…get in the wardrobe as quick as you can.

You continue the motion, pulling yourself up into the wardrobe and closing the door quickly and quietly. It’s dark, predictably, but as you wave your dagger before your eyes, you find that it’s not completely lost. A keyhole is before you, showing and hiding behind the dancing stiletto, broken and no more than a semi-ragged hole drilled into the wooden door. It gently spills a flicker of light, glimmering along the silver edge, and you note as well that there is an alternative source of light at the wardrobes hinges, where the door is held a short gap from the frame. Through it you see the bed -the wardrobes other side showing little more than dull wall and being promptly ignored- and when you hunch to look through the keyhole, you can see the table with the mugs, sitting on its surface like lost children begging for your help. You listen to the sounds of voices and footsteps approaching, both becoming clear when some outer door is opened and clearer still when the inner door is barged wide before your eyes.

“-fire in the woods now as well, and after this summer it’s basically a tinder pile. We’ll have to cut our meeting short.”

The woman’s voice is familiar, and you realise why as Captain Washkin walks through the open door. She looks frustrated, pounding out hard angry steps across the wood boards, but her voice is calm and controlled. She scoops up and down the last dregs from one of the mugs before moving on. You doubt you could have poisoned the mugs before being caught, but it’s still galling to see. It also may have been worth the risk. Her hand rests on the fine cutlass handle at her waist and, un-poisoned, the dagger in your hand feels mediocre by comparison; small; just a little pointy stick in your hands, and one thoroughly insufficient for matching the most famed and feared woman of the archipelago. What’s worse is that she is not alone. A man, wearing a coat so offensively styled in red and yellow stripes that it’s all you see of him at first, walks in with his hands similarly on his weapons, in this case twin daggers at his hips. His face is somewhat older than hers; hard lined and worn by both old permanent suspicion and new fresh suspicion roused by the current goings on. His hair is pulled back and scarred on one side, streaked with grey at the temples, and it all conspires together, leaving him a man looking either a hard thirty or an easy sixty. Perhaps it’s the keyhole, but your guess shifts between the two with his every step.

“This place should be safe though, right?”

His slightly rasping voice, used to shouting, is aimed at your targets back, and you watch her hand lower, correcting her unthinking impulse to hold her sword. She doesn’t look at him though, nor address the accusation underlying his concerns.

“Yes. At least I hope so. But the path won’t be. I don’t like the idea of being trapped and if what that man said is true- If we don’t get off the island soon, it could be too late.”

She considerers for a moment, pausing at the wheels of her mind churn some train of thought unknown to you. Whatever it is, she shakes her head and approaches your wardrobe.

You begin to panic immediately, holding the blade ready as you move your head back. The odds aren’t great; two against one, and while you have surprise, they both have weapons and experience, and likely a healthy dose of paranoia. Sweat forms. Your breath paints a wet vapour along the inner door, kept steady by the **** effort of not being heard. A shadow blocks out the light from the keyhole, and soon the light from the hinge side as well. You lean forward a little, looking through the side crack and seeing her standing there. Were the door not present, you could reach out and touch her, and were you to open the door, it would hit her before you had room enough to attack. She opens and closes a draw in the unit next to yours, and another, rummaging through draw after draw until a handful of papers come out with her search.

“Here.” The shadow moves, disappearing with a step back to him. The papers rustle as she hands them over. “That’s our target. Look it over and we can discuss it later. Now go; there are a few things I will not be leaving behind. There should be time yet.”

Looking through the keyhole again, you can see that he’s unsatisfied, holding the pages like an illiterate. He narrows his eyes with rekindled distrust.

“I thought you said this place was safe?”

Captain Washkin was already ignoring him, moving away when the words halted her. She turns with a quick snap.

“I thought I told you to go!” A sigh blows through her, the wall of composed command being hastily rebuilt with a pinch to her nose. “You can wait with the others if you want, but you need to take control of your crew.”

The man wants to complain; you can tell by looking. His stance and expression all give an air of petulance. Eventually, he barks out a dismissive noise and strides out the room, leaving no illusions as to how tiresome he can be.

Freed of his company, Captain Washkin strides over to her bed, where the hinge-side gap shows her pulling out the draws of her bedside table. Papers are produced, which she leafs through, selecting and separating single pages into a small heap.

