Stephen first put the first two fingers of his left hand into the water, then poured it into the large, metal basin when he was certain of the temperature. His wife, who had her hands over her face and her eyes closed behind them, released a noisy breath through her nose.
"Still too hot?" Stephen asked, holding the large mixing bowl up so that the water would stop flowing into the metal basin.
"No, Stevie, no- the water's fine," Susanna replied in a low, clear voice. "It's fine. Every bowl-full of water you've put in here has been fine."
Stephen still held the bowl up, waiting. "You want me to get Lona?"
Behind her hands, Susanna bit on the insides of her lips. "Who's heating the pot right now?"
"Sly's at the kitchen fireplace, and won't be moved, Lona says," Stephen reported dutifully. "I doubt she tried- if she'd truly tried to take up space in front of that pot, he'd have moved out of her way."
"You're not giving Sly's stubborn streak credit," Susanna replied, puffs of pained laughter coming with her words. "They don't argue- not really- but every so often there is the slightest difference of opinion between them. Sly wins, so long as he's actually convinced of his cause. If there's even a hair's breadth of doubt, Lona destroys his intentions as surely as a hawk takes apart a hare."
Stephen scoffed. "No wonder why it seems to me as though she simply always wins. But for all that, he's heating the water, and she's ferrying it."
"But you're testing and pouring it," Susanna managed before having to breathe deeply again. "No doubt Lona can do that work as well. Put the blindfold on and rest yourself- one of us should."
"The birthing witch hasn't arrived, and if I hadn't seen you in all your glory before now, we wouldn't need her. I'm not going to stand around useless," Stephen answered. "Here you are in so much pain that you can hardly move yourself, and I'm to sit, blindfolded and idle with a handful of weeds? Hang me first."
Susanna sighed, a sound that had nothing to do with the contractions she was weathering. "You weren't idle before I sent Lona for you- this is just supposed to help prepare me for tomorrow. I didn't expect you to drop ev-"
"The baby's not going to wait for me to finish what I was working on, Lona said," Stephen shrugged. "Said she was coming right now, and that I had to come quickly."
" 'She'?" Susanna asked, a smile appearing on her uncovered lips.
"Lona said the baby's another girl." Stephen paused briefly, but decided to firmly finish his thought. "I made myself believe her; I know we have to. If we don't give Lona more support and understanding than Leena got, she- well. We'll get the treatment we deserve out of her."
Susanna hummed, knowing that Stephen had glanced across the possibility of witchcraft without directly saying it specifically to keep unwanted spirits out of the birthing room.
"The water's fine, Stevie; give it to me before it goes cold," she said, opting to leave the topic to rest.
Stephen poured the rest of the water into the metal tub in silence, as slowly as he could. Almost as soon as the last drops of the water joined their compatriots, Salone appeared with a steaming long-handled pot.
"You didn't stand out there and listen to our conversation, did you?" Stephen asked.
"No," Salone replied, her eyes pinned to the basin her father held as though it were the only thing that existed in the room.
"No, you didn't stand out there, or no, you didn't listen?" Susanna clarified.
Salone's unperturbed face didn't change, but her focus did, briefly settling on her mother before returning to the basin. "Both," she replied, with a tone as cool as finished marble.
Susanna felt the cool press of some kind of potential magic force, and trembled slightly in spite of herself. As soon as I can stand, I must find someone who can help me guide this child.
Stephen set the basin down on the floor so that Salone could fill it with the fresh, hot water from the pot. He watched as she did so, with her hands tightly wrapped in her apron, forcing himself not to give her advice or try to take the hot pot from her hands.
"We've already gotten all the burns we're going to," Salone said when she'd finished pouring. "We learned."
"Who got burned, you or Sly?" Stephen asked immediately.
"Saul too," Salone added, already straightening up and preparing to go. "By Sly."
"Is Sly still warming the pig fat?" Susanna asked breathlessly, deciding to allow the notice about Saul to go without questioning.
