The kneeling women were aghast. Praised for having a daughter? All men wanted sons, the more the better; and Zabaai had never been an exception. He was proud of his thirty-five sons, even remembering all their names and ages. But the more perceptive among the women understood. It was the great love he felt for Iris that would excuse almost any fault. They sighed with resignation.

Iris laughed, and her laughter was soft and filled with mischievous glee. "Have I ever done the expected, my lord?" she asked.

His black eyes laughed back at her. Glancing at the other women Zabaai said curtly, "Leave us!"

"Not Tamar, my lord." Iris would not offend Tamar, who had always been kind to her. She did not forget that if Zabaai died, Tamar's eldest son, Akbar, would hold her fate and her daughter's in his hands.

Zabaai bent to look at his new daughter. Used to large boy babies, he was somewhat awed by the delicate girl child he had sired. The infant slept, dainty dark lashes fluttering slightly against the pale-gold skin. Her dark hair was a small tuft of down upon a well-shaped head. Despite her slumber, her tiny hands moved with a fluttery restlessness, the slender fingers fascinating him with their translucent miniature nails. He regarded her almost warily, for although he knew what one could do with a son, he was not quite sure what one did with a daughter; and this child, of all his children, was the one born out of the great love he felt for its mother.

Looking up, he observed, "She is very small."

Both Iris and Tamar laughed. "Girls," Tamar said, "are usually tinier at birth, my lord."

"Oh." He felt a trifle foolish, but then it was his first daughter. "Where is the Chaldean?" he demanded, suddenly remembering.

"Here, lord." From a dark corner of the room a hunched shape emerged. As it came forward it became an elderly man with sharp eyes and a long, snow white beard, dressed in dark, flowing robes upon which were sewn a pattern of silver-thread stars and moons. The old man bowed low, and Iris held her breath waiting for the slightly askew turban to tumble off his head into her lap. It didn't.