Oleander

XIX. Harbors (part four)

A ghost of wailing answered his whisper. Over the ring of shattering porcelain and stubborn rain, anguish echoed. In reply, the soft hair on her arms and neck bristled. Oristos shuddered, though his eyes were hard with knowing. His jaw tightened with resolve as he vaulted from his seat and towards the palace.

Yalira followed. Their wet sandals slapped against the marble, resounded through the corridors, as they pursued the cries toward the villas and rooms of Andar's most favored.

"Who is it?" Yalira asked between breaths, between the coils of dread. He knew whose screams decorated the halls, and, in the disquiet of her heart, Yalira suspected.

Oristos frowned. Hesitance dominated before he replied, "Sasha has been unwell."

Before Yalira could beg for answers, for symptoms to connect in comforting diagnosis, they stepped into Sasha's villa and greeted the remains of chaos. Sasha sat in the middle of her rooms, surrounded by the wreckage of her belongings, crouched over and whimpering. Her maid shuddered with soft sobs of her own as she held her fingers to a bleeding cheek. Dezma stood in the corner's shadows, watching in mute terror.

"Are you alright, Nyla?" Oristos asked the maid gently, ushering her onto a bench so he could examine the trio of oozing scratches against her cheek.

Yalira only had eyes for the broken queen. The bile of empathy rose in her throat.

Always pale, Sasha's skin had curdled into wasting gray. Her long sheet of hair, once coiled and kept, hung in lank, dirty strands. Blue eyes, too large for her face, bigger still against the deep shadows, clung fast to a misshapen bundle of rags in her arms.

Though Yalira had feared it, this was not the purging illness that had spread through the city.

Hollowness had regressed into violent despair.

For all the babes Yalira had guided into the world, there was never a pattern for which mothers would fall to madness. Women who drowned their child; women who ignored their bodies until they both starved; women who mumbled strange words and delusions until their voices turned to dust.

In her native language, stretched by her smile, she whispered in crooning melody. She hadn't seen Sasha smile since those first weeks in Semyra. Yalira swallowed.

"I tried to take it from her," Nyla whispered above the horrible lullaby. Her fingers folded into a fist she held at her lips, as if she meant to keep her voice from breaking. "I thought I might wash it for her."

Filth beneath her jagged fingernails, the queen murmured and made soft gestures. Yalira turned as Dezma loosed a soft cry. The other queen's knuckles were white around a bottle of blood-colored tonic.

"Dezma?" Yalira called gently. "Will you not come see Queen Sasha's babe?"

The queen hardly acknowledged she had been addressed, but Sasha's head snapped up. Her clouded blue eyes studied Yalira in narrowed scrutiny before they returned to the bundle in her arms.

"A handsome child, is it not?" Yalira tried again, moving closer. She knelt before the mad queen. Oristos shifted uncomfortably behind her. Playing into delusion was risky. The shattered porcelain that littered the room called in answer. So was confronting it.

Dezma took small steps forward, her slippers whisper-soft across the marble, her voice a fraction louder. "He is indeed."

The compliment breathed new color into Sasha. Her expression grew stronger. "He is fit to rule the world. The firstborn son of Andar of Tyr!"

"May I hold him?" Yalira asked. It was the voice she'd use with frightened children, a spooked beast. Sasha still flinched.

"You won't take him from me?"