Steeplejack (Alternative Detective, #1)(10)

It took no more than five minutes, and I kept my gaze locked on my sister’s face for as much of it as possible. When the baby emerged, I did as I was told, but I couldn’t stop staring at the child.

It was a girl. The fourth daughter.

For a long moment, no one moved or spoke. The baby wailed over Rahvey’s exhausted panting, and I just looked at it, registering the awful truth, so that for a few seconds, it seemed that time had stopped.

At last the midwife seemed to come back to herself. Her face was ashen, but she brought her fluttering hands together and pressed her fingertips, a gesture of composure and resolution, both hard won.

Then she stood up and took a deep, quavering breath. “Where’s my knife?” she asked.

“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“Cutting the cord,” said Florihn. “What did you think?”

Rahvey gaped, her eyes flicking to the midwife for guidance.

“Then what?” I asked.

There was a moment’s stillness, then the baby began to cry again. The midwife wrapped the child in a towel and set her on the floor before turning on me and speaking in a low whisper. “Fourth daughter,” she said. “You know what that means. Rahvey can’t keep it. It goes to a blood relative or we take it to Pancaris,” said Florihn.

Pancaris was an orphanage run by one of the Feldish religious orders—dour-habited, grim-faced white nuns who raised children to be domestic servants.

“Till she runs away and turns beggar or whore,” I said, looking at the brown, wriggling infant, so small and powerless.

“There’s no other choice,” said Florihn dismissively. “And they’ll teach her what she needs.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Florihn gave me a hard look for my temerity, but she answered. “They’ll teach her to scrub. To cook. To wield a pick or wheel a barrow. Anything else is just making promises you can’t keep. You of all people should know that.”

I looked to Rahvey, but she kept her eyes fixed on Florihn, the way Tanish stares at me to avoid looking down from the chimneys.

“Rahvey,” I said, dragging her gaze to my face. “Maybe there’s another way. Maybe this fourth-daughter business can—”

“Can what?” demanded Florihn.

“I don’t know,” I said, quailing under the woman’s authoritative stare.

My sister gaped some more, at me this time, then looked back to the midwife. She squeezed her eyes shut, and a tear coursed down her cheek. Her grief gave me the courage I needed.

“Maybe we could keep her,” I said, feeling the blood rise in my face.

Florihn blinked, but she maintained a rigid calm. Her eyes became two slits as she considered how to respond. “‘We’?” she said, staring me down. “What will your contribution be to raising an unseemly child? Where will you be when your sister has to raise more money to feed another mouth?” When I said nothing, she added, “Yes, that’s what I thought.”

“Sinchon could look for a different kind of job,” I said unsteadily, but Florihn, reading the panic in Rahvey’s face, cut me off.

“And you’ll tell him that, will you?” she demanded. “You have forgotten everything. This is our way. The Lani way.”

Then it’s a stupid way! I wanted to shout, an old rage spiking in my chest. You should change it.

But faced with Florihn’s baleful glare, I couldn’t get the words out. Rahvey looked cowed, but her eyes wandered back to the mewling infant. I moved to the child, stooped, and gathered her inexpertly into my arms.

“Put it down, Anglet,” said the midwife. “You are only making things harder. This is not helpful. It is cruel.”

I avoided her eyes, crossing to my sister with the child.

Rahvey gazed up at me, and beneath the exhaustion and hesitation, I thought I saw a flicker of something else, a faint but desperate hope.

“She looks like you,” I said, finding an unexpected smile.

Rahvey took the baby with trembling hands, moving it to her breast. The crying stopped abruptly. My sister tipped her head back a fraction and closed her eyes.

“Three daughters only,” Florihn intoned. “Blessing. Trial. Curse. The fourth is unseemly.”

“Florihn?” Rahvey said, gazing at the infant now.

“Look what you are doing to her!” said Florihn, seizing my arm and turning me round. “You don’t live here, Anglet. You don’t belong here.”

Anger flashed in my eyes, and she let go of my arm as if it were hot, but then her face closed, hardened.

“We will give the child up,” she said. “That is the end of the matter.”

“Florihn?” said Rahvey.

The midwife turned to her reluctantly, her expression softening. “What do you need, hon?” she asked, sugar sweet.

“Maybe,” Rahvey began, like a woman inching out over a narrow bridge, “if we explained to Sinchon and the elders that we could raise her, maybe they would listen.”

“No,” said Florihn, so quick and hard that Rahvey winced, and the midwife had to rebuild her look of simpering benevolence before she could proceed. “I am the elders’ representative here. I speak to and for them. We cannot allow our traditions, the beliefs handed down to us from our grandparents and their parents before them, to be trodden underfoot when they do not suit our wishes.”