From the wall a pair of eyes watched him. At the moment they were blue, but one of them already showed a peppery speckle which told Mye that one day they would be as black as his own.

The nursemaid had bound the baby in swaddling clothes as tight as an acorn in its cup, so that it could not learn to be wrigglesome. When the baby was nothing but a linen cocoon with a surprised little head peeking out, she had strapped it to a board to give it a nice straight back. The board was hung from a hook on the wall to keep it out of the way.

For the last month, for all the attention Mye had paid to it, the suspended baby might have been a picture hung upon the wall, albeit a picture whose eyes followed one around the room rather more convincingly than one might like. Now, however, it had a Name, and Names were important.

She had a name.

Mye was suddenly sorry that the girl would not have green eyes, like her dead mother. If he had thought about this for another moment, he might have regretted spending so much time among his books, writing of the fates of nations, while those green eyes were still open. However, he very sensibly caught himself in time and decided to think about something else.

But what would he do, now that his sight was weakening? He had always thought that in years to come dear Jessamine would help him with his papers.

Those wide, pepper-speckled eyes, watching from the wall . . . what a pity the child was a girl, and not a boy to be schooled!

“Well, you will have to do. If you had died along with your mother, I would have taught the cat to read.” Mye felt a brief qualm at the idea of turning his daughter into a freak by teaching her letters, but it could not be helped.

The baby watched as he stooped over his manuscript once more and picked up the quill. The study was so quiet and lonely, snug and sealed like a ship’s cabin against the rain-blasted world. Once, while he still lived in the city of Mandelion, Mye had longed for such quiet, an escape from the distractions of horse clatter and hawker cry. His exile to the remote village of Chough had left him weary of stillness and the dismal, eternal trickle of water outside his window.

Mye laid down his quill again. He had no idea how to speak to a baby, he had no stories for children, and he was embarrassed by the fact that, just for once, he wanted—or rather needed—to talk.