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But now, this baby. How could Umbo explain that he didn’t need to take the baby, that he would merely go back in time and prevent the murders in the first place?
Then again, how could he know that if he went back and warned them, it might not prevent the birth of this child after all. They might have some child, but once they left Leaky’s Landing, as they surely would, their second child would not be conceived at the same time, and the same sperm was unlikely to fertilize the egg. Umbo would save Loaf and Leaky, and might save their firstborn, if he had already been conceived, but this child would never come into existence.
Umbo reached out his hands and took the child. The baby was not a newborn, as he had expected—but of course he wasn’t, Leaky had been killed nearly half a year ago, and so the newborn had grown since then. “Not weaned?” asked Umbo.
“You’ll have to find somebody,” said the woman, Dariah. “He’s a good baby. Sleeps well. Eats hearty.”
“You’re willing to let him go?” asked Umbo.
“To save his life? How could I say I love him if I did otherwise?”
The baby regarded Umbo steadily. There was intelligence in his gaze, but no fear and yet also no particular eagerness to please.
“What’s his name?” asked Umbo.
“Do you dare to use it?” asked the old carpenter.
“I should know it, all the same,” said Umbo.
“They were strange folk,” said Dariah. “Their own names were proof of that. So I guess nobody was surprised when they named their first boy Round, the name of a shape. And then they named this one Square. But I’ve never called him that.”
“What do you call him?” asked Umbo. “What name has he heard?”
Dariah looked embarrassed. “Well, because his father was named Loaf, you see. I just started calling him Biscuit. Not a name, just a pet name, a silly play name.”
“It’s the name he knows. I’ll call him by neither one for now, but I’ll remember both, and one day he’ll know.”
“I think you’d better go,” said the carpenter. “There are spies in this village, as in all villages. You were no doubt seen coming here, and I know Dariah and the baby would have been seen. They might know all about this baby, and it might be bait for a trap.”
Umbo thought of going back out on the road with a baby in his arms, walking the mile or so back to the copse where he had made the jump in time. If there really was a trap, there was a chance of an arrow out of hiding. Even if he and the baby were uninjured, he might have to make a jump in time right in front of would-be captors. If he and the others had kept the secret of time-shifting all this time, it would be a shame to let it be discovered by their enemies.
“I know a way of escaping,” said Umbo, “that won’t require me to go back out on the road.”
The carpenter nodded. Dariah’s eyes grew a little wider. And brighter.
“We’ve heard that you can disappear, sir,” she said. “Go invisible, like smoke in a high wind.”
“I don’t want you to see what happens,” said Umbo. “You should have a look of honesty in your eyes when you say, ‘The boy who visited here only asked questions about Loaf and Leaky, and then he left, I don’t know how or where he went.’”
“They’ll ask about the baby,” said the carpenter.
“Dariah, everyone knows you were wet-nursing for someone,” said Umbo. “Can’t you say the family sent for the baby and you gave it back?”
“We’ll say something,” said the carpenter. “You pay no heed to that, it’s our affair. With luck nobody saw you or Dariah today, and there’ll be no questions.”
“I hope you don’t end up paying a price for this,” said Umbo.
“Put Queen Param in the Tent of Light in her mother’s place, and your own skinny buttocks on King Haddamander’s horse, and it will be worth whatever price we pay,” said the carpenter.
“St. Silbom care for the baby, and the Wandering Saint bless you on your road,” said Dariah. Then she bent and kissed the baby again.
“Stay here and chat together for a while,” said Umbo. “Perhaps share some bread, so there’s a reason for you to have lingered here. I’ll go out through the back room.”
“I keep that door locked against thieves,” said the carpenter.
“Then you must have locked it again after I left,” said Umbo. “If anyone asks.”
What Umbo wanted to ask was for a time, not long after the moment when Umbo took his walk away from Leaky’s roadhouse, when nobody would be present in this shop, so he’d have a safe moment to jump back to undiscovered. If he had Rigg’s and Noxon’s gift, he could look for paths and pick a time when the carpenter stepped out. Instead, he’d have no choice but to guess and hope he picked a good moment. If he guessed wrong, then he’d jump again so quickly that the observer wouldn’t know for sure what he had seen, if anything at all.
