His lips were warm.

He hadn't been expecting that. He'd been expecting the same perpetual coldness that he'd grown accustomed to, that'd he'd been willing and prepared to embrace. Apparently want was enough to draw out the heat in him, even when everything else, every spell and potion, wasn't enough.

And there was want there, desire. Though it came through in that particular, deliberate way of his. In precision kisses, their exactness not stripping them of their passion. He chose his spots carefully, for maximum impact. Neck, chest, wrists. Lips. It was overwhelming. His head was spinning and his stomach was in knots and his chest felt like it was going to burst. He couldn't match that carefulness, that modicum of self-control. He threw himself at him in return.

He touched everything he could reach, he pressed himself tightly against him. He wished he could be closer still, somehow, wished he could sink down inside of him until there was nothing left between them, not skin or bone or even magic, until he could finally feel his mind instead of only wondering at it, guessing at it, studying every last gesture and pause just to catch a glimpse of what lay in his heart. He thought it might have been too much. Too close. Too much for a man who was so accustomed to distance.

But he didn't draw back from him. He leaned in. Kept leaning, kept pressing, that immaculate control of his faltering, then breaking as his hands began to shake. And then he was rolling on top of him, overcome by need, and then—

And then Mirk jolted awake, so disoriented that he squeezed his eyes shut tight again until the roiling in his stomach settled.

It'd been a dream. Yet another of those impassioned dreams that had consumed him so often as of late, especially when he was exhausted. He didn't even know where his mind was getting the fodder for them. He didn't know the first thing about that, aside from glimpses of the impulses of others and the vagueness of poems and songs. Mirk didn't count Tours in among his experience. Tours had been nothing like that. There had been no want then, not for him. And especially not from him.

It didn't matter. They were just dreams, thoughts. Despite what he'd been told about the sort of people whose minds churned up dark thoughts at the least provocation, Mirk knew from being close to countless minds that people had as much control over their unconscious thoughts as they did over whether the sun rose in the east. Dreams were a minor thing to repent for. As long as he didn't do anything, it'd be fine.

Then Mirk came back to himself fully and realized that instead of lying in his usual spot at the far end of the bed, curled up around a pillow, he was curled up around Genesis.

Terror seized him as he searched his body with his senses rather than moving. There was nothing there, no physical evidence to pay testament to what he'd been dreaming of, thank God. Though God really had nothing to do with it. Bracing himself, Mirk lifted his head from where it'd been propped against Genesis's neck and snaked a hand out from underneath the blankets to unbury his head, tapping on the magelight on his wrist along the way. Predictably, Genesis was already awake, staring blankly up at the ceiling, as if he'd never fallen asleep at all.

For once, Genesis managed to find words before Mirk could. "I see...you have recovered."

"Ah...yes, of course..." Mirk hurried to compose himself. The cold snap that had gripped the City had broken while he'd been asleep — the air beyond the blankets was chilly, but not unbearably, bone-achingly cold. He sat up, pushing back the blankets. Genesis's hand trailed down his back, as the commander let it fall away from where it'd been before, his fingers still gently wrapped around his neck. It surprised Mirk that Genesis hadn't quit indulging him the moment he'd fallen asleep, resorting to his usual corpse-like sleeping position instead. He tried not to think about it too hard. "What time is it?"

"Half ten. In the morning."

A fresh surge of panic welled up in Mirk's chest and he threw back the rest of the bedclothes. Only belatedly did he realize how inconsiderate it was of him to subject Genesis needlessly to the cold. Mirk tucked Genesis back in as he babbled his apologies at him. "I'm so sorry, messire, I know you're busy, I didn't mean to keep you in so late. I was supposed to be gone by now too, I must have forgotten to set the alarm—"

"You didn't," Genesis said. He hadn't moved, but at least he was looking at him now instead of staring straight upwards. Though his expression was as inscrutable as always. Mirk thought the darkness under his eyes was worse than usual. Apparently he'd been the only one to get a good night's sleep out of their arrangement.

"Euh...what?"

"It went off. However, you did not...react to it. I stopped it."

"Oh..."

Genesis sighed. "You are always...scolding me for not resting enough. I assumed your lack of response indicated you required more."

Mirk laughed weakly, helplessly, halting his frantic efforts at getting himself up and out the door, instead sitting in a defeated lump beside Genesis on the bed. "You were probably right. Methinks it might have done you a little good to rest too, even if you didn't get much more sleep."

