He flailed at her, his curses suddenly gurgled threats. One of his desperate blows caught the side of her head and sent her crashing into the wall. His hands found the knife she’d left stuck in his neck and pulled it out. It clattered to the floor. Blood followed it, leaping out in pulsing gouts.

Malta screamed in horror and staggered back. The next instant, she sprang forward to catch her babe and snatch him to safety as Begasti staggered in a circle in the room. The Chalcedean crashed to his knees, both his hands at his throat, trying to hold in the blood that sprayed out between his thick fingers. He stared up at her, his eyes and mouth wide open. He grunted at her, blood coming out with the sound, spilling from his lips and over his bearded chin. Slowly he toppled over on his side. His hands still clutched his throat, and his legs kicked. She retreated from him, her baby clutched to her chest, the umbilical cord spilling over her wrists to the connected and dangling afterbirth.

She looked down, finally, for the first time, at her child. A son. She had a son. But as she regarded him, a low cry of dismay escaped her.

Her dream of someone handing her a chubby infant wrapped in a clean swaddling cloth had come to this. Birthed in a brothel. Dirt from the floor clung to his wet cheek. He was thin. He stirred faintly in her arms. His tiny hands were bony, not chubby, and the nails were greenish. He was already scaled, on his skull and down the back of his neck to the nape. Reyn’s eyes, but deep blue, looked up at her. His mouth was open, but she was not certain at first that he breathed. “Oh, baby!” she cried out in a low voice that was both apology and fear. Her knees folded and she sank to the floor, the child on her lap. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing,” she sobbed.

The knife was on the floor near her knee, but it was covered in the Chalcedean’s blood. She could not bear to touch it, let alone cut the birth cord with it. She remembered her trousers, still shoved into the front of her tunic, and pulled them out. She set her child on them, and bundled the legs around him, wrapping the cord and the afterbirth with him. “It’s all wrong, so wrong,” she apologized to him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this, baby. I’m so sorry!”

He gave a sudden thin wail as if to agree that this was not how life should treat him. It was a terrible sound, lonely and weak, but Malta laughed aloud that he could make even such a noise as this. She could not recall that she had taken off her cloak, but there it was, on the floor where she had labored, wet with two kinds of blood. Her beautiful Elderling cloak. It would have to do.

Begasti gave a low, drawn-out moan that sent her staggering away from him until she cowered by the wall. Then he was still. No time. No time to think about anything. The other man would come back, and he must not find her here. It was hard to get her cloak around her and fastened without setting the child down, but she would not let him be out of her arms. She opened the door and tottered out into the small common room she had passed through earlier. Night was deep and the room empty. She heard no sounds from the whores or their customers. She was exhausted and every muscle in the center of her body felt overused. Blood was trickling slowly down her legs. How far could she get like this?

Bang on the doors of the brothel chambers? Demand help? No. She could trust no one who would knowingly shelter Chalcedeans in the Rain Wilds. Even if they were sympathetic to a woman in such a desperate situation, when Arich returned, they would likely give way, out of fear or in response to bribery.

She crossed the room and carried her newborn son out into the storm and the night.

Day the 26th of the Change Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Reyall, Acting Keeper of the Birds, Bingtown

To Detozi, Keeper of the Birds, Trehaug

Dear Detozi and Erek,

How peculiar to send you this post by boat instead of bird, but the Guild has grounded almost all birds until the contagion can be contained. Those that can fly are reserved for the most urgent messages. I have heard a rumor that they have ordered more birds from Jamaillia, but even if they arrive, it will take months to establish breeding pairs and imprint on them that they are to fly home here rather than return to Jamaillia. Nor do I think that the quality of birds we import can match what we have been breeding here, thanks to the program that Erek began. I am heartsick at the loss of birds, not just as breeding stock but as small flighted friends. I have only two pairs of swift birds left in the cotes assigned to my management. I have isolated them as pairs and allow no other keeper to bring feed or water in or to clean their cote. As soon as they hatch the eggs they are setting and the youngsters fledge out, I will remove them and hand-feed them in the hopes of preserving as many swift birds as I can from the contagion. I hope you have been able to preserve some of this stock, as I wish to be very cautious of breeding them.