Chapter 2: The Name They Gave Him
The woman holding him was crying.
Tatenashi felt it before he understood what it was: a warm drop against his forehead, the uneven rise of the body beneath his cheek. He tried to lift his head. The effort exhausted him.
There had been a street. He needed to explain about the street.
His mouth opened, and the same thin cry came out.
The woman answered in words he did not recognize. Her palm covered most of his back. When he tried to pull away, his body made a small, helpless movement inside the cloth surrounding him.
He could not find his phone.
He could not find his hands.
Someone moved close enough to interrupt the light. A lower voice spoke, stopped, and tried again. Tatenashi caught a shape above him, a face too close and too blurred to understand.
He needed them to listen.
But the warmth was getting into him. He fought it, holding on to the last thing he had heard before the darkness.
I'll wait by the door.
He was still trying to answer when he fell asleep.
"Ren. Your shoulders."
Ren realized she was holding them almost against her ears.
She let them fall. Pain answered from places she had not known could hurt, and she closed her eyes until it passed.
Beside the bed, Vin made a movement toward her.
"Don't," she said.
He stopped.
"I was going to get the chair."
"Oh. Yes. Get the chair."
He pulled it across the floor. One leg caught the edge of the rug and produced a noise that seemed much too loud for the room. Both of them looked at the baby.
He slept on.
"A promising beginning," Ren murmured.
Vin lowered himself carefully. He was still wearing his boots. One had a long gray smear across the toe where he had tried to shift the hearthstone with his foot while carrying three kettles.
The midwife had taken two away from him.
Now she stood at the washstand, wringing a cloth into water that Ren did not want to look at. Ilen had rolled her sleeves above her elbows. A strand of white hair had escaped her braid and stuck to the side of her face.
"Drink," she said, without turning.
Vin reached for the cup.
"Her, Nobohide."
"I knew that."
"Then stop looking surprised."
Ren accepted the cup from him. The broth had gone lukewarm, leaving beads of fat along its rim. She drank anyway. Until the first swallow, she had not realized how thirsty she was.
Beyond the shutters, a wagon passed slowly over the uneven street. Someone called for space. A wheel struck the loose stone outside their gate with its familiar double knock.
Everything was still there.
The thought frightened her enough that she set the cup down.
Vin was watching the baby. His hands rested open on his knees, empty and awkward.
"You can touch him," she said.
"I know."
"Then stop looking surprised."
He glanced at Ilen, who gave no sign of having heard.
Ren shifted the blanket. A small hand emerged, fingers spreading briefly before closing again. Vin offered one finger and waited.
The baby caught it.
Vin's mouth changed. All the things he had been preparing to say seemed to leave him at once.
"There," Ren whispered.
He bent closer.
"That's quite a grip."
"He has very little to compare you with."
"Give me an hour. I'll establish myself."
She smiled, then winced at what smiling did to the rest of her.
Vin noticed. Of course he noticed. For the last three months he had been watching her cross rooms as though every piece of furniture had privately threatened her.
"I'm all right," she said.
He nodded too quickly.
Ilen came to the bedside and checked the cloth beneath Ren. Her expression remained practical, which Ren appreciated more than reassurance.
"You're doing well. You're also finished doing things for the day."
"I haven't done anything."
The midwife looked at the baby.
"I'll amend my records."
Vin made a sound dangerously close to laughter.
"You," Ilen told him, "can fetch another clean blanket. The blue one's damp."
He eased his finger from the baby's hand with the caution of someone withdrawing a blade from a crowded scabbard.
When he left, Ren looked toward the window.
On the sill stood the little clay pot her neighbor had brought the previous week. A pale cutting grew from it, its stem no thicker than a sewing needle. Three translucent leaves curved around a closed white bud.
Its light had returned.
"Did the whole street go dark?" Ren asked.
Ilen followed her gaze.
"I haven't been outside."
"The cutting stopped glowing."
"I saw."
Ren waited for more.
The midwife folded a used cloth inward, concealing the stain.
"Someone will come from the rootward office. They'll tell us what happened."
"Has it happened before?"
Ilen's hands paused.
"A cutting failing? Certainly."
"And the bells?"
From somewhere farther down the street, a door slammed. Ren tightened her hold before she could stop herself.