"So you say."

It wasn't like Genesis to be so flexible, Mirk thought. When it came to things like routines, once Genesis had found one, he followed it precisely and without exception. Perhaps there was something unseen at play, some lull in his work or an upcoming assignment at an unusual time that meant there was no need for Genesis to vanish from the bedroom before dawn. Mirk doubted that Genesis had decided to stay abed just to keep from waking him. Genesis was perceptive enough in his own way, good at recognizing patterns. And he'd lived with K'aekniv for decades. He should have known by then that when someone with angelic blood was well and truly asleep, it took much more than being rolled off to the side to wake them.

Either way, Mirk didn't have time to dwell on it. He was supposed to start work at dawn. They still had four full floors of men who needed tending to after yesterday's battle. That aside, every time he rushed in late, someone had a sarcastic comment to make about it, a muttered aside about his servants being late with his breakfast, or needing extra time to choose between the silk and the velvet shirt to wear underneath his robes. Mirk knew they didn't mean anything cruel by it — everyone got their fair share of needling — but it still bothered Mirk that any of the other healers might assume that he thought he was too rich to have to follow rules and put in a full day's work like the rest of them.

Yet part of Mirk didn't want to get up. No, most of him didn't: it was still chilly in the bedroom, and it was warm under the blankets, and if Genesis wasn't in a hurry, then what harm was there in detaining him further? It wasn't as if he really could stop Genesis from leaving, if he truly wanted to. Which made him wonder exactly why it was that Genesis had decided to put up with all his nonsense.

It made it all the more imperative that he leave. Mirk scooted over to his proper place in bed, swinging his legs off the edge of it and stretching the kinks out of his limbs. He glanced back over his shoulder at Genesis — he was still watching him. And not making any move to get up himself. "Is something wrong, messire?"

"...no." Genesis looked away, resuming his customary staring contest with the ceiling. "It will have snowed a considerable amount since you last went out. You may wish to consider...making preparations."

"Has it? I thought it would have been too cold...well, thank you for letting me know. I'm not used to this strange weather yet."

Mirk forced himself up and onto his feet, pausing to put the quilts more or less in order before going to his dresser. If it had snowed, that meant that he'd need his thickest socks. They made the slog through the City less miserable in the damp, when it wasn't practical for the healers to wear boots to the infirmary. Once Mirk had gathered up all his things, he moved to leave. But something made him pause at the door before opening it, looking back over his shoulder, lifting his hand to both tuck an errant lock of hair back behind his ear and direct more of the faint glow from the magelight around his wrist at Genesis. He still hadn't moved. But he obviously wasn't asleep either. "Euh...do you need anything, messire? The magelights? Tea? Though I suppose you can do all that yourself without getting up..."

"Yes. I can."

"It's only a little odd, shutting someone up alone in a dark room. But if you're going to try to sleep, it'd be better not to make things bright." Not that Genesis ever wanted things bright, save for when he was cleaning. "Well, have a good day, Genesis. Maybe I'll see you later on?"

"...perhaps."

He sidled out the door, waiting until it was shut behind him before waving on the magelights out in the common room. Mirk paused again before heading onward to the bathroom. What was Genesis planning on doing? It wasn't like him to stay in bed when there were so many other productive things he could be doing. Maybe he was feeling ill. Mirk hadn't sensed any outward disturbances in Genesis's body or magic, but, then again, the commander was very good at hiding any signs of weakness.

It all left Mirk with a strange feeling, a certain uneasiness, like he was overlooking something crucial that should have been obvious. It was probably just his imagination. Genesis always had a reason for the things he did. And, when it came down to it, if Genesis suddenly decided to spend a morning lounging in bed instead of ghosting about the City's dark corners and rooftops in search of someone to stab, it was none of Mirk's business. He hurried off to the bathroom.

At the infirmary, there was no such thing as a free morning.

- - -

Genesis was right. It had snowed overnight. It was still snowing, though it felt more like icy sand whipped into his face by the wind rather than the soft, wet snowflakes they were treated to on occasion back in Nantes. Mirk tried to hurry, tried to be efficient, but slid on the ice coating the dormitory's front steps and ended up flat on his back at the bottom of them before he could even properly set out.

It was only a month and a half into winter proper in the City, and already Mirk felt like he'd had enough of it to last him a decade.

