Free The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Hobb Robin

to look into his little face, she exclaimed, “What is this clumsiness! You have not cleaned him! He is covered still in my blood. Look how it clings to his face!”
    The midwife did not speak. Not from her lips ever came those tidings. It was the assistant who said, “May it please my queen, your son is as he is marked, red and white, piebald as a puppy.”
    “It pleases me not!” Caution cried wildly. “Wash him! Wash him clean for me!”
    And then it was that I took the babe from her hands, and undid his wrappings that we might look on him. But it was as the midwife’s aide had said. He was mottled with red splotches that stood up from his pale flesh. The midwife said in a low voice, “Many things can happen to mark a child. A fright, or a strong emotion of any kind. My queen, look on him, and see if the marks on his body do not match where the blood from that evil horse stained you as he died.”
    “No,” Caution said. She looked down at her blotched babe, with half his face white and fair and half his face stained red. And then, “NO!” she shrieked and then her head fell back on her pillows and she fainted.
    The midwife and her assistants bustled close to her side, pushing me away from her. I stepped back, cradling her child to my breast, and as if he knew that this was our fate, he turned his face toward me and quested for a nipple.
    In the days that followed, I heard many a wild tale. Some said that the babe was so marked because his father was one in spirit with the Spotted Stud. Just as every foal born to the Spotted Stud’s service was born with his spots, so must every child born to the beast’s Wit-partner be likewise blotched. And others said that the baby had been marked in Caution’s womb with the blood spattered on her, and they did not seem to make a difference whether it was Lostler’s blood or the Stud’s.
    However it was, this I know for truth: Caution would never let the child be put to suck on her, and so from that moment he was mine to nurse. The Queen-in-Waiting lingered until the change of the moon, speaking little and always looking at me with accusing eyes whenever I came into the room. I knew she blamed me and I would take that blame with me to my grave. The only lie I ever told her was my undoing, and hers, and the Stablemaster’s. Such is the power of a lie given to one you love. And never did I think of telling her the truth, for I knew it would only make her lover’s end more bitter in her memory, and that she would blame herself as well. That burden I kept from her and made it mine alone.
    My queen never grew stronger, but dwindled away with that last moon until, in the dark of the moon, she died. My heart shrank as her spirit grew smaller, and when she died, something in me died as well. I cut my hair to mourn her, shearing it off shorter than even the king cut his. My mother rebuked me for this, and I heard gossip hissing and sputtering whenever I passed, but I cared nothing then for any of them or what they thought of me. My queen, my sister, my daughter, my lover all were gone, as if the sun had vanished from the sky, leaving me with nothing but two squalling children.
    I was as good a cow as my mother before me, with ample milk, and that was well, for my mother refused to nurse either child. “What future is there in giving suck to a bastard once his protector is dead?” she asked me bluntly. And coming close to me, she added quietly, “But there might be some who would reward a woman who saw that the king’s bastard grandson did not prosper.”
    And that was when I took both infants from my mother’s rooms and placed them in my own. And little enough did I have to do with her after that, or she with me. As if all that had come to pass were my own fault, she treated me. And perhaps it was true. And in times to come, when she could neither bear nor nurse, and thought that I would be the one to cushion her life, I did not. Nor do I regret that.
    All seemed content to