If ever there is a time to strike, it is fast approaching. Her annoying confidant is gone, and she is soon set to leave with whoever the others currently waiting are, providing a narrow lonely window of vulnerability. However, it won’t be easy; she may be alone, but she’s armed with her sword and a dangerous reputation for winning duels with it. If she draws it then you’re finished. Whatever busy work distracts her, it does so across the room and bed, and to attack over such a distance would be a fatal mistake. Better to wait until she leaves, the door being as close as you can hope for.

A small bundle of papers in hand, she holds them over a bedside candle and walks quickly to the fireplace, tossing them down and watching until their contents is blackened for good. You play out the fast approaching conflict in your mind. Blade unpoisoned, you’ll have to stab, thrusting the stilettos advantage into her heart or other vital organ. You’ll have to do it before she can draw as well; you are not arrogant enough to think your skills a match for hers, nor your shorter, slighter stature should it come to a match of strength.

As she straightens and begins to walk about the table towards the door, you shift as well, ready like a race day sprinter to leap and attack.

One shot.

You’re scared.

No time to think about that now.

Near the door and reaching for its handle, you shoulder your way out and run to her, running with arm bent and blade aimed. Her eyes are wide, but not wide enough, her surprise muted by the islands own raging alarm, and she jumps back, moving from where the blade was meant to bite. She’s fast, but you needed only to move a little with her and the blade rips cloth and flesh in a scored line just below her bosom. You feel a hand on your back as you pass her, pushing you away, and you stagger forward into the table. Wood scrapes on wood as your body pushes it forward, toppling the far chairs and leaving the two on your side standing alone. You turn and slash, but only the air is cut, your stagger working with her quick withdraw to leave a space between you. A space for her to draw her sword.

No! You grab one of the chairs, throwing it as best you can into her arm and keeping the delicate rapier blade in its place. She stumbles back and you lunge again, **** to close before the opening is lost. You go for her guts, she sees, and a booted foot intercepts, hammering into your own belly like a battering ram. The blade twists, aiming for the deadly hearts vein of her thigh, but flying back is no angle for a thrust and while the deep cut you leave is crippling, it’s not fatal. The door frame slams into your back, robbing you of breath.

Free of you and the chair, she draws her sword, levelling the fine point towards you, but the situation is not so dire as it could be. She limps, bleeding freely at the chest and leg, and the point of the sword shakes with fear, unwilling to approach you, held out like a shield. Unfortunately, she has more advantage that just her sword.

“ASSASSIN! TO ME!”

Her shrill voice shakes the house, penetrating the walls and letting all know of her predicament. You dart forward, trying to get under her blade, to strike it to the side with a clash of steel, but it adjusts with a fencers grace, staying at your heart even as she limps backwards, towards the bed. You pick up the second chair, tossing it forward with both hands so it crashes down upon her, but she turns, taking it hard to the shoulder with a grunt, but keeping her blade out towards you. She sidesteps, limping and leaving a bloody trail until she comes to rest at the table, one hand on its surface, staying upright through pale faced will.

You’re out of time. Were you alone, you could wait it out, or find some other way of winning, but her forces will no doubt be on their way. You look to the window.

“Try it!”

Captain Washkin’s hoarse voice barks at you, sounding pained and weak, yet victorious. She’s right; her lean against the table was for more than holding her up, placing her between it and the bed, and giving her sword arm ample reach across its surface. No going around and no going over, and with the fallen chairs on the other side, going under would be a risk as well. You look in her eyes, considering a last rush against her, but there is something in them that stops you. A hardness. Her breathing is heavy, her face pale and drawn, but she does not retreat. Her sword point still shakes, but differently, and you’re sure it stilled before she spoke. Her hand covers below her chest, but you’re sure it was the leg that was cut deeper. Be it a feint of strength or weakness, there is a strategy to her stance that you cannot read, and for two aching second, you watch her, torn between attack and retreat.

You’re so close!

“ASSASSIN!”

Her hoarse cry seals it and you turn bitterly to the open door behind you. Fleeing in failure, or retreating to fight another day; whatever it is, you run into the next room.

It’s a relatively small antechamber, made more so for the many chests, dressers, cupboards, and wardrobes lining its side, and its dominated by a low table that fills much of its middle. It’s low enough that you step up onto it with ease, blurring the decorations as you sprint across it, racing to the double doors at the rooms other side. There can’t be all that many people still here, considering no guards are bursting through and running to her call. Captain Roland doesn’t seem the gallant type, and while she mentioned the ‘others’, there is not the sound of a group running your way. Still, be it the roof guard or someone else, you won’t be alone for long.

