"I've thought about that and I don't mind. The things you talk about are usually interesting. Besides, I've gotten quite good at tuning out – " 

"....I didn't mean it that way."

She giggles. "All right then. As long as you've thought about it and are aware of the risks."

"But also, what is the plan if it does bother you a lot. I assume we dispel it, but we should probably discuss at all at what point we would decide we'd tried it and it was time to go ahead with the dispelling."

"After the baby comes? If we can get through that without wanting to kill each other I'd think we could get through anything." 

"They're not that bad. Slumber helps. - oh, unless you mean the - I guess that's a pretty good stress test, isn't it. If we get it now and have it up during the delivery."

"And is it something you want? Would it make it easier for you?"

"Well, it's hard to be sure of that ahead of time. But my snap guess is - yeah, I think it'd make things easier, with the understanding that you might totally want to kill me sometime in the middle there and if we expect that to happen you should probably be moderately confident in your ability to shut up over the telepathic bond, because I will absolutely not be able to. I mean, at that exact moment. Not in general. I mean, maybe in general, but normally I'll stand a chance."

"It might be easier this time, you weren't a seventh-circle witch when Rahim was born – there's a thought. We can't just make everyone adventurers, but your hospital could have belts of mighty constitution on hand for women in childbirth, if it reduces injuries that's less risk of infection later."  

"Oh man, I wonder if it would - I think it's probably too expensive to scale, even loaning them like that, but I'm incredibly curious what results you'd get. Of course, we do have clerics on the island, our women don't die of blood loss or anything. But some amount of injury is unavoidable, before it gets healed, and childbirth is, uh, not the most clean thing anybody ever does, so -

" - um, I was sort of planning not to do anything about the pain, in particular. For me, this time. I thought about the options, but delaying it with magic would make it impossible to sleep for Nethys knows how many hours afterward, and given how long it took last time I really don't want to end up in that position. Is that - I dunno, I sort of feel like if I'm going to be screaming at you the entire time then maybe I ought to ask your opinion about that. I'm not sure whether that impulse makes a lot of sense, but it's there, and asking's free."

"I rather imagined you'd be screaming at me the entire time anyway."

"Yeah, that would be nice, honestly? But without the telepathic bond you could, you know, leave and take a break. At some point."

"You couldn't." 

"Well, yeah. That is kind of how it is. But we are talking, you know, potentially many hours of extreme stress. I think it's a particular kind of stress that women are better at, though. ....although I suppose there's really not very much way to compare."

"I'm certain it would be more stressful for me not to be there. ....Let's cast the spell before we talk ourselves out of it." 

"Okay. If you're sure. If we waste twelve thousand gold it's not going to have any incredible consequences on us, but I'm pretty opposed to it on principle."

But she can cast her telepathic bond. It's not a new experience; they've been putting them up between practically all members of their adventuring party since she hit fifth circle. But this time, if he wants to, he can permanency it.

That's one of the reasons they're doing this, actually – Naima's telepathic bond can get the whole party less one. A permanent bond between the two of them means no more last-minute calculations about who has to be left out. And if there are other reasons are more personal, well, they can afford it. 

He casts Permanency. 

Okay, now that we're stuck like this, to be clear, I am really really excited about this.

We'll see how you feel when I've had the chance to bother you during your work day. I promise I won't interrupt you above fifty or a hundred times.

But that's the best part! You have no idea how dull my workdays are. They make spinning look riveting by comparison.

I wouldn't know, I've never – oh, 'll have to learn to spin, won't I? When my Fabricate spell is finished. 

You will! But it's not that hard, and you'll have an excellent teacher.

It's very boring. To be clear. But you can generally hold conversations while you do it, which is harder to do when you're tapping a roomful of sick people with hexes.

When I've figured out how to make hexes obsolete, you'll be able to converse as much as you want.

And it will be glorious. Until everyone gets sick of talking to me again. You, however, are stuck with me.

I believe I made a promise to that effect, yes. 

You did. I was excited when that happened, too.