The streets of the City had been partially cleared by the horse-drawn carts with spades lashed to their fronts manned by the Supply Corps. But they only pushed the snow from the center of the streets, making just enough room for the Corps to haul goods to and fro, or for the fighting men to haul themselves and their cannon off to the parade grounds transporter. Regular pedestrians were stuck wading through the piles left behind on either side of the main throughway. Low-level fighters and even more Supply Corps workers were working at clearing paths up to the fronts of the main buildings, bundled up tight against the wind, digging with mortal shovels rather than magic.

Mirk thought it odd the officers were unwilling to call up a mage to get the work over and done with more quickly. It was a waste of time, left people who already labored all day at equally thankless physical tasks with one more difficult thing to do. Perhaps it was because of the conversations he'd been having with Genesis as of late, but Mirk was noticing more and more things like that around the City as the weeks passed, petty slights and injustices. It would have taken a fire mage like Elijah only a sliver of his potential to clear the whole street, especially if he used a spell to help things along. And yet, there were none to be seen.

It took Mirk an extra half hour to get to the infirmary. When he arrived, nurses and aides were hurrying to clear the steps rather than tending to their patients inside. He drew to a halt a few feet away, wondering if it would do him any good to stop and offer to help. He was already late, wasn't he? And he had so little life-giving potential left after yesterday's patients that a seasoned aide would be more useful to their patients than he was.

"Mirk! Mirk, come! Come look!"

He hadn't noticed him before, another burly black-clad figure battling against the snow near the infirmary's front steps. But now that he was waving his arms and yelling, Mirk recognized him. Slava, one of K'aekniv's close friends. Once Slava saw that he'd caught Mirk's attention, he went back to what he'd been doing before — serving as a windbreak for someone working on the ground to the side of the steps. Mirk hurried over, half-running, half-jumping through the snow. "Slava? What is it?"

"She is hurt," Slava said, moving aside so that Mirk could better see what was going on. The infantryman looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't find the right English words to express his frustration about the scene unfolding on the ground. Eva, the head of surgery for the Tenth, was kneeling beside a woman lying in a frozen pool of her own blood. After a moment, Mirk recognized her too, more from her vibrant red and gold dress than her face. She was the woman who'd ushered him and Elijah inside the bordello just beyond the South Gate when they'd gone to meet with Genesis.

Mirk knelt down in the snow across from Eva, swinging his work bag off his shoulder. "How can I help?"

Eva glanced up at him, expression flat and distant. "She's been out here for a long time. It's the only thing that saved her. The cold slows things down."

He searched for the woman's wound. It was deep, stretching diagonally across her stomach from above her hip to the bottom of her rib cage. Deep, but narrow. Nothing vital had spilled out of her other than blood. Lost blood, they could work with. Lost innards were a whole other matter. "What do you think?" Mirk asked Eva.

"She needs to be warmed up if I'm going to save her. Fast. She's barely alive."

Mirk reached for the woman's neck to confirm it: her pulse was fluttery and weak, and she was only drawing shallow, sporadic breaths. "Then let's take her in."

"That's the problem," Eva said. She pressed her hands to the wound across the woman's stomach, trying to use a combination of the warmth of her own body and that of her ordered magic to clear some of the ice away. The surgeon's expression was as hardened as the snow all around them. "She's not K'maneda. We're not permitted."

Mirk shook his head. "She'll die out here. We have to take her in."

"If an outsider wants healing, they need to pay."

"How much?"

Eva hesitated, her fingers splaying wider over the woman's wound. When she named the price, a near-curse escaped Mirk, and he crossed himself reflexively. It was more than an expertly tailored suit, made to the latest fashion. "Even the guild healers don't charge that much!"

"It's so that no one ever tries."

Despite the wind, Mirk suddenly felt hot, as if he needed to take off his cloak. He decided to, nudging aside Eva's hands and tucking it in around the shaking woman. "Tiens, we'll bring her in anyway. I'll pay for it," Mirk said, looking back at Slava, gesturing for him to come lift the dying woman out of the snow.

Eva stared at Mirk, her brow furrowed in confusion. "They'll want it up front."

Mirk got back to his feet to make way for Slava, shouldering his bag once more. "They’ll have to wait. Besides, do you think anyone's going to stop Slava if he looks at them the right way?"

