Okay kids, we are here yet again! I enjoy this week's chapter and hopefully so will you, can't wait to hear everything that pops into your heads anyway.


Chapter 8: Trimesters

Yugi didn't want to do this.

She rang her fingers behind her back, let the ivory and gold pieces clink into each other on her wrists, and glancing to the huge guard to her left gave the ghost of a smile. The eunuch gave no response but those deep dark pupils for a second flickered to Yugi. Her blood had taught her to always remember the faces of one's friends and enemies. Yugi's fist had healed, faded, but her distinct memory of the guard's face had not.

"Milady," came a pleased drawl from behind her.

From the rough, accented, tone Yugi knew before spinning that it was Timaeus.

"Sir!" Yugi dipped lightly at the knees, her fingers still laced behind her back with latent nervousness. "How stand you this fine day?"

"In great health and good spirits," he assured with his own responding bow, "and you too I trust?"

"I have the fortune of most excellent health."

"And business with the Sultan?"

"Yes indeed," she nodded curtly, still waiting before the doors to the private offices of the caramel King's quarters.

"Business before all pleasures here I find," Timaeus snorted.

"Ah but by having so much business we get off with having extraordinary pleasures," Yugi answered with mild mannered cheek but plucked with a bored restlessness. She glanced furtively to the door, still expectant, and as Timaeus continued found herself only half engaged.

"I too have business with his Majesty," he revealed with that gruff comfortable way of his, tucking his hat under his arm. "I am not surprised to find you likewise engaged but I am to see you without your flurry of attendants."

"With the Queen presently," came Yugi's vague but to the point response.

"I shall have to be your company then."

"Fine company," Yugi snorted playfully, glancing again impatient.

"You seem engaged with something dear Mistress?" Timaeus construed, leaning a little to his side as if to try and see what round Yugi was so exciting.

"Her Majesty has caused all matter of excitement your Excellency," Yugi sighed, forcing her smile up.

"Yes, most wonderful news that," the Ryssian agreed. "Must have you all in quite a splendid rush."

"Something to that effect," she dismissed.

"Her being six months into it…" He sighed. "I find there is nothing more charming than the glow of a happy mother. Tis God's greatest grace to give such kindness and joy."

"Yes, you're a very elegant poet Sir," Yugi murmured as a brief noise of chairs scrapping sounded within the chamber and she suspected the King's current engagement to be leaving.

"Ah, I was recollecting on poetry yesterday actually," Timaeus tried valiantly to draw the crux of Yugi's attention as she gazed off hawkish and expectant. He hardly seemed the kind of man for proper poetry being so grizzled with war wounds. "I wondered if you could help me with a local mater of translation?"

"Hmm?" Yugi made out that she didn't quite hear him but in actuality she hadn't been paying the slightest attention. The man was insistent but unfailingly polite.

"Given your apparent mastery of several European and local languages I thought you could best explain the meaning of the curiosity," he chuckled, "it's been a great wonder of mine what exactly Gem Faher means?"

There came the sound of men approaching the doors, she expected they'd soon be opened and Yugi would have her chance at last.

"Dear Lady?"

"Pardon?" Yugi had forgotten him again and Timaeus seemed to deflate. "Oh! That old thing your Excellency? It's baby story gargle, nonsense mostly adapted to official title as something of a joke by the last Sultan-"

Yugi was already keenly looking away as the doors opened and the Sultan came swaying out, patting hard at the backs of two of his lords from the greater council of men, with his bare chest flashing under a golden collar.

"Enjoy yourself!" Atemu laughed thwacking at the retreating shoulder before he appeared to notice Yugi. His smile had a way of evaporating around Yugi into something of nothingness and expectant concern. "You now too? Am I to hear baby news all morning? Tis not even here yet."

"Majesty," Yugi bowed with a lowering of the head and a dip of the knees more to curtsey than anything else. "A moment?"

The Sultan frowned, gently, and noticing Timaeus appeared to consider an escape.

"Do you have anything of urgency for me Ambassador?" He supposed almost hopefully with his hand on his sword.

