He could probably kiss her. He's not even sure that it'd be unpleasant, there can't be that much difference.

He watches her go.

There are only two ways not to make a complete hash of this and one is to pretend forever and the other is to tell her pretty soon. "I'm gay and actually only want you for cover and the crown" will send her running. But he's good at people. Once he knows her well enough he'll know what to say.

"You're not usually this stupid," Antir says. "It's the breakup. You'd delegated too much of your smart decision making. You got used to having more people than me to talk you down from bad ideas."

"Thank you for the commentary."

"Welcome," she says complacently.

Iobel has her stock of clocks all in place as usual on Firstday.

He stops by with another kitty treat for Cricket and a pot of dahlias - "spelled to not require any maintenance, supposedly, though apparently they still do a little better with water. I have decided that I needn't decide which clock I want and can have both; one for my rooms and one for my office."

"Well, I'm not going to stop you," Iobel says, and she wraps up one of each variety of clock in paper and puts the dahlias on the corner of the counter. "Thank you, these are lovely."

"Can I whisk you away for lunch again? We have admittedly nearly exhausted my knowledge of nice lunch places in this district."

"I know one," she volunteers. "It's downscale but they have the very best potatoes."

"Perfect."

So off to a little hole in the wall with fish four ways and eggs five ways and potatoes eight ways, and everything is delicious in a greasy sort of way, especially Potatoes The Seventh Way.

He will take her recommendations. The proprietor recognizes him and looks a bit alarmed.

Poor proprietor. Iobel's having Fish The Fourth Way, An Egg The First Way, and Potatoes The Seventh Way, but suggests that if Mitros gets Potatoes The Second Way instead they could split half and half.

He'll do that, then. He will have his arm around her while they wait for food. He won't stop smiling.

It's nice. So's the food.

She has great taste in food. He asks how her week's been.

She has had a minimally eventful week, but she did manage to squish down a branch of the immortality spell that she was assuming would have to be enormous!

Ooooh! How?

So she smugly expounds as long as it seems to interest him.

Which it does; he knows enough about spellbinding to follow and smug expounding is a trait he is very fond of. He encourages her in it.

She can smugly expound on the whole spell if he likes! What a lovely symbiosis.

Eventually they should probably head out and walk while expounding, the proprietor'll get more nervous if they hang out in his tine restaurant all afternoon. He leaves a ridiculous tip and a note complimenting the dishes - 'or they will think I gave them a lot of money because I have it to throw around, rather than because I had delicious potatoes and fish and eggs' - and then she can keep right on talking.

"Do you often specifically ask what people think of tips or are you speculating?" she wonders.

"I do a lot of listening to how people talk about my family but I've never given someone a tip and asked what they think of it, that seems like it'd put them on the spot inappropriately. People have expressed in my hearing that they lose respect when we overpay for things because how could you run the country without understanding the value of am ammar."

"I suppose it's not non-information about how you'd handle the national budget but it's certainly very little."

"To be fair people have rather little to go off if they can't get the time off work or don't have the background knowledge to come up and sit in on budget talks, and honestly lots of important decisions are made behind closed doors. So why not size us up for general frugality or character?"

"Because they presumably pay taxes and that's much more information."

"Not about what kind of King I'd be!"