Right. 

It's not much to ask. He was the only one to read the Alfirin book, and the stakes were higher then. There's no question about trust. He doesn't like keeping secrets from his wife, but then, he's not exactly being asked to. 

And it makes sense. If she thinks she's real, that means the other one isn't. Naima wouldn't want some clone, or construct, or who knows exactly what, really, reading every thought she's ever had in her life. She thinks she's real, and nothing she can say or do will convince him, short of this. Gods. The whole thing reminds him of those terrible last six months in Isarn, meetings former friends at cafés or clubs or this-or-that person's apartment, swearing blindly that he's innocent, begging them to believe that he's the same person he's always been. Eventually he managed to scrape together some dignity about it. By then, nobody was inviting him anywhere at all. 

"Of course I can. And – 

– Naima. You understand why I can't trust you right now. I wish I could, and when this is over, I very much hope I will."

"Yeah. I understand. Thank you."

It takes him ten days to make a book capable of holding an archmage, if he drops absolutely everything else. That's a day sidereal, if he works in the fast demiplane. He drops absolutely everything else. 

The next day, Naima is a book.




Naima spent the first nineteen years of her life living in her parents' house. She played on the banks of the river Junira, learned to spin and weave cloth, and spent an enormous number of hours carrying water from the temple to the rest of her family. She couldn't read, of course, but in some respects her childhood was idyllic, at least relative to Elie's. As a child, her closest friend was her next-youngest sister. When she was nine years old, both of them caught a serious illness. Naima recovered; the sister did not.

The child who emerged on the other side of the illness was quieter, except when she was yelling; she got into trouble more frequently with her parents and siblings, and spent more and more time on household chores and textile creation. When she wanted to be alone, she looked for trash that had washed up along the side of the river. She eventually withdrew from almost everyone, besides her oldest sister, the only person who could ever get an honest report on what she wanted. It was her sister who helped convince their mother to convince their father to let Naima marry Tariq, who was considered a terrible option financially. She wanted him because she thought he would be kind.

For about a year, she lived with her new husband. She was still remarkably reserved while she lived with him, but she was happy. She worked tirelessly to make things easier for his mother and sisters, who in turn grew to accept her. She created new clothes for her husband. She bore him a son. He was proud of her, and told her so. He trusted her judgement, and didn't make many demands of her. For the first time, she felt like as long as she followed all of the social rules she knew, her life would be mostly comfortable.

Then, of course, her husband died. She felt shattered, unsure how to bear going on without him. She felt terrified that her son would die. Some power sent Wishbone to her, and she accepted its offer, fully aware that whatever price it demanded would be something she would probably regret. She went back to live with her parents for six more months. She knew she would have to remarry, and she really, really didn't want to. She felt like nobody else could ever compare.

Shawil showed up and commandeered her dog. He'll remember the adventures from this point forward, of course, since he was there, but will see them through her perspective. They were stunningly incompetent at some points, but somehow, they muddled through again and again. Naima started saving money to raise her husband, realizing that she had the ability to save enough money. And, at the same time, she gained friends. She didn't mean to, exactly, but it happened, over time. She became less withdrawn, and more angry. Then less angry, and more... hopeful.

She didn't mean to become interested in Elie, either. It just happened - very suddenly, actually, while he was playing with her baby in Merab. She told herself that it almost certainly wasn't a good idea to consider - but every day, he was there, growing beside her, and she was there, growing beside him. And when she finally had enough money to resurrect her husband, she realized that she had grown into something else while she wasn't looking - something brave, ambitious, and willing if not always able to try to convince others of her perspective. Something with plans. Plans that were compatible with marrying Elie Cotonnet - who was, really, her best friend in the world - and not very compatible with remarrying her husband at all.

She proposed twice, of course. Both of the proposals are about as terrible as he remembers them being, but the second one, of course, actually worked. There was a relatively long engagement, by Osirian standards, during which they stymied the plans of the Urgathoa cultists who were poking around the ruins of the four pharaohs of the ascension. It was worth the wait, though - she thought the wedding jewelry and the sentiment that went with them were perfect. She was so, so happy with her husband. And for the first time in years - maybe ever - she felt really, entirely safe with someone. She knew that whatever happened, she could count on Elie to be there with her.




And then, immediately following the remarkably dangerous honeymoon in Isarn, during which they saved the entire city from being physically sucked into hell, Naima Cotonnet was kidnapped by a lich. It suppressed her memories of the encounter and psychically linked her to a copy of his own creation, who then took over Naima's old place. No one noticed the difference. It was a perfect copy, one with all of her memories and abilities. She doesn't know how it was done.

Because of the link, the later memories are here, too. Naima remembers being there for them, all the memories of adventure and of marriage and of family - for Bachuan, for Ines's birth, for the months they spent hiding in the temple of Abadar, for the house of oblivion and Drezen crusade, for the growth of her hospital, for Nex, for Razmir, for the war to take Cheliax, for the deal with Mephistopheles, for the fight over Rovagug containment, for the realization afterwards that she was pregnant again -

But she wasn't. The copy was.

