Given a task, the slave hurried off to the small encampment newly set up down the path to accommodate the daily comings and goings of reeves out of Naya Hall bringing provisions and news. The baby slept, his tiny round face entirely peaceful, although he slept so much she had scarcely seen his eyes open except for that first startling moment after his birth when he had stared at her as if recognizing her. He weighed nothing, really, light to hold but so vast that her heart had opened to encompass heavens and earth, fire and water, all of creation.

“Mai.”

She smiled down at the sleeping baby, and then she rose with careful dignity and turned to greet her husband. “Anji, greetings of the day.”

He looked a bit ragged, as if he hadn’t slept, but his clothes were neat and clean and his hair was tied tightly up in the Qin topknot, not a strand out of place. He held a basket in his hands. Awkwardly, he offered it to her, looking very serious.

“These gifts I bring, mare’s milk, goat’s butter, sheep’s yoghurt, to strengthen your blood.” He set the basket on the low wall and opened a pouch slung at his hip. From this he drew length after length of gold chain and jewel-set necklaces, a fortune beyond price. “Among my mother’s people, a woman of honor wears her clan’s wealth, for she alone possesses the vitality to resist its corrupting influence. This is yours now, which once belonged to my mother’s mother.”

He draped them over her neck, a heavy weight indeed, and only then did he bend his gaze to the child.

She gently unwrapped the sleeping baby, who stirred and stretched as his limbs were exposed. “He is whole, and although small he is so far healthy. He sleeps a lot, though.”

He examined the child’s head and torso and genitals and limbs and fingers and toes, and only then did he smile, the sudden brilliance quite staggering.

“He needs a name!” she said indignantly.

He nodded. “That’s why I waited seven days. He’ll be Atani, after my father, who loved his younger brother too much to see him murdered, although it cost him much on his own behalf. I’ve also been told that by Hundred custom it is a Water-born name, proper to a child born under the shelter of a waterfall, during a storm.”

“Atani,” she murmured, tracing the infant’s perfect tiny lips and his flat baby chin. He burbled, mouth rooting as he woke up. His eyes opened, black pools absorbing the mystery of the world, and shut again.

“You have done well, Mai. Not that I am surprised.”

“Will you hold him?”