Eva sighed, glancing up at Slava, who had taken Mirk's place on the other side of the woman, squatting down and working his hands underneath her, though he was waiting for Eva to confirm before he lifted her. After another few moments of hesitation, she did, speaking to him in a language that sounded different from the one the Easterners all spoke to each other, but that Slava seemed to understand better than English nevertheless. He nodded and picked the dying woman up, cradling her against his broad chest.

Slava led the charge up the front steps, Mirk and Eva flanking him on either side. The giant fighter took the steps three at a time, as if there wasn't any ice on them at all. Eva and Mirk struggled to keep up, using the path Slava made through the remaining piles of snow to climb up after him. Then it was on through the front doors, though he paused halfway across the waiting room to ask Eva something over one shoulder. She made a gesture toward the hall to the left of the desk at the rear of the waiting room, the one that led to the field transporter. Slava set off again with a snort, moving fast, with the sort of authoritative air that could only be summoned by men of either great size or wealth.

But he was intercepted: Cyrus emerged out of the hall right as they reached it, on his way to scold the aides tending the rosters at the desk. Slava's appearance diverted his ire. The head of the Tenth planted himself squarely in Slava's path, between the desk and the hall, not letting him advance past it. "What do you think you're doing?" he snapped, his eyes falling on the woman in Slava's arms. "If you decided to gut a whore, that's your problem. Get out of my infirmary."

It was for the best that Cyrus spoke too quickly for Slava to pick up on the finer details of what he said. His tone alone was enough to annoy Slava, who shifted the dying woman's weight to one arm and moved to knock Cyrus aside. Eva caught up just in time to restrain him, taking hold of his arm. Had Slava been able to complete his swing, he'd have smashed Cyrus clear through the front desk. "This is an emergency," Eva said to Cyrus. "She needs a bed."

Cyrus was unimpressed by the two of them, his hands on his hips. His annoyance at having to look up at both Eva and Slava rather than down his nose at them was even stronger than how irritated Slava had been at Cyrus's tone. "The last I checked, the whores aren't taking their pay from us. Officially."

"I'll pay for it," Mirk said, stepping out from behind Slava. "Please, Comrade Commander. She's dying."

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"Hmph. The little prince is here too," Cyrus said with a snort. "Well, even princes pay here. So take out your purse."

Cyrus's indifference to the woman in Slava's arms, bleeding out all over herself and Slava and the floor now that she'd been brought out of the cold, made the heat rise in Mirk's chest again. "No one carries that much gold with them, Comrade Commander. You should know that. Please, we need to get her—"

"Like I said. Even princes pay in the K'maneda. Come back with the gold and I'll let you try your hand at it."

Something in Cyrus's tone, something about the sneer on his face, the delight he took in finding someone he could finally look down on rather than up at, made the heat overwhelm Mirk. He took hold of Slava's uniform blouse and dragged him along with as he tried to push past Cyrus. "Let's go, Slava. It's fine. I'll take care of it."

Mirk was uncertain of what happened next. He thought he'd barely brushed past Cyrus, small enough to slip past him rather than being forced to barrel through him like Slava would have. But the head of the Tenth reeled backward into the corner of the desk like he'd been shoved hard. Maybe Slava had done something while he'd been distracted? Either way, Cyrus stayed out of their way as Eva caught up, directing Slava to an empty room halfway down the hall.

Slava set the woman down on the exam table carefully, then went to the door to keep watch as Mirk and Eva set to work. She took her magicked instruments out of the roll she always carried in the smock she wore over her robes while Mirk snatched basic supplies from the cabinet in the corner. Blood regenerating potion, needle and thread, bandages and rags and a second potion to warm her, always kept near at hand now that the weather had turned. Mirk wedged an arm under the woman's shoulders, propping her up so that he could dump the potions down her throat while Eva pushed aside the cloak he’d tucked around her and cut away her dress to take a better look at her wound.

It looked worse without the pattern on her dress to distract from it. Her skin was bluish white from cold and blood loss, the edges of the wound blistered, a sure sign that the knife that'd sliced her open had been enchanted. Once Mirk made sure the potions had ended up down her throat rather than in her lungs and eased her back onto the table, Eva set to work, using one device to hold the wound open further so that she could see what parts of her insides had been slashed with the knife. Mirk could do little more than watch, helpless, as Eva sorted through her insides with a second tool, a rod with a hook at its end. His life-giving potential wouldn't have regenerated enough overnight for him to heal more than one or two small parts of the wound. As long as they hadn't been shredded too badly.

