Title: Songs from within the Gilded Cage Ch 2/4

Author: Kate

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All standard disclaimers apply. They're not mine and I'm not making a red cent.

Summary: Kalasin has news for Kaddar. A marriage faces its most serious tests to date via a pregnancy and a miscarriage. Kalasin/Kaddar, or Kallydar

Chapter Two

Kaddar sat on the lumpy couch where he had spent one uncomfortable night a few months ago. He anchored his elbows on his knees and dropped his face, the picture of despair. Kalasin was…was… Why had he allowed Zaimid to go to the Copper Isles? Would his cousin have been able to heal his wife?

Kaddar wanted to howl, wanted to rage, but gods above, he couldn't. If Kalasin, the woman who cried for people she didn't even know and for people who didn't even exist (she was a sucker for ballads about lost love) wasn't weeping, he had no right to. The Emperor relived the day, certain parts in a distorted slow motion, others zipping by so quickly he felt nauseous.

It began at breakfast. Kalasin was just beginning to show a slight bump, but she concealed it still with gowns. They'd been talking about when to write to their families, when to announce it to the court. There'd been succession anxiety, because Kaddar had inherited from his maternal uncle, and Ozorne from his mother's brother. Some argued that if Kaddar's nephew Gazanoi, named for his grandfather, inherited, it would mean precedent. Some women like the thought, since it would ensure matrilineal succession—one parent was certain, at least. But Kaddar and Kalasin wanted a traditional Eastern succession, though they were in the Southern lands. The crown and scepter would pass from father to son, not uncle to nephew, but there had to be a son first…

Kaddar had been jokingly trying to convince his wife that she was still by far the most beautiful woman in the world. Kalasin—Kally, she had told him to call her—was self-conscious, but the early morning nausea from the first three months was over. She was finalizing plans to celebrate her twentieth birthday; Varice was handling most of the details. They were reviewing the guest list when she flinched and laid a gentle hand on her abdomen. "I think I just felt the first flutter." She sounded awed.

He had wanted to touch her belly (why hadn't he skipped the meeting to be with his wife??), but it had been late, so they had hurried to dress. He left first because she was having some difficulty with her jewelry and dress. Her hands had swollen thanks to the pregnancy (along with her ankles), which made her rings and shoes extremely painful. She had taken the jewelry off to sleep. Kaddar had frowned, but his ordinarily serene wife was cranky with her discomfort, so he let it go.

'WHY?' He demanded of his memory. 'I KNEW better. Why didn't I tell her to put the rings on the chain around her neck? Why, why, why? Why did I allow her to risk herself and our child? Why did she risk our baby?' He shied away from that train of thought…it wasn't Kalasin's fault, it wasn't his fault, it was the fault of the mage who sent the spell. But it was the Iliniats' fault too, probably. Her fault, for disobedience. His fault, for lenience. Their fault. A little.

They had gone their separate ways for the day. He hadn't even kissed her goodbye. (He forgot some mornings when he was in a rush, or felt awkward. Why? How could he ever forget to kiss the most beautiful woman in the world?)

She hadn't shown up for the light lunch, but she had warned him that she might not be able to get away from the Ladies' meeting. He'd gone back to their suite (thank all the gods for that, even though he'd been fuming at them so recently). And she'd been there, on the floor. Where were the guards? They were waiting outside the door, of course. Because he'd told them not to disturb her. And they were used to her taking mornings off to work in the suite.

She fainted, he thinks. But he remembers (and the memory makes him feel almost violently sick) that she was crumpled on the floor, her wide skirts around her like the petals of a peony, fallen under its own weight. And there was blood, which stained the image. He'd seen just a dot, but he'd turned her over and seen the stain (like the morning after their wedding day, but so much worse).

He had screamed then, and a guard ran for a healer, and the guards knew that they were not to disclose the reason on pain of death (Kaddar didn't know that he had looked capable of murder at the moment he issued the order).

