Zory's plentiful sins

Author's note 2025/02/09: Content warning for passive suicidality.

===26 Summer 1395 continued==========

Curry had remembered my coffee, which was cold now, but I didn’t care. I took it, with vast relief at being finally out of the house, and had a long drink from the cup. Drinking something had the added advantage of giving me an excuse for having nothing to say because my mind was racing too fast for that.

After only a few steps he said, “Actually the bottle stabber was granted a continuance like an hour ago. So we don’t have to be at the citadel. His trial is starting next month now.”

“Really?” I asked him. “Not shitting me?”

“Not shitting you. It just felt like you needed out of there, so I figured I wouldn’t mention it and forfeit the urgency that late-for-court suggests.”

“Oh, thank the fucking gods,” I sighed. “I have such a headache.”

Curry stretched his arm sideways round my shoulders as we walked and gave me a hard squeeze before withdrawing, our pace slackened a bit now that we weren’t actually late for anything that would piss off a city magistrate. I knew he was waiting for me to say something about what a catastrophic wreck I was this morning—every morning, really—and I couldn’t think of what to say about it, other than my acute sense that that everything felt bad, and nothing could be reversed or redeemed, and that this feeling was so all-enmantling it couldn’t be put into words or communicated by any means other than either screaming or frantic tears, and I wasn’t sure which of those it would be if I even tried.

“Are you… doing all right?” he asked after we’d walked together in silence a while. “I’m worried about you lately, if I’m being honest. Nan too. We were chatting about you after I found those clothes yesterday folded up in your chaunceyhorse quilt. Neither of us could recall how long they might have been there.”

He meant, they couldn’t recall the last time I’d spent real, meaningful time with either of them, and the total lack of reproach in his tone made me want to weep. I had no answer to that even if the lump in my throat would let me speak aloud. Instead I cast him a miserable sidelong glance upward, then fixed my gaze on the cobbles under our feet.

I knew from his posture that Curry was marking how carefully I avoided looking up at him while I considered my answer. He might have phrased it as a yes-no, but he was only asking because he sensed something was very wrong, and couldn’t settle on what. He probably also understood that if I looked at him I would descend into complete hysteria. It had been a long, long time, since I had done anything like that, but I was afraid if I gave in to it now, another long, long time might go by before I could stop crying. If he made me try to explain, everything would unravel so fast they would have to put me in one of those lunatic asylums.

I hated it, that I had someone so trustworthy, who cared enough to be my confidant, and I was too tongue-tied about how my life had closed around me like a trap to even tell him anything.

“I’m… um.” I should say something. All I had to do was open my mouth and speak aloud a few words to Curry: I hate my husband. Except I really didn’t—couldn’t—how could I?—Roland was kind, and cheerful, and not jealous, and he was so good with Zory. I hate Zory. Hate her. My head was starting to swim with guilty confusion—and gods, I really needed to kick this headache. My eyes filled, from the effort of trying to organize my thoughts. “I don’t know…” I said lamely. “I think I need to—I don’t know, hire a laundry service, or something? I never thought I would be moved almost to tears by something so little as a shirt that smells more like you than it does baby shit.” I managed a tense little laugh, then chanced a guilty look up at him. There was nothing Curry could say, even if I knew how to tell him. And the longer I kept some of these secrets the more hurt he would be. I was stuck with them, if I wanted him to still like me. If Curry stopped liking me, it would be impossible to keep going anymore.

Because nobody rivaled him for his simple decency, instead of hassling me about the enormous, ugly pile of shameful secrets I was obviously keeping from him, or taking it personally, or making me feel guilty, Curry just linked his arm through mine at the elbow and we kept walking. “Let me know when you’re ready for some help with the laundry,” he said quietly. “Whether it’s just talk, or something more.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and squeezed his elbow with mine. I cleared my throat. “I, um… and… I think… maybe I need to increase my dosage,” I said in a voice that came out much less casual than I meant it to.

Curry stopped us right there in the street and steered me to one side out of the other foot traffic, his expression tinged with true concern that filled me with dread at the prospect of having to carry on a real conversation about this. “Again? That seems… really soon after the last time. Is it more now than just the one that showed up right after Zory?”

“Mostly her… except, a few others too,” I admitted reluctantly. “I’m… um. I’m just not used to them acting so… urgent? Or… not that. Purposeful?”

“Purposeful how?”

“I don’t know,” I said helplessly, “like they want something. Most shades who notice me can’t shut the fuck up—but none of these ones will tell me what’s the matter—they just stand around looking ghoulish and expectant like I’m supposed to know, and do something about it. I never saw them act so silent and creepy before.” I drew in a shuddering breath, because now I really was near tears. “Mag?” I whispered. “What if Zory’s like me? What if they’re here because of something to do with her? And Roland—” I tried again to think of the right words to explain, about me and Roland, and how complicated I felt about it, but it made my head swim to contemplate being that disloyal to Roland, and looking like such a liar to Curry.

“—I don’t even know what to do about the fact that I should have told him about me ages ago and never managed to bear up to it. What the fuck is wrong with me?” I scrubbed at my eyes.

