6. A Father’s Promise
A Father’s Promise
Nine months old and the body was finally becoming useful.
I could sit upright without support now, balance steady enough to free both hands for grasping.
Crawling came last month, knees and palms carrying me across the nursery floor faster than the nursemaids expected.
This week I’d started pulling myself up on the crib rails, legs wobbling but holding each time a little longer than the last.
The disconnect between intention and execution remained maddening, but the gap closed a fraction more each day. I’d learned patience in this new life, or perhaps I’d relearned it. The underworld crossing taught me that some things couldn’t be rushed.
Tonight the nursery held four of us in rough wooden cribs spaced along the stone walls.
Most were occupied. The nursemaids rotated in shifts, and the current one, a heavy woman with a permanent squint, had fallen asleep an hour ago in the chair by the door.
Her snores provided a steady rhythm to the darkness.
I should’ve been sleeping. Infants demanded rest to fuel their growth, and every wasted hour cost me development I couldn’t afford to lose.
Instead I sat propped against the crib’s headboard, staring at ceiling beams I could barely see, running combat scenarios through a mind that had nothing else to occupy it.
The door opened without sound.
I felt the draft before I saw the figure. Cold air from the corridor slid across my face, and the Knight Brand stirred in response, warmth spreading along my spine where the card was woven into my soul .
「The thread tightens. A hand reaches for what is Hel’s.」
A shape moved through the darkness. Tall and lean, stepping with deliberate care through the gap in the door. The corridor behind her wasn’t fully dark. Dim light from a wall sconce bled through the opening, showing the outline of a figure and the pale bundle she carried.
The nursemaid’s snores continued undisturbed.
The figure approached my crib, and I saw the pillow in her hands as she drew closer. Soft fabric clutched in fingers that trembled. These were a servant’s hands, callused from scrubbing and hauling. She wasn’t one I recognized.
This one was younger, sixteen summers at most, with the pinched features of someone who grew up hungry and never quite stopped. She leaned over the crib rail, and in the thin light from the corridor I made out her face.
Tears tracked down her cheeks. Her mouth was pulled tight in the way mouths get when every part of a person wants to be somewhere else.
This wasn’t a killer by nature. This was someone who’d been told what to do and promised something in return, then threatened with worse if she refused. I could cry out and the sound would wake the nursemaid. It might stop what was about to happen.
But the mercenary part of me wanted to see how this played out. I wanted to know if Henrik’s promise meant anything at all.
The pillow descended.
The door slammed open. Light flooded the nursery, torch flames from the corridor painting everything in orange and black .
The servant girl froze with the pillow inches from my face. In that frozen moment I saw Lord Henrik de Blaise standing in the doorway.
He wasn’t dressed for midnight appearances.
A robe thrown over sleeping clothes, bare feet on cold stone, gray hair disheveled from his bed.
The nursemaid woke at the sound of the door and made a small, broken noise in the back of her throat.
“Storm-Cleaver,” she breathed, the name coming out of her like a prayer or a curse.
The sword in his hand was very much awake.
It drew orange reflections from the torchlight, its edge honed to killing sharpness.
The nursemaid jerked awake with a strangled sound, eyes wide and confused.
The servant girl began to turn. Her mouth opened to form words that would never come.
Henrik moved.
I’d seen fast men before. I’d been one of them in another life. Robert Garland had been fast even while dying on his feet. Henrik de Blaise made Robert Garland look slow.
One moment he stood in the doorway. The next, Storm-Cleaver was completing its arc through the servant girl’s neck. There was no in-between. My infant eyes couldn’t track him. He was there and then he was here, and the girl’s head tumbled through the torchlight.
Blood sprayed across my crib in a hot arc. Droplets spattered my face, my blankets, and the wooden rails. The body crumpled forward and the pillow fell harmlessly to the floor. The corpse landed draped across the crib’s edge, neck stump leaking onto stone.
