep."

Her knees gave out.

"Let it be quick. Do you understand me? Let it be quick."

The knife clattered to the floor. He had her by the arms now, easing her down. She made a sound that reminded him of something from childhood, something he couldn’t quite place.

Then the Investment System jolted awake, hard enough that his vision stuttered.

[Target: Countess Mary and her house.]

[Projected return: territory, soldiers, political standing, the child’s full power. Fate deviation: deep.]

[Risk: highest recorded.]

Territory. Soldiers. Political standing. Even the child’s future. The System had reduced all of it to numbers. His stomach turned. He read it to the end anyway, because the numbers were real.

His finger trembled once, then stopped. He accepted. There had been no hesitation.

"Lady Mary..."

She didn’t reply. She kept her face down, tears dripping onto the carpet. He let out a breath and knelt to bring himself level with her.

"I’ll take responsibility for her. The Empire doesn’t get her."

She looked up. "You’ll take responsibility?"

Allan nodded.

Mary got to her feet and scrubbed the tears away with her sleeve. She came back with papers.

"If you can keep her safe. If you can make the impossible possible, Lord Allan, then everything is yours. Everything. I don’t care."

He named what he needed, and she agreed to every term. The child would live. Mary would keep him informed. And she would tell no one, not the healers, not even her own steward.

"I’ll ask once more. Are you sure?"

She nodded again, without a flicker of regret.

"Then it’s done."

He poured her a cup of water from the stand and waited until her hands were steady around it before he asked the other thing.

They sat together on the sofa, her head against his shoulder. For a couple of minutes neither of them spoke, and some color crept back into her face. Once she’d stopped shaking, Allan asked the question he’d been holding back.

"Why is the manor still crawling with healers and priests, if they already know?"

"You don’t know?"

Allan shook his head.

"Ah. I forgot you’re only a baron." She spoke in short sentences now. "The Emperor issued a decree. Cases are appearing in other houses. Many of them, and too fast. Every family of earldom rank or higher has been ordered to find a cure by any means. The Crown is shuffling healers around like soldiers." She wiped her mouth. "It wants results, not reasons."

Allan’s thumb moved over the hilt at his side as he thought. One child was a tragedy. Several, all at once, in several houses, looked more like an opportunity.

If I had the means to heal them all...

The thought hit him hard. Whatever he had planned for the next few years had just become irrelevant.

Only then did he notice the guards outside had gone quiet. The candle on the sill leaned toward the door, though nothing in the room had moved.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Boots on stone. One set, moving fast.

"My lady. Countess Mary." The voice was a guard’s, and he sounded hurried.

The door opened with no knock and no permission.

The man who walked in wasn’t wearing Mary’s colors. The insignia on his chest was the Duke’s. He saw Allan and gave a small bow.

"Lord Duke awaits you."