Fey 02 - Changeling (33 page)

Pity the children weren't worth defending.

The thought made him freeze.
 
If she had known he thought that, she would drag him into Sebastian's rooms even more often.
 
Sebastian.
 
He had seemed so bright-eyed and eager when he was born.
 
Nicholas had never seen a new-born baby with such alert features.
 
He watched everything, and everyone.
 
The nurse said that new borns never tracked as if they could see.
 
It took time for them to learn to control their vision.

Not Sebastian.

Then after the naming, the tracking ceased.
 
He stopped fussing, stopped crying, didn't seem to recognize Jewel or the nurse when he had seemed to recognize them before.
 
Nicholas hadn't let Matthias Bless the boy with holy water, but sometimes he wondered if Matthias hadn't snuck into the nursery during the night and done something.

The child seemed wholly different after he was named than he had when he was born.

Names have to have meaning, Nicholas.
 
They are the secret to power.

He had insisted on naming the boy Sebastian.
 
There was an order for naming in Nicholas's line, and Nicholas's first-born had to be a Sebastian.
 
Nicholas had lied to Jewel, claiming that previous Sebastians had been great warriors.
 
In truth, they had been nothing more than mediocre kings.

For all his knowing talk in the kitchen the night before, he still did not know or understand Fey. When Jewel had tried to explain her Vision to him, she had radiated a kind of joy.
 
She believed that her Vision showed that they would have a daughter, and the daughter would be what she had promised about their children.

She had never had a Vision about Sebastian.
 
After it had become clear that Sebastian would never be like other children, she had confessed she believed that to be the reason she hadn't Seen him.
 
She should have ended the pregnancy there.

The thought of ending a pregnancy had shocked Nicholas then.
 
He understood it now.
 
He didn't want another child like Sebastian.
 
What he hadn't admitted to anyone was that he saw this second baby as a test.
 
If this child were also deformed, he and Jewel would stop having children altogether.

If the Fey had ways of ending a pregnancy, they probably had ways of preventing one.

Then he would deal with the dynastic concerns on his own.
 
His father had had only one child.
 
Nicholas would have two, but those two might not be the right two.

The portrait of Jewel looked fuzzy.
 
He blinked, wiped his eyes, and the edges cleared.
 
Perhaps Lord Stowe had been right that day so long ago, the day that Nicholas had agreed to Jewel's offer of marriage.
 
Perhaps he had been agreed because he lusted after her.
 
But lust didn't feel like this.
 
He felt lust for that serving girl --just touching her aroused him.
 
But he knew that if he slept with her, the lust would fade, and he would be disgusted with himself.

What he felt for Jewel had never faded.
 
It had become richer, despite the troubles.
 
He valued all of his time with her, not just the sexual time.
 
And whenever anyone spoke against Jewel, Nicholas defended her.

She had been well named.
 
He treasured her above all else.

She would be waiting for him.
 
The entire Kingdom would be waiting for him.

He turned and walked back toward her suite.
 
Outside the nursery, he paused.
 
No sounds came from it at all.
 
He had visited many nurseries of the peerage, and they were never quiet unless the child slept.
 
Babies laughed and cried.
 
Children yelled, screamed and talked constantly.
 

Sebastian rarely talked.
 
He never cried.
 
And he only smiled for Jewel.

Nicholas pushed the door open.
 
Heat billowed out of the room.
 
Jewel always kept it too hot.
 
The nurse was sitting beside the fire, stitching a tapestry.
  
Sebastian sat on his rug, surrounded by blocks.
 
He held one in his hand and stared at it.

Nicholas slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
 
Sebastian didn't turn at the sound, but the nurse did.
 
She smiled at Nicholas in acknowledgment of him, then went back to her stitching.
 
The crackle of the fire, and
 
whisper of thread pulling through canvas were the only sounds in the room.

Nicholas couldn't even hear his son breathing.

The boy looked normal.
 
He had Jewel's dark hair and upswept eyebrows, but his face was all Nicholas's.
 
The stamp of the Roca, his father had called it, passed from generation to generation.
 
The boy's body was square and solid, hard as a rock, even when he was a baby.
 
Nicholas had thought that if the boy's baby fat felt like muscle, he would be stronger than any man when he got older.
 
But the boy would never get a chance to prove his strength.
 
He rarely did anything without someone telling him to.

"How long has he been holding the block?" Nicholas asked.

"Lor," the nurse said.
 
"I dinna notice.
 
Sebastian, love, set the block down and rest yer hand."

Slowly the boy looked to his father, as if he had just heard Nicholas's voice.
 