They have a couple weeks left before the baby comes, to the best of her knowledge. Obviously that's at the point where the baby could really come whenever, if it really wanted, but her intention is not to stop working until she literally goes into labor, because - well, any amount of time she takes off dooms a bunch of other babies to death, and she doesn't really love doing that.

This does mean that they at least have a little bit of time to test how the connection works while she's working. As always, she teleports off to Hospital Island at dawn the next morning, apprentices in tow. 

Élie is not a morning person. 

The earliest couple hours of Naima's day are not, actually, excruciatingly boring. This is the part of her day that she devotes to training her couple dozen lower-level apprentices in herbalism. It saves way, way fewer people per hour than her regenerative hex, but it's also far more likely to be able to scale beyond her, especially if Élie's witch patron idea never pans out. It totally might, and she hopes it does, and believes it can, but, also, it might not, and it's important to also be pursuing other ways of eliminating disease. That means teaching people to do what she does, which, conveniently, she doesn't even really mind.

But she's also excited. So a couple patients in, while she's mixing herbs together and not really explaining what she's doing at all (although the better apprentices are watching raptly and taking furious notes), she decides there's not much reason to wait until she's actually excruciatingly bored.

How are you doing?

bwuhhhhright this is a time when hard-working and responsible people like his wife are up and about and ministering to the public. 

Awake! I mean, fine. I am fine. And awake. Saved any lives yet?

Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to wake you up. Whoops. Have to keep better track of that going forward, I guess. Uh - probably haven't literally saved any lives yet, we just did a remedy for typhoid and one for zombie rot. But if the kids learn to treat them then they'll go on to save more.

Oh, dear. I thought the whole point of Osirian burial practices was to not have this problem. Good luck.

– And since he's awake anyway he might as well drag himself out of bed and get to work. After he's made sure Rahim's had his breakfast, of course. And informed Naima that he can spell "porridge" all on his own! In two languages, almost. He's a very bright child. 

Awww! Naima actually has no idea how smart that indicates being because she didn't learn how to spell anything until she was in her twenties, but it sounds very impressive!

The guy might not be Osirian, we get a lot of people coming in on ships. I'm not gonna personally follow up on it, though. We have other people on staff for that.

Élie wishes he had other people on staff! Right now his work process mostly involves drawing up illusion-diagrams and staring at them and getting distracted by the idea of maybe working out more stable higher-dimensional visualizations like using crystals or something and going into town to see about getting materials where he runs into a wizard he met in Quantium who's doing interesting things with crops or planar anomalies or something and oh look now it's afternoon. 

Does Naima have opinions on how likely is it there's some obvious cheap solution to the visualizing spells-in-progress problem, because, seriously, every high-level wizard would want this? and, moments later, of course there is but none of them share it because they're all too obsessed with personal power instead of the advancement of the arts by which mortal beings understand the nature of the universe and that stand outside the arcanamirium has those date things you like and I don't suppose you remember what was that fellow's name again? 

I don't have an obvious solution off the top of my head, but it's admittedly not something I think about as much as you do. You could, hm - oh, one moment - 

Whose name? - you should buy the date things. 

She packs up her things up as soon as she runs out of supernatural intuition for remedies, takes Dahab and a couple of the newer female apprentices with her, and teleports them all to Azir, where they can begin on the lines of patients that are already waiting for her. Then it's Merab, and Katapesh, and Quantium, and Sedeq, and Oppara, which she will get through by talking about how she wonders how she should be assessing whether her students are actually learning anything and not just wasting time, and how she wonders how much it affects your reading on the law-chaos axis if you keep going through the Bachuan portal to get to the rest of Tian Xia even though you've been formally exiled from Bachuan, and whether they have any idea how Grandfather Pei is doing, and how Grandfather Pei is a ridiculously terrible person but she also kind of likes him just because he was interesting, and because it's hard to dislike anyone that committed to destroying hell too much, and on that note do they know where Ping is and what he's up to, and also is the one-winged bird okay? Is it eating? It's such a dumb bird. Maybe she'll have time to argue with the bird more when she has more time in her life. 

