“It’s time?” He ran one hand caressingly across her stomach, his fingers instinctively settling on the band of contracting muscle. “Yes, it is. What’s so funny?” he added. She could not quite see his face in the dim light, but he sounded solemn, almost indignant.

“The welcoming committee, of course! All of them. Faranth, love, are all present and accounted for?”

We are here, Faranth said, where we should be. You are amused.

“I am very amused,” Sorka said, but then another contraction caught her, and she clutched at Sean. “But that was not at all amusing. You’d better call Greta.”

“Jays, we don’t need her. I’m as good a midwife as she is,” he muttered, shoving feet into the shoes under their bed.

“For horses, cows, and nanny goats, yes, Sean, but it is expected for humans to assist humans … oooooh, Sean, these are very close together.”

He rose to his feet, pausing to throw the top blanket across his bare shoulders against the early morning’s chill, when there was a discreet knock at the door. He cursed.

“Who is it?” he roared, not at all pleased at the idea that someone might have come to summon him for a veterinary emergency right then.

“Greta!”

Sorka started to laugh again, but that became very difficult to do all of a sudden, and she switched to the breathing she had been taught, clutching at her great belly.

“How under the suns did you know, Greta?” she heard Sean ask, his voice reflecting his astonishment.

“I was called,” Greta said with great dignity, gently pushing him to one side.

“By whom? Sorka only just woke up,” Sean replied, following Greta back to their room. “She’s the one who’s having the baby.”

“Not always the first to know when labor commences,” Greta said in a very calm, almost detached manner. “Not in Landing. And certainly not with a queen dragon listening in on your mind.” She flicked on the lights as she entered the room and deposited her midwifery bag on the dresser. She had been a gangly girl who had turned into a rangy woman with hair and skin the same coffee color and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, very brown in her kindly face, missed few details.

“Faranth told you?” Sorka was astonished. A dragon speaking to someone outside of their group was unheard of.

“Not exactly,” Greta replied with a chuckle. “A fair of fire-dragonets flew in my window and made it remarkably plain that I was needed. Once I got outside, it wasn’t hard to figure out whose baby was coming. Now, let me see what’s going on here.”

I told them to get her, Faranth told Sorka in a smugly complacent tone of voice. You like her.