"No. Not at all Sire, nothing so grim," the Ryssian murmured hoarsely. "Nothing worth keeping the Lady waiting for on my account certainly."

"A courteous man you are then Sir," Atemu sighed woefully realizing he was forced to take on the Gem Faher. Grunting, he beckoned to Yugi's keen, sharp, eyes. "In then woman and let's have how much more you lot want out of me for this nursery."


"I'm not here for anything so petty Sire," Yugi informed, traipsing briskly after him back into the office as the grand doors heaved behind them. She did not even think to bid the Ambassador a farewell. She was too occupied with her warpath. "Sesset sent the Exchequer our request for more funds and I assume that is all sorted."

"Tis, tis," Atemu heaved turning to her as he slouched one shoulder towards the grand windows with his hand still resting on his sword. He tended to fondle the weapon before Yugi. Sinister perhaps but Yugi preferred to consider sayings of deficient masculinity. "Then what did you come to badger me with?"

"Her Majesty's health concerns me greatly."

"She is taking the first babe hard, it's expected," Atemu grunted.

"She will not listen to me-"

"I would hope not!" He scoffed, laughing.

"-Or her physicians," Yugi hissed both arms slapping to fold her forearms over each other. "She listens only to the nonsensical advice her sister in Britton sends in those letters. They have put notions in her head, of preserves and the benefits of as little exercise as possible, no wiser than anything I could beat out of sheep herder!"

"You will not disrespect the Queen's kin," Atemu warned, finger inclined.

"I should hope someone would for the sake of the child's health." Yugi snapped demurely. "Twill make the whole course of her pregnancy harder and the birth worse if we don't have her dissuaded to sense soon."

"I have sent for trained doctors from France," he snorted back, "they are great professionals. We shall see what they say."

"Oh they'll be all the worse with their cold footed notions about asparagus and milk!" She laughed nastily, frustrated. "You have the finest doctors in the world here."

"If the Lady wants such homely comforts I won't deny them from her," Atemu shot firm and very tall at once. "I won't be lectured on medicine from your either unless you can name for me some school you've attended aside from the front row of Hell!"

"Oh you damn petty rabblerouser you're as bad as they are!" Yugi bent to holler before throwing her hands up. "Have at it then! Let your mystic white men deliver the babe and have your wife sucking lemons! See how I shall keep my mouth shut!"

"So you ought to!" Atemu boomed.

"Good day then!" Yugi took her steps back, sweeping her hands open before scoffing, angrily, she turned to break off and escape in a flourish of impatience. "Enjoy yourself with your elixirs and potions!"

He gave the last caw angrily as the guards scrambled to let her out in an uncommon fluster and tugging the handles from them Yugi turned about the slam the doors after herself.


The Great Lesser Council did not like the Frenchmen and the Frenchmen did not at all like the savages as they saw them. The head man, with a long hawked nose and hair which didn't take well to all the hard sandy air, found their painted white Queen precious however.

The head Frenchman could spend a good hour or more sitting with the Queen at the window sill. She would pat her belly, her courtiers would sit about watching the man disapprovingly, and in whispers, pretending at playing cards, Mana'jet and Kisara would demand Yugi to translate. The Frenchman seemed to notice, at a brief moment when his eyes met Yugi's looking up through her lashes, and made a game of switching his conversation with her Majesty from English to French.

It proved useless; Yugi knew more than enough French to take notes of everything the head Frenchman said and to laugh at him behind her fan.

The Frenchmen were put up and paid handsomely. They were not welcome among the clerics or native physicians which was probably just as well given the French saw them as savage witch doctors. Likewise they were not suitable courtiers. They kept to themselves mostly, the three of them and the two white midwives.

Yugi suspected they hoped, if they served her Majesty well enough, that they would be permitted to stay to attend her other children in years to come making a good fortune for themselves. Kuli thought them a hive of ravenous blood suckers and Yugi taught her how to say as much in French (which luckily never got back to the Sultan).

Regardless the Frenchmen said ridiculous things about the dangers of riding at this stage of the pregnancy, the uselessness nutritionally speaking of uncooked food, and how the Queen very much ought to have the standard twelve week lying in properly shut up from the airs of the river.

