Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 44088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44088 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 147(@300wpm)
Crrrrrreeakkkk….
The door complains as it opens. It’s Kail, returning with a pot of fish paste for the baby, and some supplies for us. He does not appear to be covered in even a speck of blood, which heartens me.
He places arm loads of things onto the table.
“Wow, all that?”
“I got some cloth material, some soap, cups with lids so they don’t spill, changes of clothes…”
He got everything the baby needs, including so many things I didn’t even think about needing.
“How did…”
The question dies on my tongue because I know how he knew. He was a father once.
“Thank you,” I say.
“I also found this.” He slaps the station paper down on top of the pile of supplies. These rags are half-heresy, half-rumor, and an extra undetermined percentage of terribly important local information found nowhere else.
“Anything useful?”
“Yes.”
He starts to strip. I know the disguise I painted him with several days ago is starting to get uncomfortable. He’s no doubt itchy under all that paint.
There is a bath in the room, which is nice because it means we can stay together. I was nervous while he was away. I tried to push my concerns to the back of my brain, but they remained. Now he’s back with me, and all is well.
He runs the bath, water coming out immediately hot. What a luxury. I think about joining him, but not yet. Not until the paint and the last scraps of blood are gone. He cleaned most of it off with a towel before we left the Persinian ship, but I can still see where it marks his skin with flecks of the innocent. I may share his sins, but I will not bathe in them.
I pick up the paper, but my eyes aren’t on the words. They’re on the absolute magnificence of his body. The green skin of his natural, undisguised flesh hidden beneath his clothes was never decorated.
“You’re supposed to be reading,” he says, giving me a sly grin.
“I know, but you’re so distracting.”
Steam rises from the bath, obscuring him slightly, but not nearly enough to stop me being hungry for him. I watch as he steps into the bath, picking up a thick bar of soap. He bought a lot of cleaning supplies. That makes me suspect that having a baby is a fairly filthy affair.
I wait until he settles into the bath and is obscured by the increasingly soapy water, then I manage to look at the paper.
“Sixty percent off Meaty Treaties?” I read off the paper. “Do we need meaty treaties?”
“Other side of the paper,” he says, extending a big green foot out of the bath.
I turn the paper over and see the headline he intended me to read.
PERSINIAN ROYAL COURT IN CHAOS
There is a picture of the same baby sleeping next to me being held by a beautiful Persinian woman in elegant robes and a crown. She is Queen Alan of Persinia, and they are both being embraced by the large King Roland. I know this because the caption reads: The royal family in happier times, Queen Alan, King Roland, and heir to the throne, Prince Porthos.
“Prince Porthos, infant son of the King and Queen of Persinia,” I paraphrase aloud. “Well, that tells us who he is. We have to take him to his home or give him to someone close enough to the royal house of Persinia to be trusted to deliver him.”
Kail reaches out of the bath and puts his hand on my shoulder in a comforting manner. “Don’t be sad. I will get you another.”
“Another what?”
“Another baby.”
“Please don’t,” I say. “Our lifestyle is not conducive to infants, and we really need a moratorium on parent killing.”
“May I see the article again?”
I push it over to him, hiding the fact that there are tears in my eyes. I know I can’t keep the baby, but everything in me, everything good, wants to. It feels like the baby unlocks the last good part of me, the only part that hasn’t been fucked up and twisted around from a lifetime of lies.
He looks at it and grunts.
“We’re not giving that baby back.”
“We have to…”
Kail slips the article back to me.
“Keep reading,” he says. “According to this, the prince is already dead, killed along with his parents. His cousin, Rochefort, has sadly taken the throne.”
“So… wait… what?”
“So that baby was being spirited away in the wake of a coup. Maybe to save his life. It seems likely to me that this baby is doing the same thing we are. Seeking a new life in the wake of the ruins of the old one.”
I read the article, not just the words, but what’s between the lines. Kail is right. It is very clear in the careful wording of the article that the royal family has been assassinated.
“Politics,” I sigh, putting the paper down. “It’s not fair that a baby had to deal with that. His poor parents.”