Maybe telling him was a good idea. If he knew I’d hidden something so important from him, maybe Roland would stop being so cheerful and do something that made him worth divorcing. Maybe he would divorce me. Maybe he would take Zory and go somewhere far away and marry a lady who loved babies and nobody would ever again talk to me like I was expected to find anything about motherhood rewarding. I would never make this mistake again, if I could only start over.

That was a fantasy I didn’t dare tell Curry. Unlike me, he loved my daughter. I looked up at him and his face was so… grim, more serious than I had ever, ever seen him before. That was a little scary. I leaned into him and buried my face in his chest so I didn’t have to see him looking at me with that frighteningly grave expression, and he put one arm around me, so tight it almost hurt. I held my breath, but the first sob broke free anyway. “I know I’m not supposed to say this out loud,” I cried, since I was already in full swing and at this point who the hells cared anymore, “but honestly I just wish I could be dead. I think maybe I would be already, except for I wouldn’t be able to go through with it, because of how guilty I feel that you and Nan would be upset. But if I just dropped dead tomorrow... people would be sad but they'd get over it.”

I felt Curry nod, and then raise his voice, not at me, calling over somebody who was passing by. I stayed put because I didn’t want anybody who wasn’t him to look at me. When the person approached he fumbled in his bag for something and then used my shoulder as a makeshift surface—he was writing something down. When he was finished writing, I heard a clink of coins and then he gave some instructions to whoever the person was and they left.

“Fauzia.”

I shrank harder into him instead of answering.

Curry put his other arm around me and held me close. “I just sent the captain a message. We’re not going to work today,” he said.

“Are you taking me to a lunatic asylum?” I asked meekly. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. They probably didn’t allow babies in places where lunatics were kept. A lunatic asylum might be warded, too, depending on what order was running it. I wouldn't get to work at the watch guard anymore, but I might finally stop stinking faintly of sour breast milk all the time. Sort of a draw, then.

“No,” he said, firmly. “I’m taking you to the temple of Lytie to see one of their physicians. Right now. This is serious. Way beyond the ‘baby blues’ Roland's been calling it. People with regular baby blues don’t go to sleep at night half hoping they never wake up.” He stroked my hair with his big hand. “They’ll help. Lytie’s people know what they’re doing.”

“I think I’m losing my mind. Or maybe I did already,” I said into his chest.

“You’re not. You didn't. I promise.” Curry rested his chin on top of my head. “I’m so sorry it feels like that right now, Fuzzy.”

“Zory hates me,” I wept. “I really tried to love her, at first, but I didn’t try hard enough, and then I gave up, and she knows. She only likes you and Roland. It’s not her fault because she’s just a baby, but it would be so much easier to love her if she just liked me a little,” I cried.

“We’ll work on that, then.”

This made me cry much harder. “I can't anymore! I know I’m supposed to, but I just want to—to—to—never go home again. I literally never want to see either of them again in all my life. I would rather join a—a—cloistered sect of Arvinter,” I cried, so he would better understand exactly how hopeless it all was.

“Sorry, I didn’t put that very well,” Curry said, calmly, like there wasn’t a crazy woman clinging to him, sobbing hysterically in a public thoroughfare. “I meant we’ll work on it as in I plan to get to the bottom of why your terrible baby thinks she can act like such an ungrateful little bitch.”

The hiccuppy laugh tore out of me almost before I’d registered these shocking remarks.

I pulled away enough to look up at him with my swollen, tear-streaked face. “S—so ungrateful, though,” I managed shakily.

“That doesn’t even cover it. If she’s going to just casually—disrespectfully—let loose her puke and shit and piss,” Curry continued, gesturing one-handed with such dramatically indignant energy that several passersby gave us a strange look and a wider berth, “all over the person who generously squeezed her out of her own body—the least —I mean the very least that entitled little cunt can do, is spare you an occasional smile. So on my honor—if you ever consent to even look at her unappreciative ass ever again, that baby is on notice.” He began listing, counting each item off on his fingers. “Mama will get—big adorable eyes—Mama will get smiles—Mama will get sweet gurgles—Mama will get the blessed cessation of all that constant fucking screaming—Mama will get whatever the fuck she goddamn wants or I am taking that baby to jail,” promised the greatest friend any person had ever known in all of history. “And if Zory even fucking considers making her first word Daddy, I will seek the **** penalty.”

I let out a sound that was half hopeless sob, half hysterical laugh. “Don’t tell them at the temple that you called my baby a cunt, and that I laughed.”

Curry lowered the hand he’d used to enumerate Zory’s plentiful sins and folded both arms tighter around me. “Honestly I kind of think of anybody, Lytie’s people would get it. But if that’s what you want.”

“Thank you, though. For calling my baby a cunt.” I squeezed him around the middle, wishing there was some better way to tell him that nobody had ever loved another person as much as I loved him that moment.

“Hey. Do you trust me, Fuzzy?” he asked.

“I maybe only trust you,” I said.

“Then trust me when I say we’ll get through this and everything is going to be all right.”

“You make me feel less like dying,” I offered, because the rest was too hard to picture.

“I’ll take it.” Curry broke our embrace, leaned down and examined me for a moment, my face cupped in his two hands, then wiped my cheeks and straightened my messy hair before slipping his arm around me and motioning to the street. “Come on.”