Lindsha doesn't watch. She doesn't care much about horses but it's a habit at this point.

Cleery isn't wrong -- draft horses are an important kind of military materiel; while not wholly irreplaceable, they make up the core of almost any effort to cause things to be in places at scale, which any expert will admit is the essence of warfare. Beyond this vital yet unglorious contribution to every war ever fought, there is also the recent case of three draft horses who, only a few thousand miles away from Gandlun's Mercy Neonatal Hospital (Taldor Branch), played an unexpectedly large role in the defeat and humiliation of an archfiend and are scheduled to receive commendations from the queen of Cheliax for their service, just as soon as things have settled down a little bit.

Six weeks pass. The rains make the river fierce and swollen and lively. 

Manela knows very well that only a foolish person gives their baby to the fairies, and that if you do you had better expect they'll whisk the baby away to Faerie and raise it as their own, if you're lucky and they don't just eat it or something. But the thing is that the baby's cough is getting worse, and when that happened to her sister it kept getting worse until she died, and if the baby is whisked off to Faerie she'll still be alive. Right?

She waits until the baby is barely breathing at all and her lips are thin and blue, and then she takes her to the faeries. If they can save her they can have her. And maybe in thirty years Manela will see a faerie out of the corner of her eye and know that her daughter is alive.

Lindsha lets her in.

"Do we finally have a patient?" Antler bounds into the room, brandishing a black mouse. "Trouble breathing, is that it?"

Manela glares fiercely at the fairies and clings to the baby even though she came here to give her to them.

"...I don't need to hold it, but I do need to touch it," says Antler. "Can you confirm that it is a breathing problem or do you not know what's wrong at all?"

"She's a girl."

"And a very cute one too, or would be if she could breathe. I need to touch her, just a toe or an ear or whatever is fine, and then I'll put her illness in this mouse here, and then she won't have it anymore, but I do have to know what I'm putting in the mouse. What's wrong with her?"

"She had a cough." She's not coughing anymore but that's because she's too weak. Manela is not exactly offering the baby but she's not impeding the fairies touching her.

Antler is not with Gandlun's Mercy Hospital because even consent negotiations with parents are exhausting, let alone the children themselves. They poke the baby's ear and put the cough in the mouse and then dash off with the mouse to put it in isolation and wash their hands.

Manela watches this, dazed. "Is she...the mouse, now?"

"No, they just put the disease in the mouse. Now you've got the baby same as before except without the disease," says Lindsha. "If you want to wait and see if there's anything else she needs help with you're welcome to, you can even take a nap in the waiting room and I'll look after her for you, but you could probably just take her home now no problem."

Manela looks back at the baby. She does look ...alive. And not like they'll certainly bury her by sunrise. "You don't keep the baby?"

"No! No, it's like on the sign. You walk in with a sick baby, you walk out with the same baby all better. We're just here to heal babies."

"...and then you come back for her when she's grown and has borne a daughter?"

"No! We don't track you at all."

"Oh." She is a bit dumbfounded and then remembers to be polite to the fair folk. 

"Thank you, ma'am?" Is that person who fixed the baby a ma'am. She's dressed confusingly if she's a she and he's dressed confusingly if he's a he.

"You're welcome, and I'll tell the person who did the healing you said so too. Have a wonderful day, ma'am!"

Then Manela will stagger out into the rain and cling to her baby and not cry until they are home and still nothing terrible has befallen them. 

In the summer the Baron rides out with his men to address the mysterious wizard tower, which he is learned enough to identify as a wizard tower. He is cautious. One doesn't want to offend the kind of wizard who lives in a tower too tall to have been made without magic. He sends one of his entourage ahead to announce him; if the man gets turned to stone then probably he'll figure out how to make this someone else's problem. 

The door of the strange wizard tower swings open as he approaches it. He conceals his terror and enters. 

"Good morning, do you have a baby who needs medical attention?"

He's just going to ignore that and have the interaction he braced himself to have. "I am Andar of Sadvak, a knight in the service of the Baron of Sadvak, on whose land this tower sits. The Baron intends to pay a visit, and will arrive this afternoon."

"Does the baron have a baby who needs medical attention? That's the only thing we're here for. Healing babies."