Élie thinks she should be having her students record remedies in minute detail – as they already do, of course – and cross-reference treatments for the same disease and find commonalities and then make remedies with different combinations of those traits and try them themselves, which might or might not work since he still thinks the remedies are supernatural but at least it would be information, and doesn't Naima want to read more Chaotic anyway, and that he's still really angry at himself if he's being honest since the only person he's definitively rescued from Hell is a murderous tyrant but it's not like he's going to put him back – and, no, he's not going to start planar binding hundreds of petitioners either, he's been sufficiently convinced that's a bad idea – and it is good to know that Heal still works on souls that've been in Hell for years because maybe it means the ones who've been there a hundred times longer might be recoverable, and last he checked Ping was in Mendev and the bird is eating sunflower seeds but does seem sort of listless, and on that subject they should really get their kid some more normal pets, and – 

Do you think you'll be home for dinnner?

Probably not, today's the day I finish up in Katheer and then compare notes with the professors at the medical college. Planning to do some troubleshooting on some parts of the inoculation process. I'll probably be out pretty late, I'm sorry.

Don't worry, I'll wait up. Where are you now?

Oppara. Last stop before Katheer, and then I'll take the newer apprentices back to the hospital and come home.

Then he can be in Oppara with some date things! 

Awwww!! Best husband.

He works very hard at it. 

Naima is not one of those people who stops working when she's about to have a baby. She works up to the last possible second. "The last possible second", in this case, means after she's started early labor, because it's not like she hasn't had a couple false labor pains before anyway, and after each person there keeps being another one, each as hopeful and needy as the last, most of them having stood in line for an hour or more, and she hates to just turn them away...

She's in Tian Xia, which means home is a minimum of two teleports away.

Before, of course, she'd have been weighing when to go back on her own, but now updating Élie is basically free.

I think it may have started.

It takes him a full thirty seconds to realize what she's talking about. 

Where are you – I'll be right there – 

I can get home, I'm just letting you know! I'm in Goka right now.

Élie can be in Goka!!! ...Wait, does he have a teleport point in Goka? 

Fine, he can be in Sothis and grab Shawil's crystal ball and scry his wife and then he can be in Goka, a whole six minutes later. 

" - Élie! Hi!"

She's still tapping people.

He did know these things take hours, but really – 

"I don't suppose you'd like to go home now?"

"All right, all right, just give me a sec - ahh - "

(One of the apprentices whispers something to one of the Gokan staff, who yells "She's having a baby!" to the crowd in three different languages.)

We also have to get the apprentices home, she tells Elie, finding it very convenient that she can do that without actually having to inhale right now.

"You two, grab my hand – " he shouts in Taldane, and if they don't hop to in the next thirty seconds, a night in Goka won't kill them. 

Diobel or Hospital Island? 

Hospital Island. The apprentices hop to.

Greater Teleport. 

The last time she did this, she'd been in a mud house in Mut, surrounded by women with no particular training other than having helped deliver babies in the past. She hadn't been particularly worried about death then, either. They had Saira with them, so there was no real chance of her bleeding out, only a chance that she'd get sick and die of fever in the weeks to come. It wasn't that dangerous, not the way it had been a hundred years ago, when the village was smaller and had no cleric near enough to come to every childbirth. Mostly it was painful, and kind of embarrassing.

This time she has a room in her hospital, trained nurses and medical clerics, and her husband. It will be even less dangerous this time. It will probably be exactly as painful. She kind of expects it to be even more embarrassing. For the moment, though, it's going to be kind of boring; the baby will come when it comes, and for once in her life she's not really part of the flurry of activity around her.

It's - not a very dignified process. If I haven't mentioned that yet.

I'm the oldest of five and we were all born at home. You're not going to scare me off.

Now, can anyone take him to his wife? Like, say, that cleric over there, on the order of now?

She's a middle-aged Pharasmin, and she doesn't seem to be in any terrible hurry. "Sure. But first, are you sick? Cough, fever, nausea?"