The nursemaid opened her mouth to scream. Henrik’s eyes found hers, and whatever she saw there turned the scream into a whimper. She pressed herself back into the chair, making herself as small as possible.
Henrik didn’t speak to her yet.
He stepped over the body and reached into my crib. His hands were still warm from sleep, sliding beneath my back with a care that seemed wrong coming from a man whose blade still dripped red. He lifted me out, cradling me against his chest.
For a moment the lord vanished and the man stood in his place. His eyes searched my face, cataloging the blood that wasn’t mine, checking for wounds that weren’t there. His thumb brushed my cheek, wiping away a droplet of the dead girl’s blood.
Grief lived beneath that rigid expression. The grief of a man whose thoughts lingered on my mother.
“You have her eyes,” he said. His voice was so quiet that only I heard it.
Clarissa. The woman who died bringing me into the world.
Henrik held me a heartbeat longer. The sound of running boots echoed in the corridor, and the warmth left his face. By the time the house guards burst through the door, Henrik de Blaise stood cold and composed. His grip on me was still careful, but his eyes showed nothing.
“My lord.” The lead guard took in the scene, eyes wide. The body, the blood, the infant in the lord’s arms. “We heard the disturbance and came as quickly as we could. We were at the lower barracks when the runner reached us.”
He was breathing hard, words tumbling out in the frantic rush of a man who sensed his life might depend on how the next minute played out .
“Silence.”
The word ended his babbling as cleanly as Storm-Cleaver ended the girl’s life.
Henrik walked to the crib. His movements were measured and deliberate. He set me back down on the blood-spattered blankets, arranging the wool around my small body with a careful exactness that looked automatic but wasn’t.
I caught it now, knowing what to look for. His fingers lingered a moment too long. His eyes stayed on my face before he turned away.
“The child has my protection.” His voice carried to every corner of the nursery, pitched for the ears he knew were listening beyond the doorway. Servants, guards, informants. Everyone would know by morning. “As promised.”
He turned to the nursemaid. She hadn’t moved from her chair, gone white and trembling so hard her teeth clicked against each other.
“You.” Henrik’s tone held no warmth now. “You fell asleep at your post.”
“My lord, I beg you.” The nursemaid’s hands gripped the arms of her chair. “I didn’t know she’d try to harm the child. I swear on everything holy that I’m loyal to this house.”
Henrik’s eyes stayed on her, flat and unreadable. “You fell asleep.”
“Please, my lord. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing. I deserve only your mercy.”
“You fell asleep,” Henrik repeated. “While you slept, someone entered this room to murder a child under my protection.”
The woman’s mouth opened and closed. No more words came out.
“You’ll be reassigned to the laundry. Tonight.” He looked at the guards. “The cold water should help you stay awake.”
He gestured toward the body. “Remove the body. Clean the floor. Discover who sent her. I want names by morning.”
The guards scrambled to obey. Two of them lifted the headless corpse while a third retrieved the fallen head, and they carried the remains out with more speed than dignity.
Henrik paused at the doorway. He didn’t look back at me. He didn’t allow himself that weakness where others might see. But he spoke, quiet enough that only I should hear.
“I made her a promise. I intend to keep it.”
Then he was gone, bare feet padding down the corridor, and the room settled into the aftermath.
Other infants were wailing, startled by the noise and the smell of copper in the air.
The nursemaid scrambled to call for servants, her voice shrill with panic and relief at her narrow escape.
Soon there would be people and questions and the careful work of removing evidence before dawn.
I didn’t cry.
Blood on my face was nothing new. Blood on my blankets was the price of survival. I lived this way for thirty years before I died, and I’d live this way again for as long as it took.
But I understood this house differently now. Henrik didn’t come because I was useful. He came because he loved her. That was worth remembering. It was a weapon I could use later.
In the morning, I learned that several servants had been dismissed without references. One had vanished entirely.