Even if he couldn't help heal, he could help sort out what was broken. Mirk put his hands on the woman's stomach, on either side of the wound, and cast his senses out into her body. He made mental note of everything that felt wrong — a coil of intestines leaking its contents, an artery severed, muscles separated. And...

They must have found it at the same instant, Eva with her tools and Mirk with his mind. Mirk looked up, startled. Eva met his eyes and nodded, a wary expression on her face.

"Can we save it?" Mirk asked her in a whisper.

"I don't know," Eva said, looking back down into the wound. "That's not something my magic can do anything for. It might not matter. The damage..."

Mirk glanced at the woman's face. Somehow, through some combination of the potions and being brought in out of the cold, she was barely conscious. Not enough to speak, not enough for her eyes to focus or for her to make more than a few, uncoordinated twitches. But it was enough for her to feel. Maybe because it had been at the front of her mind, maybe because it was what had driven her to stagger all the way to the infirmary rather than staying where she'd been struck down. Mirk could sense flickers of desperation amidst her pain. Determination. And dread. That she'd been too late.

Mirk thought of Tours. Of the child that'd been lost without him even knowing it. A voice circled around the memory, velvety and choking.

Be a man and give it to me!

He withdrew his hands from the woman's stomach, reaching into the sleeve of his robes for his grandfather's staff. "You do what you can for the rest," Mirk said as his fingers closed around it. As always, it felt warmer than it should have. "I'll see what I can do about that."

Mirk pressed the staff, the size of a wand, to his chest with one hand as he slid the other back into the woman's wound, off to the side, to give Eva as much room as possible. This wasn't the kind of thing that could be healed with touch, with stitches and pinches and wrapping things together tight. He wasn't sure there was anything he could do. But with his hand inside of her, the woman's fear was a clarion call carried on waves of pain, an insistence like the tolling of a bell, counting away the seconds.

He had to try.

Mirk knew by then that his grandfather's staff, and whatever force guided it, was a mercurial thing. Something that didn't take into consideration matters as inconsequential as human wants and needs. All he could do was present it with what was wrong.

It wasn't the sort of thing that could be forced, that he could argue with it about, like the bindings on the Montigny men. Mirk allowed his magic to seep into the wood of the staff, to mingle with its potential, as he did when he wanted to draw on its strength. But rather than forcing that potential out and shunting it off into the woman through his body, Mirk only opened a conduit, hoping that whatever controlled the staff could sense through him what he could feel — the woman's desperation, her failing body, the part of her potential that had been rising inside her.

The presence in the staff felt closer than it ever had before, more interested, intrigued. Like a gardener who had found an unexpected flower budding among her household's staple crops. Something that could be left to flourish, or could be ripped away. Irrelevant, but interesting enough to linger on.

Mirk couldn't put his thoughts into words. Instead, he projected his emotions at the staff, mixing them with what he could feel radiating from the woman — his disgust and anger at her being left on the steps to die, the injustice of it. And the black uncertainty and sickness he felt when he thought back to Seigneur Rouzet's offhand comment in Mademoiselle Polignac's parlor about why House Rose had sent no emissary to apologize to him.

Nothing happened. There was no ringing voice, no swell of golden warmth within him. The staff must have made its decision.

Just as Mirk was about to pull his hand back and tell Eva he'd done what he could, everything went black. In the darkness came a rush of heat. And a distant voice, singing or laughing, with words that were familiar but still just out of reach, resonant with a beauty that was terrifying in its strength.

When Mirk's vision returned, it was blurry. And his head and chest felt like they'd been squeezed in a vise for hours.

"...what did you do?"

Mirk blinked a few times, focusing on the sound of Eva's voice across from him. When his vision cleared, he saw that her mouth was hanging open, her hands upheld at the level of her shoulders, both them and her instruments streaked with blood and shaking. Eva’s shock was hot and insistent in Mirk's mind, as clear as if his mind was completely unshielded.

Which it was, he realized. It felt like all his magic had been ripped from him, save for the hot core of his own life energy at his center. Mirk looked down at the woman between them on the table. He should have been overwhelmed by her pain. And yet...