You burst through the double doors and stop dead, quickly reading the situation. Stairs are laid out ahead, leading down the centre of a large foyer that bridges the upper and lower floors in a wide open space. It’s well lit, stinging your eyes slightly, and a crowd is gathered at the bottom of the stairs, partially hidden by a far more pressing concern sprinting up them. A man who could be twice your height and three times your width, hulks his wall of muscle up the stairs with surprising speed. He catches sight of you, the eyes of his stony face going wide, but he doesn’t slow as he takes the stairs three at a time. He closes the distance in moments. You run to the side, not knowing where you’re going, and a long hallway stretches out ahead with a window at its far end. Good enough.

Your black top stops you.

While you had run forward, it had stayed still, wrapped in the reaching grip of the giant and **** you as you lurch back in the wrong direction. He grips the landings banister for leverage, and with the only advantage you have -a dagger gripped in your sweaty hand- you surprise him by leaping into his arms and driving it into his neck.

A scream is an odd thing through a pierced neck. You feel it vibrate the handle. The other hand still gripping your top moves on instinct, throwing you away with all the **** it has, and unluckily for you, his size makes that a lot.

He turns and roars with a gurgle, and your lithe body flies through the air, over the stairs and into the true centre of the high room. You flail, you cry out, you scream and tense and feel quivers of animal terror shiver through every part of you. You fall and the seconds stretch. The stairs are long, uncarpeted, spilling out and wide at the base with nothing to hold on to. You tumble and turn. The last step rushes to great you, the first you meet in your decent down them.

CRACK.

---

---

You float in a void. Numb, empty, blank, and dead. An unthinking knowing permeates your being, your fatal state stretching infinitely before you and after you, perceived and ignored both. So sure are you that you are dead, that the growing realisation that you’re not is almost like a strange necromancy, reanimating you through shock alone. From dead to alive.

---

The woman’s eyes widen with shock before disappearing, the unfamiliar face lingering in your mind like smoke. All that’s left are odd swirls, distant and near, your mind shaking off the dust of withdrawn infinity. A door clicks, the sound of a latch snapping both familiar and new, like a memory from childhood re-experienced for the first time. You know what a latch sounds like, but you never thought you’d hear it again.

You blink, reality coming back in dribs and drabs. Your body still floats in the void; it seems only your mind woke from it. The swirls you saw sharpen into shaped forged by your squinting eyes; plaster decoration worked into a high ceiling. It looks fancy. You feel a pillow against the back of your head, softer than any you own, tempting you to close your eyes and drift away again.

You tilt your head, looking down your body with difficulty. The act feels…sluggish, pained like the rusty squeal of an old door **** into motion. You don’t see much before you let it fall, your eyes aching from trying to look down yourself. There was a soft frothy sheet covering you, which you are glad about; your body still feels numb and unused, and seeing the shape of it below the sheet convinces you that you aren’t just some head resting on a pillow.

The room you’re in matches the ceiling, which is to say that it’s quite fancy. Light blue walls, picked out by white painted skirting and wall decorations leave it looking non-threatening, along with the window that shines a morning light through. Unless you miss your guess, the sound of distant voices, crowds, children playing and merchants haggling, filters through it, not right outside, but copious, wherever they are. Perhaps they’re several streets away, or the window looks over a large garden. This seems the kind of place to have a large garden.

Considering you were dead a few moments ago, questions like ‘what am I doing here?’ and ‘how did I get here?’ and ‘where is here anyway?’ come with remarkable lethargy. The air has a smell to it, not human made or some natural sent, but the smell of air itself. You’d forgotten, or perhaps never noticed before. There are many such small things, details reconceptualised, and while such things are not fun or exciting for all their novelty, the strangeness of them makes you pause and consider, your mind learning to think again.

Eventually, still alone, you get around to the question of how you got here. You try and think of your last memories. The island, the fire…the manor. You look about, feeling a sudden spike of panic, but it’s pointless and fades fast. This is not the manor of Captain Wendy ‘Go’ Washkin. The style is different, perhaps newer, and the rooms you saw before had a shabbiness that this one lacks. Even accounting for some other room, the sounds you hear are of a town or city, or perhaps a bustling village square, not an island of pirate thugs. It’s a comfort, but also a further confusion; if you are not even on the same island, then how by starlight did you get here?

