Post-partum
a conversation as their positions demand
Mithrigil Galtirglin
"So, you're lucky your boy was the second son," Al-Cid said, as he stared absently at the canopy over their bed, hands splayed under his head and tangled in his rampant nearly-black curls. His accent, a touch diminished by his covert tone, still held the edge of mockery that had put Ashe off to him at the first, but in eight years of marriage she had come to tell the difference between mocking her and mocking them.
Still aching from the labor three nights ago and dazed from half a week of medicine, Ashe supined over her shrinking and scarred abdomen and wrenched the bedsheets, her swollen breasts feeling bruised even against the gentle fabric. She glanced wearily at her husband, whose gentle smile, ensconced by a black moustache and goatee, was at this time the strangest thing in the world for her to see.
He arched his chest, and his nightgown slid further down the shoulder nearer her, and still he was smiling. "Because if he was the heir," he went on, "then I'd be insulted, and my brother the Emperor of Rozarria would be equally insulted, and then we'd turn insult to injury."
Ashe winced—he was not mocking her, but that struck her cruel—and sighed, tiredly.
The baby was too pale. He had been red upon his birth, as babies are wont, but time and cleanliness had solidified the child's attributes, smoothed out his wrinkles and the shape of its head. His skin was darker than his mother's, but not nearly to the extent of Ashe and Al-Cid's first son, Prince Rasler. The down on the new child's head, once the scraps of placenta had been cleaned off, was fair and thick, and his eyes were slightly hooded and small, the kind of lapis blue that most mothers prayed would never change.
"But he is not the heir," Al-Cid went on. "For once, I am glad of your country's primogeniture."
If Ashe had been less tired, she might have hit him. But she was weary, and he was smiling, and there was no acid in his tone, no woundedness.
They lay there a moment, he on his back, she half on her side facing him across their bed. He had aged gracefully to this point, too vain to do otherwise, and the hollows 'round his eyes stayed strong and firm from all his glasses' protection. Her wedding Al-Cid did not feel like a betrayal to Rasler Nabradia; to Ashe and Al-Cid, marriage had truly been a convenient thing, founded on mature, mutual respect and compatibility. She rebuilt her country for diplomacy and trade; he was an ideal diplomat, eloquent and ingratiating and charming. She would allow no other to rule; he had no designs on ruling, took the title of King-Consort, and often said only half in jest that his love for Ashe was a convenient excuse not to ascend to the Rozarrian throne. She loved freedom; with her, he could be free.
He asked the inevitable question, and she did not dread its coming. "Incidentally, who is the—"
She raised her eyes to him, and reached over to touch his face. Al-Cid tended to sweat, and her finger slid over his forehead and brow, her fingernail glancing off his left ear with a minute hiss.
"Oh," he said, and rolled over to face her. His eyes managed to capture hers before sleep and drugs made her blink, languidly. "Yes, I remember him." When she opened her eyes again, he had not moved, and his voice held a touch of the devious, the sensual. "Good choice."
Her stomach churned a bit, despite his solemnity.
Al-Cid reached over to her and rested his hand upon hers where it pulled at the bedsheets. His body tilted toward her, and his face contorted into one of his falser expressions, and Ashe could not help but wonder if he was, perhaps, slighted. "Have you together decided on a name for the boy?"
"He does not know," the Queen admitted.
"Oh, he does," Al-Cid corrected with a disarming smile. "Your country's notions of monogamy continue to perplex me."
A faint, lazy smile curled at the corner of Ashe's lips, as it did every time they had this conversation. "The child is royal and will be raised here."
"Of course, of course," Al-Cid half-sang, and raised his hand from hers in a defensive gesture of concession. "And I shall love him as my own, as I love anything that you took part in the creation of."
Ashe knew that his words were not meant to sting, but sting they did, and her smile began to fade.
"Call the child after your thrice-honorable uncle," he suggested, "but give him a name as well that would honor his natural father." After a moment, he added, smirking "For we both know of the man's obsession with honor."
"That was uncalled for," the Queen chided, a bit coarsely.
"It is never my intent to be undecorous," Al-Cid again conceded. "My apologies."
The Queen began to drift off to sleep, and held herself tightly in the blankets. This first night in her own bed, after hours of pain, and she felt more powerless than ever.
Her husband made no move to touch her now, for he knew; she cared for him, and respected him, because she knew he had never thought her weak. And that was why he was in this bed and beside this throne, and the father of that child was not.
"Reks," she muttered into the risen down of her pillow. "Reks…Halim…Margrace…Dalmasca."
"As my Lady would have it," Al-Cid said with a cordial bow of his head, and turned onto his back to sleep beside his wife. He closed his eyes, and conjured up the image of the man who'd cuckolded him; perhaps they would sit down and discuss this, when next he paid his tithe of audience to Archadia.
Or perhaps they would not. If his wife's reaction was any indication, the Judge would probably tear himself new scars to have the conversation. Besides, his wife, Dalmasca's desert bloom, was strong enough to take care of that on her own.