The healer had cut Kalasin out of her corset and clothing and bathed her, but by then, it was far too late for the baby. It was barely in time for her. They would've let her body heal itself through sleep, but they were afraid the sleep might deepen to an endless dreamtime. Wakeflower was applied. Kalasin woke in time to behold the blood that stained her thighs. When she met his eyes, she looked fragile and frightened and confused and so broken he could not bear it. Kaddar tried to breathe to control the emotion at the memory of her lively face so still and pale.

When she met his eyes, he saw knowledge enter them. She knew, suddenly, why he insisted on guards and spells and protection. She suddenly believed that evil existed, that malevolent forces were directed against her personally (many years later she confessed that she'd begun to think men could be evil during the siege of Pirate's Swoop, but after the kraken saved them, she had believed that she was protected and favored by the gods, in some ways). The fact that someone evil had violated the sanctity of her womb, of her body, shook her faith in the nature of the essence of men.

The pain and the pleading in that expression broke Kaddar. He had turned away and wept. And Kalasin had fainted again. The healers had drawn a little blood, to test for sure, but they all knew that the heir was lost, and that the Empress's womb would be poison for at least twelve months. No seed would take root in her, no monthly blood would flow, for the duration of the treatment against the curse. And after that? Only time would tell if her body could support life. Her bleeding would be erratic—at different times, in different quantities, of different consistency.

One healer woke Kalasin to feed her the first tea that would purge her system; another gave her a drug to make her sleep. Kalasin did not ask questions about the potions or spells, did not even speak to ask about her husband or her body. She looked around the bedroom with dull eyes, and whether that was from the pain medication or the shock of the loss, no one ventured a guess.

The memory of darling Kalasin's face, pale and frightened, floated in front of him. Her husband whimpered. The blood, the shock of that moment, seeing her skirts and the dark smear… What if he had been later? She'd still been bleeding a little. Would she have bled to death? What if he had been earlier? Could a counter spell have been issued?

Kaddar had sent the guards to find the mage who sent the working. Only three men in Carthak at the present time had the power to send such a spell past all the palace wards; only one could scry through them, wait for an opportunity AND cast the spell. Kaddar knew that the information of the Empress's pregnancy had been kept too closely to spread beyond Carthak—he need not research enemies far from home. Kalasin hadn't even written to her beloved brother and parents; there could have been no interceptions. Kaddar made a fist and bit his knuckle. He could not lose control, not yet. There was still work to be done.

Killing the mage couldn't bring back his child, or his wife's innocence. But it would stop this from happening a second time. And maybe, if there were blood on his hands, he could get lost in that guilt, and forget that he blamed himself. Motion might allay the fear that Kalasin would never be sweet Kally again.

He wasn't in the ugly pit when the mage breathed his last breath. He heard it, though. Heard the hyenas making that odd noise, like evil laughter. Heard the mage's curses, when he realized his Gift could cast no spells past the words. Heard the curses disintegrate. And when the servant who kept the keys to the menagerie looked nauseated, Kaddar declared "So shall all king killers be dealt with in the land of Carthak."

Guards who had been with him since the beginning of his reign shied away from him, as though they were frightened of him. And no matter how fast he moved, he couldn't escape the fear that he lost Kally, lost the man he was with his naïve bride. He'd gained a stranger for a wife, and he'd become a stranger to himself. Kaddar had never kept secret prisoners or jails. He believed that in order to heal from Ozorne's desecrations, Carthak had to become an Empire of law, where a crime in Yamut was punished the same way the same crime would be punished in Siraj. He'd injured his own ideals this night.

Kaddar found drink in the cabinet and poured some into a glass he kept for meetings in here. Hours passed, in this torturous sequence of memory, repeated at different speeds, in different amounts of detail.

Varice entered the office. Kaddar was lying on the short sofa, back to her. There was a bottle of brandy to one side, and a bottle of whiskey to another. Anger sang, but she rapped twice. After he turned to face her she said, "Your Imperial Majesty?"

He looked at her, dull eyed. "You know me better than that."