The wound across her stomach was gone, his hand shoved out of it. Instead, it was resting on the bulging stomach of someone days from birth. Mirk staggered backwards away from the bed, coughing. He tried to speak, but found that there was something in his mouth, along with the coppery taste of blood. Reflexively, he lifted his free hand and spat it out. One of his back teeth.

Only then did Mirk become aware of how achingly cold he was. His body felt wan, too light, like it did when autumn claimed him. The only warmth he could feel near to him was the staff clenched in his other hand, still pressed to his chest. Though it'd grown to its full size while he'd been focusing on healing the woman. Mirk looked from the tooth in his hand back at the woman on the table between him and Eva. The side of her body that he'd been standing closer to was strewn with clumps of his hair.

"What are you?" he heard Eva ask, from a great distance. Now she wasn't just shocked. She was afraid as well.

"I...it's...the staff..."

The woman sat up between them, letting out a strangled noise of mixed panic and confusion as she grabbed for her stomach. Though her wounds had been healed, the pain radiating off her was acute, the aftereffects of having her organs and bones shoved aside to accommodate the growth in her stomach. But the pain was tempered by the relief that blossomed in her once she woke up enough to realize what had happened. "The baby," she said, looking to Eva. "Is...is it all right?"

Eva tucked her tools away in the pockets of her smock, wiping her hands on it before cautiously reaching out to the woman with her hands and magic. After a pause, she nodded. "You're healed. He..." At a loss for words, Eva could only stare across the table at Mirk.

The woman finally noticed Mirk wavering on his feet beside the table. Though she was even more shocked than Eva, there was no fear in her. A small blessing, Mirk thought. "You saved it," she said.

"Her," Mirk corrected, without thinking. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew. The same way he knew now, deep in the pit of his stomach, that whatever power coiled within the staff was also a her.

Letting out a weak laugh, the woman looked back down at her stomach, her palms smoothing over its new contours. "It's a girl?"

"Yes. I...well...methinks...I don't know..."

Abruptly, she reached out to Mirk, grabbing hold of him and dragging him close enough that she could wrap him in a crushing embrace. Her thickly-muscled arms were even stronger than they looked. "I thought...I thought that bastard had..."

Mirk felt he should have returned the embrace, but he didn't have the strength for it. He settled for leaning against her. Not that he had much choice in the matter. "It's nothing."

It wasn't nothing. It was something beyond magic, something impossible and terrifying. A miracle. His grandfather had always told him the staff was capable of great things, but this...all Mirk could do in the face of it was try to keep himself upright and steady, his mind too exhausted and jumbled with other people's emotions for him to have any coherent thoughts of his own.

Eva circled around the table to his side, pressing her fingertips to Mirk's temple. Her magic was a warm, welcome presence against his raw mind, despite the way her emotions were still pounding at him. "You're completely drained. What day is it?"

"Euh...Tuesday..."

"Where are we?"

"The infirmary?"

"Who am I?"

"Comrade Eva...is...am I missing something?"

The surgeon shook her head as she locked him in a stern look. "This is unheard of. Drained like this, so quickly, you should be dead."

Unspoken was the implication that the woman on the table, who still had her arms wrapped around him, should be dead as well. "I'm fine, really, though...methinks I should sit down..." Mirk could feel the strength in his limbs failing; the only thing keeping him upright was the strength and insistence of the woman's embrace.

Eva crammed both her hands back in the front pockets of her smock, muttering to herself in her native language as she hurried to the door, snapping something at Slava that made him laugh and get out of her way after flipping her a clumsy salute. He left as well, coming back a minute or two later with a chair. When Slava saw that Mirk wasn't in a position to move, he brought the chair to his side. Whereas both Eva and the woman had felt shocked by the sudden reversal of events, Slava was completely unfazed by both Mirk's condition and the fact that the woman he'd carried in less than fifteen minutes ago was suddenly days away from giving birth.

All Mirk could feel from him was sympathy, as he nudged the woman in the arm until she let go of Mirk, helping him sit down. "Rest," he said, patting him on the shoulder in the measured, controlled way that he'd mastered but that K'aekniv, who was even more oversized than him, never quite remembered to use until it was too late. Slava paused, then plucked at a lock of Mirk's hair. It came away in his fingers. "You look like shit."

Mirk laughed, though he quickly regretted it — it made pain lance through the muscles of his stomach. "I wonder if this is why grand-père always kept his head shaved..."

