I booted the crib aside and drove Claireblade through the second troll’s softies, all the way out the other side. It uttered a death caw and dropped the baby. On instinct I let Claireblade clatter to the floor and dove to catch the child. She landed in my hands, smacking her lips through the daubs of secretion still covering her body. I held the baby to my chest, relieved not only to have saved her but also thrilled to have killed a troll. Jack had been right—I did love it.

The Nullhuller that had made the plaster cast flattened itself against the wall. I swiped Claireblade from the floor and swung it. The troll was too fast; it hopped, using the blade as a stair step, and bounded over the edge of the crib. The sword continued its movement—and cut the changeling baby in half.

It was the grisliest thing I’d ever seen. Feelers of skin tried in vain to cover the exposed innards. The chest cavity’s organs, half human and half troll, clung to each other like blind kittens fresh from their amniotic sacs. Only the changeling baby’s top jaw had been completed, and it gummed helplessly upon the air. The eyes, though, were pure troll—blinkless black orbs glowering at me in condemnation. The half-formed human skull exposed the troll brain hiding beneath, a glossy green thing nippled with twitching nodules.

I was crying when I killed it. It was an abomination; the job had to be done. But the changeling had already mastered a baby’s voice, and it sobbed as I hacked it into smaller and smaller pieces while holding the real baby in my other arm. By the end of it my entire body was shaking so badly that Claireblade fell from my grip.

The crib was thrown aside. Jack was in my face. I saw my numb, blood-spattered reflection in his goggles. He sheathed his sword and wrenched out his horseshoe, bringing it to the baby’s face.

“She’s not…” I said.

“Shut up,” he said. He took a shuddering breath. I saw his fist tighten around his scimitar. Then he pressed the horseshoe against the infant’s forehead. The baby scrunched up her face in annoyance. Jack sighed in relief and stuck the horseshoe back into his armor, then grabbed me by the front of the shirt.

“Where’s the last one?” he demanded.

I blinked around the room and saw nine dead Nullhullers, including the one I had lanced. Vaguely I remembered the one who had dodged my sword and vaulted away.

“I think…it went…”

I gazed at the open window.