"I'm not certain that I do, after tonight." Her voice was tight. She was furious that Kaddar would leave his wife at the most fragile moment of her life, abandoning her to assume that he was disgusted by her failure, or that he was taking comfort in another's arms.

"Are you so disgusted with me then? I had to do it." Kaddar poured three fingers of whiskey, unsteadily. He downed the liquid without wincing, which showed Varice he hadn't really tasted it.

Varice thought for a minute, then realized that Kaddar's guards had been absent tonight. They'd been replaced by a pair of young toughs, the likes of whom she hadn't seen since Ozorne's day. She felt ill at the realization. Kaddar had stayed away from his wife's bedside because he sought revenge, not because he was seeking companionship. "Why? If you'd been trying to make an example out of him, you would have sent him to Court, to pay for his crimes publicly."

"He could've struck us at any time. It had to be done." He repeated, slightly slurring his words. "Had to be."

"You're wrong, Kaddar." Varice said. "I've been here since your uncle's time. I never questioned your leadership." She shook her head. "You crossed a line tonight, whether you see it or not. After centuries of abuses of power, you stood for law, for a system that's predictable. You trust your courts to dispense justice. You don't rig them so any dandy can pay a bit and walk away. The peasants are beginning to respect that, even when they don't believe it can last. And tonight you proved the doubters right! You broke the system that enables you to keep your throne."

Kaddar did see it, but he had to argue. "I am on this throne because of the Graveyard Hag. My nobles may help, but—,"

"Mithros, Minos and Shakith," Varice whispered, "Stop it. If you talk about her, you'll bring her down upon us"

Kaddar ignored her to insist, "I defended my family. I did it secretly and fast, but I'm not ashamed. It had to be done."

Varice gritted her teeth. "That's the third time you've said that. 'It had to be done.' Whom are you trying to convince?"

Kaddar rested his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands and he felt his years and the weight of choices. "It's gone, Varice. The baby is gone and it's a year before we can try again and we can't tell anyone that our security was breached and I don't know how she'll live through this."

Varice sighed. "You'll both get through this. The first step is to put away those bottles and swear not to touch them for at least a season. You're going to dry out and then you're going to sit with your wife. You're going to tell her you don't believe it's her fault, and that you aren't disgusted by her, and you're going to act like a husband, not a teenager denied a treat."

"When did my hostess become the only advisor who stands up to me?" Kaddar wondered. He couldn't say, 'What if I can't tell her I don't blame her? What if I do blame her?'

"The men are still in bed. It's the reason you should have women other than your Empress on your Council."

"Stop should-ing me." He ordered.

Varice approached the couch and the semi-recumbent emperor. "Can I bring you water?"

"Oh no. I want to be blind, stinking drunk tonight. I want to be so drunk I can't remember why I'm drinking. And tomorrow I want to lie in a dark room and groan a little, but do nothing more strenuous. I want to vow to never drink again and I want to wake up questioning where my clothing is."

Varice pursed her lips. "Just so long as you don't lose your clothing to…someone unexpected in your stupor."

"Can't, when there's been too much drinking." Kaddar reminded her. "It doesn't work that way." He considered his lap with the attention only a drunk understands.

Varice sighed, because he wasn't in any shape to speak to Kalasin. "I'm going to fetch a pallet for you at least. You don't want to have a hangover on that couch."

"Varice," Kaddar whispered.

"Yes?"

"Thank you for telling me the truth."

Varice hovered. She wanted to say "always" and she wanted to say "I will never stop" but she could only say, "I am sorry about the baby."

"Me too." Kaddar agreed in a whisper.

Varice returned with the pallet, and then she stayed with him throughout the night, to make certain he didn't die of the drinking.

A maid saw "that pretty Miss Kingsford what doesn't wear a veil" leave the emperor's office, shortly before Kaddar, the next morning. The empress didn't show her face for weeks, and it became known that the emperor and empress were keeping separate beds. The gossip mill began to whirl these hints of scandal together into an ugly tapestry, unchecked by the Emperor's sisters or mother, all of whom were publicly mourning Princess Aaminah and her child.