The Child Within

Kieran heard the word pregnant the way a man hears the first crack of a river ice.

It did not strike him all at once. It came in pieces. First the sound of it, which meant nothing, a collection of syllables in a voice he loved. Then the shape, which was a small round hollow in his chest, like the hole left by a tooth. Then, last and worst, the meaning, which rose through him slowly from the soles of his feet, cold and clear and absolutely enormous, until it filled his skull like water in a bottle.

A child.

He was on his hands and knees on the black glass. He did not remember falling. He could feel blood in his mouth, and a stab in his side where the ribs had gone, and the pillars humming overhead. None of it mattered. He was looking at the scratched surface of the platform, an inch from his face, and he was thinking, with perfect, idiotic clarity: I did not give her a dog.

I had a house built. I had a dog bought. I did not give her anything that matters.

"Kieran," said Solaia, hoarsely.

He raised his head.

She hung in the chains above him, white and shaking, with the blood of her bitten lip on her chin and her hair plastered to her forehead. Her eyes were violet at the rim, and the whites were red. She had never looked so small. She had never looked so entirely like herself. She was smiling at him, a tiny, awful, brave little smile, as though she had brought him a present and was afraid he would not like it.

"Don't," she said. "Don't look like that."

"I am so sorry."

"I know."

"I did not know. I swear it. If I had known—"

"I know." She swallowed. "It's all right."

"It is not all right!"

It tore out of him. He had not known he could shout. He hauled himself to his knees, clutching his side, and the scream went up into the haze and rattled among the pillars. "It is not all right! You are in chains! There is a child in your body, and I have chained you to a pillar of bone, and I am going to kill—"

"Emperor," said the Pontiff gently.

…

The voice came down the column like oil down a wall.

It had changed. It was no longer dreamy, no longer drunk. It was crisp and warm and quite sane, and it carried a note he had not heard before: the quiet delight of a craftsman who has just been given a better material than he had hoped for. Kieran looked up. The old man sat in his throne of bone, a hundred feet above, with the cables running into his back like tubes into a patient. The silver mask had split from brow to chin. Through the crack, he could see the light. He could not see a face.

"I must thank you," said the Pontiff. "Both of you. I had not dared to hope."

"You knew."

"I suspected. A little. I saw the signs in the spring." The voice was kind. "The tiredness. The hunger. The dreams. I wondered if the Veil might have held. It is very unusual, to conceive under a Veil. It is hardly ever done. The child is hidden along with the mother." A soft pause. "That is why my cables could not find it. It slept beneath the fire, and I took the fire, and the child was left behind."

"Then it is safe."

"Quite safe. For the moment."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," said the Pontiff, "that I have taken a third of what I came for. The rest is in the child."

The silence was very cold.

"You see, the fire is only the beginning," said the old man. "It is a gift of the blood. It passes down. The Queen had it from her mother, and her mother from hers, and each in turn was a little stronger. But a woman's fire is a river. It runs, and it ends. A child's is a spring." The voice dropped, almost to a whisper. "A child of the Queen and the Marshal's line, born under the Veil, in the shadow of the Debt. A child who carries the Gift of Night in one hand and the White Fire in the other. Do you understand what such a creature would be?"

Kieran did not answer.

"It would be the first of a new age. The first being in the history of the world to hold both. Light and dark. Debt and credit. The scales, balanced. A key that opens every lock."

"You want it."

"I need it." There was a note of such naked longing in the old voice that Kieran felt his skin crawl. "Do you know what it is to be old? To outlive everything? I have buried every man I loved. I have watched the world go gray. I have held up this age on my shoulders for five thousand years, and I am so very tired, and the Seat is the only rest I have left. But it is not enough. The fire will fade. In a thousand years, in ten, it will run dry."

"And the child would not."

"The child would feed it forever."

Solaia made a sound in her throat.

It was low, and dreadful, and almost animal. Kieran turned. She was straining against the chains, every tendon in her wrists standing out like cords, and her eyes had gone wholly violet. A tremor was passing through the column behind her. A faint crackle ran along the silver cables.

"You will not touch it," she said.

"Child, I do not intend to hurt it."

"You'll not touch my child."

"Hush." The voice was soothing. "Hush, child. I am not a monster. I wish only a little of its fire. A thread. A taste. It will grow up quite normally. It will never know. It will be a sweet, healthy, ordinary little thing, with its father's eyes." A pause. "And you will be there. In the house on the cape. I have the plans. I had them drawn myself."

Kieran's blood ran cold.

"The house," he said.

"Of course. Did you think it was your idea?" The mask tilted. "The dog was a nice touch, I thought. You always did have a soft heart."

…

He did not remember standing.

He remembered that he was on his feet, and that the pain in his ribs had become a distant thing, a kind of music. He remembered that his hands were open. The black veins had risen to his wrists again, and his fingers were trembling, and he could feel the Hollow in him like a tide at the full, ready to break. He remembered thinking, with a strange calm: he has been in my head. He has been in my head for months. He has been choosing my thoughts, and I have been thinking them.