He doesn't remember what he expected when Naima asked to speak with him alone, that first time, but he knows it wasn't a proposal of marriage. It wasn't the sort of thing well brought up young Osirian women did for themselves – in the first place – and back then it still seemed as though that's what Naima was. Well brought up Osirian women – if they did somehow get in the habit of arranging their own marriages – certainly didn't pursue disreputable foreigners. And Naima herself wanted stability, a home, and a father for her son. He hadn't expected he'd ever have a home again. But Naima proposed anyway, and if that Naima was quieter, smaller, less confident, she was every bit as relentlessly practical. She needed a husband. Rahim needed a father. Of all the men she'd ever met, Élie seemed the least likely to beat her and steal her money. 

He told her to wait six months. He was sure that if she allowed herself to start looking, she'd find a man she really cared for. Instead, she came back in four months with a list. Item one: Naima's ambiguous-possibly-malevolent patron is likely to be a danger to herself and her children, Élie is likely to become powerful enough to protect them. Item two: Élie understands the significant of medical research, and thus, item three, Élie wouldn't forbid her from working outside the home. Item four: Rahim loves him. Item five: she thinks he'd be a good father. 

He'd asked her – somewhere between items seven and fifteen – if she actually liked him as a person. Yes, she said. It's on the list. She just hadn't gotten to it yet. 

They'd had a short engagement, by Galtan standards. Just long enough for him to make the wedding jewelry. And he did make all of it himself, even the things which weren't magic – only he needed to go to a cleric for help with the bracelets, for the spell that would let Naima summon him to her in an instant no matter where in all the worlds he was. He'd wanted to do that himself, too. He could now. It was his promise, in stone and wire, that while he might be a disreputable foreigner with strange ideas about freedom and duty and relationships between men and women, he would do everything in his power to be a good Osirian husband. That is to say: he'd protect her. 

And he'd believed he had. 

He was was right the first time: no sane woman would ever want to marry him. He shouldn't have agreed. He should have known that he couldn't be relied on, that people who trusted him tended to die for it. He should have warned her. It wouldn't have changed anything, he knows that – Naima, once her mind is set upon a course of action, is nothing if not stubborn. She'd have married him anyway. She's probably not even going to leave him when he tells her, even though he deserves it. 

He realizes he's thinking about the copy. The one who isn't his wife – 

Except she is, of course. For almost four years, she's shared his home, his battles, his thoughts. She's the mother of his children. He loves her. And right now he needs her very, very badly. 

Naima?

Yes?

I need you to come here now. 

She plane shifts to him without hesitation. A moment later she's in the demiplane with him.

What is it?

"I know what happened." 

And, finding himself suddenly unable to speak – It might be easier to just share memories. 

Is it bad, she wants to ask, but it's obviously bad. She nods.

All right. We can do that.

He doesn't share the text of the book itself. He made a promise to his wife, and he is still trying to hold to those. Just his moment of realization – checking again to confirm the memories had been been altered – piecing the timeline together after. They'd only have been married a month, when it happened. 

She stills.

She spent a year or two believing, once, that the price of her witch powers was going to be the consumption of her soul. She had tried to face it bravely, making every day count as much as it possibly could, and to prepare Elie and herself for what might happen if she was replaced by something else, something that didn't share her values and goals - her patron, possibly, or maybe an older version of herself, one jaded and beaten down by trying to accomplish things. She'd thought she might be Alfirin, although she hadn't known the name, back then.

This is not the same thing. But - there is some carryover, she thinks. She will make there be carryover. 

"How certain are you?"

"We should go back through everything in the lich's lair, all of his notes – see if we can get copies from the First Vault of anything that was destroyed, if we can. But short of that, I'm as certain as I can be." 

"All right. We should do those things. I'm not sure if I should be part of the group that does."

"I want to tell Catherine and Shawil and Ione. I want all of you to have a plan for what to do if I attack you again. I want you to update whatever plan you have for me turning evil, if you haven't done that since it stopped looking likely to happen. I don't want to know anything about them."

"I think our first step should be finding and destroying the lich's phylactery before he reforms so he can never control you again. I'll do those things, but – 

I love you. I'm not going to leave you to deal with this alone." 

" - all right, yeah, that's a better plan. I like that plan. I think it plausibly also involves going back to get more of the lich's stuff so that we can hopefully discern his location. And - thank you."

"What about her?"

"We need to tell her. After that – she'll want to run her healing route. We can have it put about that you've solved bilocation. I don't want to lie to the children." 

"Yeah. I don't either. ...Rahim is hers, then, isn't he."

"He is, and Inès is yours, but we can't very well just split them." 

"No, not now. And can't very well - " No, she doesn't even know what to say about the new baby.

"We couldn't split them anyway, it's not like it would be fair to any of them to take them away from you."

"We'll have to decide together. All three of us."

"Yeah, it'll have to be."

"I suppose she's probably going to feel even worse."

"You would know, I suppose. 

Do you think she'll want to speak to you? Do you want to speak to her?"

"I can't imagine resolving this without talking to her. I admittedly don't know what I can say to her right now. Sorry for accidentally stealing your entire life and everything you care about? - of course, maybe it all really belongs to her anyway."

"I don't think that's a helpful way to look at it. The fact of the matter is, you're both here now."