“Are you Jax?”
She opens her eye and looks at me, and then at the infant in my arms. I waste no time in putting the baby down next to her. She can't hold him, because of the cuffs, but I snuggle the infant down under her arm and he curls into her as if he has always belonged there. There are some things so true that even a week-old baby knows them.
“You... thank... oh my…"
"He's yours,” I tell her. “And he's perfect.”
“I thought he had died. They told me he was dead," she whimpers, tears streaming from her eye.
“What!? Who told you that?” Pure outrage streams through me. Maybe it is all the sleepless nights. Maybe it is the many weeks of living under Tusk’s tyranny. Or maybe it's just that it is incredibly fucked up to steal a woman's baby and tell her he's dead.
“TYVIAN!” I shout his name. I know he’ll be close. He’s never far from humans. I have gathered that he is somewhat obsessed with the species, judging by his special dungeon for us.
The jailer comes, much as I expected him to. Wherever there is a human cruelly shackled, Tyvian will be nearby.
“Unlock this woman!”
He looks at me, his green eyes flashing. I wonder if he has a softness for me still, or if he thinks I have Tusk's authority.
“You shouldn't be here, Margaret.”
"Of course I should be. She should not be shackled. She just gave birth. She needs to feed her baby, if she still has milk.”
“Of course she has milk. She has been milked daily.”
"You've been milking her?”
"Tusk has sent someone to milk her."
My outrage keeps growing. I keep thinking that I am going to reach some peak outrage at which I cannot get any angrier on behalf of these poor human innocents, and yet it just keeps rising.
The baby starts to cry and paw at Jax. He knows his mother, this wise little thing. He understands better than any of these grown monsters what he most needs.
“Please, Tyvian. Unlock her shackles. Let her feed her baby.”
He hesitates for only a moment, then, cursing, he does as I have asked. Jax sits up and wraps her arms around her baby, holding him close. In that moment, I know I have done what is right. The sight of the tearful mother holding her baby is worth all the pain I know I am bringing on myself with this action.
“Tusk will not be pleased.”
“You need to get them out of here. If you have any tricks left at all, you must use them now. Right now.”
Tyvian has suffered much. He was almost murdered by Tusk on my account. I believe he might be one of those rare brave souls prepared to do whatever it takes to do what's right. But has the slicing of his throat destroyed that bravery?
“There will never be another moment to do this. Maybe you can get them out of the city. You can save them.”
Tyvian shakes his head, sending his red mane flying. “I can’t get Krush. He's being held somewhere far more secure.”
“Just them. Please. Tyvian. Just these two. This one last thing. For them.”
“He’s going to kill you for this. You have to understand that. Tusk is not a merciful korabi. He will never forgive you.”
“Let me worry about that.”
Eleven
Tusk
My human has disobeyed me. She will pay for that.
I discovered her deceit fairly quickly, but not quickly enough. I trace her movements from all the korabi who foolishly aided her, until I end up in the medical bay where Jax was once shackled. Margaret is waiting for me, sitting on the bed. The woman, the baby, and Tyvian are all gone, of course.
I knew the scene I would discover the moment the maid told me that Margaret had taken the infant for a walk. It was clearly a ruse. Infants cannot walk.
My shadow falls over her, doing nothing to dull the light of rebellion in her eyes.
“What have you done, Margaret?”
“I gave him back to his mother.”
I put my scepter to the side and step forward into the room. She sits very still, the frozen posture of prey. She has done far more than merely unite mother and son. She has betrayed me, and all of Megaris.
"I thought you wanted a baby?”
“You can't treat people like toys to be handed out and gifted, Tusk. That baby needed his mama."
“His mama is a human rebel, doubly wounded, and facing the potential execution of her husband.”
“He needed her.”
Margaret
Tusk growls at me in that way he does when his fury is triggered. I used to be afraid of such displays. I no longer am. If I am to die at the hands of some violent male, then let it be for this reason.
“Why must every human repeatedly betray good sense and their best interests in order to do something they imagine to be correct, even though all practical evidence points to the contrary? You’ve abandoned that infant to his severely damaged mother and his hunted father. The least you could have done was look after the boy and keep him safe. Instead, you’ve put the innocent in danger. Why? Because of some unalienable maternal right to possess the fruit of her loins regardless of the fate they must suffer?”