"Kieran," said Solaia. "Don't."

"He used me."

"I know. Wait—"

"He made me love it." The words came thick and slow. "The house. The little white dog. I thought it was my own. I thought it was my tenderness. I dreamed it for three months, and he was there." He turned his face upward. "You let me think I was being merciful."

"I let you think what you needed to," said the Pontiff. "It is not the same as lying."

"It is worse."

"Perhaps." The old man sounded unconcerned. "But it was effective. Let us not be childish about it, my son. You have been a tool. You have been a very fine one. But there is no use in resenting a hammer." The voice gentled. "Now. The hour grows late. I shall ask you once, politely, to go back to the lever, and put your hand on it, and finish what you began."

"No."

"Think of her. Think of the child."

"I am thinking of them."

"If you refuse, I shall be forced to take it by other means. And I assure you, they are not gentle." The staff, in his lap, tapped once on the bone. "There is a bolt in the cables for the child alone. A fine one. It does not need the mother's consent. Do not make me use it."

Kieran stood very still.

The wind had risen. The pillars sang. He could hear, below him, a hundred thousand people breathing. He could hear the Ashborn horns, far away on the plain, low and ragged and desolate. He could hear his own heart, which had been so loud, so strong, and so terribly wrong for so long. And under it, faint and small and utterly clear, he heard something else.

Forgive me, Sol.

The page.

He had not thought of it in an hour. It lay in his coat, against his ribs, folded small, with its four lines in the Marshal's trembling hand. He put his hand to his chest. He felt it there, thin and dry and sharp.

The blood of the line. The whole of it. It is the only way the Veil can be torn from her without her dying.

I pray he will be a man who loves her.

"Oh," said Kieran softly.

He had been so stupid.

He had read it, in the dead of night, in the Archive, and he had thought: the coin. He had thought: I will be spent. He had gone through the whole winter with a hollow certainty, a quiet sick dread, because he had understood the last page as a sentence. A bill. A thing that was owed to him and would be taken by force. He had spent months running from it. He had built a fortress to avoid it.

But it was not a sentence. It was a key.

It was the only door out.

He laughed.

It was a small sound, quite quiet. But it stopped the old man in his chair. The silver mask turned. The cracked face looked down, and for the first time in five thousand years, Kieran heard the Pontiff draw breath in uncertainty.

"What amuses you?" he said.

"You said you had selected me."

"I did."

"Out of all the men of my line."

"Yes."

"Because I would love her enough." Kieran wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It came away red. "You were right. I would. But you made a mistake, Holy Father. You forgot what it was that Aldren wrote."

"I wrote it."

"Then you should have read it more carefully."

He reached into his coat.

The page was soft with handling, its creases worn to threads. He did not open it. He did not need to. He drew it out and held it in the wind for a moment, a tiny square of paper, and let the light touch it. Then he opened his other hand, palm up, and drew the dagger from his belt.

"What are you doing?" said the Pontiff.

"Paying the Debt."

"Kieran!" It was Solaia's voice, ragged with terror. "Kieran, no—"

"It is the only coin she will accept," he said. His voice was perfectly calm. "I am sorry, love. I should have known it at the beginning. I should have trusted you with it." He smiled at her across the platform, and it was the old crooked smile, the one from the tower. "I told you I was not very good at this."

He drew the blade across his wrist.

It did not hurt. That was the surprise. It was only a thin bright line, and then a bead of red, and then a rope. It ran down his palm and dripped from his fingers onto the black glass, and where it fell the stone hissed.

"Stop him!" cried the Pontiff.

The acolytes lunged. The Black Guard, on the stair, hesitated. Crane's voice rose in a bellow. But Kieran was already moving, across the platform, with his bleeding hand held out before him, and in three strides he had reached the foot of the column.

He knelt.

He pressed his palm flat against the iron ring.

"I, Kieran, last of the house of Aldren," he said, in a ringing voice that carried to the farthest ramp, "heir of the Marshal's oath, bearer of the Gift of Night, of my own free will and with my whole heart, do pay the Debt of my blood to the Queen of the Sky. Take it. Take all of it. And give her back what is hers."

The ring gave a low, shuddering note.

The column cracked.

It began at the base, a single line, thin as a hair. It ran up the black stone in a sudden jagged streak. From the crack there poured a light that was not red, nor white, but a deep burning violet-black, the color of a bruise, the color of the space between stars. It lit the faces of the priests. It lit the pillars and the cables and the awestruck crowd. It lit the woman in the chains, who was staring at him with her mouth open and her eyes wide and terrible.

"No!" shrieked the Pontiff. It was the first time his voice had broken. "Fool! Fool! You will undo it all!"

"Yes," said Kieran.

He looked up at her, through the light.

"I love you," he said, and the world went dark.