“You said you were patrolling nights until this heat broke.”
“I was.”
He explained the night’s events to her-at least those that accounted for his presence with a midwife and infant. He said nothing about his conversation with
Kama or the anger that had swept over him when he saw the newbom girl’s life being bartered among unwilling patrons. Illyra listened politely but made no move to take the infant from Masha’s arms.
“I’m no wetnurse. I can’t care for the child, Walegrin. I tire too quickly now, and even if I didn’t-I’d look at her and see Lillis.”
“I know that; that’s why I’ve brought her,” her half-brother explained, with a sincere tactlessness that brought fire to Dubro’s eyes and a sigh through
Masha’s lips.
“How could you?”
They were all staring at him. “Because her mother’s dead in some stinking room in Shambles Cross and no one wanted her. She didn’t ask to be born any more than
Arton asked to become a god or Lillis asked to die.”
“No other baby can replace my daughter, don’t you understand that? I can’t take her in my arms and tell myself that all’s well with the world again. It isn’t.
It won’t ever be.”
The elegance and simplicity of logic that had allowed him to face down Zip and the child’s father ceased to support Walegrin as he stared back at his half sister’s face. Words themselves failed him as well and a crimson flush spread quickly from his shoulders to his forehead. In desperation he grabbed the infant himself and thrust it into her arms as if physical contact and the sheer force of his will would be sufficient.