The bells had sounded while she was pushing. Three measured strokes from the lower ward, taken up by a tower near the market. Ilen's apprentice had gone to the window. Ilen had told her to come back.
Then the room had filled with instructions, and there had been no breath left in Ren to ask what the bells meant.
"He's breathing well," Ilen said. "His color is good. When he wakes, we'll try feeding him again."
"That wasn't what I asked."
"No."
The midwife met her eyes.
"It's what I can tell you."
Ren looked down at her son. His lips moved in his sleep, making a shape too small to become a sound.
She stroked the damp hair at his temple.
"Then tell me again."
Ilen sat on the edge of the bed.
This time, when she spoke, she took her time.
By evening, the house smelled of broth, warmed linen, and something Vin had burned downstairs.
"Only the first one," he said when he brought up the tray.
Ren looked at the two pieces of bread beside her bowl.
"The first what?"
"Attempt."
Ilen's apprentice had left. Ilen herself would remain until morning, and had gone downstairs to eat after inspecting Vin's meal with professional suspicion.
He set the tray across Ren's knees and adjusted the pillow behind her. She had to tell him when to stop.
"I can still sit upright without structural reinforcement."
"That pillow was slipping."
"It was retreating."
He took the chair again. In the cradle between them, their son stirred and settled.
Vin had made the cradle in the shed behind the house. Ren had been allowed to see it only after he had dismantled and rebuilt the runners twice. One side bore a shallow carving of three birds. The last was noticeably larger than the others.
He had insisted it was closer.
She tore a piece of bread and held it out. He hesitated, then took it.
"Have you eaten?" she asked.
"A little."
"The first attempt?"
"Waste is an ugly habit."
She pushed the tray toward him until he took the other slice.
Outside, Grincester was preparing for night. Stall shutters rattled down. The knife-grinder passed, his little handbell announcing a service nobody would want at this hour. Across the lane, old Meret argued with the lamplighter about whether the post outside her house leaned more than it had yesterday.
Ren could usually judge the time from their argument.
Tonight, another sound came between the familiar ones: boots stopping at each door, a short exchange, then the boots moving on.
Vin heard it too.
"They came while you were sleeping," he said.
"Who?"
"Rootward clerks. They're asking which cuttings failed."
"How many did?"
He turned the bread in his fingers.
"Meret's. The shrine at the corner. The lamps along the lower canal."
Ren looked toward the small light on the sill.
"All at once?"
"That's what they're asking."
The baby began to fuss. She shifted, meaning to lean over the cradle, and pain stopped her.
Vin was already on his feet.
"Let me."
He slid one hand beneath the small head, the other beneath the blanket, and lifted. His movements were slow but correct. Ilen had made him practice with a folded bolster until he stopped holding it like an unexploded weapon.
The fussing became an indignant cry.
"Yes," Vin told him. "I've received complaints before."
He brought the baby to her, then turned away to give her space. Ren caught his sleeve.
"Stay. Just move the tray."
Feeding took several attempts. Her son grew furious at the delay. So did she, briefly, then felt guilty for it. At last he settled, and the room quieted enough for her to hear Vin let out a breath.
"We need to name him," she said.
"We did name him."
"You suggested a name. I said we would see."
"We've seen him."
She looked up.
Vin held both hands out, acknowledging the weakness of his argument.
"Shinonari," he said more quietly.
They had first discussed it at the kitchen table during a rainstorm. She remembered because the roof had begun dripping into a pan between them, and Vin had moved his list of names before moving his dinner.
She had liked the name then. She liked it now. Saying so too quickly would encourage him to bring out the list again when they chose anything else for the next twenty years.
"It's a great deal of name for someone so small."
"He'll grow."
"Shin," she said, testing the shorter sound.
The baby's eyelids fluttered.
Vin leaned closer.
"Shin Nobohide."
Ren watched him say it a second time, barely above a whisper.
She had seen her husband praised in crowded rooms. She had watched him pretend not to enjoy it. None of those expressions resembled the one on his face now.
"All right," she said.
He looked at her.
"All right?"
"Before you make a speech."
He kissed her forehead instead.
The visitor arrived the following morning with rain on his shoulders and a wooden case tucked beneath his arm.
Ilen brought him upstairs herself.