"No," Salone said simply. Stephen raised an eyebrow at her, but his displeasure seemed to go entirely unnoticed.
"That's for the best; I think... I don't think I'll have time or need for it. Now, if Saul got burned, please go see to him," Susanna asked. "You know he won't ask."
Salone didn't turn back around, basically speaking her answer out into the hallway. "He didn't, but I did." There was no pause for an answer or a dismissal. She began descending the stairs, going at her steady pace, down the stairs and out of earshot.
"You say she doesn't mean to be disrespectful, and I know you're right," Stephen finally managed after a few moments of silence, "but it still feels like it."
"It's not a loss of control, like Sly's flares of temper," Susanna reminded with a grim smile. "And she's not putting on adult airs like Saul and Sarai do. You are still the lord of this house, however; if you feel disrespected..."
Stephen looked down into the basin on the floor and contemplated the steam. His mind flitted through Salone's brief life- how long it had taken her to do everything that her siblings seemed to have rushed to do. While she did stand and bobble in place for many months, she didn't try moving anywhere until she could confidently walk. Words didn't come awash in a sea of babbling, but instead struck like lightning bolts in short, full sentences. She didn't grab at things that were dangled in front of her, but if she did want something, it was almost impossible to get the object of her desire out of her small fist. The faintest vacant smirk crossed his face as he recalled the one time that she's gotten a firm hold of some of his beard. She had held on so tightly for so long that he simply held her until she fell asleep, hours after she'd first gotten into his arms.
"Stevie?" Susanna asked, looking up at her husband with a grain of concern under her playfulness.
"What I feel is worried," her husband finally answered, shaking himself from his reverie a few moments later. "For her and you, never mind this little one."
Susanna gave a low laugh that turned into a hum of tolerance as another contraction crushed her lower body. "Stop blaming yourself, Papa Raibeart. Or if you will, you must blame me as well, for not keeping you away from me when our passions take us. We have our little dove; she lived, and so did I. We'll have this one too. I feel strong, this time. If she's also different to other children... well... she'll have company, since our dove isn't going to change. Constancy is a blessing and a virtue; isn't that what the priests of Lathander teach?"
Stephen scoffed. "I'd know that if I ever listened to them."
"I'm fortunate you don't say such things when your parents are about to glare at me," Susanna laughed gently. "Oh, how they set their faces against the self-important, overwise hussy who snatched their first son out of Morningmist Hall!"
"Bert's balls," Stephen groaned. "As if I weren't in danger of snatching several daughters out of other people's homes- I'm lucky that your goddess decided that only you should actually give the wild dog a litter."
Susanna laughed harder, and had to clutch the rim of the tub for the strength to bear the discomfort that welled up after she calmed down. "Oh, alright; that's enough of that. Did you know Saul's taken up the use of that colourful little saying? Sarai- presumably on my behalf- nearly smacked the tongue out of his head for it a month or two ago, but that didn't stop him. Now he just says it under his breath when he thinks neither she nor I can hear him."
"Practicing at being me, I suppose," Stephen said with a shrug. "If he starts stealing Sly's girlfriends, then I'll worry."
"Aha! You agree that Sly has a girl somewhere around him," Susanna pressed immediately. "She's given his aura a thickness that Saul's doesn't have as yet. Worse, his temper's flaring hot and high because it's too soon for him to be taking such fancies. Try to dissuade him, Stevie; remember how you were dismissed from your apprenticeship."
Stephen shrugged. "My master wasn't thinking of any girl when he dismissed me, and I can't talk Sly out of a situation I'm not sure that he's in as yet. Either he doesn't tell Saul anything, or he does tell him, and Saul's also practicing at protecting his younger brother from his father."
Susanna pursed her lips, immediately irritated at herself for having brought Stephen around to comparing himself to his own father. "No, Sly and Lona are quite alike in the stonewalling of their elder siblings. I've heard from Taura that some of the neighbor girls have seen how Sarai can't get on with her own little sister. They tease Lona about it, which makes Sarai nearly as indignant as Dellie- and oh! That girl's mother has every right to call her a sandstorm. A few of her protests for Lona's honour have nearly come to blows."