Yugi's eyes rolled so far back they almost scampered out of her head.

Sensing her disapproval but inflexible in her ideals and unsure how to tend Yugi's dislike Anzu put a little silent bubble of space between them by effectively handing Yugi the keys to run court how she liked. Yugi did; they had adequate festivals and little plays and so on but she did it with no real zeal. Likewise Anzu took the opportunity to settle back her feet up with the growing babe and avoid any conversation with Yugio on the matter despite how she patted her belly every alternating syllable.

Tenuous as their current relationship sat Yugi was too generous and Anzu too kind for them to fall into bitter words. Yugi just wanted her to be safe.

The Sultan, unmistakably, quite liked the whole thing. Yugi with her lips wired shut, Anzu nice and settled, a score of stubborn European doctors preaching in the house, the court running without particular emphasis on the customs Atemu must've found unchristian…

Yugi wrote furious letters to Mahado and whispered just as much with the lesser council. They agreed, sided, with her but that was expected. Mahado wrote once to the Sultan about not taking one voice too highly above others and Atemu's eyes found Yugi across the breakfast table but the Gem Faher ignored him.


Timaeus had a way of, in no improper sense, seeking Yugi out when the woman was frantically busy with something.

The morning Yugi attempted and failed to dissuade her Majesty out of her ridiculous twelve week lying in the Ryssian exercised his peculiar talent.

"Morning your Grace!" Timaeus greeted striding towards the stables, slapping his leather glove against one still fitted on the other hand. "What is this great excitement I see?"

"We are out to ride this morning your Excellency," Yugi responded, still vengeful after the Lady Anzu had, in her very soft spoken way, turned down all her complaints as docile and stupid.

Those coming with her along the river, wives and husbands, tipped their hats to Timaeus who sent smiles to their little hums of genteel greeting but the Ryssian was otherwise occupied with Yugi who was rocking Mana'jet's daughter in her arms trying to urge the stable boy to saddle the horse at a brisker pace.

"I can feel the heat as well as you can," Yugi chided at the slave, bouncing the curled toddling child of two on her hip. "Makes men lazy, I know, but you can sleep in the empty hay all day when we are out."

"Milady," Timaeus had taken a step beside her. "Is there perhaps any chance I could dissuade you from your purpose?"

"Not this morning I fathom." Yugi answered offhand before she caught to bother asking; "though your Excellency why ever would you want to dear Sir?"

"I find myself with little to do today and I find your conversation always quite enlightening," Timaeus flattered tucking his cap.

"You'll find me very ill-tempered today," Yugi snorted absently, kissing the girl's forehead as she leant into her chest garbling for attention. "But if you have nothing better to divert you Milord you ought come riding with the men of our company. I am sure they'll find something worth hunting if only a crocodile."

"I did not know they hunted crocodiles here?" He wondered.

"Oh they'll hunt anything if it possesses a physical challenge." Yugi dismissed with a cocking shrug of one shoulder. She was quite displeased likewise with men this morning.

"This great country wonders me like a modern Sparta," Timaeus laughed.

"A wh- pardon?" She blinked. Yugi was educated on a great many practical things but deliriously, notoriously, unprepared in other senses. She knew only a little history and none of it stretching so far back. To her the word was nonsense.

"Sparta, the Greeks," Timaeus tried to enlighten Yugi's memory as if he fancied Yugi some well primed child of someone important rather than a vagabond.

"I confess I know nothing of the Greeks," Yugi sighed easily, "so you shall have to give me some tutoring on the matte- There boy! You are done and you can sleep away the hot midday!"

She was distracted by the lad who tightly lacing her horse now presented Yugi with a crop. Her second with the slave was more lightened than anything that had escaped her mouth a moment before. Timaeus appeared to notice but continued or attempted to before Yugi thrust the tiny, mumbling, baby girl towards him.

"Would you Milord?" Yugi half pleaded, taking the crop and passing the child to Timaeus.

"Ah! Yes!" Timaeus flustered hooking up the baby girl delicately though she squirmed utterly fat and displeased with the manner of being passed from one funny looking white individual to another.