"Examiner Halven," she said. "From the rootward office."
He bowed at the doorway rather than approaching the bed. He was younger than Ren had expected, with ink along the side of one finger and a tired crease between his brows.
"My apologies for calling so early."
"Then call later," Vin said.
Halven glanced at Ilen.
She took his damp coat.
"He hasn't slept," she explained.
"Neither has anyone at the office," Halven said. There was no complaint in it. He sounded as though he had briefly forgotten which conversation he was having.
Ren adjusted the blanket around Shin.
"What do you need?"
"To examine the child and record the time of his birth. We're visiting every household that had a delivery during yesterday's interruption."
"What interruption?" Vin asked.
Halven rested the case on the washstand.
"We don't yet know its extent."
"That isn't an answer."
"It's the answer I have."
Ilen gave Vin a look. He stepped back, although not far.
Halven washed his hands before opening the case. Inside lay folded cloths, a slender glass instrument, and several pale wooden rings nested within one another.
"This will warm slightly," he told Ren, lifting the smallest ring. "If he becomes distressed, I'll stop."
"What does it measure?"
"His response to a small amount of life force. Circulation, chiefly. We're checking for strain."
"You can't test an affinity this young," Vin said.
"No. I can't."
Halven said it simply enough that Vin fell quiet.
Ren looked at Ilen. The midwife nodded.
"I've seen it used."
Only then did Ren shift Shin into the examiner's reach.
He laid the wooden ring flat against the blanket over the baby's chest. Its grain shone softly. Shin stirred, opening his mouth in a small, searching movement.
The glass instrument brightened along its length.
Halven watched it, frowned, and changed the angle.
"What?" Ren asked.
"The reading's doubled."
Vin moved closer.
The examiner lifted the glass toward the window. Near one end, a hairline fracture caught the daylight.
"Ah."
He set it aside and took out another.
Ren waited while he repeated the examination. The new instrument showed a single steady line of light.
"Within the expected range," he said.
She let herself breathe.
He removed the ring and covered Shin again before opening his ledger. His handwriting was neat despite the awkward angle at which he held the book.
"Name?"
"Shinonari Nobohide," Ren said.
Beside her, Vin smiled.
Halven wrote it down. He asked about the labor, whether the baby had fed, whether Ren had felt faint since the delivery. Ilen answered some questions; Ren answered the rest.
Then his pen moved to a narrow column at the edge of the page.
"Did he first cry before the rootlight returned, or afterward?"
Ren looked toward the windowsill.
She remembered Ilen's hands. The terrible pressure ending. A silence in which she had tried to sit up, though everyone was telling her to stay still.
"I don't know."
"After," Ilen said.
Halven made a mark.
"How long after?"
"I was attending to a child, Examiner. I wasn't counting."
"Of course."
His pen hovered, then moved on.
Ren watched him close the ledger.
"Were the other children all right?"
He rested one hand on the cover.
"The ones I've examined."
There was enough restraint in the answer that she believed it.
After he left, Ilen went downstairs with him. Vin remained by the washstand, looking at the damp patch the case had left on the wood.
"Don't," Ren said.
He turned.
"Don't go down there and ask him questions he's already told us he can't answer."
Vin looked toward the door, then back at her.
"I wasn't going to."
She waited.
"I was considering it."
"Come here instead."
He came.
She made room beside her, and for a while they watched their son sleep.
When Tatenashi next woke, a hand lay beside his face.
The knuckles were broad and scarred. A line of dark hair disappeared beneath a rolled sleeve. He stared at it until the fingers moved, then tried to move his own.
Something small emerged from the blanket.
He watched it open.
He tried again.
The small hand closed.
The room seemed to recede around him. He searched for an explanation and could not hold one long enough to finish it. His body was hungry. His neck hurt when he tried to turn. A beam of light across the ceiling drew his attention, and when he looked back, he had lost the thought.
The man beside him made a low sound and offered a finger.
Tatenashi caught it.
He remembered a phone pressed against his ear. A voice waiting for him. He tried to hear the whole sentence, but the man was speaking now, repeating a sound Tatenashi had heard before.
"Shin."
The woman answered from nearby.
He did not know these people.
But when the man started to withdraw his hand, Tatenashi held on as tightly as his small fingers could manage.
The hand stayed.