Stephen hummed for a moment. "Curious that Lona tolerates her, then. And Sarai should be satisfied with having a working relationship with Lona, at least. Dassy liked being near Leena, but the latter did everything in her power to be out of reach, even so much as dumping the waste pots and drawing water before dawn."
Susanna sighed sympathetically. "Poor Dassy; no wonder she's ended up as she has. Leena was supposed to support your mother in helping her to be a proper woman, and she didn't."
"I don't know that Dassy needed help with womanly matters," Stephen mused, thinking about Adassa's admission about having a relationship with a married man. "She was a persuasive, intelligent, and almost dangerously alluring young woman every and any time she wanted to be. For as well as she can swing bastards of all kinds these days, I doubt she's lost any feminine arts and charms. On the other hand, Leena survived her gentlewoman's gathering because of the exceedingly high quality work she could do with her hands, not because she was well-spoken, attractive, or even kind to anyone while she was at it."
"I had hoped that Leena would come down and sit with Lona a while," Susanna breathed, trying her best to purposefully relax all of her muscles.
"Unless MacCreigh himself finds reason to bring his family south, Leena won't move," Stephen replied simply. "She might truly not want to ever set foot on heartland soil again. No one willingly puts themselves in the way of a wild boar twice."
"I would accept that reasoning if you were, in fact, the wild boar." Susanna slowly turned herself over and sat on her knees. "Mother Chauntea, where is Yzidra? I should have taken this bath last week, when she told me to. Finally the girl gets instructed in midwifery, and how do I cheer her? By not listening to her counsel when it doesn't suit my fancy, as if she didn't put every other child in this house in my arms with her own two hands-"
Stephen looked down into the tub and noticed that a thin trickle of red was leaking out into the water there. "Are you scratched somewhere? Turn back over; it looks as though you're bleeding."
"No, Stevie, that's the baby's blood," Susanna managed as she closed her eyes. "She's pushing her way out. I'll have to stay like this- please find some cloth to put under my knees. I don't know how long this is going to take, but I can't change position until it's over."
"She's not even here yet- is she supposed to be bleeding? Can she come out into water? Is this safe for you both?" Stephen asked, suddenly feeling himself far too ignorant about a process that his wife had survived a grand total of eleven times prior to this moment.
"You'll have to snatch her up into the air as soon as possible, but she's been in blood and water within me for months, Stevie," Susanna soothed. "When we have her, she'll cry that we've taken her out of where she thinks she belongs. Some cloth, please."
Stephen, not so very unlike his silent sister after all, looked around the room until his eyes lit upon the clean cloths Salone had left behind her a little more than an hour before.
Outside the front door of the house, Sly was attempting to explain to an unusually persistent older woman who claimed to be from Marsember that his mother couldn't have visitors that day. Seeing that there could be no calm way of entering the home from that direction, a quiet figure blended into the afternoon shadows thrown into the shared yard by the other nearby houses. Saul, who was busy trying to finish maintaining the grindstone, didn't notice the swelling and hollowing of the areas of semi-darkness around the shop. Salone, in contrast, was standing at the top of the stairs from the shop with the empty, still-warm, long-handled pot in her hands.
"Miss Yzidra isn't coming," Salone said. It didn't sound like a question, but its hearer treated it as though it had been.
"No; she is with one other young midwife, assisting Ivonne with a noblewoman who's lost several children. The noblewoman refused to give anyone permission to leave." Slender blue fingers searched a few pockets in the newly-sewn apron. "My lady Ivonne was loathe to send me in Yzidra's place, but had no recourse. Here is the note she had me write before she sent me, but I wonder who she thought would have time to read it."
"We should have asked you and Mishka to come on purpose," Salone shrugged. "Now, everyone's late but you and the baby. Mama's in the shrine room, in a bath."