Yugi hooked herself up into the saddle and reached to reclaim the child off the idling man trying to hold her.

"You will with us Milord?" Yugi supposed.

"No, I think not today," he apologised.

"Then I wish you a better day than I am having," Yugi sighed, "till this evening Milord."

"Hopefully I shall have chance then to tell you of the Greeks."

"I should enjoy it I'm sure," Yugi promised.

Timaeus had, sweet man though he was, a dry way of saying things. He spoke with passion but stripped the details of all their excitement. He was soldier not a story teller and Yugi, being of the blood of story tellers, sighed at it.

"A good day to you as well," Timaeus tipped his hat as Yugi nudged the horse into an amble.


Atemu had rather liked pregnancy in his youth. His kith and kin were so often bursting with child it seemed the normal state of things. They took to it all easily here, without fear or fussing. So great was the carelessness of mothers here that often times Atemu's bursting mother didn't even seem to realize she was expecting another hackney son soon to be clinging to her ankles.

Anzu had little hips Mana'jet fussed though and now he was Sultan a million other voices snapped, yammering, in his ears about this or that gold ornament for this mythical nursery and slow coming child. It was a tiring effort.

Over the course of her swelling, with something Atemu found it hard to contemplate was his child, Anzu got a little gaunter and lost a little of her lustre. He loved her all the same but it was a puzzling paradox to the sunnier memories of his childhood where the whole business of babies seemed easy enough.

She pressed his hand the bulge eventually, gasping and crying, to try and commune to him the fluttering feel of their offspring turning. He couldn't quite make it out but the idea made him smile briefly. It was a kind idea that there was some cognizance in something that would be his flesh and blood but…

The idea perplexed him and Atemu found himself briefly unsettled. It had always been easy to imagine whatever brother or sister was growing in his mothers, his father's wives, but he found it hard to picture his own child. He put it down to how gently the child inside Anzu seemed to push. Perhaps he was desensitized or perhaps a child with so much civilized, British, blood was gentler in disposition than a wild Eastern newborn.

How normally very mild Anzu could get so excited over the same affair likewise bothered him. It unsettled his steady seat of confidence. It was fearful and bothersome every time he found some little thing he hadn't been worried about had been panicking her. She had been terrified apparently that the child wouldn't begin to move and the fuss she made, sobbing, when it did quite startled Atemu…

He loved her, he was happy, he just… She made him feel like he had something to be frightened about. Childbirth had never been so dreadful a thing before.

He didn't want to go on about it but there also came an element of feeling cheated about the whole thing. Seth laughed at Atemu for it.

"She won't let you have her?" He cackled.

"She turned stark at the concept I so much as want to touch her," Atemu groaned, "she seems to think a brush at the bosom could startle the babe right out of existing."

"Ah but wives can be so feisty with heat when with child," Seth grinned filthily, "it's something about the occupation that sends them primal."

"Not my lass evidently," Atemu shrugged bitterly.

"Is it true the Frenchmen say she has to lock herself up for a month and so?" He leant in keenly with his gossip.

"For her health," Atemu sighed, "it's the most reputable science."

"Ha! Thank the gods you have the Gem Faher or the whole court would fall to chaos!" He laughed senseless or seemingly so of Atemu's hatred on the matter. "Tis a shame you don't have a second wife; then you'd not be lonely."

"But I don't," Atemu shrugged, that much didn't bother him but… "You know her Majesty suggested I actually find a mistress?"

"No?" Seth wheezed stunned and delighted.

"In Britton it's quite common," he elaborated, "especially for Kings who must be the spirit of virility."

"Ha!" His brother chortled. "It's because they're so stingy and so few. Gods save and preserve me if I slept with another's wife! I'd be ousted and hanged for my troubles. Though if I did not have three of my own I could no doubt be hungry enough to try."

"Something to that effect," he yawned. "So with my morality I must sleep alone."

Seth, a typical younger brother, had no sympathy for him but a slew of snorts.


Yugi had a way of sitting that Atemu, though accustomed to, didn't often like. As they waited outside the Queen's darkened chambers however, watching the sheets ferried in and out by pasty foreigners and hearing the screams…

It was that first scream that during Atemu's approach had compelled him to seek out the normally distasteful seat by Yugi's left side along the shelf of the narrow, squatting, bench along the wall.

