Masha continued to hold the infant tightly, rocking from side to side across her hips like an animal searching for a bolthole. “What then?” she whispered, mostly to herself. “She needs a home. A wetnurse-“
Walegrin chose that moment to step between them. He looked down at the infant.
Its hands were red and impossibly small-scarcely able to circle his forefinger; its face was dark-mottled as if it had taken a beating just in entering this life-which it probably had.
“I’ll take her with me,” Masha concluded, daring Zip or Arbold to challenge her.
“No,” Walegrin said-and they all stared at him in surprise.
“Is the garrison commandeering babes-in-arms now?” Zip sneered.
The blond man shrugged. “Her mother’s dead; her father refuses to acknowledge her: That makes her a ward of the state-unless you’re thinking of raising her yourself.”
Zip looked away.
“Now, Mistress zil-Ineel’s an upstanding woman-but she’s raised her own children and’s not eager to raise another.”
His ice-green eyes bore down on the midwife until she, too, looked away.
“I know a woman whose children have been taken from her. You know her too. Zip know her very well.”
“Gods. No.” Zip inhaled the words so they were barely audible.
“You’d gainsay me?” Walegrin’s voice was as cold as his eyes.
“What? Who?” Arbold interrupted.
“The S’danzo. The one in the alley. You remember: the pillar of fire and the riots afterward?” Zip replied quickly, never taking his eyes away from Walegrin, whose hand rested on the exposed hilt of the only sword in the room.