For just a moment, the shadows caused by the lack of candlelight between the shop stairway and the ground floor of the home seemed to reach around the child toward the grown woman. The child watched them undulate and contract, as though they themselves were breathing and thinking along with the woman before her.
"If the water is warm, I'll put these herbs right into it; they are sent by the first beloved to aid with the loosening of the lower body muscles. At the time she gave them to me, we both believed there would be time to make a proper satchel, but clearly there isn't. On the way here, I paid a messenger to bring her word that the baby is on the way, and to come here quickly."
Salone shrugged. "She'll be here, if my gramma's help doesn't stop her from getting in."
Silveredge felt a permutation of Mi'ishaen's hellfire smile cross her face, and didn't bother trying to hide it. "As soon as the first beloved perceives your grandmother's 'help' as a potential stopping force, she will set about finding a way to avoid being stopped."
"You didn't bring your chain or Niku," Salone commented as Silveredge began moving past her and toward the stairs that led up to the second floor of the house.
"Don't worry," the Shadar-kai comforted, knowing Salone's line of thinking without any further explanation. "The first beloved is very good at getting into places that others don't want her to be."
Upstairs in the shrine room, Stephen had convinced Susanna that he could successfully move her without her changing position. In order to do so, he stripped bare to the waist, washed his hands in vinegar, knelt next to the basin, then gathered his wife very carefully into his arms. By the time Silveredge stood outside the room, he had just successfully set Susanna back down onto the cushion of cloth that he'd placed on the other side of the basin.
"May I enter?" the Shadar-kai asked quietly.
Stephen snapped his head up, surprised that he hadn't heard any footfalls.
"Miss Yzidra and my lady Ivonne are both being retained by a noblewoman who is also at this moment bringing forth a child," Silveredge explained. "My lady sent me in Miss Yzidra's place, but I have never put my hands to a living baby. Mishka has, and if my message has reached her, she is on her way here to help us. I have with me herbs that were supposed to be delivered to you in a cloth satchel; I apologize that they are only reaching you, loose as they are, now. Their intent is to soothe the lower body, but I do not know them as Mishka does."
Stephen, who had stopped listening to the explanation precisely halfway through it, noted only that Silveredge had not moved to come into the room. "What are you waiting on?" he asked, hearing himself sound more gruff than he intended.
"Me," Susanna answered swiftly. "Come, handmaiden; whatever Yzidra and Ivonne would have you do, do that. We'll see if we're still in need when Mi'ishaen arrives."
Silveredge quickly produced the herb pouch and made her way toward the tub, recognizing it for the vessel usually used to wash the household clothes and linens.
Down at street level, Sylvester had finally given way to the old human midwife, who had resorted to smacking him while threatening to call for the nearest patrolling guard. Once the woman had gotten through the kitchen and into the sitting room, however, she was faced with Saint Stone, and quickly learned how the young girl had gotten that moniker. Salone had seated herself on the steps with the cool long-handled pot in her lap, and completely ignored the threat that had recently cowed her older brother.
"If you don't let me up those steps this instant, I'll lay hands on you as surely as your own mother," the Marsemban repeated sternly. "I'll holler for the guards, and they'll make you make way."
"This is Papa Raibeart's house," Salone said frankly. "You can't play nursemaid here."
"You- why you- what do you mean?!" the woman cried, confused and insulted. "That self-same man, who is in Marsember, put me on a cart to this smelly, sooty city early this morning!"
"No, Salone is right," Sly piped up from behind the woman. "Our grandfather ceded his right to make decisions for the family before she was born; our father is Papa Raibeart now. So if he doesn't want you here, the guards would actually come to put you out, not to help you."
"What do you know, you bent reed?" the woman crabbed, turning around to face Sly. "You've only come up with that darling defense this very second; why did you move at all, if what you say were true from the beginning? I'll go right out and scream in the street, and let's see who the guards do what for."