A thumping sound comes, like running feet, stopping before your door, and the latch once more lifts. You crane your head, lifting it enough to watch the door open. You should be worried, but as stiff and numb as you feel, it’s not like you could run away and so you roll with it, watching with half lidded eyes.

Through the door comes a man dressed in dark muted colours, practically skipping with agitation. Despite that, he does not rush over, instead keeping his decorum with a gentle pace, as though you some scared animal ready to bolt in fright.

“Good morning my dear.”

Behind him, the woman you saw before drifts in like a wraith, closing the door silently. She’s dressed in a maid’s uniform, and carries herself with the self-constrained air of service common to one before her master. The man must be a noble of some kind, or a rich merchant.

“Mm.” It’s all you can manage at first. Your throat is sore, your lips cracked. It feels like the effort blew a cloud of dust from your lungs. Swallowing, you try again.

“Who are you? What happened?”

You realise how thirsty you are and your eyes look immediately for a glass of water.

“Calm yourself.” He raises his empty hands as he approaches. “You’re in my house. My name is Lord Maxan-Tear Nokim Bellafontie. You were injured in a fall.” He stops before the bed, looking concerned. “One in which you landed on your back.” His face, which bares the countenance of a man in long into recovery from some illness, his skin glowing with health and energy while his cheeks and sunken eyes are sallow and hollow. He looks tentative, approaching some delicate subject he needs to inquire about. “Can you… move your arms and legs? Can you feel them?”

‘What an odd question’ you think to yourself, finally raising your sluggish arm. But the arm does not raise with your intention. Nor does your leg kick. You look down your body to be sure.

“No, I…” You’re just stiff. Just numb from lying down too long. You try to arch your back, to twist and thrash and leap out of the bed! You try as hard as you can.

“The doctor I brought in told me that such a condition may afflict you, should you wake. Apparently, back injuries rarely heal and can leave people crippled in odd ways.” He takes the final step, perching on the bed and looking at you remorsefully. You shake your head.

“No.” No. It cannot be true.

“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.” He puts his hand down, on your leg? You lift your head again to see, but you cannot tell. You cannot feel. “I’ll look after you. We can help each other. Tell me, what is the last thing you remember?”

You can’t. Can’t think, can’t remember, can’t feel; it’s too much. The moment plays, your mind, half thought of, searching through what was then and groping for sense in the now.

“I…ran from Captain Washkin, then…the stairs.”

“You did quite the number on her and her man, I must say. Ah, but I assure you, you’re safe here.”

A storm of emotion warps and wraps within you, anger, fear, denial, confusion, despair, and the sudden chill of another feeling that should have been blown away, like the first flake of snow in a downpour, there and gone. It’s that feeling that you grip on to, and it grips you in turn. It’s like the glimpse of a dead body, the loose thread of a murderer’s mask, a feeling of wrongness that you dread and yet, compulsively, _must _unravel.

“You…were there?”

His face twists slightly, like a child stung by his mother scorn, caught doing something he’s not supposed to.

“Ahh, yes…I was. I was just doing some business, were it possible.” He smiles sheepishly, looking to brush past it. “But you started that fire, did you not? We all left after that, I barely spoke to the woman, and as we were leaving I… saved you.”

Lying as you are, your situation increasingly apparent and growing more so with each numb seconds fading denial, the statement seems ridiculous.

“You…saved me.”

You say it back, flatly, bitterly, voice breaking, not questioning its truth or his sincerity. Why should you? If what he says is true then, considering what little you are left with, he may as well say he ‘saved’ your shoes, or something equally mundane. It’s a joke. It all hast to be a joke.

He nods in answer, a little too quickly and a little too self-congratulatory.

“Yes. Unfortunately, your attack on the captain was not as successful as your attack on that brute. Had you not been broken by the stairs, she would have killed you, or worse.” He smiles at you, and through you. “She nearly did anyway, before I stepped in.”

You watch him, half your mind reeling in trauma, the other half finding a growing dislike for your ‘saviour’. Perhaps it’s just his words -carriers each of ill news- that irks at you as you can find no immediate fault with the man himself. You try to put it to one side, but your mind has no space to place it, and you watch as he speaks, giving you yet more to process.

“One of the men present was a… doctor, of sorts, or clearly had experience of such things, and explained that your back was broken and that you were in a sleep that could be permanent. It helped me to convince Captain Wendigo that you were basically dead already, and thus I was able to spirit you away.”

