"This is Freedom Radio, reporting live from an undisclosed location somewhere in creation. This week, we're talking with Afasi Kennadas, a fifth-circle priest of Pharasma, goddess of Creation, birth and death – but first, we're going to talk about a matter near and dear to many of us: why do so many babies die? I was initially planning to pose this question to the priest, but then it occurred to me it isn't really a question of theology. After all, no babies - or very few of them - die because the gods willed them dead. They get sick, or they're born sick, or they're born funny-shaped or too small or unable to breathe. Rich families save their dying babies. They get powerful priests to come drive an illness from their child's body, or they cut away a crippled part and regrow it right, or they use the most powerful of healing magic that can address almost any ill whatever its cause.

My family was rich, but not so rich that we could call a powerful priest for a sick baby, and so we prayed for them, and when our prayers were not enough we buried them. Three of my sisters, two of my brothers. The gods didn't do that. So what did?

We have talked before about the germ theory of disease, the theory that sicknesses are caused by tiny living creatures that can be shared from person to person, or pass through tainted water, and which spread and multiply inside the human body. Such diseases are everywhere, and when a flu comes to a household, probably everyone in it will get sick. But the baby is likeliest to die? Why is that? What I learned from great scholars in the functioning of the human body is that babies are born practically without the defenses which a healthy body can raise against disease…"

It's about ten minutes in that she feels it. A yanking twisting dragging sensation that she tries to claw her way away from and - can, but only barely, and she can feel the little bronze talisman from Felandriel Morgethai dissolve on her skin. She blinks at it, wide-eyed.

Alfirin doesn't feel a thing, but she sees Iomedae's expression change - she glances at Cansellarion and he nods - Iomedae's still here, and that's the most important thing -

...Iomedae's still here and wearing an unstable homemade explosive vest and if she gets blown up Alfirin will never forgive herself even though it was obviously the right decision at the time… She'll start disarming her own vest and wait impatiently for the broadcast to end.

Iomedae's trying incredibly hard not to sound any different, it was important for making Cheliax think that she is in Sothis. Unfortunately, it was distracting, and she paused, and also the cleric of Pharasma was not informed about the plan to pretend they were in Sothis and is a perceptive person even when all he has to go off is a mid-sentence intake of breath. "Are you all right?"

Ugh, that probably ruins it, and if it's ruined then she wants to switch strategies towards mocking Abrogail on-air but the orders were not 'pretend unless you failed at pretending and cannot achieve your pretending-related goals anymore', though she should have asked for those orders, if she'd thought of it. 

"Oh, I'm quite well," she says. "I was saying that I'm told it's possible to save born-early babies but you have to keep them warm and get them good air, and how do you do both of those things at once? Put them by a fire, and the air isn't good enough for them and they'll likely die; keep them somewhere dry with clean fresh air, and it will be a great nearly impossible labor keeping them warm, when their body can't produce enough warmth itself. So the best thing you can do is to keep the baby on their mother, touching her skin, every waking moment, somewhere away from a smoky fire, and that's nearly as good as what they do for kings." She has so many things to say to Abrogail right now and she's not allowed to say them and she's mad at herself for not clarifying what to do if she failed to act like nothing happened.  

(Catherine is still having tea with Morgethai and reluctantly lets the wish slip away. She's mind blanked and very good at hiding her magic but she's also sitting right in front of an archmage, inside that archmage's sanctum; It's not worth the risk.)

Cansellarion can tell Iomedae wants to talk about the attempt, but he doesn't want to speak up and risk his voice getting on the broadcast - he whispers to Alfirin, who goes over and whispers to Iomedae that she can say whatever she wants, no use keeping up the deception once it's been blown. (She disarms the main trigger for the vest while she's there.)

Iomedae smiles gratefully and continues talking through how to care for premature babies, but when she's reached the end of the segment she says, "I do feel obliged to confess that my earlier answer to you was only half-true. You noticed I seemed - surprised by something?"

"You did."

"Someone tried to cast a Wish, to interrupt our conversation. Now, it could be that they hate early-born babies, but that wouldn't actually be my guess."

"- nor would it be mine. A Wish?"

"It couldn't have been much else. You may cast a truth spell, if you have one, if you don't believe me -"

"Ma'am, if what happens when someone casts a Wish to take you somewhere else is that you have to restart your sentence, my truth spell's not going to compel you to speak any truths."

