Additionally, working with a subtle artist therapist is routine in my world and I wouldn't normally have to explicitly mention this and I don't know how to explain it very well, but - the mental powers I have can be dangerous if they're used badly. The reason I haven't taken any therapy classes yet despite being a year into school already is that they needed to make sure that I had good control of and judgment with my arts, and it is still not impossible that I could make a mistake of some kind, especially if there's something irregular about how your species's minds work. Some possible accidents are fixable and have minor consequences; some are larger; and here there's no option to go get a better subtle artist to repair something I can't. I do not expect this result but you should be aware that there are risks.

Doing nothing has risks, he says. She is very gravely ill.

I understand, and I am much more likely to do nothing at all than to make it worse. But it's not impossible that if something goes wrong she could wind up differently or further impaired. And because I am very timid because I am from a dangerous world full of malicious people, I want to know what will happen to me if that occurs.

If you accidentally permanently destroy my wife's fea?

...what's a fea?

Mind, spirit, soul, the part of us that survives even the destruction of the body.

Um, I am pretty sure I am literally not powerful enough to obliterate it. Subtle arts accidents from practitioners of my strength level are more likely to look like nontherapeutic memory gaps, tics, weird problems in using expressive or receptive language, jagged affect, or synaesthesia, some of which I could fix and some of which I couldn't.

Well, don't do things that might have those effects.

I can avoid risk to that level of guarantee only by not working with her via arts at all. I can talk to her, but I assume you have no shortage of people to talk to her.

He looks horribly anguished. No. Use what your people know. Aid her to the best of your ability, and be very very careful.

I think I made it clear what I want you to do.

Being terrified that if I slip something unspeakably horrible is going to happen to me however nice this plane seems is not a condition in which I am capable of effective work of any kind.

...something unspeakably horrible?

When I landed in your palace and found out it was a palace I was afraid I was going to die, for being there, without the question of whether I meant to be there coming up as anything other than an afterthought. Possibly after more or less unpleasantness beforehand. That's what would have happened in my country. I do not know what you do with people who upset you, or how far you could take it before people decided you ought not to have that power anymore, or - or anything, I don't know anything, and my world is very, very horrible and full of very, very nasty things that can happen to people who anger the powerful.

I'm not going to hurt you, child. I'm not going to promise you any boons for your attempt in aiding my wife if you're not sure you won't just permanently damage her, not before you've even done anything. But even if you murdered her I wouldn't have you hurt. I don't know what kind of monsters rule your world, but they don't rule here.

I'm not asking a boon. Just - trying to - navigate.

In your world, would telling people you hesitate to help their dying wives lest they torture you if you fail be a wise navigation strategy?

No, but I didn't actually have anything available that would be a wise navigation strategy except "be more likely to make a mistake out of fear because it's still likelier that I won't make one and if I don't it's okay". (Is she shaking again? She's shaking again.)

You have nothing to fear.

Thank you.

It's a few day's travel. Is that enough time you won't be anxious when you arrive?

I can calm down in that time. How do you travel here, is it all walking?

There are horses. People are befriending them and learning to ride them, with the help of Oromë.

Okay. I've never ridden a horse but I've seen it done.