"That probably makes it less safe to ignore them. I'm not sure what 'him, scared for his life' does, could plausibly be bad instead of good..."

"Do you think it could be useful to ostentatiously assume the difference between you two is that you care about your brothers more?"

"The logic of that one is completely lost on me, actually..."

"I still feel like I don't have a complete picture, he doesn't just want his boyfriends totally at his mercy he wants them submissive and half brain-dead, why does he want that, what is he getting from it?"

"...would 'at his mercy' get boring after some period of time shorter than three centuries...? Or intractable?"

"Maybe."

"Or this is somehow easier for Findekáno to work with and he maneuvered into it - not sure how the details of that would work out but - or this is just an exceptional state, normally it looks different -?"

"He can definitely use Findekáno for less this way, but deliberately breaking enough of your own capacity for action to be a drain on your evil boyfriend is - extreme - 

 - these are fairly exceptional circumstances...."

"Rather. To both."

"That's an avenue. If I want to use it. Could say to him 'gosh, this isn't how you prefer him, is it? You can come up with a cleaner oath, ask Nechar to clear up only and exactly whatever he got loaded down with in the aftermath of wandering into here...' I just don't know if I should -"

"Failure mode being?"

"I help get him under a better-designed oath?"

"Is that a good vantage point from which to make further progress...?"

"If I'm right about what'd be appealing, yes. But I'm reasoning off 'me, less the morals'  and I don't even know if that's the right thing to be reasoning off..."

"What would you need to be surer?"

"I would give anything for a recording of one of their normal interactions but guess which stupid fucking treelit planet hasn't invented them -"

Snuggle. Sigh.

Why did you think that pulling this particular kind of nasty means he doesn't care about his brothers? she asks Tyelcormo.

Because, like, if our Maitimo wasn't remotely a good person, I'd still expect him to separately from that care about us, and keeping a slave is a shitty thing to do to everyone who cares about you even if you're not moved by the harm it does the slave - makes us all monsters, if we weren't already - 

I hope his you isn't otherwise a monster.

Yeah, it's a little worrying. 

Flop.

She flops beside him and drapes a wing over him. Not planning to set him up on a blind date with one of my forks if things aren't dramatically better than I had hoped.

Yeah, not a good idea. Until we know more.

She'd probably yell at him for implicitly condoning his brother's actions. Not the best start.

I mean, I'm gonna yell at him for that? So.