"I wanted to see you outside of the Rememdium. I truly don't mind it there, but..."
Gloria Wynsee lifted her left arm from the lap of her dirty skirts. The striped stocking worn from stump-edge to elbow was black with the unusual tar of her sweat. Peering over the truncated limb's lumpy edge toward the physician, she added, "Hemlock and henbane. I think of vomit. I think of old pain."
She sat in Mercy Tirel's room at the Broken Dagger, the folds of her loose dress hanging over the sides of the chair. The swollen curve of her pregnant belly left the rest of her seeming diminutive in comparison -- otherwise, Gloria had always been a barrel, a stocky plug of a girl whose shoulders were thicker than most women's thighs. Her neck, a meaty column stuffed in a too-starched collar, suffered marks of unwashed dirt. Eyes like pale gray stones watched the other woman, daring to practice ingenuous bravery despite their nervous flitting, dancing, and shifting.
"Sometimes I still feel my fingers. Sometimes I reach out for -- for things, try to grasp, flex, squeeze. And then I remember they're gone."
Under the shade of her bonnet, where the room's dim candlelight dared not venture, she glanced down toward her belly. She couldn't see her feet; she wondered if they too were gone.
"I do care about the baby, Menna Mercy. I'm no fool. I'm -- I'm no child. I do. I need to know if it will be well, if it's grown as it should, if I'm suitably prepared."
A breath. A whisper.
"I'm scared to be alone when it happens."