Yugi's fingers didn't move from their stagnated layers against each other in her lap but her eyes did drift to Atemu suspiciously and as the King folded his arms the witch's neck flexed. Yugi sighed through her nostrils and distracting himself from the constricted shrieks of his barred off wife Atemu regarded her.

For a nobody Yugi sat with the kind of poise, the composure, Atemu recalled his mother exhibiting. It was the kind of straight backed elegance that could comfort and embarrass a man equally depending on the weather. At one glance it could make the braver sex feel inferior, unworthy, but at another, like now when Atemu needed to baste in the outward glow of something stronger than himself, it comforted. To see someone else who seemed at least in control of themselves was reassuring.

The stance did nothing to melt the stark, hungry, grip about Yugi's mouth however. In a moment's pause, inclinations of thought running off with him to try and quieten the effect of the screaming still reaching Atemu's ears, he considered that was simply the bizarre quality of Yugi's face.

Atemu had originally expected more people of the continent to look like Yugi than he had actually found during his time there. The Gem Faher's face, well preserved and admittedly younger than Atemu's, lacked fresh milk-skinned youth, the dew of life appearance, women like Anzu possessed in gentle hands leaving a kind of portrait ancientness to the witch's face. Vexingly though, annoyingly, often enough as Atemu made up his mind that the poor thing was ugly Yugi would give a tantalizing, flushing and blooming, kind of smile that sparkling would fill her whole features.

He understood his father's weakness for such too-old for themselves faces but Atemu did not like how it affected him in that instance. When Anzu gave a shriek so groaning it almost cut an octave but fell down deep and dragging the pair of them cringed on the bench about their lips in much the same gesture of discomfort and disapproval. As his eyes fell shut, sighing, Atemu flexed his fingers on his arms and could've been compelled, for an instant, to slump his head in Yugi's lap and wait out the whole affair there. It disturbed him and while Atemu wouldn't have given some inclination to kiss a fair girl a second thought he gave everyone uncalled for thought of Yugi credence.

In her chambers Anzu seemed agonized, muffled sobs ringing out between contractions, and Yugi's lips pursed in a way Atemu took a note of unease from.

Birth was a dreadfully consuming thing.

"Should it be this wretched?" Atemu asked hoarsely.

"No." Yugi did not spare him any gentle pandering with the worried curtness of her answer.

The sitting rooms in the Queen's chambers, in fact the whole of her chambers, were stuffy with closed shutters and stagnant darkness compounded into sweat from the natural heat of their continent.

Atemu frowned, glancing across his shoulder towards the sealed door.

"Where are the others?"

"In the grand hall seeing they are not invited to the birth," Yugi answered.

"They'll get chance enough to fondle the child."

"It's not the fondling they care about," Yugi grunted, "it's the helping. Yet she is without help."

"She has the best doctors money can afford."

"Money does not afford happiness or family," the Gem Faher shot back in that scathingly clever way of hers. "It shouldn't be like this; she should have light, the whole family holding her, strengthening her bonds with and well protected by her subjects. She should have drink and smoke and chews to lessen the pain. She shouldn't be running in dry and unwell. She should be safe, not scared."

Atemu sighed. Births were not a thing men were allowed to but husbands and brothers oft sat in the outside sitting rooms drawn by the sheer festivity of the women coming and going. There was none of that here and, despite his attempts not to, Atemu missed it.

"They won't let her eat," Yugi murmured fretting, "I can feel her getting weaker."

"Oh?" Atemu stiffened nastily, eyes darting.

It was the wrong thing to say and glazed as they both had been Yugi didn't seem to realize Atemu had been listening.

"Yes," she answered hoarsely because there was no backing out of the words now, "she sounds… don't you hear it?"

"Are you trying to frighten me?" Atemu grunted. He thought for a second he almost had the witch into a corner worth exploiting a confession out of.

Yugi sighed but didn't ruin her posture as if to say Atemu couldn't make her do anything or think anything except exactly what she wanted to.

