And the next instant, Élie is in Katheer. 

He doesn't look for Naima. This is a temple of – probably Sarenrae, most of her stops are – and they'll have healers; he isn't one. Instead, he looks for her attacker – a woman with a baby, to his material eyes, cloaked in faint auras of illusion and conjuration to his arcane sight. He only has six seconds, but it doesn't take him that long to recognize a Teleport in progress, or counterspell with one of his own – 

And fail. 

Naima casts Dispel Magic on herself, not because she thinks it will work, but it's the only thing that might, and she's certainly not going to spend her last six seconds doing anything other than fighting tooth and nail to hold on. She can feel as she's doing it that she's not casting it well; hyper-fast-acting poison isn't great for precision casting. Perhaps a better casting would have mattered, but probably not, and either way, this one doesn't.

She tries to stand, and instead falls out of her chair, vision gone completely and hearing fading with it, all of her senses smearing into mush. 

It doesn't occur to her to say anything, to leave Elie with some kind of goodbye. She doesn't want a goodbye. All she can think about is how she might be recovered, whether a fast enough resurrection response might interrupt an automatic reincarnation process.

In another moment, she isn't thinking anything at all.

Élie isn't afraid of death. The things that might come after, certainly, but never the bare cessation of existence. As a child, he'd stayed awake praying for Abaddon instead of Hell. 

He'd known, intellectually, that if Naima died, it might be just as final – that even if some portion of her soul survived, it would be in the body of an infant with no memory of Mut, of the catacombs under Lamasara, of the  the evil queen of Korvosa, of Bachuan, of thousand and thousands of children saved, of Rahim and little Ines. Of him. He thinks, she can't be gone. She could be anywhere. She'll never see her daughter learn to talk, or her son master his first spells, or her hospital grow – 

And while he's thinking this, he's calling for a cleric to cast a Raise Dead right the Hell now, because Naima deserves better than for him to give up hope. 

It fails. Fine. He'll get a True Resurrection if that's what it takes – 

But what he gets instead is a sending: "Your wife is in the main temple of Abadar at Sothis."

– so six seconds later, so is he, holding Naima's corpse and yelling at the cleric with the shiniest-looking uniform to take him to his wife. 

The cleric will try his best to calm him down and walk him away from the middle of the temple, down a staircase and into a room in the basement. The inquisitor, a handful of other clerics, and his wife are there, waiting for him. Naima is wearing only a bedsheet and an expression that mostly looks annoyed and uncomfortable, but she at least looks relieved to see him.

"Oh good. I am told there's an explanation."

For a moment, he can't speak. 

"I'm sorry I didn't think to bring you a change of clothes." 

"I'm sure I'll live," she says, and only realizes a second later exactly how dark that response is.

Someone else is already off getting clothes, so complaining about the lack of them again is hardly going to accomplish anything. She's really, really missing her telepathic bond right now. But it's gone, permanently attached to her previous body. She has to use her words, and only say things that she's fine with everyone else hearing.

"Shawil commissioned a clone," she says, a moment later, when no one else leaps in to begin their explanation. "From the wizard who had been working on them Absalom. The one whose remains we recovered after his tower exploded, before we went to Tian Xia. Apparently it's been sitting here in the temple, as a backup, in case something happened to me."

The first thing he doesn't say is, I should have thought of that. He remembers the wizard – they'd fished his corpse out of the smoking ruins of his tower to collect on the insurance bounty. He'd thought about copying the spell for making clones, so he could cast it himself when he reached eight circle. It hadn't occurred to him to commission one from the man who already could. 

Without the Shawil's foresight, Naima would be gone; he needs to identify and excise whatever weakness kept him from seeing such an obvious precaution. Of course, he hadn't known that that wizard's later cloning experiments had succeeded, and the wreckage of his first attempt wasn't calculated to inspire confidence in the buyer. But that's a bad excuse. He never thought to go back and check; Shawil did So what was stopping him?

In the first place, pride. If he was a more reasonable person, his decade at first circle would have knocked that out of him, but it hadn't, just left it wounded and waiting for his meteoric rise. He wants to be a great wizard –  if he examines his motivations honestly, he wants to be the greatest wizard in the world – and it stings to be reminded that he isn't. Paying another wizard to do something he can't is humiliating, it hurt to consider it, so he hadn't. 

