"Okay. He said he'd come visit, though."

She hisses under her breath. "Well, maybe they can say that this is medically inadvisable."

She does not know what to say about this.

"He says I'm supposed to want more things."

"...do you want advice?"

"It - seems possibly useful to have?"

"I think you should stop caring what your husband says he wants except insofar as you need to keep track of it so he doesn't hurt you. Men don't know what they want, and the more women they have the less they know it, and you're in pieces, Korva, you can't add things to your to-do list. You're having his baby. You have leverage. Get yourself some air so you can breathe. That probably involves wanting things but I would bet it does not involve telling the pharaoh about them."

"I'm not allowed to disobey orders - "

"What does not allowed mean? He might hurt you. That's it, that's what it means, that's all it means."

She thinks about this.

"I said I'd do what he asked."

"And you have been! For a long time. And what has that gotten you."

"It's not supposed to get me anything."

"Then why did you do it."

"To get the helmet off."

"Why do you think that doing what he asks will get the helmet off."

"Because - the first day we came here he said I was entitled to it. Once he found someone else. It's the only thing I ever remember him telling me I was entitled to. And - he didn't find anyone, so I need to grow a new heir, but - once that's done - but I think it might be important that he feels like I did everything I was supposed to, to keep being entitled to it - "

"So you want your husband happy enough with you that he remembers he offered you this. Has he promised?"

"He doesn't promise things."

"Hmmm. Okay. 

I do not think being practically bedridden is a good way to get that from him, any more than it's a good way to get other things from him. Men aren't - fair. It's not going to work out like, if you go long enough without asking for something, you'll have earned it."

Nod.

"I think it's a reasonable thing to want! And I think you can get it! But - not by trying to be worthy of it. That never works."

She wants to cry. She's maybe going to cry. She doesn't want to believe that he'll refuse it but she is also intellectually aware that she's been charmed to trust him, so.

"He doesn't like it when people try to get things from him."

"He's cruel," Zakiya says, a bit bitterly. "He doesn't know what he wants and he blames everyone within reach for it. But I don't actually think he wants to be surrounded by cooperative zombies. I don't think that's the way to keep yourself and your baby safe."

"I don't know what he wants."

"All men want the same thing. To be loved and desired and respected and feared by lots of pretty young women who'll bear them lots of pretty children, none of whom they have to care for, none of whom they have to think about when they don't want to, all going about their perfectly happy lives interruptible if they do want to step in on them."

She hugs herself.

"I don't know how to - "