Adonai had His reasons, and it was too soon to say whether or not she would die in childbirth.

Not that he was hoping.

… Much.

Some coquettish howling cat had seduced his brother from the gutters, but Uriel was no longer a boy. He was a man, and it was upon him to learn from his own mistakes. He wiped condensation from his glass with his thumb.

“It is an eccentric movement that hardly even keeps the calf from soaking in its mother’s milk … but they do not practice the stingy pittances that the churches here call ‘alms’.”

The temples did tend to have food at every hour of worship but fasts, and much of it.

“Penina is in town. It would be... quaint, but your child would be blessed and have cousins.”

He was still praying in hopes that ‘Humphries’ was not of entirely goyish heritage. Either way, the mother was more important.