The boy had been unplanned, as had the two girls before him. When his wife told him she was pregnant for the second time in as many years, he had not greeted the news as a good man should have. They wouldn’t have had the first one at all if Elahyiah hadn’t been four weeks pregnant the night the bel dames murdered their other children. When he found out about this third pregnancy, he yelled at her, questioning why the old methods they had used to prevent pregnancy were no longer working. She had wept and told him she did not know.

“I had no choice! Do you think a woman has a choice? The old ways don’t always work. That is God’s will. We must bear the consequences of our actions. And it is my burden and blessing more than yours.”

He suspected some deception on her part until the day his son was born. It was a long, painful labor lasting nearly two days. After, she begged him to allow one of the magicians to put a hex on her—semi-permanent sterilization. He had refused. He refused because a moment before she asked he held his son for the first time. When he did, some great unknown emotion rose up in him, something he had not felt since the bel dames came and mangled his wife and killed his children. He nearly lost everything that night. He badly wanted to rebuild. As the years passed, and his eldest daughter grew without either of them talking about more children and his wife became more and more distant, he had stopped believing rebuilding was possible.

But now he had a son. It was as if anything were possible again, as if he himself had been reborn with a second chance at life.

As if to punish him for his decision, the boy squalled day and night. Elahyiah no sooner put him down than he started screaming again. Rhys once insisted they simply leave him in the house while they went to dinner—he, Elahyiah, their eldest daughter Mehry and the younger girl, Nasrin. When they came back three hours later, the infant was still screaming. Elahyiah thought there must be something wrong with him. They brought him to hedge witches and even the local Khairian midwives, but they all came back with the same answer. If you want him to sleep, give him a bit of whiskey.

This part of Khairi was a dry town—it was a Chenjan-occupied settlement called Shaesta, and had been for some time. Whiskey was nearly impossible to find, and came with a sentence of six lashes for possession. Some nights, Rhys thought the lashes might be worth it.