SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant

The crying went on, thin and outraged, and nobody in that room did anything about it for a good few seconds because they were all listening to it the way you listen to rain after a drought.

”There you are,” the midwife said, and her voice had gone rough. ”That’s it. Let us hear you.”

She worked fast after that. The baby was washed and wrapped and passed to the healer, who put both hands over him and held them there while the light came up on his palms again. Trafalgar watched every second of it from the chair and did not breathe properly until the man finally sat back on his heels.

”He’s very small,” the healer said. ”Smaller than I’d ever like to see, if I’m being honest. For the next few weeks, somebody needs to keep a close eye on him. He’ll need feeding more often than a full-term baby, and this room stays warm day and night. I don’t care if you end up burning half the furniture to manage it.” He rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. ”But his heart’s steady, his colour’s already improving, and you’ve heard the lungs yourself. He’s alive, my lord. Right now, that’s what matters.”

Trafalgar heard the words and could not for a moment do anything with them, and then he went to his wife.

Mayla was grey with exhaustion and shaking with it, and the first thing he did was take the cloth out of the nearest basin, wring it out, and wipe her face and her neck. He pushed the hair back off her forehead. He got the cup to her mouth and made her drink half of it before she tried to talk, and when she finally did the only thing she asked was whether the baby was breathing.

”He’s breathing.” He put his hand around hers. ”And judging by the noise, he’s very unhappy with the way tonight has gone. He’s small, Mayla, but he’s here. You did it.”

”Is he really all right?”

”The healer says we need to watch him closely for a while. Keep him warm, feed him more often, all of that.” Trafalgar squeezed her hand. ”But his heart’s good, he’s breathing on his own, and apparently shouting at everyone is already one of his strengths.”

She laughed, and the laugh turned into a sob, and he held on to her while she got through both of them.

The midwife brought the bundle over a few minutes later and put him into Trafalgar’s arms without asking whether he wanted to try, which was probably the only way it was ever going to happen. He took the weight and immediately understood he’d braced for something heavier. There was nothing to him at all. A red, wrinkled, furious little face, both eyes screwed shut, one fist out of the blanket and shaking at the world.

Trafalgar stood there in the middle of that hot room holding two months of early and could not make a single sound. He carried him to the window.

Outside, it was still snowing. It had been snowing since the Gate, and it had gone on all night without anybody in this house noticing, and now the whole of Euclid lay under it, roofs and streets and the long dark line of Mordrek’s wall running out into the white. The lamps were burning down in the lower city. Somewhere out there the world was going on being difficult and dangerous and full of people who would gladly take all of this away from him.

He held his son up a little, so the cold light of it fell across that scrunched red face. ”See all that?” he murmured. ”That’s going to be yours one day. Just give me a few years to make it slightly less of a mess before I hand it over.”

The baby carried on complaining, and Trafalgar looked down at him and felt something in his chest give way completely, a thing he had never had happen before and had no way of preparing for. He had built a city. He had killed for that city. He had sat across a table from patriarchs and held his ground. None of it had ever touched this.

He turned back to the room and found the midwife watching him with the expression of a woman who had seen a great many men do exactly that.

”Can you let them in now?” he asked. ”They’ve probably worn a hole through the corridor by this point.”

The door opened, and the corridor came through it. Cynthia was first, and she went straight to Mayla and put both arms around her, and neither of them said anything useful for a while. Aubrelle came behind her with her cane and Pipin on her shoulder, and the small pale bird flew ahead to the foot of the bed, which meant she came through the door already looking at the right place.

Trafalgar glanced past them at the doorway, where Rhosyn had stopped short of the frame. ”Rhosyn. Come on.”

She hesitated. ”I thought this was something you should have with your family.”

”It is.” He tipped his head at the room. ”And I’m still asking you to come in. Don’t make me stand here arguing with a newborn in my arms.”

That finally got her to move.

She came in, and they gathered around, all of them, and the room that had been a battlefield an hour ago turned into something else entirely. Cynthia put a finger against the baby’s palm and made an undignified noise when the whole hand closed around it. Aubrelle asked to hold him and was given him, and stood there with her sightless eyes fixed on nothing at all, learning him by weight and touch the way she learned everything, her face doing things Trafalgar had never seen it do. Even Rhosyn, who had watched empires rise and fall and had never once looked impressed by any of it, leaned in and stayed leaned in.

”He’s tiny,” Cynthia whispered. ”I knew he’d be small, but... gods, Trafalgar.”

”He was in a hurry.” Trafalgar looked down at him. ”Give him time. He’ll catch up.”

Cynthia studied the little face for another second. ”He has your chin already. Poor thing.”

”He’s been alive for less than an hour and you’re insulting him.”

”I’m preparing him for the family.”

It was Mayla who asked it, propped up on the pillows with her hand in Cynthia’s, her voice worn down to almost nothing.

”We still haven’t decided, have we?” She looked toward Trafalgar. ”What are we calling him?”

The room went quiet, and everyone in it looked at Trafalgar, because they all knew there had been two names on the list and they all knew which way the weight had been sitting.

Trafalgar took his son back off Aubrelle and looked at him for a long moment. ”Aaron.”

Mayla’s eyes came up. ”Aaron? I thought you were still leaning toward Mordrek.”

”I was.” He shifted the bundle against his chest. ”But I’ve been thinking about it since you suggested it, and the more I do, the more I think Mordrek would’ve hated the idea.”

Aubrelle’s mouth curved faintly. ”That does sound believable.”

Trafalgar looked down at the small furious face. ”I didn’t know him for as long as I would’ve liked, but I knew him well enough. If I told him I was naming my son after him because he died, he’d probably laugh in my face and ask why I’m making a newborn carry around a dead man’s name.”

Mayla watched him quietly.

”He’s already had enough put on him tonight,” Trafalgar continued. ”I don’t want his first gift from me to be somebody else’s weight. Let him have his own name and decide what he wants it to mean.”

A corner of his mouth moved.

”Mordrek can have a street. Maybe a gate. Something large enough that he’d complain about it.”

Cynthia smiled. ”A gate would annoy him more.”

”Then definitely a gate.”

Nobody argued with him.

Mayla looked toward the child in his arms, exhausted and smiling at the same time. ”Aaron,” she said softly, letting the name sit for a moment. ”Yeah. I like Aaron.”

”So do I.”

”Aaron du Morgain.”

Trafalgar lowered his eyes toward his son.

”Aaron du Morgain,” he repeated quietly. ”That’s you, apparently. Try not to make us regret it.”