"I hope this is a silence of 'of course not, that is a completely left-field sort of question, what could possibly have inspired you to ask', because what has inspired me to ask is that apparently while Amariah was gone, Kas went slightly mad and had their firstborn child all by himself without waiting for her input. Said firstborn child is now thirteen."

"Leaving aside surmountable technical problems, I cannot think of a single earthly fucking reason why I would want to have children in your absence, and if I did, they certainly wouldn't be yours. What happened to Kas? Or is the answer just 'Jokers'?"

"He didn't mean for her to be Amariah's, in all fairness, I think he was trying to have some unspecified variety of offspring and just got an Yseult-alt. As for what happened it's only what I said - she was gone a long time. Sixty-six years. Meanwhile Aegis's Joker handled her political campaign for her, so, you know, if you happen to spot Amariah looking murderously in Aegis's direction at the next Bellparty see if you can distract her."

"Noted. Will do. What did Aegis's Joker do with her political campaign, exactly? Get her elected in absentia? Impersonate her? That would've been a trick."

"No, he got elected himself, it was kind of time-sensitive, but behind the scenes they can work out whatever now one of them has the position," shrugs Bella, "and maybe they can wrangle a changeover at some point, I don't know enough about Peace politics to guess."

"And I suppose 'let him keep the bloody job if he's handled it this long' was never an option."

"Maybe it is," shrugs Bella, "like I said, I don't know about Peace politics. I somewhat doubt he wants it indefinitely though."

"Because that would be incongruous. I always lose track of how many levels of incongruity I am supposed to expect, with that lot."

"Six," says Bella decisively.

He snickers and hugs her.

"Under no circumstances am I going to inflict Sunshine on a Carinna. I'd be hesitant to inflict myself on a Carinna."

"The other two seem more portable. How would you personally upset one, though?"

"Has it escaped your notice that I don't have a soul?"

"No. I noticed that. Would the bare fact of you not having a soul upset a Carinna, do you think? I wasn't modeling her like that."

"Quite possibly, but apart from that, it's not exactly a cosmetic fucking difference. In the hypothetical distant future where I am for some reason considering having a child at all, I'd just as soon aim for one who will laugh when I joke about getting them fresh demon heads for their birthday."

"Okay, I could see you doing that," concedes Bella. "A Kiawen would totally laugh, I'm not as sure about a Tanalin."

"I haven't heard as much about the other two; Carinna has the obviously relevant characteristic."

"I talked to Kiawen for a while. She seems to think that the entire multiverse is divided into hilarious wonderful things and things that will soon be fixed."

"Appropriate, I suppose, for the context."

"Yeah."

"But not, unfortunately, true."

"Depends on your definitions of 'soon' and 'fixed'. Anyway, I last talked to any of the little beads when they were like seven, maybe in the intervening years Kiawen has begun wearing black and writing moody poetry, I don't know. We did stop in Chronicle while re-pealing everyone, but we were mostly picking up Wellspring magic and catching up with each other."

"Is this question relevant to any immediate concerns, love?"