"I have not exhibited any symptoms since the last time I had a Remove Disease, which was this morning. Look, do you know where they take the women who are about to give birth – " 

"Yes, sir. You won't want the main entrance, that's women-only." She flags down a younger woman, this one not a cleric. "Rabiah, this is Naima's husband. Please take him to the west entrance of the birthing ward, we don't want him surprising anyone."

"Of course." And she can take him around and find the right room.

Naima's room has both a plain little bed and a decorated birthing stool, covered in the symbols of Pharasma and Sarenrae. She's not using either right now. She's traded her ornate clothing for a hospital gown, propped herself up against the wall with one arm, and seems to be mostly focusing on breathing. 

Would it be helpful if he rubs circles on her back?

Yeah, that's nice.

It's going to be a while, yet.

He's so glad they have the telepathic bond, because he can make vague comforting noises with his mouth, and at the same time say – 

How long did it take for Rahim?

All day. People say it takes longer the first time you do it, though. She breathes, and tenses again, and then relaxes a bit. This isn't even really active labor yet, we probably didn't actually need to come in this early. Not that the worrying isn't adorable.

What if our child gets impatient? How would they feel if they came into the world and their father wasn't there to meet them?

She gives him an awkward half-hug. I'm sure they'll adore you. It really is going to be hours from now, though.

Then I suppose we wait. I'm sure it will go quickly, though. Can you imagine that a child of ours won't be in a tearing hurry to see what's outside?

I suppose not. They had better wait until there's a door large enough to fit their head through, though.

...right. This isn't just a matter of wanting to meet their baby sooner. 

Please – if there's anything at all, anything in the world I can do to make this easier for you, tell me. 

You're terribly sweet. Just be here.

Two hours and many contractions later, Naima remembers how she feels about waiting: it sucks. She hates it. The entire concept of sitting somewhere doing nothing is deeply upsetting. The nurses have brought her food and water, which is something, but it's hardly enough to keep her occupied.

"Hate waiting," she murmurs, leaning against her husband. "I keep wondering if I could wander the hospital tapping people for the next hour, and then remembering that I made the rule against sick people interacting with women in labor for perfectly good reasons, and also that I'd screw up all of our data, which seems like an incredibly heartless reason not to heal people, and it usually doesn't even come up, right, because tapping people on hospital island is fundamentally less efficient than tapping people in my designated tapping areas, but - "

She hisses, tensing up again. Hate waiting. I'm against it.

"Do you want to help me with my work? You know that crafting spell I'm working on, I want to use weaving as a test case, and I need you to help me understand how it works." 

I know, I know – I could round up some sick people in the city and bring them here, if you wanted, they could come in through the back entrance like I did. As long as you think it's safe. 

No, no, I really did make the rule for a reason. I could probably weave intermittently.

I'm not sure we could get the loom in here. Just – here, he can make an illusory one. Show me where that bit goes – 

She can show him where the bits go. That's about the right level of challenge right now. She forms, but decides to ignore, the question of whether this is actually useful work, or whether he's just humoring her. If ever there were a time to just humor her, this would probably be it.

She gets a rhythm down, for a few hours - a few minutes at a time of working through the lighter pain, then a minute or so of enduring as calmly as possible as the pain flares up, then a few more minutes of work. Occasionally she instead stops to pee, or paces the room aimlessly. The nurses check on her every now and then, different ones as the sun dips below the horizon and then the stars come out. She wishes she'd finished out the day - she thinks perhaps she could have, and keeps having to try not to calculate the number of people missed - but it's far too late for that now. And it really is sweet, that Élie is trying so hard to get this right. Maybe next time they'll both be calmer.

At some point she gives up on weaving; she isn't entirely sure when. Labor carries on into the night, well past midnight. She's exhausted, and the pain is getting much worse. She'd vaguely planned to use the stool, but instead she finds herself kneeling on the floor as she did last time, artlessly prodding Élie to keep touching her and saying the same meaningless things over and over.

He can do that. 

