"Don't fight it. Look at me. Odalie. Look at me and fight the woman, not the arm."
I did not lunge, because a blade is faster than a mother and Odalie was between me and my child, and I had learned on the Ashfall stones that a predator you rush is a predator that finishes fast. So I did the other thing. I let the silver come up, all of it, quiet, and I put myself between her and the cradle one slow step at a time, and I kept my voice the low even voice I use on the dying, because that is what she was, some part of her, dying on her feet with her own hand turned against a sleeping child.
"You're not doing this," I told her. "Your hand is. There's a difference and I can hear it in you. Whose voice is in your hand, Odalie."
"Hers," Odalie sobbed. "The Warden's. I never saw her face in my l
