She held her hands out. “Like what?”
“Why are you asking me? Shouldn’t you know?”
Amma’s hands fell back to her sides, and all the anxiety went out of her voice. “Why would I know, Damien?”
He glanced back to the chamber through the door’s crack, still empty, but for how long with the spawn’s cries rising? “Because you’re, you know,kindand…and nurturing? Also you happen to have breasts.”
Amma glared at him and poked herself in the chest. “These aren’tworking, they’re just for show!”
“I just, I mean—” Damien rubbed his forehead, the child’s cries, the temple’s aura, and his own stupid words making him as inarticulate as he’d ever been. “They’re warm and nice to be pressed against. That’s what spawn are fond of, no?”
Amma’s indignation didn’t recede until she glanced about the still-empty room. Beyond the cries of the child, there were no doors opening elsewhere, no footsteps headed their way, no worried voices calling out. “It doesn’t really seem like this baby is used to being cuddled against anything,” she said, looking back down at it.
Amma reached into the basket, awkward at first, face pinched, and then she lifted the baby out and held it to her chest, slipping a hand underneath, the other cradling its head. She whispered to it, something Damien couldn’t hear over its cries, but then as the infant quieted, he could make out her voice, softly lilting a few honeyed words of appeasement and reassurance. The child’s eyes, deep brown and large, roved up to her and studied her face with a strange and sweet wonder.
That was what Damien had meant—it was that Amma was a soothing presence. The breasts were just a nice perk.
With the room quiet save for Amma’s low hum, the pressing pain on Damien’s head lifted again. Strange, he thought, so close now to theancast erfind, but even as he took steps toward where Amma stood gently rocking the infant, the cloudiness and pain didn’t intensify. Yet he could feel the child had been blessed, not so that he couldn’t touch it, but it waspreparedsomehow, and his stomach turned over. It had to be like Amma herself and the talisman, housing something arcane within it but blocking the aura with its very body.
“Damien?” Amma’s voice broke just on his name as she stared down at the baby. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth again, but wasn’t capable of getting out what she wanted to say.
“I know.” He sighed heavily. “Xander knew what this was, he had to, but chose to keep the details from us. A holy relic is one thing, but this is a person.” Damien poked at the baby’s hand, and it grabbed at his finger. “Barely a person, but one nonetheless.”
There were shadows moving in the chamber below, and a voice commented on the door being open.
Amma hugged the infant closer. “Do you think they won’t be mad if we just tell them we only meant to steal their holy relic, but since it’s a baby we don’t want it anymore?”
Damien grunted. “Doubtful.”
There was a shout from below and the ringing of unsheathed metal. Damien pulled out his dagger, ready to defend them.
“We shouldn’t hurt these people, it’s going to look real bad,” Amma said.
“I don’t think we have a choice—they’ll be here in a moment.” Boots scuffed up the stone steps outside.
Amma shuffled backward, knocking into the wooden desk and grabbing its edge with a hand to stay steady, the other firmly wrapped around the child. “We just need a little more time,” she said in a whisper, and then the doors to the room slammed shut with a resounding thunk.
Damien had been prepared for them to burst open, and the shadows that were headed up the stairs certainly suggested that was about to happen, but instead the light was blotted out, and there were only surprised but muffled cries from the other side.
“I didn’t do that,” said Damien, hand and dagger still raised but no blood spilt. There was a latching sound, and when the handle jiggled, the door remained tightly shut.
“Well, neither did I.”
Damien narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve done that before.”
“Notthat—not to a door I didn’t touch. And that’s not even liathau anyway.”
Up against Amma’s shoulder, the child was beginning to fuss again.
“It may not be, but,”—Damien gestured to her other hand gripping the wooden desk, gaze traveling down its leg to the wooden floors and along them to the wooden door, a good conduit for whatever kind of arcana she was capable of—“I do believe that bit of magic was all you.”
Amma held her breath, taking a shaking hand up to the baby’s back to pat it as she stared at the door. It bulged slightly as shouting came from the other side, and then she shook her head. “It won’t hold forever. We need to find a way out of here. Take this.” In one swift and too-nimble move, she passed the infant off to Damien, and he had no choice but to be saddled with it.
The baby stared back at Damien, something both expectant and suspicious in its eyes. He held it at arm’s length, little feet dangling from the bottom of a simple gown. “What am I supposed to do with it?”
Its whining began to evolve from annoying to aggressive.
Amma was hurrying along the room, running her hands over the shelves and pulling things off in a mad search. “It might be cold?”
