Nobody answered right away. Ren's hand had gone to her mouth, and Callum was watching her the way a man watches someone about to say something he can't take back.
"Whose name?" Lyra said again.
Ren lowered her hand slowly. "It says, Halden."
Halden. The name sounded too ordinary for a man who had been hiding inside her life for twenty-three years.
"Halden was there," Lyra said. "The night I was born."
"According to this, yes." Ash held the photograph out, and Lyra took it with hands that weren't quite steady. The certificate looked exactly like it had in the earlier picture, except now she could see the second line clearly, cramped beneath Elara's neater signature.
Witnessed by H. Halden, physician.
"He called himself a physician," Lyra said.
"Men like him call themselves whatever
