"'because they treat vulnerable people' meaning - what, exactly, that they think people won't go to Healers if they expect the Healers to mindread them? Is that really a problem that comes up a lot? It seems like it'd mostly come up with criminals or something and most states don't want to make it easier for criminals to get away with crimes."

"People did seem to think that! I thought it was sort of weird, but I guess some people are - embarrassed - about some things related to stuff they might go to a Healer about? Like if they were pregnant, they'd be really embarrassed if the Healer mindread them when they were remembering having sex, that literally came up and everyone thought it'd be appalling of a Healer to do that." Shrug. "I said I thought the punishments should be the same for Healers as for everyone else, because there already aren't really enough Healers and it'd be worse to stop them practicing when it's not even about how good a job they do of Healing." 

"That makes sense to me. It's true that if someone knows you are pregnant and betrayed your husband or something then they have pretty good blackmail material but you can solve that by punishing blackmail, if you object to it, not by punishing mindreading that is entirely unrelated."

Nod. "I think so. Urtho said my point was a good one, and we had sort of an interesting discussion, although it kept getting off track because every single time someone mentions sex the entire class starts giggling about it, it's really tiresome." 

"Lots of societies have lots of taboos on talking about sex with young people. I don't know why. Cheliax didn't and I don't think that was evil of us, I think it was just sensible."

Ma'ar shrugs and gets out his homework. 

With that said it's nice how he seems to have already gotten reasonably good sex ed from living in a tent with his entire family, because it would be a little weird to explain that to baby Leareth in particular. 

She gets back to work too.

And the weeks and months pass. 

Ma'ar slowly gains more confidence in his debate class, as Urtho continues making a noticeable effort to call on him. He gets advanced early to the next level in his magic class; he's now with children two or three years older than him, which makes him very nervous at first because they're correspondingly bigger and stronger, but in fact they're mostly just extra-welcoming to him.

He eventually feels safe enough, secure both that the other students take the rules and punishments seriously and that he's now good enough with magic to defend himself, that he mostly stops reading anyone's mind and only does it when there's some specific sign of a threat. (Which sometimes includes trying to protect other students from the nonviolent kind of bullying, by warning them when the bullies are plotting something so they can be elsewhere.) He's not very worried about getting caught, passive Thoughtsensing is as far as anyone knows undetectable and there's no sign Urtho goes around mindreading the students or using truth magic to question them about their rulebreaking activities, but - he's seen enough to notice that the idea bothers people, and even if they don't know it seems like there could be some sort of abstract nebulous harm in doing something they'd be upset about if they did know. Not much, a lot of less abstract threats could counterbalance it, but he doesn't feel like it's justified to do it for literally no reason, and he's accustomed to Tantara's culture now so no longer using it for cues on fitting in. 

The eight-month mark since their arrival passes, and Leareth still does not appear looking for her. 

She has mostly given up. Only mostly. But Leareth has Aroden, and has Abadar and Iomedae, and an Urtho, and there's no particular reason to think he could do it in a year, if he couldn't do it in two weeks, and even if he loved her very much at some point he will have had to stop spending all his time on it, he has a country to run.

If the baby were going to be the King of Cheliax's baby she'd name a boy Aspex Aroden and a girl Aspexia Iomedae. If they're going to be Ma'ar's baby brother - a Predain name, probably, one from the city rather than from the herders. She asks Ma'ar for suggestions. 

Ma'ar isn't sure he knows city names much more than she does, but he likes Conn and Lanz and Taran as boys' names, those are all the names of students here but he thinks they don't not sound like Predain names, and Dierne and Seri and Marlina for girls. 

She likes Taran and Dierne, they can go with those. Technically, not that this is a technicality that is instantiated in any way in the physical world, she can tack on the Chelish names too, in case.

When she goes into labor Ma'ar is in class; she leaves a note for him telling him he can come over to Healers if he wants to, and then goes herself.

Healer Tamsin from before is on duty, and waves to her cheerfully. He's come by a couple of times during the pregnancy to check on her, but not frequently since he said she was so healthy. He sends a trainee to watch his current patient and heads over to her. 

"Starting now, is it? C'mon, have a seat here...this is your first one, right...?" 

"Yes." She wishes she was at home, with a dozen clerics and Healers bustling around and someone with Breath of Life prepared in case the baby's not breathing but only just not breathing, and Leareth would probably - it's not customary to watch your wife give birth but she thinks he wouldn't like being far away - it's getting harder to imagine what he'd say and what he'd think, she didn't really know him that well and it's been so long -

"Nervous? Hey, it'll be all right. Let me explain some of how we do things here..." 

They have a dozen Healers on shift at a time; not all of them are here-here, Urtho's Tower is a big facility, but they can all be here in five minutes or less, if there's an emergency, which he thinks there almost certainly won't be but they try to always be prepared. They haven't lost a mother in childbirth for the last decade, and the few babies they lost more recently were ones who looked obviously not all right to Healing-Sight even still in the womb; she looks just fine and so does the baby, he reassures her. They have herbs for painkilling and to help stop bleeding afterward if it's a problem; some cultures prefer not to take any drugs for pain, and they mustn't give her anything strong later in labor because it can affect the baby's breathing once it's born, but some of the Healers can also use a Healing technique to temporarily block the worst pain of contractions, and that doesn't have any side effects. She's of course welcome to have visitors, if her son wants to come after class.

Does she want to know the baby's sex now, he can check with Healing-Sight, or does she prefer to just wait and find out the usual way. 

She's not particularly worried about the pain though possibly later she'll feel differently about that. She's worried about dying but this is probably objectively very stupid, between the things he said and her precious remaining divine spells held in reserve and her being tougher than a normal Velgarth human. She's worried about -

- about committing, to this life alone (with Ma'ar, so not alone, but) -

- but that's stupid, too, she can't be any less committed to it, it'll happen no matter what she does or doesn't do -

She tells him he can check the baby's sex.

He has a look. It takes him a little longer than just checking for a strong heartbeat and that all the fingers and toes are there, but not a lot longer. "Congratulations, you're having a baby girl." He pats her shoulder. "I'll check on you in a bit, call for one of us if you need anything, you can get yourself water over there if you're thirsty." 

Ma'ar comes home from class and finds the note and immediately tears over to Healers', arriving somewhat out of breath and looking around for Carissa. 

Sitting where instructed, looking mostly neutral. "In principle I think wizards can teleport the baby out but I don't know how to do that and not accidentally kill her, so."

"Mmm." He starts to sit down next to her and then stops himself. "- Uh, do you mind me staying? With the clan only women were allowed to be there." 

"You can stay, if you want. In Cheliax I think men mostly don't want to because it's bloody and unpleasant and not very attractive as a way to see your wife? But I can't think of a good reason not to, and if you're going to put people through it you should know how it works, probably."

"I want to stay." He sits down beside her. "I'm - just going to feel more scared, if I can't see you." 

"Yeah. That makes sense. It's a girl. I think she'll be Gifted because that's - coincidence, the kind gods can nudge, at conception."

"Mmm." The gods here wouldn't have a reason to nudge that but his baby sister was conceived in the other world, and those gods would have. 

After a while of not thinking of anything to say, Ma'ar figures that Carissa might want to be distracted, and starts telling her about his classes that day. They're learning Gates. A child his age normally wouldn't be strong enough, but he has the control for it, so they just have him practicing it very short-range and on a smaller threshold. 

She is mostly attentive.

"Leareth was the best in the world at Gates. He could move them, he could do them with no threshold, he could do them to places he'd never seen, he could do them underneath him..."