4 Interlude: Spoiled

"Just a little further, my lady! He has your hair, I can already see it!"

The lady screeched, and even in a space a large as her bedchambers, the sound was earpiercing. Her midwife's assistant had long since retracted her hand for her to squeeze -- she'd ground the bones together until the woman could barely speak -- so she had only her blood-soaked bedsheets to hold. And hold she did, until her fingernails sank into the wet fabric and ripped it apart.

"Just cut the damn thing out!" she screamed. "I don't want it! I don't want it!"

The midwife and her assistant exchanged a nervous look.

"Shhh, my lady. It's only a matter of time now. It'll be over before you know it," the midwife said. The mistress's hips spasmed in response, drawing a fresh scream from her, this one less sharp and more prolonged.

The portly old woman seized the chance to whisper to her assistant.

"Fetch Lord Hayle. The baby will be along any minute now, and I've much to say to him about the birth."

Her assistant nodded and scurried off, perhaps a bit too eager to leave the room. The ideal of birth and its reality often differed more than apprentice midwives expected; the poor girl would have to become used to women hurling abuse at everyone from their husband to their child to the Master itself, or she would get nowhere in this profession.

Lady Hayle's scream died down at long last, replaced by shallow breathing and a string of muttered curses that would curdle milk.

"Let the barbarians take the child," she said. "Let them slake his greed. I'll not have a son who looks at our halls with hate."

This was the sort of nonsense the midwife would have to have a word with her husband about. She'd been spouting it all through her labor, and it didn't bode well for her health in the early days of motherhood. Midwives heard too many tales of women who slit their wrists or drowned themselves after birth; even worse, some chose to take their child with them. If Grey Haven wanted its heir, she suspected Lord Hayle would have to arrange a close watch on his wife.

The midwife opened her mouth to soothe her yet again, but in that moment, Lady Hayle bucked, screamed, and the wrinkled form of a newborn babe slid into her hands.

A girl. Blast. The lord had wanted a boy.

Her apprentice was still out of the room, so she grabbed the swaddling cloth, flipped the baby over, and gave her a sharp smack on the rump. She was her mother's daughter, alright. She let out a shriek to rival the pains of labor.

"It's a girl, my lady. A beautiful, healthy little girl," the midwife cooed, wrapping the screaming infant and holding her to her chest. Lady Hayle didn't seem to hear. She'd collapsed back against her pillows, eyes fluttering open and shut. It had been a hard labor, even without bizarre accusations. She'd keep hold of the babe until --

"Give her to me." Lady Hayle's voice hissed out of her, barely a breath. "Let me see her face."

The interruption nearly gave her a heart attack, but the midwife complied, handing the baby to her mother.

Now, the midwife had had a long, storied career. One couldn't deliver children for a living and walk away without a few tales. Mothers who barely squeaked during birth, only to pass on after. Mothers who demanded their child taken out of their sight. Mothers who should have died, but lived on through sheer strength of will, desperate to hang on for the babe inside them.

Lady Hayle was none of these mothers.

Lady Hayle looked at her daughter with such contempt that the midwife almost seized her back where she stood.

"Welcome to Corona, little one," she said with dripping sarcasm. "You wanted the Sunspire, didn't you? That's alright. My husband wanted a son. And I wanted to deliver you after the queen, so I wouldn't birth an uppity bitch with her eyes on the high throne."

With a trembling hand, she traced a shape on the baby's head in her own birthing blood. X X.

"Are you sleeping somewhere on the moon? Did you think that would get you what you want? How much did you pay?" she asked. "Will you throw yourself into the ocean to escape the debt?"

Her suspicions were confirmed at last. The lady had gone mad.

The midwife lunged forward to wrench the little babe from her arms, but she only clung tighter, her voice soaring louder and breaking.

"You will not abandon this family. If I have to chain you to the walls of the dungeon, you will stay with us and do your duty," she screamed. "Do you hear me? You lost, and you're stuck here, until the barbarians come to slit out throats!"

The midwife no longer had a choice. She grabbed an unused knife from the bedside table and stabbed at Lady Hayle's hand, the blade sinking deep into the flesh between her bones. Only then did Lady Hayle let go, her screams becoming more pained than angry, then more desperate than pained.

Wiping the strange symbol off the baby's forehead with a clean cloth, the midwife didn't know anything more was amiss until the lady started choking.