10 – Aftermath by Asprin, Robert

“She’s getting her milk teeth.”

Suyan gulped a mouthful of pastry. “Not milk teeth, I’ll warrant?” Another of her lilting questions, but this one came with a furtive smile,

“Not milk teeth then. She’ll soon be ready for gruel and a bit of por- ridge in the morning, I used to like to make porridge-especially in winter.”

The happiness in Suyan’s face wavered. Illyra could almost see her

thinking of where she’d been before they’d brought her to the forge.

“We’ll still need someone to take care of her. I’m S’danzo, not . . .” Illyra hesitated, wondering why she’d been about to say she wasn’t Trevya’s mother. Neither was Suyan, for that matter. And other S’danzo women had children underfoot all the time. “Well, Trevya should have someone watching her all the time,” she decided after a puzzling mo- ment. “It’s dangerous here, with the forge. Not like some other places where the worst that could happen is a bumped knee.”

The tension left Suyan in a great sigh. She ate the rest other pastry but left the baby in Illyra’s arms- They talked then, in the afternoon light, as they had never talked before, though not about anything of importance. They talked about the foods Dubro liked, and the ones he didn’t; and the bolts of brightly colored cloth that had just arrived in a caravan from Croy; and whether the journeyman had a wife in his future.

Illyra stole a look at the future, then shook her head. “I can’t See a thing,” she murmured and remembered what she had said out on the rock. For a heartbeat her blood went cold. He had tricked her. That strange man who was not a shepherd had tricked her into casting an unprecedented curse over Sanctuary: a S’danzo blessing. Not that there was such a thing as a S’danzo blessing. “Everyone’s a child, one way or another-“