Chapter Text
Lan Qiren’s nephew is placed into his arms on the day of his birth. The situation is highly irregular, but he had been asked to attend the birth (remaining outside the room, of course), in case of… he does not know what. What it means is that he is present if perhaps not entirely ready to be handed a squirming infant, still red in the face and slightly damp from having blood and afterbirth wiped from his skin.
“We must finish,” says the midwife, vanishing back into the room. Lan Qiren is left with his nephew—Lan Huan, by the dictate of his father—out in the hall.
The baby is crying, inarticulate. Lan Qiren says, “Shh,” which of course does nothing. Lan Huan, A-Huan, is a baby. He is small and warm; he fits unreasonably well in the crook of Lan Qiren’s arm. He has been taught how to hold a baby.
He is not sure how long he stands there, trying fruitlessly to hush the crying infant, before the midwife emerges once more and says, “Alright, hand him over.”
Some deeply-rooted instinct has Qiren tightening his arms. “He is to be returned to his mother?”
“She’ll have the regular confinement period. It would be damaging to them both to deny it. We’ve been over this.”
They have, at great length; or rather the midwife and other healers have been over it at great length with the elder council, and Qiren had been there to listen to an number of the arguments. He himself knows little about the care of infants or of new mothers. Rule 682 says, Be respectful of the opinions of experts. He hands over the baby, feeling at once the loss of the warmth from his palms and from his chest where A-Huan had rested against him.
“You’ll have him back in a hundred days, at the ceremony,” the midwife says. “Patience, Qiren.”
“Yes, of course,” he says, and finds his voice unexpectedly hoarse. He cannot identify the emotion he experiences as he watches the midwife vanish back into the cabin in which his brother’s wife is confined. It will have to be a matter for later meditation. For now, he departs. It is Qiren’s duty to tell the Sect Leader that he has a son and heir.