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PROLOG

Eiah Machi, physician and daughter of the Emperor, pressed her fingers gently on the woman's belly. The swollen flesh was tight, veins marbling the skin blue within brown. The woman appeared for all the world to be in the seventh month of a pregnancy. She was not.

"It's because my mother's father was a Westlander," the woman on the table said. "I'm a quarter Westlander, so when it came, it didn't affect me like it did other girls. Even at the time, I wasn't as sick as everyone else. You can't tell because I have my father's eyes, but my mother's were paler and almost round. "

Eiah nodded, running practiced fingertips across the flesh, feeling where the skin was hot and where it was cool. She took the woman's hand, bending it gently at the wrist to see how tight her tendons were. She reached inside the woman's sex, probing where only lovers had gone before. The man who stood at his wife's side looked uncomfortable, but Eiah ignored him. He was likely the least important person in the room.

"Eiah-cha," Parit, the regular physician, said, "if there is anything I can do…"

Eiah took a pose that both thanked and refused. Parit bowed slightly.

"I was very young, too," the woman said. "When it happened. Just six summers old. "

"I was fourteen," Eiah said. "How many months has it been since you bled?"

"Six," the woman said as if it were a badge of honor. Eiah forced herself to smile.

"Is the baby well?" the man asked. Eiah considered how his hand wrapped his wife's. How his gaze bored into her own. Desperation was as thick a scent in the room as the vinegar and herb smoke.

"It's hard to say," Eiah said.

"He'll be fine," the woman on the table asserted; the hand not being squeezed bloodless by her man caressed the slight pooch of her belly. "It's a boy," she went on. "We're going to name him Loniit. "

Eiah placed a hand on the woman's arm. The woman's eyes burned with something like joy, something like fever. The smile faltered for less than a heartbeat, less than the time it took to blink. So at least some part of the woman knew the truth.

"Thank you for letting me make the examination," Eiah said. "You're very kind. And I wish the best of luck to you both. "

"All three," the woman corrected.

"All three," Eiah said.

She walked from the room while Parit arranged his patient. The antechamber glowed by the light of a small lantern. Worked stone and carved wood made the room seem more spacious than it was. Two bowls, one of old wine and another of fresh water, stood waiting. Eiah washed her hands in the wine first. The chill against her fingers helped wash away the warmth of the woman's flesh. The sooner she could forget that, the better.