She put the little painting back in its drawer. She locked the drawer again, with the same bent pin, and the study door behind it, and she went back to the library and sat down with her dull book as if nothing in the world had happened. Brann was still outside, humming. She read the same paragraph forty times.
At midnight she crept down again, picked both locks a second time, and took the painting. It was not stealing, she told herself. It was evidence. She could not leave a baby in the dark.
Kael came home on the sixth day, as promised.
She felt him ten miles out, a slow, bright warmth returning to her chest like blood to a numb hand, and she had to sit down on the edge of the infirmary table and put her head between her knees. Mira, rolling bandages, said nothing and went on rolling.
