Mahlia just waited. She was good at that. When you were a castoff, it didn’t do any good trying to talk to people, but sometimes, if you just kind of waited them out, people would get uncomfortable and feel like they had to do something.

Amaya wasn’t really complaining about more mouths, exactly. She was talking about orphans. And when she said that, she really meant war maggots. Orphans like Mahlia, who had shown up in Banyan Town with a chopped-off right hand, bleeding, dying for help. No one wanted a war maggot in their midst. It meant they had to decide one way or another about a peacekeeper’s castoff, lying in the dirt in the middle of their town. Most people had decided one way; Doctor Mahfouz decided different.

Mahlia said, “You don’t need to worry about the extra mouth. Salvatore’s going to take it back as soon as it can eat on its own. And Doctor’s going to send you more food for your trouble.”

“What’s that man see in a one-handed nurse?” Amaya asked. “Is that why Tani’s dead? Because you got no hand?”

“Wasn’t my fault she got herself pregnant.”

“No. But she didn’t need a useless crippled China girl for a nurse.”

Mahlia bristled. “I ain’t Chinese.”

Amaya just looked at her.

“I ain’t,” Mahlia repeated.

“You got the blood right there on your face. China castoff, through and through.” She turned away, then stopped. Looked back at Mahlia.

“The thing I keep wondering about is what was wrong with you, girl? How come the peacekeepers didn’t want you? If the peacekeepers didn’t care enough to take you when they went back to China, why in the name of the Fates would we want you, either?”

Mahlia fought to keep down the anger that was starting to bubble in her. “Well, this one ain’t Chinese, and it ain’t castoff. It’s Banyan Town’s. You want it? Or am I telling the doctor you dumped it?”

Amaya looked at Mahlia like she was a sack of goat guts, but she finally took the infant.

As soon as the baby was in Amaya’s hands, Mahlia pressed close. Right in Amaya’s face, as eye to eye as she could make it with a grown woman. Mahlia was a little surprised to find that she almost had the height. Amaya backed up against the ladder of the squat, clutching the baby as Mahlia pushed closer.