"I like how salt water makes it easy to swim but it's not great for your hair and it feels a bit weird on your skin."

Nod.

She can try swimming. With the salt water helping her out it's not very hard to achieve a decent amount of movement.

It's... nice. Moving hurts less with her body's weight distributed differently.

Zakiya will cheerfully keep her company and make sure she does not drown.

She swims and floats for a while. She investigates the snack trays. She swims and floats a while longer.

She doesn't really know when to declare that she is done swimming and should go back to her room now, but eventually she stops moving around the pool area.

"Ready to head back?"

"Yeah. I think so.

"It's nice being in the water. And being - in a different place."

"That makes sense. We can make a habit of it?"

"Yeah. Maybe."

So they can swim sometimes. It's okay. It's an improvement on the rest of her life.

Verita comes to visit her, a week later. She plays with the baby and talks about her magical studies and at one point says some things about how she doesn't blame Korva for not being able to spend as much time with her while she's been sick, and that she thinks she's been a very good caretaker on the whole.

She's hopeful that it's some kind of reconciliation.

Actually it's a goodbye. 

The next time she leaves the palace to go to the bookstore, she uses Innocence to get her bodyguards to leave her alone long enough to slip away. Then she disguises herself as an adult Osirian man, pays for passage on a ship leaving port, and is bound for Absalom.

It's terrifying. Not the most terrifying thing she's ever done, but up there. She tells herself over and over that Hagan won't do anything horrible to her if she's caught. Maybe he'd beat her, but he wouldn't do anything that a cure spell wouldn't fix. She's supposed to try to run away. She needs to make it, because if she doesn't make it there'll be no more bookstore trips and she won't be able to try again for a long time, but if she doesn't make it she's not going to die, or anything. Anyway, she needs to; if Korva's accepted the situation, then the only way to get the helmet off is to Wish it off, and she isn't going to pick up Wish in the palace.

Hopefully she can get a little closer in Absalom.

They look, of course. He did this when he was a kid; he has them check the ships, scry for her, scry for her possessions, scry for her family in Cheliax and anyone else she might have been in contact with. He puts out a reward. He sends spies to Absalom.

He isn't angry. Children will run away, and if she's good enough he can't find her, she's probably good enough the cult can't find her, if anything remains of it. The corollary is of course that if he can find her he will have to drag her right back home. 

He tells Korva.

"I guess this is kind of unsurprising."

"It is that. Scrying for her will also catch if she gets herself killed, and we can raise her."

Nod.

"If she wants to come back, anyway."

"Oh, I think she will. I bet she'll make a nice afterlife but - I don't think she'll be satisfied, there."

"I don't think she'll be satisfied here, either."

" - you know that I'm not trying to get her dragged back because I think she belongs here, right?"

"I know.

"But it would probably be better for her if she could avoid it, all the same."

"I hope we don't find her." He leans towards Korva, hesitates, stops.

She does not react to this, except to pause for an unusually long amount of time.

"I asked Fazil to look after her. After I decided to let you - break me. Didn't think it'd be good for her, sitting here watching me be broken."

She considers.

" - no, that's not it, I don't think. I didn't think it would be good for her to watch me choose you over her.

"I don't know why everyone keeps saying I'm any good at being a mother."

"If we'd let there be a war that wouldn't have been good for her."

"No. But I don't know that - it's not as if the thing I did to myself was the only thing I could have done."

"What else could you have done?"

"I could have argued with you. Could have - tried harder to communicate what would have had to happen for there to be any of me left over for anyone else. Even if it made you angry."

"Do you think that would have worked?"

"I don't know. - but it's really only a question of whether it would have worked for Verita, right, if you felt that things weren't moving quickly enough then you weren't going to let them stagnate. So by caving I didn't do anything to stop a war, I just - traded away Verita having a mother in exchange for your good regard. For being able to submit without getting angry.

"...this actually doesn't sound like a very good trade, when I put it like that."