"All right. Well, you have my word, anyway; someone tried to interrupt us and they cast a Wish to do it. And my guess as to who ordered this, of course, is Abrogail Thrune."

"Imagine you're Abrogail Thrune. You've got a lot of problems, as we talked about last week. Your country is poor, and Asmodeus is strangling it. Much of what he destroyed to conquer it has never been rebuilt. Your ships sail around the ruins of an arch the old Empire would've repaired inside two years; it's been a hundred of them. There's an ancient green dragon planning out an elaborate revenge on you for your uncle's flatly stupid effort to rob her library after she let Chelish apprentices visit it. Most of the Empire that was once one with Cheliax is now free and independent and hates you passionately. You are damned by an infernal contract you signed at an age where no decent father would let you marry if you weren't already pregnant. Cyprian's a better commander than anyone who has ever worked for you, and a lot of your wizards work for him because Cheliax can't keep people who have the power to leave. Felandriel Morgethai's a better wizard than any of yours. 

Also, there's a teenage girl making fun of you on the radio. 

But you possess the means to harness untold arcane power to solve your problems! You can do things that many gods wish mortals did not dare to dream of! You can cast a Wish, and rewrite all of reality to suit your vision! Listeners, if you're imagining that a Wish could solve every problem in your life, you're completely right, it could. A poorly-worded one will come back to bite you, sure, but a careful Wish is everything it's renowned to be. It can raise the dead, or cure any illness or injury, or make your home and village safe. There are castles raised by Wishes that stand after centuries, looking brand new. Should Abrogail rebuild the Arch of Aroden? The cities that her predecessors razed to the ground? Should she pry herself free of Cheliax and to Heaven, to seek out her best hope of escaping damnation?"

"I swear to you, to each and every one of you, that as far as I know, the way Abrogail Thrune chose to use that Wish is to try to make me stop making fun of her on the radio. She turned on her radio, listened to me talk about keeping early-born babies alive, and she ordered that the fabric of the universe bend and quake so she could get back at me for saying that Asmodeus can build a mound of corpses and prop her up on top of them but he can never make her the true ruler of our country. That's what she did.

And it didn't work.

Abby - can I call you Abby - glad to have you among our listeners! Use the next one for your Wisdom! …you know, I say that, and it's good advice, but it's also kind of mean advice, because they wouldn't let her. She can't cast Wishes herself. Hell's supplying them. If she tells Asmodeus that she wants a Wish to kidnap people off radio shows, sure, he's happy to supply that, it's Evil and it's …at least dubiously lawful - I am arguably a Chelish subject - and it's her playing Hell's stupid, stupid game, where the most important thing in the world is your pride. So they'll give her the Wish, if that's what she wants it for. If she asks for a Wish for her Wisdom - if she asks for a Wish to make Cheliax strong and rich and free - well, Hell will turn out, shockingly, to be out of Wishes today. Or they'll kill her. 

Abby - I would save you, if I could. If I were writing the story of your life, it wouldn't be 'a suffering lump of flesh, forever'. But the only person who can save you is yourself, and the only way you can do it is by getting out of there, and if you had the courage to do that Asmodeus would never have chosen you.

Right. Apologies, Ser Kennadas, I think we can get back to business."

Felandriel Morgethai pours herself a second cup of tea. The nice thing about being an archmage is that it's always ambiguous whether you're speechless or just wisely not speaking.

"...I take back all my suspicions, you are definitely not secretly Freedom. With all due respect to your noble profession, I don't think wizards can usually speechify like that."

"There is an obscure tradition of wizard that can, but they don't get a familiar and can only cast eighth-circle spells on Toildays," says Morgethai, straightfaced. 

"I must admit, I do not have so thorough an account of your activities that I could say right now that I know you to have cast an eighth-circle spell on a Toilday. She's really trying quite hard, though even so I'd be pretty surprised if it worked."

"I think it's too late," Morgethai says. "I think - forty years ago - but Hell's efforts worked better than she's giving them credit for. I would be delighted to be wrong."

She always did manage to see the best in people, even ones with very little good in them. It would be an astoundingly foolish thing to say, for many reasons.

When the broadcast is over Iomedae collapses into Alfirin's waiting arms. "Thank you," she says to the priest. "I'm sorry I can't stay to speak more, but -"

"It's quite all right," he says. "You're sure it was a Wish?"

"Pretty sure. I - don't think I exposed you to danger, but I'm sorry, if I did."

"I'm glad we could meet. It was an interesting conversation." And he'll leave her to her - sister? Lover?