He turns the explanation over in his mind. It feels true, but incomplete. He's commissioned magic items he couldn't make himself. He doesn't like it, but he's done it. What makes this different? Clones are rare. He's known they were theoretically possible to make, but he's never heard of anyone else actually having done it. So he knew that clones were among his options – but he knew it incompletely, like a spellform he could recognize but hadn't mastered. In the long run, that sort of partial ignorance is a less serious failing than his pride, but for now it's easier to correct, he needs to go back over all his notes and think about every unusual spell and item and effect that he's encountered – 

– And he's been quiet for a long time, hasn't he?

"Thank you," he says to Shawil. And then, remembering his manners – "I'd be grateful if you sent me the bill at your earliest convenience." 

Shawil is standing in the corner, talking to another member of the Church, an Inquisitor or Cleric of some kind, with a not-uncharacteristic scowl. He nods at Elie, acknowledging his thanks if not his remark about the bill.

"Everyone out!" he says in Osirion, looking at the clerics not engaged in any discernible task, particularly the men. His voice is quiet but harsh. Looking back at the Wizard, he studies his face for a moment with a frown on his own. "It wasn't for you. It was payment for dealing with the problems he caused. And for the return of the spellbook. Think of it as correcting externalities, if you will."

Without looking at Naima, he addresses her, raising his voice slightly. "My apologies for the inconvenience. There was supposed to be a change of clothes closer at hand."

"I'll live," she says, again, and she's totally doing it on purpose this time. Everyone in this room should be exactly as uncomfortable as she is.

"I should - probably get all my stuff back together and get back to work. I guess."

He catches himself to keep from smiling wryly at the joke. He's sure it's intended to heighten his discomfort.

"No," he says firmly without turning away from Elie to look at the still-unclothed woman he's addressing. "Your things will be brought to you, as will your children. But for now, you are not to leave this temple." He glances back at the Church official he had been addressing a moment before, who nods and leaves the room swiftly.

"My children will - are you arresting me?" she asks, and then immediately realizes that that's a very stupid question, because you don't in fact bring people's children to them when you arrest them, and also it's pretty obviously not a crime to be murdered. She's just not coming up with words that successfully get at the absurdity of Shawil making any declarations about where her children will or will not be brought. It occurs to her, then, that she's stopped channeling hexes through Wishbone, and that she could start again and keep doing half her work without having to be anywhere in particular. Shawil wouldn't notice and couldn't stop her.

She doesn't. Because he's being kind of an ass, but he's an ass who just saved her life, and who did so by having a plan for this situation that she, herself, did not have, and he might have one now, even if he's as terrible at explaining himself as she is.

"Nevermind. I just - why, what are you going to do."

"I can retrieve our children myself if you have reason to believe they're presently in danger. I don't recommend you send anyone who isn't familiar with our security." He doesn't think they have security the inquisitor isn't aware of, but if he doesn't cut it out with the orders then that might have to change. 

"Where are her damned clothes?" he thinks to himself. "I am going to personally bring whoever is responsible for putting me in this position to justice."

"You are not under arrest. And I will... not stop you from leaving. But I very, very strongly advise you to stay here." He doesn't turn toward her, but does face up, making it obvious he is addressing her and not her husband, despite his obvious discomfort at her state of undress. "We don't know who just tired to kill you, or why. Though we have some idea,"—he gives Elie a look—"But until we know more, I would like it to appear to whoever is responsible that the succeeded. See what their next move is."

That's – reasonable. Godsdamit. He wishes he and Naima still had their telepathic bond. As it is, he just looks at her. 

Ugh. Six hundred people an hour. A handful of deaths, in expectation, every hour she remains here. On the other hand -

"How many clones did you commission."

He winces inwardly, almost feeling like he's being scolded. But his face is unchanging.

"Just the one."

"I guess I'll stay, then."

And at that point, mercifully, the person who went to get clothes shows up, and she can ask where she should go to change into them.

"Here."

He turns to leave but pauses for a second. "Someone will fetch you when your apartments are ready. In the meantime, you should be seen by as few people as possible."

"Sure. We'll see you soon, then."

And she can change into actual clothes. They help with the awkwardness, but of course they don't feel right; Naima has very particular taste in clothing, and communicates particular things with it. These clothes don't communicate any of these things. She still feels half like a corpse, stripped of her presentation, her jewelry, her permanent magical effects, her magic items.

But she'll have them back soon. She'll have all of it back soon. For now, she returns to her husband.

"Hey," she says, quietly. "How are you doing?"

That's a very good question. 

"I'm – I'll be alright. I'm trying to think of other things like Clone that I should have remembered so that this doesn't happen again."  

"Right, that seems important. I'm sure I'll think of a dozen things I need to think about in a second. Right now I'm still feeling fuzzy, and can't tell if it's the lack of magic items or if dying is just like that."

"How long does it take to make a clone, do we know?"