The crying went on, thin and outraged, and nobody in that room did anything about it for a good few seconds because they were all listening to it the way you listen to rain after a drought.
"There you are," the midwife said, and her voice had gone rough. "That's it. Let us hear you."
She worked fast after that. The baby was washed and wrapped and passed to the healer, who put both hands over him and held them there while the light came up on his palms again. Trafalgar watched every second of it from the chair and did not breathe properly until the man finally sat back on his heels.
