"Your grace?"

"The Duke of Gandia."

So now she knows who the man was. The Duke of Gandia. She prefers it, immensely, to having no name for him.

But also the Duchess knows. She had been - imagining, somehow, stupidly, that the Duchess would never find out, that no one would ever find out, that it would just be her secret all her life - 

"Did the Duke of Gandia secure your compliance by force, or by magic?"

"No, ma'am." It is such a serious accusation to make of a Duke that she probably wouldn't make it even if it was true.

"Did he threaten to?"

"No, ma'am."

Carlota leans back in her chair, exasperated in the way she is frequently exasperated because no one is ever really satisfactory to her. "I'm not running a whorehouse here, Issa."

She is Chelish; she keeps the outrageous injustice of it off her face. But she is too busy doing that to think of anything to say.

"My staff reflects on me. Your work is important. I have endeavored to hire men and women possessed with good judgment and good characters. I am disappointed, and more than that I am confused. What were you hoping would happen? He doesn't remember your name, if he bothered to learn it."

She knows that. "I - had no intentions, your grace. He came into my room and -"

Carlota gives her an excruciatingly long while to finish the sentence.

Issa is finding this far far far more violating and miserable than being taken by a stranger on a narrow fancy bed. He was smiling at her. 

"What, your grace, would you have had me say to him?"

"That you are the loyal servant of the Duchess of Chelam, and she forbids this, and of Iomedae, who does also. The best refuge when powerless is always perfect obedience to some greater power you cannot be faulted for obeying."

She says this as if it ought to be obvious to any child of ten, that when a man comes into your quarters to bed you you say that Iomedae forbids it. Issa did not even know that Iomedae forbade it.

"Oh."

"In Asmodean Cheliax that would not have worked."

Issa does not really believe it would have worked in this Cheliax, either. "Yes, your grace."

"I don't know if it would have worked here. I suspect so. He is my guest, and not a complete idiot; whatever his morals, and I've seen no evidence of them, I would be surprised were he willing to offend and outrage an ally in order to have a woman he bumped into in her mansion's servants' quarters."

"He was not sober, your grace, and - he was being kind, and I didn't want him to instead be angry -"

"In the moment I am sure it would have been much more unpleasant, if he was angry. But for the rest of your life and at final judgment it would have been better. In Cheliax as it was before Asmodeus women did die for their honor, Issa. I will not pretend to you that the men who sought them could always be deterred with the right words. 

But do you know how I know this? I know this because I met them in Axis. Their mortal lives ended, by outrageous injustice, and they awoke in paradise, where there is no power that can or will touch a person against their will, and they all live richer than Kings, and always will.

And do you know who I didn't meet in Axis? The women who bore children they had no means of support for, and strangled them, or turned to theft.

You should have been willing to die for your honor. You can name it an injustice of Pharasma, if you like, but it is practical advice, and the advice I'll give my daughters, and it is an injustice we endure for only a tiny fraction of our eternal and immortal lives."

"I wouldn't kill a child, your grace. I know that's evil. I can look after one."

"I am glad to hear it as you may have to. I'm sending you back to Chelam. I can't have you here any more and you can't do your work. Keep your legs shut, don't be stupid, and know that I will protect you, if you do your best to do the right thing and are overcome, but not if you are too cowardly to try."

Issa feels like she is drowning. She keeps trying to breathe but there's no air, just water. She mustn't cry. She shouldn't even be upset. She hates this stupid city and everyone in it and the pamphlets say Carlota's a diabolist and she'll be safer at home and -

"Dismissed."