Nicholas made himself smile at Sebastian, but the boy did not smile back.
 
Instead he gazed at Nicholas with intent gray eyes.
 
Nicholas had no idea where the gray had come from.
 
His eyes were
 
blue and Jewel's were black.
 
She once said that perhaps their combined colors gave Sebastian his unique features.

Sebastian turned his head toward the nurse.
 
Then, carefully, he placed the block on the rug.
 
He let his hand fall on his thigh, and then he didn't move.

"Have you tried playing with him?" Nicholas asked.

"Sire, tis the Mistresses orders.
 
Twice a day, after we break fast, and afore dinner.
 
Tis hard, too.
 
Ye see how the boy moves.
 
He dinna understand play."

Nicholas had heard that very sentence from Jewel, but didn't understand it himself.
 
How could a child not understand play?
 
It was as if the boy were just a shell with nothing inside.
 
Nicholas had spoken to the healers.
 
They had never seen anything like it, and they blamed Jewel.

They blamed him too, for bringing her to the palace, but they never said so.

They didn't dare.

He should have listened to his father.
 
He should have believed the older council.
 
But his father had botched the war, had caused thousands of deaths by not taking action, and had threatened his own life.
 
Nicholas had not believed in his father's wisdom.

Nicholas had thought that if he brought a Fey into the family, the rest of the nation would follow.

He had thought the wedding would be enough.
 
Jewel had seen that it would take more work, but she became involved in the pregnancy, the pregnancy they needed to cement the relationship and the truce, and she had lost her focus.
 
She regained it after Sebastian was born, but lost her credibility with the palace staff.
 
They thought that Sebastian was proof the marriage should not have been.
 

Nicholas's father ordered that no one except the nursing staff see Sebastian, but it was too late.
 
Those that had seen him spread the news out of the palace.
 
The fact that no one saw the boy at all led people to believe he was some kind of monster, that he looked odd.
 
Finally, Nicholas and Jewel brought him to one of the public speeches so that people would see what a beautiful boy he was.

Beautiful, but empty.

Sebastian hadn't moved since the nurse told him to put the block down.
 
Nicholas knelt beside his son.
 
The boy raised his head.
 
He didn't even have any curiosity.
 
The movement was a reflex, like setting down the block, something he had been taught to do.

Nicholas stared into the boy's gray eyes.
 
They were like flat
 
shiny pebbles.
 
"Sebastian," Nicholas whispered, hoping somehow that the sound of his name would bring out the promise of the boy's first week.
 

The boy continued to stare at him.
 
Nicholas touched the boy's face, felt that smooth hard skin.
 
Jewel's stomach felt like that now as the skin stretched tight over the child inside her.
 

A girl.
 
Even if the child were normal, a girl would count against them.
 
A girl could not take her brother's place, no matter what Jewel said.
 
The Fey might accept a female ruler, but the Islanders never would.
 
The only thing they could hope for was another son.
 
Or, if they could not have that, then that Nicholas lived until his grandchildren were born.

That seemed very unlikely.
 
He could die the next day.
 
His father's death had shown him how vulnerable they all were.
 
He had thought his father would live to be older than the 50th Rocaan.
 
Instead he died at the same age as the current Rocaan, a young man by the standards of Blue Isle.
 
A very young man according to the Fey.

Nicholas let go of his son's cheek.
 
The boy brought up his own hand, and caressed Nicholas's cheek.
 
The boy's hand was cool, but Nicholas leaned into it.
 
His breath caught.
 
Sebastian had never willingly touched him before.

So Jewel was right.
 
There was change.
 
It was just slow.
 

Sebastian let go of Nicholas's cheek in the same way that Nicholas had done.
 
He did learn.
 
And he could mimic.
 
Maybe there was hope.
 
Sebastian would never be the brains, but he might be the voice for his sister or his mother if the need be.

Nicholas's father was wrong.
 
Hiding Sebastian was the worst thing they could do.

"Nurse," Nicholas said softly so that he wouldn't startle his son.
 
"Dress Sebastian for the coronation.
 
Then get yourself ready.
 
We will have him sit near the peers."

The nurse set down her tapestry.
 
"The Mistress said — "

"I don't care what the Mistress said.
 
I want my son in that Hall."

"Yessir."
 
She bobbed her head as she spoke to him, and that made him feel like a child himself.

"Do not let anyone else hold him.
 
Do not let anyone touch him.
 
Do not sit next to anyone.
 
Is that clear?"

"Yessir."

"And bring him right back up here after the ceremony.
 
Do not let his grandfather near him."