A veiled woman visited my crib. She studied me with eyes I couldn’t see through the fabric and said nothing before she left.
No one else attempted to smother me in my sleep. The message had been received.
◇ ◆ ◇
Two years old now. Small hands, unsteady balance, and a tongue that still tripped on half the sounds an adult mouth once owned.
But the mind behind these milk teeth remembered how to measure a battlefield.
The outer courtyard stretched before me, a square of packed earth surrounded by gray walls and a grayer sky.
Servants moved through their morning routines with the efficiency of people who knew exactly where they stood in the hierarchy.
We stood below the acknowledged children, below the household staff.
Somewhere around the level of the hounds, depending on which bastard you asked about.
I’d spent two years cataloging this place from crib and crawling range. Now that walking came easier, my survey expanded daily.
The keep dominated the northern wall, four stories of black stone and banded doors.
That’s where Henrik lived with his legitimate family, wife and sons I’d only glimpsed from a distance.
The eastern wing housed the acknowledged bastards, children of noble mistresses whose bloodlines carried enough weight to merit recognition.
The western wing belonged to the household staff, kitchens, stores, and the endless machinery that kept a great house running.
The southern buildings were mine. The backhouse quarters where servants’ bastards were stored until they proved useful or died trying.
I counted fifteen children in my cohort now. We’d started with twenty-two. The culling happened slowly and invisibly, a child gone from breakfast here and there until you realized the room had grown emptier.
Sickness took some. Accidents took others. The ones who simply vanished were the ones nobody asked about.
I’d made it a point to be visible, to demonstrate value before anyone decided I was expendable.
The Knight Brand pulsed warm against my spine as I crossed the courtyard, a steady presence that had grown stronger over the past year.
The card didn’t grant me power yet, but it kept me alert to threats in ways an ordinary toddler wouldn’t be.
I’d felt the nursemaid’s resentment building for two days before Henrik dealt with it.
I’d felt the cook’s assistant considering poison before the head cook caught him stealing silver and solved the problem without knowing he’d done me a favor.
Useful, sensing hostile intent. Less useful when I stood two feet tall and could barely lift a spoon.
A shadow fell across my path.
“The bastard walks.”
I looked up to find Kasimir blocking my way. He was five years old and half again my height, the legitimate son of a client house sent to foster under de Blaise colors. His clothes were finer than anything in the backhouse, and his sneer carried the confidence of someone who’d never been told no.
Two larger boys flanked him, cousins or lackeys. I hadn’t bothered to learn which.
“He’s small,” one of them observed. “Even for a baby. ”
“That’s because he’s a servant’s get.” Kasimir crouched to bring his face level with mine. “Bad blood makes weak bodies. Everyone knows that.”
The Knight Brand flared hot between my shoulder blades. I had to actively suppress the urge to drive my forehead into his nose. Two years old. Couldn’t start killing other children yet. Needed to wait until I was at least old enough to hold a blade.
“Cat got your tongue, bastard?”
I met his eyes. I let him see what lived behind a toddler’s face. The calculation. The patience. The absolute certainty that one day the balance between us would shift.
Kasimir flinched backward. He nearly fell on his backside, and his lackeys laughed nervously, uncertain what happened but sensing their leader’s discomfort.
“Freak,” Kasimir spat. There was less confidence in it now. “Come on. He’s not worth the trouble.”
They left. I resumed my survey of the courtyard.
In a few years, we’d meet again in the training yard. By then I’d have hands that could hold a sword. I was patient. I could wait.
「Hel’s Ledger」
Vessel: Danarre de Blaise | Year 817 | Age 2
House de Blaise | Status: Bastard (Unacknowledged)
Location: de Blaise Estate, Outer Courtyard
「Knight of Swords」 — Stirring
「Emperor」 — Sleeping
「Magician」 — Sleeping
Active Charge: Find the one who broke Hel’s claim.
The thread is taut. The vessel endures.