Chapter Text
The Merchant Council exhausted Wylan. Sitting in a tidily cut suit and listening to them debate minutiae felt like an exercise in self-control more than anything productive. Little as he liked it, though, Wylan did it. He was the only member of the Merchant Council who knew anything about the poverty in Ketterdam, sometimes he thought he was the only one who cared about relieving those conditions. He owed it to Kerch to be prepared and do this right.
One evening after he left a Council meeting, rather than take the short walk home, Wylan turned toward the Zelver District. He had an engagement tonight with… well, he wasn’t sure what to call Alys. He had an engagement with his imprisoned father’s second wife to meet his half-sister.
He knew what babies were, of course. Everyone knew what babies were. They were like normal people, only very small. But this one was related to him. She would be special.
He visited Alys at her parents’ home, where she had returned after the “plague” passed. They were pleasant enough people, and Alys seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
“Wylan!”
Alys hugged him. Surprised, Wylan didn’t respond for a second. Then he hugged her in return. She had always been kind to him, but the affection was new.
Before she married Jan, she had been Alys Tuinstra. And so she was to be again soon enough. As Wylan understood it, she had remained a Van Eck just long enough that her child would be one—the Van Ecks were a more prominent and prosperous family than the Tuinstras. He suspected her parents had made the decision and wondered if it was a gambit to promote themselves or to potentially aid their grandchild.
“It’s nice to see you again. You look well,” he said. She did look absolutely glowing.
As he followed Alys into the sitting room, Wylan noted the piano. He couldn’t help thinking about Alys and her passion for music. He wondered if she had gotten much better… and if she studied with the same teacher.
“Thank you. Please sit.”
They chatted for a while over tea. Alys did most of the talking—about the weather, about her music lessons (yes, she still studied with Mister Bajan), about her newest parakeet. Wylan didn’t contribute much. He didn’t have much to say on those subjects. But he didn’t mind. He sipped his tea, and nodded, and enjoyed her easy company. There was something reassuring in someone who had no expectations of him. Alys wasn’t trying to persuade Wylan’s vote or work a sly con against his businesses. He was simply here for company and tea.
The pryaniki were an interesting choice. Sitting in on meetings of the Merchant Council, Wylan had learned that tensions were growing between Kerch and Ravka—apparently there were indicators that the Ravkans had developed technologies that could be game-changers at sea, while the Zemeni fleets were catching up to the Kerch. As their nautical superiority had been the source of their international power for so long, this made the higher political echelons of Kerch uncomfortable. It made Wylan’s head spin—there was so much to learn and he was already late knowing it.
Perhaps the cookies meant something.
Perhaps they were simply tasty cookies. Were the Tuinstras prominent enough to make political statements with such details?
Wylan remembered little of his childhood, but he knew he had been entrusted to the care of nannies fairly early. He oughtn’t to have been surprised, then, when it was a nanny who brought in his half-sister.
“Here we are,” she said. She was a cheerful-looking woman with apple cheeks and a mole on her chin, carrying a soft yellow blanket wrapped around a bundle of tiny human.
Wylan stood, unable to keep from noticing Alys’s put-out look at his eagerness to see the baby—it was true he was more excited for his half-sister than Alys.
“Would you like to hold your little sister, Mister Van Eck?”
“Yes, please.”
“Now, just hold your arms up like this—she’s got a very weak little neck at this age, you’ll have to support her head—like that, there’s a good lad.”
He hadn’t escaped that yet, being seen as a little boy. Wylan wondered if it would help when he started growing a beard. For now he just held his arms the way he was told. When he had it right, the nanny—he needed to learn her name—placed baby in his arms.
Wylan gasped. He actually gasped.
She was simultaneously heavier and lighter than expected.
She didn’t weigh much, but it was how she weighed, how she felt, the way she moved with each small breath and the warmth of her beating heart. She was weighted with life. There was a significant amount of humanity packed into that tiny body. She yawned and it was just about the cutest thing he had ever seen. It was like her mouth didn’t know how to make yawn-shapes yet.
“Hello,” Wylan said softly, feeling himself change, too.
He felt everything inside him melt. She was soft and warm and new, and it was like being so close reminded him what it was to be soft and warm and new himself. Her face looked squished in and softened, like dough that hadn’t finished baking, half a nose and undergrown eyebrows, which made her utterly human eyes more striking.
He recognized those eyes. They unsettled him, so innocent, so alive—his father’s eyes in that tiny face. How could his father’s eyes look beautiful?
“Hello, Cornelia.”
Was that… was he cooing?
Ghezen’s books, he was fairly certain he was. Stranger still, he didn’t care.
“I’m your big brother.”
That was important. She should know that.
Wylan had, at times, felt protective of the people he loved, especially his mama, Jesper when the situation arose, though Jesper was usually the one being protective of Wylan. He was so much stronger in so many ways.
This was different. He was immediately struck by the utter helplessness of the baby in his arms, how much responsibility he took in holding her. Her life was literally in his hands. And, by Ghezen’s hand, he loved her. Did that make sense? He didn’t know her, wasn’t sure there was a her to know yet, but he loved her.