The words ‘you…spirited me away’ die on your tongue, stilled by the urge not to simply repeat his absurdities back at him. You close your eyes, resting your head back on the pillow, willing yourself to get your thoughts together. Tears roll down from your eyes, into your hair, and you cannot wipe them away, or hide them.

“Why?”

“Why?” He sounds confused, gently repeating your question. Forcing you to speak the words that should be obvious.

“Why bother? I can’t even-” How do you finish? Can’t even move? Can’t even run? Can’t sit or dress yourself, or eat? Can’t feel? He sits on the bed near you; surely you should feel his warmth? Perhaps that is the source of his bad impression: a cold blooded quality that is not him, but you. It’s not even cold.

He looks angry, for the first time, an upset frown smearing his face.

“Because you’re strong! You’re a survivor!” He leans forward, drilling his words into you, and the expression on his face becomes tinged with amazement. “An assassin, who’s a woman, that can kill that mountain of a brute and cut up the famous Captain Wendigo in a duel! I knew you’d wake up, sooner or later! Someone like you, with the kind of spirt you have, cannot stay down for long. And awakened you have!” He gestures emphatically at you, as though your crippled body bares some miracle. “You must have fire in your blood!” He leans in a little further, eyes fixed on yours. “In the northern wastes, there are herbs. I’m sure you’ve heard of them. Rumoured to have tremendous healing properties. There is no sense in giving up.”

You have heard of such herbs, vaguely. Wyvern Weed apparently originated from there, and from it, most all the **** that currently plague the world. It wouldn’t surprise you to learn it holds rarer fare, though it would to hear of someone wresting it from the grip of such a dangerous place. Cruel hope blossoms in your heart.

“What’s more, from your fair skin, and now hearing the tone of your voice, you have the breeding of the central principalities, do you not?” He doesn’t wait for your response. “A bit ‘villagy’ but not some uncouth labourer’s child, and not like these dammed Coronac rabble. I also came from that dreary place to these far shores, and so did my dear wife.” He sighs, looking at you regretfully. “Truth be told, you look a lot like her.”

His words, especially the dangling hope that would undo your current nightmare, are a lot to take in. You think for a moment. Most of what he said about your origin made little sense, though you admit it to be true. Is that why he brought you here? Because you look like his wife?

“Thank you?” It’s all you can think to say for the comparison. Perhaps she was ugly and his words a veiled insult. You sniff and go on, looking at him as he sits over you, like your father used to. What is it about him that doesn’t sit right? “Forgive me, but, you still haven’t really told me why yet.”

He blinks, a little taken aback, but smiles quickly, even wider than before. It’s a satisfied smile. Thrilled at your question.

“Smart as well, but, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He leans back turning, for the first time, to the maid. She had not moved since standing by, watching her master for instruction. “I’ve yet to introduce the true miracle worker; the reason you’re alive even more than me. This is Ms Dennit. She has been tending to you, washing you, keeping you fed and alive these last…” He looks pensive for a moment. “Ninety…five, days? Is that right?”

Ninety five days!? You’ve been asleep for more than three months!? Five days off one third of a year.

“Yes Lord Bellafontie, though only Ninety total in my personal care.”

The maid’s response is of careful construction, agreeing while correcting. Her eyes stay down, with a little curtsy following.

Ninety five days. Five days off one third of a year. Your spiralling thoughts spill out in a mumble.

“Ninety-“

They break into a cough. The wheezing sensation feels odd: trapped in your throat, but also reaching beyond your remaining senses, into your numb torso. It scratches at you, the dry feeling, reminding you of your thirst, and no wonder, if you haven’t had a drink in a year’s third.

The maid steps up, glass in her steady hand full of crystal clear water, and you reach out to take it. Nothing comes, of course. Nothing comes. She delicately moves it to your lips, poring small amounts past coughs and breathless panting. It tastes divine, and bitter, and you gulp and **** on what you’re given.

The man had shuffled back to give the maid room, and her stern sight is all you can see as the drizzle given is eked out over several minutes. Her face is stern and unfeeling, concentrating on her task, yet she could be watering flowers for all she treats you as alive. She’s older than you, by about five or so years, and smells faintly of lilac. To think she’s known you for near a hundred days. Between gulps, you try and smell yourself, detecting nothing but clean sheets. She must have washed you recently.

The man leans over you, looking past her while she performs her duty, and his smiling face is almost welcome in the face of her cool dispassion.

“She’s the best money can buy, and then some.”

