Parmida is very confused about this man who wants to become powerful, or a scholar, or something more than that, but picks up orphaned Chelish toddlers and marries merchant girls with the pox so they can do accounting for him. But she is pretty sure she loves him very much. She does logistics at his laundry business. She knows of another laundry wizard who had the spell down fast enough he didn't need to see the clothes and it didn't matter how densely they were packed and the only thing that determined his rate of cleaning was the overall volume, can her husband pick that up? Then they can tell people how to pack the clothes and it'll go faster, and make the switch to a delivery service easier. 

She cooks for them. The price of food keeps getting higher and higher but she knows some ways to stretch it. Saba should learn the alphabet but he should maybe also learn how to pull barnacles off the sides of the canals, he can get into small nooks where other people can't and where they're accordingly not all gone yet. 

There are bread riots in the Quarter. It's not particularly near them. 

He can buy spells off other wizards, if they're not spending every penny on food. The wizards want payment to show him their spellbooks and the inks which will let him stabilize the magic in his own spellbook are expensive, ordinary ink won't do. Alarm is nearly useless right now because he could only do one a day and it'd only last an hour, but it'll be useful when he's more powerful. Charm Person is also only for an hour but more useful, for that. He could learn a simple personal shield against physical attacks. Or the ability to see alignment. He could carry their laundry on a floating force-disk. He could, with a touch, render people so clumsy they can't walk in a straight line and might not be able to walk at all, but that one will last a grand six seconds at his current level of magical ability. He could make himself invisible for just as long.

The man who is her husband, who used to be a god and is now a low-level wizard living in poverty with a wife and child, is quietly scared. Things are getting worse, which was inevitable, but he doesn't know how much worse they're going to get before they start getting better again, and - there's so very little he can do about it, there's so little he even knows, he's half-blind and pinned to a specific body in a specific place and he can't even perceive what's going on a neighbourhood over, and he hates it, and he's scared. He does his best to stay focused anyway, on the small limited projects in front of him, but sometimes when he's looking at his notes, his eyes are dark and haunted and full of - something - that really doesn't belong in the face of a human man of not yet thirty.

Saba can learn barnacle-picking, and anything else that might be useful for stretching their food supply. He'll probably find it fun. (Aroden does supervise him closely. Doesn't let him wander out of line of sight, ever. Gods but he hates not being able to see.) 

He thinks that all he needs for the cleaning spell better version is lots, lots, lots of practice, where he pays a lot of attention and hones his concentration, and he's getting there. 

He takes notes on all the spells the other wizards have, scrimps and saves carefully and decides when he can risk paying for one. He thinks it's probably still more useful for him to learn another spell than to get Parmida set up with a spellbook of her own, but he keeps that on the table, and he can talk to her about his magic, when he's practicing.

He suggests that he could take a day off, once in a while, and then she could use his spellbook and try to learn some of the cantrips. It'll probably take her a while to get the shape of it in her head (she doesn't have any of his inherited half-memories), and then she'll have a head start. 

Finally he thinks he can afford a new spell. He's torn between Charm Person and the shield. Both of which can offer some usefulness if there ends up being a breakdown of civil order in the city - this is the threat he's most worried about, this year, if that doesn't happen then he thinks they can scrape by on their income. The shield is the most useful for a direct attack, of course; he doesn't wear his money anymore, he's hidden it in a space carved out below the floorboards that will be very hard for anyone else to find, and he has a weapon and also apparently some intimidation factor, but it could get worse than muggings. Charm Person won't offer much protection against angry rioters, but it could help if there's some sort of tense standoff not quite at the point of violence, and will be more useful in the day to day order of things though of course he's not going to use it in illegal circumstances. What does Parmida think? 

She tries to learn the cantrips from his spellbook. It takes her much longer - dozens of actual practice days, squeezed in when he takes a day off - before she can get them even occasionally. She has no idea how long it usually takes and asks apologetically if that means she's no good at it. 

She doesn't quite understand what he's afraid of, it's been safe in Sothis her whole life. She believes him, that they ought to be afraid of it, but it doesn't seem like the kind of thing that happens to real people, the collapse of order in great ancient cities with thousands of years of history. She has - no idea what'd help, if there's a riot, but maybe with enough deftness Charm Person gets you to "this person is definitely one of our fellow rioters", which seems better than a force barrier that can only stand up to so much and that doesn't envelop you entirely.

(He doesn't think it means that at all. Magic is very hard, especially at the start. He thinks she'll find it much easier once she has the very basics down and also her own spellbook to practice with more regularly.) 

When they talk about his worries, he hugs her. "I am sorry. These are - not normal times. There was a war between gods, and - things are worse than they have ever been in this city's thousands of years of history, I think. And nowhere on the continent was untouched; it would be much better if we could import grain from across the sea, even if it cost all the gold in Osirion, because - what good is gold when there is no bread? But they are starving there as well. I came here because I hoped it was the best place to pass this year." 

(Maybe not next year. He remembers the rumours of salt water washing up the river, and maybe multiple years of ruined crops, and - wonders if they'll still be able to get out, if everything starts to fall apart. He won't be able to teleport by then no matter how much he practices. He remembers being a god, who could just see the threads of the future ahead, and he misses that sense desperately, along with all the other lost senses, he feels like he's drowning in fog.) 