"It's impossible to frighten you Majesty, I've given up that hobby," Yugi laughed dryly. "Given you always assume the worst of me there's no possible way to startle you with a fresh atrocity."

Atemu scoffed with a kind of empty, de-facto, amusement.

"I'll give you this much witch; you're witty."

Yugi seemed to have something very sharp to say but, chuckling, suppressed it to let her hair hang about her face and yawn into the back of her palm. They allowed each other, just for now, to be quiet without another row.


They sat there on the bench, just a foot between them, in the magic shadowed circle of the candlelight before the slaves lit the fire in the sandstone hearth. The guards at the closed door looking into the sitting room stared mostly at the ceiling above their heads but Yugi and Atemu had experience enough to spot the tiny flickers in the guards notice as one squat old slave brought them a tray of treats and a pitcher to wait out the night.

The tray and the pitcher was placed between them by Atemu, the slave dismissed, and Yugi poured herself a drink without offering a chance for the gentleman to take the lead. They both of them, Atemu supposed, had a kind of stubborn independence.

Atemu furnished himself a drink, tipping it back deep, just as Yugi gathered up a slice of cold meat and pickled chutney between a hunk of wrapped flat bread. As much as he disliked the Gem Faher, loathed really, the whole act of hating had been blunted by their being forced to co-exist with the Queen. The witch's evident usefulness and refusal to rise to Atemu's snapping had made maintaining the intensity of repulsion difficult. In effect the creature had become a toad that Atemu had developed a thicker skin to the existence of. It would always rain eventually and in that same way it seemed Atemu had to endure the other.

The screaming came still at intervals but by then it had quite been broken down by exhaustion. The sound quite startled them when next it hit, uncomfortably jarring to the atmosphere, and sighing Atemu was not pleased.

"How long can all this take?" He grumbled.

"A day or two sometimes," Yugi warned vaguely though she seemed unconcerned by that fact. "If it lasts any longer I'll be off to bed."

"Not up all night with devotion?" Atemu almost made an insult.

"If I was in with her I would not sleep a wink but as I am not I see no reason not to," was the solemn, unamused, response as if this whole thing were the Sultan's fault.

Grunting, Atemu kicked off his shoes and watching him covertly Yugi seemed to consider likewise but nibbled instead.

A Frenchman came tumbling out before Atemu could slap the witch's arm and demand with hierarchical power that the pale woman match him barefoot for barefoot in mutual impropriety.

"Hm?" Atemu cocked his chin as the hobbling white man clucked up to him, bowing, attempting their tongue. "Oh stop it you cad; I speak English perfectly as well as the next man. Out with it then, what's the news?"

Yugi nibbled still, licking her teeth without even attempting to prop herself up properly before the foreigner.

"Her Majesty is almost through with it," he wheezed, dabbing the sweat from his brow, "but she is weak and the babe comes the wrong way Majesty. You may have to prepare yourself for the worst if we cannot get it out quick."

"Should've fed her," Yugi hissed ruefully under her breath, licking one finger nastily all her gypsy blood highlighted in the glow of the light.

"Well get back in there damn it man and help her!" Atemu snapped, hand cutting the air harsh gesticulation. "Off with you! Do it!"

"Y-yes Sire!" The gaunt man stuttered running as if he feared Atemu might turn savage and severe his head.

"Incompetence," Yugi mumbled, taking her drink for a swift drinker's swig as if she needed it to steady her tense hand.

"Oh hush," Atemu hissed, gut too tight for comfort as their air seemed to crystallize in mutual concern. "You are not helping either."

"I would be if you let me." The Gem Faher retorted vehemently and though it occurred to Atemu she might care honestly for the Queen he pushed it aside needing something to latch at in his own fear.

"I would not have you near any child of mine."

"I know," Yugi grunted and then to herself; "and thank God I shall never have to bear any of them."

"Heaven shudders at the thought," Atemu spat. It was a disgusting notion it seemed to both of them given how Yugi cringed, drawing up her top lip as he spoke the concept.


Next Time: a kind of spell compels Yugi and Atemu to abruptly join forces but when it passes Atemu has, at last, his metaphorical match.