R. Bakker: The Judging eye

Let others burn their fingers. Let them turn aside their eyes.

He rolled and snuggle-wriggled so that he could face her on the pillow. They stared into each other's eyes, mother and son, for several long moments. The immediacy of her was so vivid, so close, that nothing else could ever be as real. She was the only thing.

He ran a fingertip along the embroidered lip of the top blanket, a small proof of texture. He bent his face into the semblance of petulant concentration.

"I miss Sammi…" he lied.

She swallowed and blinked. "Me too, sweetling. Me too."

A part of him, the snake-sneaky part, laughed. Poor Samarmas. Poor-poor Samarmas.

"I didn't get to see Father."

Her eyes hardened beneath a film of tears.

"I'm sorry, Kel. We're at war. Your father, he… he has to make sacrifices. We all have to make sacrifices. Even darling little boys like you…"

She fell silent and remote, but he could see her thoughts clear enough. He does not mourn him. My husband does not mourn our son.

"Uncle Maithanet," the little Prince began, "he…"

A kind of wariness crept into her expression. Her eyes blinked away the fog of self-pity and suddenly became alert. "What about your uncle?"

"Nothing."

"Kel. What about your uncle?"

"He… watches you funny."

"What do you mean watches? How?"

"Is he angry at you, Mommy?"

"No. He's your uncle."

An inward look of cycling thoughts and worries.

"Which means he's my brother," she added, but more for her own benefit, he knew, than for his. She reached out to cup his cheek in her left hand, the one bruised by what she called her "ancient tattoo."

The Prince-Imperial fluttered his lids as though overpowered by warmth and weariness. "But he has more power…" he whispered, pretending to fall asleep. He would open his eyes later, when her breathing slipped into the long trough of dreams.

Unseen rulers never slumbered, not truly.