He buys the expensive ink, just enough for one spell, and he takes his hard-scrimped coin to the wizard who knows Charm Person and asks to copy it. 

He can charm people! The wizard warns him it'll be conspicuous, at first, though he can make it less so with practice. They will think he's very reasonable and very trustworthy and an upstanding sort, and it'll last an hour or so (and with more practice it can be inconspicuous in the wearing-off, too).  Pushing the spell too far - say, stabbing the person - will snap it. 

He will keep in mind not to stab anyone and expect them to remain Charmed. Getting this right seems a lot more important than having an illusion or sleep spell in reserve, so for several weeks he prepares it every day. Keeps it in reserve all day, but casts it every night - can he practice on Parmida's siblings? Parmida already likes him so it's not a very good test. 

He worries that Saba doesn't seem to be growing. Probably he isn't really getting enough to eat. 

He can practice on Parmida's siblings. They're grateful for his help and despite it they look thinner every time he sees them.  There are more riots; the governor imposes a curfew.

Parmida knows priests can create food and water but can wizards do it? 

No. It's divine magic only.

He starts thinking about routes out of the city, if things get sufficiently bad. He's very, very glad of their decision to stay in a better neighbourhood; he thinks their chances are better here. The worst will be if anyone sets a fire. He tells Parmida to think about how they could barricade their door. 

There's a spell for that but they're not going to have enough spare money for it for a long time. She gets some sturdy boards down at the docks, instead. 

The Church of Irori suggests that its followers achieve mental and physical perfection through meditation, like Irori. Also you don't burn much energy that way. They're also selling Create Food as many times a day as they can cast it, of course, but third-level spells are rare and everyone's hungry. 

Everyone is hungry. But the three of them aren't, yet, starving, even if his clothes are hanging looser each week. He has the spell down for getting a lot of packed laundry at once, and - maybe they can start encouraging people to bring it, instead, because doing magic is fine as long as he can concentrate but walking, especially with laundry, burns more energy than he wants to spare for it. 

They could pay some kids on their street a pittance to haul it for them.

"If you want to stop giving some money to my family I will understand," Parmida says to him one evening when the soup is particularly thin and requires a lot of prestidigitation to save its flavor.

(He will pay the kids a pittance, it's still better for them than not that.) 

Shrug. "It is your money. I think it is up to you how to prioritize it. I am worried that - this will affect Saba harder, he is very young and his body needs nourishment to grow right, your siblings are all older and more likely to weather it. So I might make a case that it will - save more of us, in expectation, if we use it to feed him. But, nonetheless, you earned that money and the decisions is rightly yours." 

She looks very baffled, at that. "It's your laundry business. I asked you to help them but - I didn't expect it to be quite this bad."

He had expected it to get this bad. Expects it to get worse. He doesn't say it, now, what's the point. "Yes, and you are my business partner. - I realize that is not usually how property works with husbands and wives, in Osirion, but I am not from here and I do not think that way. You are pulling your weight, here. It is far easier when I do not need to worry at all about whose laundry I am doing where." 

"Oh."

She thinks. 

"I don't have the slightest idea how to decide something like that. They're my family. I owe them everything, and I love them, and they arranged this for me because they hoped I could help them. And - you're my family too, and Saba, and Saba has no one else looking out for him, and you're right that he's smaller - how do you choose -"

He hugs her again. 

(When you're a god, he thinks, you just - look at the threads of all of the futures, and there's still uncertainty, there are still gambles, but at least they can be goddamned informed ones, and every single thing he does now feels like tossing pebbles in the dark, at a target that may or may not exist.) 

"I am not sure there is any good way," he tells her. "You - try to weigh it. And...maybe try to find roads that you did not see, before. What is your family's other income right now? I am trying to think if there is anything they could do, that they are not already doing, to bring in a little more. Maybe there is not, they are quite sensible people, just..."

He puts his head down on her shoulder. "I am sorry." 

Hug. "You're doing everything you can, you work so hard... Maybe - maybe if we had to stop with the money but you flavored their food for them it wouldn't seem so much like we were abandoning them. And it's easier to eat enough when it tastes like it's real, rich food."

“We could do that.” Sigh. 

"I don't -

- I don't want to tell them. That I decided - it'd be easier to tell them that you said to - they're hungry -" she bursts into tears and then looks profoundly embarrassed. "I'm sorry. You've been - wonderful - no one could possibly ask for more -"

“No, of course. I understand. It is harder for you, they are your family and you - you have that history...” Hug. “I will tell them.”

She looks up at him, sort of searchingly. Swallows. Nods. "I love you."

What is love, anyway. (What does anything mean, anymore.) But - surely being allies in the fight to survive and carry as many others as they can with them counts. “I love you. I am very glad that we met.”

The next day he goes to tell her family, Saba riding on his shoulders. The toddler is even lighter than when Aroden first picked him up from the riverbank. It hurts. 

He tells them gently, calmly, with the haunted look back in his eyes.

They tell him that they understand. That they hope Saba comes through all right. They ask how Parmida is doing.

She's working very hard. She's worried and scared, of course, they all are. But he doesn't think he could have a better wife, he says, fondly. 

Is she expecting? That being, you know, the kind of obvious prompt for him to decide they can't share money, anymore.