"When you go," Salone said with a strange smile, "you won't get back in."
Upstairs, the beginnings of a low, painful moan made themselves heard. The sound seemed to fan the flames of the woman's irritation.
"Right, get up- get up, you ragdoll," she growled, reaching forward to grab Salone by her hair. Sylvester reached a hand out toward the woman without any real motivation, unsure of what to do, but Salone promptly took the pot by the middle of its handle and smacked its burned iron bottom against the elbow of the woman's outstretched arm. She only put enough strength behind the swing to knock the woman's hand away from her head, but the sound rung up the stairwell like a chapel bell. In seconds, Papa Raibeart himself- still shirtless and smelling faintly of vinegar- was in the hallway outside the shrine room door.
"What is going on down there?" he asked sternly.
"Grandpa and Gramma Raibeart," Salone answered cleanly, before anyone else could even blink.
Stephen, who had heard his wife's recitation of his mother's dream enough times to recognize the situation for what it was, crossed his thick arms over his bare chest. "Miss Rhula, I thank your concern, and my mother's concern, but we have the help we need here. You can sit in the front room with Sylvester, and await news there. Salone, if there's any water still hot, prepare some tea while the miss waits."
"Yes, my lord," Salone answered as she got up.
Stephen knew better than to allow his surprise to print itself on his face. Sylvester, for his part, stared after his sister in shock. Thankfully, the woman who had just tried to grab her hair, and had gotten a bashed elbow as a reward, didn't connect his surprise to Salone's words.
"As much as I thank you for your thanks, Stephen," she began with pursed lips, "I'd thank you more for the allowance to get up there and do my job. Your father-"
"Is not the lord of this house, nor even of his own," Stephen warned. "I said we have the help we need, and if you don't wait down there patiently as a guest, I will treat you like a stranger. Unless my mother hired you as her own handmaiden since the days I knew you, if I fire you here, you won't have a job to go back to in Marsember."
"I was hired directly by your mother, yes," Rhula fired back, again insulted without really knowing why. "You ought to respect me as well as you recognize me, ser. I brought every one of your siblings out of your mother's belly, and-"
"You had nothing to do with my birth, and even if you had, on this day, I owe you nothing," Stephen cut in. "My wife has all the help she needs, and the room is too small for you to come up and crowd us. Wait here patiently, or Sylvester will go with you to the nearest inn."
"Ha, do you think I'm dotish as well as old, big man?" the woman cawed. "I would have thought your mother mad to instruct me as she did, but she was right! You've not had any children born alive since this little weed witch here because your disobedience and pride are cursing your entire house. Unless you want your woman and whelp to die, you'll let me up there this instant."
Sylvester watched as his father's eyes seemed to gloss over, as though he were no longer even looking at the target of his rage. Slowly, eerily slowly, the commissioned blacksmith uncrossed his arms and began walking down the steps. Each footfall hit the wood and stone with the full weight of its owner, causing small creaks and snaps as he came. At that deliberate pace, however, he only got halfway down the stairs before Salone came out of the kitchen. The normal sounds of the house, the neighborhood, and even Susanna's early stage labour moans slowly died away into a cool silence.
"The kitchen fire's out," she announced. Something about her tone was ethereal- dissimilar enough to her normal speaking voice that her brother looked at her with undisguised alarm.
Stephen stopped moving, also surprised by the way that Salone sounded. As he looked at her, an inexplicable wave of cool air rolled over him, and the flesh on his arms stood up in goosebumps. From his vantage point, he could glimpse the central sitting room fire, and saw that it too was out. He took a deep, cleansing breath, and the chill in the air seemed to spread from his lungs to the rest of his being. Unlike the deep cold of either fear or anger that made his fingers itch, this sensation was a welcome freshness, like a drink of spring water or the feel of a flipped pillow.
