Malcolm sees blood
Malcolm silently asked the Lord why it was that just when a man’s firstborn got to sleeping till dawn, his secondborn came along. He was beginning to fear that he would have to do as his father had done in the early days of his marriage: go to war frequently just for the chance to get a full night’s sleep.
Fortunately he was only a father and not a mother, and when the baby cried he was permitted to squint his eyes against the moonlight and try to go back to sleep.
But it did not sound like the baby crying. It sounded more like his wife crying – his wife standing before the cradle and crying softly into her hands.
He kicked the blankets away and sat up, panicked.
“Baby! Baby!”
“Malcolm!” she wailed pitifully.
Malcolm crawled off the end of the bed and nearly fell face-first into the cradle in his haste to see what was inside.
There was nothing but a perfect, sleepily blinking baby.
“What’s the matter with her?” he pleaded, more terrified than ever now that he knew it was an ailment fathers could not see.
Iylaine gently lifted her out of the cradle. Her hands were steady but her voice quivered. “I don’t know… She seems fine…”
He spoke angrily to hide his fear from her. “Why the devil are you crying, then?”
“I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I just woke up… I just knew something was wrong…”
“Duncan!”
Malcolm was gone and back before Iylaine had the time to panic.
“He’s sleeping like Sir Sigefrith’s guard,” he chuckled. “Listen here, Baby. Did you wake this baby up with your greeting and carrying on?”
“I don’t know…”
“What do you think, Maud? Is silly Mama a little bit backwards tonight? Crying and waking the baby?”
“It’s Vash!” Iylaine sobbed.
Malcolm froze.
“It’s Vash! It’s Vash! Oh, God!”
“Baby…”
“It’s Vash! He’s gone! He’s dead!”
“Baby, Baby… Give me this baby, before you drop her.”
As soon as he took Maud, Iylaine brought her fists up to her mouth and bit down on her knuckles, as if she meant to hold back a scream.
“Baby…”
She spun away from him and hurled herself against the wall, cracking her forehead against the mirror frame. He thanked the Lord it did not strike the glass, but he felt nothing but unholy anger about everything else. Merely the sound of the name was enough to roil his temper these days.
“Baby…”
“He’s gone!”
“How do you know?”
“I know! I can’t feel him any more. I could always feel him! Always! Always!” she shrieked. “And I never knew it till he was gone!”
The gouges her teeth had left on the backs of her hands were beginning to fill with blood. He watched them bleed for a moment with a sick fascination, as he did lately whenever she cut or scratched herself and bled. Perhaps he would have done so even if she had smashed the mirror with her face.
He always imagined that he knew how to make Vash’s blood come out of her, and leave his – or even to leave her only with her own, so that she could simply love him as any woman loved a man.
Then he remembered what he was doing there, and he roused himself to speak.
“Whisht, Baby, whisht, Baby… Calm yourself…”
He tried to comfort her because he loved her and could not bear to see her suffering. Still, he could not help but wonder whether she would know it if he died somewhere far away – whether she would even care enough to cry.