(If he was a better husband, he wouldn't have to. He'd have already invented a spell to remove pain, not just delay it – it's not like he didn't know childbirth hurt – he'll have it in time for the next one – but that doesn't help Naima now). 

He's so sweet. Honestly it's probably good that I'm experiencing it this way - this is how everyone else experiences it, it's really the best possible way of testing how the hospital works for this, how the hospital feels, on levels that the numbers we have can't capture, whether we help people feel good about having children or they feel weak and scared and sad.

It seems so much worse here, actually, on an emotional level. It might be safer - than other places in the city, anyway, I'm not actually sure that we're outperforming places out in the country, and in that case maybe we should actually be encouraging people to go give birth outside the city if they can - but it's so depressing? It's lonely and it's boring and it's nerve-wracking not to know anyone - of course I suppose if people left the city to give birth in the country they wouldn't know anyone where they were going, either, so I guess it's not as if the villages are outperforming on that front for city residents. I just keep thinking about how last time there were lots of women everywhere, women I knew, and I didn't even like most of them most of the time, and they didn't really like me either, but somehow it was good to have them there anyway, I guess because childbirth isn't really an emotionally complicated thing between women, it's really pretty simple in terms of how it goes and what you're there for and it doesn't give you that many opportunities to do things that people can get ticked off with you about, or maybe it does but everyone just gives you a pass for the day? Anyway, there are women everywhere, and now it's just you, and you're great and I love you and you shouldn't leave, but it's honestly also kind of awkward? Although maybe it isn't objectively awkward, if there's such a thing, maybe it's just that I absorbed that the way this is supposed to work is that all the women see each other when they're being ridiculous and vulnerable like this, and the men don't, they just kind of hang out outside and worry, I guess, and then later on you can just present them with a baby, and with you still being alive, hopefully, and they get to be so proud of you, without having to have any feelings about seeing you when you were in pain and probably scared and being kind of ridiculous and doing the endless babbling thing, not that everyone does that, I think that's just me, and I'm aware that it's absurd to be worried about the social side of things while I'm in the middle of having a baby, I'm honestly sort of wondering whether there's some sort of conservation of worrying thing where if you don't have to worry about yourself and the baby surviving you have to latch onto some other much more ridiculous thing to worry about, but the feelings I actually notice are kind of wishing that I were around all of my sisters and mother who already know that I'm ridiculous, but instead you're here, and I don't actually want you to think that I'm ridiculous, particularly, I mostly want you to think that I'm really cool for having created a little person, even if the process of getting the person out is really one of the least dignified things that people do.

I love you.

Most women in the city must have family in the country, right? And the outcomes are better because there's less disease – maybe we should set up a fund to pay for women in Alexandria to travel to their villages for childbirth and lying-in, and see if the numbers look better. That's what the people who can afford it do in Galt. I'm from Isarn, but I was born in the town where my mother's people live, and had my wet-nurse there. Six months, Naima, I don't understand how anyone could stand to be away from their baby for so long, even if they can afford to visit, we're so lucky, our child won't die of pox or consumption or scarlet fever. 

(He's going to fix it for everyone. His prototype almost works. One day, wizards will be able to cast Remove Disease as easily as Light or Mending).

I can get a gaggle of women from Mut in here if you like, but I don't know if that would help. I could get your mother and sisters and Saira – or I could get Catherine to do it, because I don't want to leave even for twelve seconds. I wish I could experience this with you. It's not fair that only you have to suffer to bring our child into the world, and – this is probably insulting, you can tell me to shut up, I should probably shut up right now – I want to know what it's like. The last thing in the world I want is for any of this to be hidden from me. You're the strongest person I've ever met. I think the mortal condition is to be ridiculous, and the fact that you were in Tian Xia saving other people's babies until eight hours ago is ridiculous, and I'm ridiculous and you're ridiculous and little Ines-or-Zaire is going to be ridiculous, and I love them, and I love you. 