Things happened quickly. Eva reappeared with Yule and Danu in tow. Eva and Yule joined together to prod at him and argue over what must have happened, while Danu tended to the woman, asking her questions and feeling at her stomach as she listened to her replies. Meanwhile, Slava went back to guarding the door, warding off healers from the Tenth who'd been sent by Cyrus to investigate, then fending off Cyrus himself. Slava planted himself in the middle of the doorway and crossed his arms against all of Cyrus's threats and insults, putting on the usual "speak no English" act that the Easterners all employed when dealing with officers they weren't inclined to listen to.

All the commotion was making Mirk feel even more out-of-sorts, like he was drowning in everyone’s emotions, choking on them, still unable to string together any coherent thoughts of his own with all the foreign feelings jostling for position in his mind. Eventually, Emir appeared to handle Cyrus, their mutual disgust and anger temporarily blotting out all the other emotions. The pregnant woman had laid back down on Danu's orders, as she continued her exam. Her emotions were the one positive spark amongst all the anger and confusion and frustration that otherwise filled the room, her pain distant in light of it.

Someone new came to challenge Slava at the doorway a few minutes after Emir and Cyrus left. Though Mirk could hear their low, rough voice, he couldn't feel their emotions. "Move, Stanislav. You know why I'm here. I have business."

Slava shook his head. "No one in. Eva says."

"I'm the exception. Quit it with the idiot infantryman act and let me in before I beat you."

The pregnant woman sat up over Danu's protests, running her hands over her hair and trying to compose herself a little even before Slava grudgingly stepped aside. A slip of a woman in men's infantry blacks squeezed past him into the room. She was leaning heavily on a cane and had a severe look about her, at least that was the impression he got from the slice of her face that wasn't covered by her curtain of straight, uncovered shoulder-length black hair. Her features reminded her of Emir's — they were both from across the Mediterranean, maybe, though he didn't think the woman had any angelic blood.

The pregnant woman nodded to her. "Got your gossip still. Come and take it before I lose it. Been a long morning, huh?" she joked. Mirk couldn't tell whether she was trying to make herself or the new visitor feel better with it.

The new woman in infantry blacks pulled a round metal device out of her pocket and tossed it to her. They both remained silent as the pregnant woman clasped the device between her hands and closed her eyes. Though the new woman was ignoring everyone else in the room, Mirk could feel all of his fellow healers' attention fixed on her. Their emotions were varying shades of distrust and suspicion, though Yule's had a different, more resigned timbre to it.

"I should have known you were behind this," Yule grumbled. The new woman shushed him, raising a hand to wave him off without looking away from her pregnant friend.

She was putting something in the device, Mirk thought. Not magic, exactly, but something close to it. Once she'd finished and offered the device back to the other woman, both of them relaxed. Only then did the woman in infantry blacks see fit to comment on the change in her friend's body. "You didn't say you were pregnant."

The woman in the red and gold dress shrugged. "I was going to tell you once I was further along. But no sense in stopping work till you get there."

"Well, you're too far gone to work now. Good thing we got him before this happened. He's an animal, but I don't think even he would go after someone in your state."

Eva finally asked the question that was on everyone else's mind. It was the lack of emotions that was making all of them even more suspicious. Mirk could sense Eva trying to puzzle through it, in the way her mind went cold as she concentrated. There were no signs of shields around the woman in infantry blacks, nor the feel of any other magic. In his present condition, Mirk should have been able to tell at a glance what element and orientation she was, but she was as magically neutral as a mortal. Moreso, even. Mortals still had slight imbalances in their auras, though they weren't large enough to generate magical potential. The woman in infantry blacks was so magically neutral that she barely registered in Mirk's mind. "Who are you? Do you know what's going on?"

When the woman didn't answer, Yule did it for her. "Fatima. The murdering madam."

The woman in black, Fatima, shot Yule a sour look. "Accurate, but rude. Typical." Her attention shifted to Mirk, eyes narrowing. "I'm guessing you're the one responsible for this," she said, gesturing at the other woman's stomach.

"Euh...well...sort of...I'm very sorry, she was dying, and I asked the staff...well, I didn't ask, it was more like showed...and..." He babbled to a halt, too tired and overwhelmed to explain what he meant, what negotiating with the staff's presence was like. Despite being mages, Mirk knew they'd all think his story unbelievable. Except for Danu, perhaps, who was accustomed to dealing with mysterious forces ten times more powerful than herself.