To Sylvester's eyes, the light of reason returned to the commissioned blacksmith's face. With guilt, he remembered that he had been supposed to report a previous episode to his mother- and he hadn't done so. It seemed fairly useless to alarm his forgetful, easily confused mother over actions and reactions that she probably couldn't do anything about. Instead, he had told Salone, who replied that their grandfather was attempting to take up residence in their father somehow. That answer hadn't made any sense whatsoever, and the young boy had put the entire situation out of his mind. Now, however, he felt a renewed urgency about telling his mother a great deal about his father and his sister, as soon as possible.
"Good enough," Stephen said after a silence that he hadn't realized had grown so long. He watched some of the fear fall away from Sly's face, and took another deep breath. "Miss Rhula would like to leave, Sylvester. See her to the front door, and call her the guard she wants so badly. Don't wait for them to arrive; close, bar, and lock both doors down there so soon as you've called out for them. Salone, pour out the rest of the vinegar in any bowl large enough to take it, and write your sister a reminder that we need to buy more tomorrow. We need it as soon as you can get it up the stairs."
And for the first time since Salone could talk at all, both children replied, "Yes, my lord," at once. Salone's voice had lost the otherworldly quality that had briefly accompanied it, but it was still astoundingly calm.
Stephen stood still on the step and watched Sly take careful hold of the elbow that Salone had hit. His choice was sound, and the fact that it absolutely still hurt the old woman worked in his favour. With a wince, but in silence, the Marsemban midwife was escorted to the door on the other side of the sitting room, which opened directly out to the street.
When Stephen returned his gaze to Salone, who hadn't yet moved, he found the faintest trace of a victorious smile on her face. He tilted his head just slightly, and with a small nod, she turned to do as she had been asked.
"We'll help you keep him out," she said, he thought to himself. Whatever it is with or in her just took me in hand. Being a dragon is one thing; being a monster is quite another.
From upstairs, another moan pressed on Stephen's hearing, ushering back the other natural sounds that had temporarily been quieted along with it. Satisfied that his children would do as they'd been told, he turned around and returned to the shrine room. At the entrance, he was utterly surprised to see Mi'ishaen on her knees in front of his wife's open legs, using her hands in some unknown way down in the basin. He was just going to ask how she'd gotten into the house when Silveredge interrupted.
"The handmaiden begs you to remember that the first beloved has helped people in very unfortunate circumstances to bear their children alive," Silveredge said very quietly, as though she were afraid that the Human man was about to put them both out of doors.
"Don't pour honey on shit," Mi'ishaen admonished without taking her focus away from what she was doing. "I got locked up with poor pregnant people all the time when I was young. I actually did things worth being jailed; all most of them did wrong was be poor. As soon as it was discovered that I knew anything about anything that would help them and their babies to survive in there, I was put to work. It's not fair that poor children have less right to live than monied ones- I thought so then, and I think so now. Stupid selfish noble cow; if that kid of hers manages to live, I hope it grows up useless as a bent nail, spends her into the poorhouse, and hates the piss out of her."
"I would ask you to speak more kindly in a room where a new person is going to breathe the air for the first time," Susanna managed through grit teeth, "but I'd be doing a greater sin, I think, by lecturing you for saying what I've been thinking since Rasha told me what the problem was."
"Never mind that, you," Mi'ishaen muttered. "You just sit still and say a psalm or something. Pray to a god or whatever."
"With what intention?" Silveredge asked, aware that such comments could be very problematic in a staunchly religious home.
"Calm," Mi'ishaen answered. "It'll take me forever to get the birthway to a proper width if she's going to clench up every few seconds."
"We can perhaps surround our lady with such things and people as might calm her," Silveredge reasoned. "May I remove your sister in law's quilt from the altar, so that you might take hold of it?"
"Don't wrap her up in it; this is already hot work. This water'll be blood, piss, and sweat in no time as it is," Mi'ishaen warned.
Susanna gave a light laugh in spite of herself. "Stevie, put half the quilt over your face, and put a corner of it between our hands here. I'll feel both at once without getting too hot, if the birthwitch allows it."