She loves him, too. And she's glad he's here, and she feels better knowing how he's thinking about this, and about her. She tries to send these to him without quite forming them neatly into words, because apparently she's coherent enough to babble on her own for however long but isn't entirely coherent enough to promptly respond to anything anyone else says. When she does get her words back they don't seem very interested in covering anything important.

It would be a good thing to test, how much better going out to the country looks, even if it wouldn't make any money. It would mostly be a terrible thing if having the maternity ward here were convincing people not to, if we can't actually offer any real improvements. And I guess I don't actually know how many women in the city have close family in the country, only having lived in the city for a handful - aaaaugh.

Maybe she's just going to gently headbutt him for the next little while, and hope that he can do something sensible with whatever kind of prompt that is.

He can – stroke her hair? That seems like an appropriate thing to do in this situation?? He'd like to be more than appropriate – maybe even helpful – but there's absolutely nothing he can do. 

You can do this – it won't be long now – I love you, I love you – 

And, in fact, it isn't long. The next nurse check-in brings with it the Pharasmin cleric-midwife, who sits with her and tells her when it's time to push. Dahab shows up to fetch things for the midwife, and then to stand awkwardly in the background, occasionally praying audibly (though Naima can't make out what for). 

It's hard. It's not harder than stopping Isarn from being dragged into hell, or saving Bachuan from its hubris, but it calls on different kinds of strength, ones that haven't been tested so recently. She holds her husband's hand very tightly, and doesn't move from the spot where she kneels by the bed. She focuses all of her energy on pushing out the beautiful new life she's grown inside herself, like some kind of mad alchemist. Anyone would be horrified and awed by this project that she's seen to fruition, if all women didn't work whatever not-quite-magic she has worked here. She stops worrying, somewhere in the middle, about whether she looks dignified while she does it.

And then it is over. The midwife cradles the child as it slides out, then hands it off to Dahab and heals up the bleeding. Naima finds herself sobbing, half in exhaustion and half in relief, and briefly collapses against the bed.

     "It's a girl," announces Dahab, quietly. She offers the blood-covered baby to Élie, maybe because Naima looks a little iffy on the holding things front.

A girl. Inés Saira. She has ten fingers and ten toes and a mind endowed with the potential for reason and like all babies looks a little bit like a hobgoblin. She's perfect. 

"Hello, Ines," he says, since he remembers you're supposed to talk to babies. "Your mama and I love you so, so much. If we were better people we might have waited longer to meet you, but we're impatient, so we didn't have time to fix everything up before you got here. But – oh, no, my darling, don't cry, you're safe, I promise, we wouldn't have brought you here if you weren't – that's the way – "

Inés gurgles. 

Naima, help. Her nose is very small and I do not know how I shall live. 

A long time ago - before they were married, before Naima proposed, before she had even settled on Élie at all - one of the very first things that made her consider him was the thought that he would be so good with any babies she had, and that she would be picking a father for them who was overflowing with love and adoration for tiny little humans who can't even do anything.

Naima loves being right. She also loves getting to admire her own handiwork, and she feels that this is near the top of the list. Everything that came before is worth it, for this moment, and for getting to look forward to all of the ones that will come after it. 

Oh, look at her. We made an entire person. Isn't she lovely?

She has all the same parts that adult people have but none of them are the same size and one day she will learn how to talk and I do believe she's trying to grab my finger right now, she hasn't been in the world ten minutes and she's already pursuing goals, she must be terribly precocious.

And at the same time he's telling Inés that she is beautiful and clever and certainly destined to be a great wizard, unless she decides she would like to be something else, in which case they'll make that happen for her, even if she wants to be the moon, although he'd really rather she didn't because it's very dangerous, being the moon – 

They're so adorable. She should probably be thinking about feeding Inés here, at some point, but she's still kind of exhausted, and she's maybe going to take a couple more moments to watch them, first. Her family. She has such a good family, probably the best family that anyone's ever made for themselves, and she's going to make sure that nothing ever happens to any of them, ever.

"Love you," she says, leaning again Élie a little, and doesn't bother figuring out who she's saying it to.