Fatima snorted, propping both her hands on the head of her cane as she leaned on it. "You're more powerful than Genesis let on."

"I didn't do...I mean, I didn't know I could..."

"I don't know what to think of it either," Yule said. "Your core's fine, though everything else is gone. To do something like this, you should have had to kill yourself. And even then, it probably wouldn't have worked."

"Maybe this thing used him as some kind of conduit," Eva said, gesturing at the staff. Mirk still had it grasped tightly in his lap, along with his tooth.

Yule shook his head. "Speculation's not going to get us anywhere. Someone needs to go pull Gen out of whatever corner he's hiding in and ask him what he knows. He always knows something."

"He owes me an explanation too. This wasn't part of the plan," Fatima said. She looked back at Slava, who was still guarding the door. "Take her back to the house, Stanislav. I trust you won't get into any trouble while you're there?"

Slava nodded, saying something to her in another language that made Fatima roll her eyes and Eva suddenly go red. Mirk couldn't tell if she was embarrassed or flattered, but her reaction was enough to earn her sideways glances from Danu and Yule. Mirk decided to speak up before either of them could and change the subject. He felt for Eva; she'd been through enough for one day. "Methinks it'd be better if she stayed here with us," he said to Fatima, nodding in the direction of the pregnant woman. "She's still in pain. And she's due any day now, maybe..."

Fatima shook her head, dismissively. "We have more than enough midwives to handle it ourselves. Or are you offering to pay for all this?"

"It's only a small thing," Mirk replied. Even though none of it was, not the sum Cyrus had sneered at him, nor the sudden change in the woman in the red and gold dress.

"You really must be as rich as he says. Well, thanks, but no thanks. We can take care of it. Besides, your gold is put to better use elsewhere."

Mirk wasn't certain what she meant by that. Really, he was uncertain of everything when it came to Fatima. It was disorienting, being in the same room as someone and not being able to feel anything from them. Even if he couldn't feel Genesis's emotions, he could always sense his magic.

The woman in the red and gold dress looked back at Mirk as Fatima helped her down off the table, flashing him a smile. "What's your name again? I'm sure someone told me once, but I'm..."

Tired. Overwhelmed, even if it was in a good way. "Mirk," he said, returning her smile as best he could. When he did, he felt something hard fall into his lap. Another one of his teeth, a front one that time.

"Mirk, that's it. Funny name for a Frenchie. I'm Alice. Come by and see us again. I'd like it if you could meet her," she added, her hands again going involuntarily to her stomach.

"Only reason he'd ever have to go visit you," Yule said. Though the target of his frown made it clear his current cross mood was more directed at Fatima than Alice.

Fatima ignored him, walking beside Alice and letting her lean on the shoulder opposite her weaker leg as she led her to the door. Only once Fatima was between Alice and Slava did Mirk appreciate how short she was, smaller than him by far, and a good hand shorter than his godmother. Even though Alice was on the tall and muscular side, Slava picked her up easily, making her laugh.

Once the pair were gone, Fatima turned back to the healers, giving them all a critical once-over. "Well. It's sooner than I was counting on. And it's a motley crew. But it'll have to do, for now. I'll deal with finding our esteemed comrade," she said with another derisive snort, as she turned and left.

"I wouldn't mind lying down," Mirk said into the silence that followed her departure. The atmosphere in the room was doubly oppressive now without Alice's relief and wonder to temper things. He picked the second tooth that'd fallen from his mouth off his lap with shaking fingers. But he kept the staff gripped in his other hand. "And, euh...does anyone here do teeth healing? Methinks I'd like to have them put back before I lose them, if it's not any trouble."

"I'll find someone," Eva said, trying to get some of her usual detached composure back. straightening her smock and rolling her head to work the stiffness out of her neck. "You two, take him upstairs to the long-term ward. Move the other patients around if you must. He needs the shielding. I'll go make some excuse for Cyrus and tell Emir to come up so that he doesn't need to be told things second-hand. I think this is proof of why we all need to talk more directly instead of being so secretive."

Mirk watched her leave, trying to ignore the growing numbness in his limbs and the aching in the pit of his stomach. How could he keep something that he didn't even know he could do a secret? He had his secrets, just like everyone else. His magic wasn't one of them. At least not when it came to the other healers, with Cyrus and his followers excepted.

But what did Genesis know?