"Birthwitch?" Mi'ishaen asked.
"It seems that in this land, if you are with the experience to aid in the birthing process, but without the training and mentoring of an elder midwife, you are a birthwitch," Silveredge explained. "It's a concerning title, given how people seem to feel about other types of witches."
"It's... not the same," Susanna breathed. "No one would stone or burn a birthing witch."
Stephen hummed his assent as he picked Leena's quilt up off of the shrine. He sighed quietly as he looked at it, then brought it over to Susanna's right side.
"I'm not covering my face," he said as he knelt down and prepared to hand Susanna a corner of the quilt. "No one blinded the dragon, did they?"
"What?" Mi'ishaen said. The tone was sarcastic enough, but her focus was entirely pinned on her work.
"If there is a danger of running a fever, I can use a very gentle cold spell," Silveredge suggested. "I would cast it on myself, to make my hands cool, and place them where instructed."
"Good idea," Mi'ishaen nodded. "Let's keep that at the back of our heads if we need it. Right now, the most pressing matter is... wait... oh, fuck. Have any of your other kids come out feet first?"
Susanna bit her lips and took a very deep breath. "None that lived."
"Right; fuck that, then," Mi'ishaen said firmly. "Look, this is going to really, really, really hurt. But if you trust me and relax as much as you can, I'll try to hurry up and get the kid going the right way. Preferably without strangling it in its own blood cord."
"That's two of us that could use relaxing now," Stephen admitted. "What's a blood cord?"
"The rope-like thing that anchors the baby to the womb," Mi'ishaen answered. "It normally comes out after the baby is born, but in situations like this, it's really important to keep the baby from trying to grab it or hide behind it somehow. All the time before birth, the blood cord keeps the baby safe, but the minute the birth process starts, that changes. Suddenly, the blood cord can kill instead of nourish."
Silveredge watched Mi'ishaen's actions more than she listened to her words. It seemed that the careful, gradual introduction of first one hand, then both hands into Susanna was nothing short of miraculous. As time passed, Stephen asked more questions, and Mi'ishaen gave more explanations, unknowingly opening up a world of danger, concern, and wonder that had been closed to the man. The Tiefling knowledgeably pushed, turned, and tipped her hands inside the Human woman as was necessary, putting the well-trained, minute muscles that were so used to disarming traps and picking locks to a use that demanded just as much precision. Susanna gave low, quiet, long-suffering moans that seemed to make the room smaller than it was. When she began sweating freely, Mi'ishaen directed Silveredge to alternate the touch of cool hands between the nape of the Human woman's neck and her temples. Stephen absorbed the occasional sudden tightening of Susanna's grip, and finally did begin to whisper psalms to Chauntea. The air vibrated with urgency for an agonizingly long time.
"Okay," Mi'ishaen breathed as she sat up a bit straighter. "It's face up, head-first now, and your birthway looks wide enough. Time for the real work. Hopefully we have the little rat in your arms by dinnertime- which doesn't mean you can be up setting the damn table."
"Your handmaiden hopes that you will allow us to help your daughters to set the table, prepare your meal, and serve you," Silveredge hurriedly corrected.
Stephen scoffed. "It's too late for manners now; do as your partner does and speak plainly. Our girls can cook and set the table just fine. Once the baby's here and healthy-"
"Stevie, don't compound our former sin," Susanna managed.
"-the pair of you will stay for dinner," Stephen finished smoothly, as though he'd always intended to say those words. "Knowing Salone, she... is likely already preparing for you to share our evening meal with us. It'll just be a matter of keeping Sarai from 'correcting' her."
"And we won't correct them, either," Silveredge cut in quietly, leaning toward Mi'ishaen over Susanna's shoulder. "They want to thank us, and we should let them. Or else why would they continue to try?"
Mi'ishaen sighed and frowned, only partially due to the work at hand. "Baby first; let's not get ahead of ourselves."