She presses your forehead back, pushing you into the pillow so she can tip the rest of the glass and slowly drain its last contents. When she is done, she stands back, putting the glass on a nearby counter and curtsying to the lord. Her sight lingers on him, before returning to you and addressing you directly for the first time.

“It’s nearing lunch time and I’m sure you would like something to eat. You’ve been on liquids for the most part, so I’m sure you’re eager to sink your teeth into something.”

“Excellent idea.”

The man smiles between you both, sitting closer to you for his previous lean. The thick bedsheets ruffle up about him, pressed together in his slide to make a heap that pools about his hips. You look about the room, fining it easier to turn your head than lift it, and you see a clock. It’s 11 o’clock in the morning.

The door clicks shut with her exit, and the man looks briefly after her departure.

“Brilliant woman. Came highly recommended. And she’s right; you need to eat in your condition.” He looks at you again, once more seeing something unknown to you in the stretching seconds. “It’s uncanny.”

With a full glass of water now lost down your throat, you find speaking a little easier.

“What is?”

He blinks, seeing you again. “Er, the resemblance. My apologies.”

“To your wife?”

He chuckles briefly. “Yes. In more ways than one.”

“What happened to her?”

A strange mix of emotion plays on his face. Strange in all the wrong ways.

“Oh, nothing. She’s fine. In fact, she’s just downstairs.”

“Oh.”

The situation grows stranger, his attitude more unnatural. Had you misread his comments? It seems so, but still…

“Well, I suppose all is not right with her, but it’s not something that has happened. I suppose that’s the problem.” He smiles awkwardly. “You asked why I saved you and…well…” The smile falls into a business persona, and he coughs into his hand to soften the transition. “Let me be frank. You see, my wife is…barren. She’s a bit older than me; it was a political marriage. With no heir forthcoming, my name and my line ends with me. Propriety and inheritance prevents me from raising one of my bastards, if I have any, and so a little bit of trickery is in order. She may be quite a bit older than you, but you look the same.” He holds out his hands emptily, weighing your reaction. “You see where I’m going with this?”

The already large mountain of thoughts to process, which had diminished only slightly for the long drink, doubles in size

“You rescued me, to impregnate me?”

He jumps in, continuing laying out the deal as though it the most normal thing in the world.

“My wife stays indoors for nine months, and so do you. I accept the child as my own, and she has agreed to do the same. No one need ever know. I get you the medicine for your condition, and you just lie there. You look young; I doubt you’ve ever had a child. This is your chance as well, especially now.”

You just look at him, flabbergasted at his suggestion, and it seems to anger him, stoking a fire of desperation.

“Think about it, you can’t move! You’re so crippled you couldn’t survive anywhere else; not on the streets, not on your own; no one would take care of you like me. All I ask for is a child with my blood in him.”

He’s serious. This whole time, you’d doubted him, but he is serious about it all. What kind of person- “I don’t- You rescued me for that?”

“At great expense! And risk! And you wouldn’t even feel it!”

His words finally get through, and anger begins to boil.

“You _bought _me?”

“How else was I supposed to convince Wendigo to let you go? Hum? Either you woke up, slept throughout, or died. Two to one odds. Not bad for three gold pieces.”

“Shut up!” You start to cry again, your lip shaking. Why couldn’t you be dead? The feeling had faded, like a dream, but it was better, wasn’t it? Better than this selfish hateful living world.

At the same time, some disturbing, lingering thought is sparked by his words, too distant for clarity.

He watches you silently, before speaking calmly.

“You know how I know? That you wouldn’t feel it?” You look at him, seeing the face of a self-assured man, as calming and unkind and sympathetic and false as the moment he walked through the door. “I’ve been fingering your pussy for the last few minutes.”

You look at him, tears thrown away by the explosive shock of his words.

“Wha-“ You lift your head, looking down your broken body.

The sheet that ruffles about his hips, which you took his slide as cause for, is ruffled higher than you thought. His hand, which you had thought was placed behind him to keep him stable, snakes slyly under the puffy bedsheet instead, moving ever so slightly in the exposed forearm, hinting at the hidden hands action.

“W-well stop!”

“Why?” He asks the question in a calm way, far from his earlier tone.

“Because! It’s-“ That you are justifying this! It’s like explaining why the sky is blue! “It’s…private! I don’t want-“

“It’s not private.” He corrects you with such calm confidence that you stop talking, looking at him with wide eyes. Your mouth would be open if your chin was not on your chest. He keeps talking, easy words still laced with caring comfort, like he’s explaining to a child. “This is not the first time I’ve fingered it. I’ve looked at it in the light of the sun; spread it; I’ve probably seen more of it than you have. I know it’s not untouched, but I know it’s too tight to have born any children.” He leans forward. “I know what it tastes like, and yes, I’ve fucked it, many, many times.” His voice creeps to a whisper, sharing a shameful secret. “It has _wept _for me.”

He leans back, breaking you from his horrifying monolog. “It’s uncanny, how the body knows. Even when the minds away. I didn’t lie to you. I saved you because you’re strong.” His lean leaves his arm less covered, refuting his words with a more brazen display. “Because you have spirit!”

He moves his hand, riding under the sheets like some leviathan below waves, before gripping and throwing them aside. You flinch as you’re bared, or try to; it comes as a twitch of the neck.

“I don’t want some common whore’s bastard; I want my heir to have courage and blood I’m not too ashamed to mix with.”

You’re naked, stripped and laid before him, and for a moment your mad mind finds the proof of his lies; that if you had been lying still on a liquid diet, surely you would have thinned further than your already meagre form allows.

How can that be possible with a belly that bulges so?

“I figured I’d ask, if you woke, but there was a chance you wouldn’t. No sense wasting time, or a body, on endless sleep.” His hands stroke lovingly over the bulge before moving to your arms. “There was also a chance you could move, hence these,” He lifts one, a rope dangling about the thin wrist of your limp hand, tied like a noose to tighten if pulled. He drops it and unties the rope with a few tugs. “No sense in keeping them now. And yes, according to Ms Dennit, the babe is healthy, despite your idleness.”

His hand returns to your belly, leaving your arm unmoving for its freedom.

Its moments before his slips down again.

This cannot be happening. It cannot! The rooms dizzying air rushes hard through your nose, as though your body had run and run, and was still running, as hard and fast as you wish it could. Your head falls back, tempting you with the notion of just forgetting what you saw and what you heard; divorcing yourself from your body and the mad man abusing it.

“Calm down; try to breathe normally. Getting upset won’t help things. Remember the herbs and what I said. I just want you to know that you are in my care, and that all I ask from you, all I get, is something you will not notice and will happen anyway.”

He looks worried, and you realise his concern is not for you, it never was. His concern was for what he put inside you. Still…

“The herbs.” You mutter the words out, sniffing hard; your nose the one remaining part of you that you can feel, stuffed with grief, like a cold. The herbs are the only sanity you can hold on to, glittering in the dark future laid out before you.

“Yes, the herbs.” He nods with you, guiding you away from hyperventilation. “They can be bought, at great expense, along with a savage skilled enough to mix them to your symptoms, which will be a rare to find and an even greater expense than the herbs themselves. And I’m afraid it will take time.” He smiles, again stroking your belly like a favourite flower, or the object of obsession. “But we have time. We have time.”

You try to calm your breathing, turning your head away. The promise of a dishonest man, one who **** you while **** and crippled, who tried and evidently succeeded in fathering a child inside you; a small voice points out the absurdity of it, crying out shrilly in the back of your head, asking why he would give you the chance to leave or get **** upon him. It remembers, despite your traitorous hope, that the herbs he speaks of are little more than the rumour of rumours; that if they worked they would be used by all, like the other **** to come from there. You silence them, emptying your mind and snuffing out its reason.

Thinking anything else would be ****, while trapped in a body that could not achieve it.

The bed rocks and you notice the man removing his top. Without looking at him and yourself, you could almost be convinced that you were not still naked before him. He tosses the jacket aside.

“Now, Ms Dennit, who is a skilled midwife, has assured me that pregnant women need continued attention to keep things active. Usually I leave it to the evening, but as I’ve already started…”

The shirt is next. You look back to the side; a world without him,

“I’ve been instructed on how to do it without harming the baby, and as you can see, everything is fine so far.”

You hate the glee in his voice. Clearly, this is no chore for him. The bed rocks as it takes more of his weight.

“My wife has accused me of playing with dolls, if you can believe it.”

You look at the clock, still far from lunch, and far from freedom and the magic of distant medicine. Perhaps you can sleep until its time. Sleep like you did before.

“Ahh. Mmmm... Huf. Uff. Ugh. Huh. Huh. Huh.”

You head rolls on the pillow, pressed up periodically from below.

It’s all you can feel.