" - because they loved me, and it is a terrible thing to consign one's daughter to a violent and unhappy marriage for the sake of peace - the right thing to do, obviously, under the circumstances, but not an easy one -"

"It makes sense to me that because they loved you it was difficult for them to require this of you. I don't understand why they expected you to also pretend it wasn't going to be terrible? Because you needed the practice at pretending?"

"What? No. They weren't demanding it deliberately. They were just - struggling with it, and it was easy enough to pick up they'd be struggling more with it if I was having a hard time too, so I tried not to be - they were doing their best. We were all doing our best. It was just a very difficult situation. And then he was assassinated, irrecoverably. I remember I wept from joy, when I heard the news... I don't feel badly about that, actually. It is not one of the places where I think I particularly failed to exercise virtue. I wish that the marriage had happened, of course, but when I look back on the places where I wish I'd been stronger, 'not being glad he died' isn't something I wish on myself - I used to think about this all the time and eventually I admitted to myself I was going in circles around it, and mostly stopped."

Lilia would not overall say that she admires Aroden Carlota Guiomar de Chelam but sometimes she speaks in a way that reveals a kind of power mortals don't possess, or at least none of them Lilia's met, a kind of clarity about the self which only Aspexia Rugatonn had in infernal Cheliax, because everyone but Aspexia Rugatonn was desperate not to know who they were beneath the pretenses, and without Aspexia Rugatonn's utter contempt for what that clarity revealed. Perhaps in Axis a person can look at themselves clearly enough to see a pathetic and contemptible worm and then cheerfully acknowledge it in all its wormy hideousness, and go about their day. It is not a strength she aspires to but it is strength. 

"That was the year my father was killed, at Longacre, in the battle we called Sun Hill at the time, I don't know what the other side called it. I haven't read any good mortal-written histories of the war, which means that probably half of what I think I know about it was wrong. War's very messy, that way. My father was killed and my brother became the Duke and - mostly didn't speak to me, actually, between when he became the Duke and when he died. We'd been close when he was younger. I think that he had space only for the dead, and not for the living..."

" - so I think it's best thought of in terms of self-interest. I actually think at least half of virtues are better considered in those terms. Why is cowardice a dueling insult but not having outrageously high taxes? It's because a coward threatens the men around him; they have an immediate interest in doing something about a coward. And for that reason being known as a coward is an immediate threat to a man's interests in a way where being known as greedy isn't. Greed of course can cross the lines a society has an interest in enforcing. 

...anyway I think the same applies if you contemplate women as a collective. They aren't acting in a dead-babies-minimizing way - if they were you'd have to shame women less for unwed pregnancy, because it's the shame that's moving many of them to solve it with poison! They are acting in a way that minimizes harm to their interests."

"That is the most satisfactory explanation of it I have ever heard. Thank you."

"I have absolutely no idea how much of that is actually necessary to get people to Axis and how much is - the same error we have spoken of repeatedly, steeling oneself to do the necessary terrible things and then doing a bunch of unnecessary terrible things."

She thinks she has enough of the woman, by now, to try her on. "Perhaps I'm speaking from too little context to guess, but - I'd expect that the way things were done in Arodenite Cheliax were more unjust than the actual best equilibrium, because the people setting it would have incentive to have more power and the checks on that, though there are some, are well past wherever it'd actually be best to land -"

Oh this conversation's going to be so so much less awkward and frustrating if it is about to be an actual conversation and not a disquieting interrogation. She beams at her and orders them another round of drinks. "On the one hand I would expect so. On the other - most men aren't cruel to their horses. Their power over their horses is absolute; the churches will not particularly get worked up if they are cruel to them; I have never heard a sermon about how one is damned for evil to horses. Most men are good to their horses because I think most men are fundamentally inspired to gentleness towards those who serve them. That analogy has some deficiencies so let me try one that has some deficiencies from a different angle. Kings are usually cruelest when they're weak. That's when they believe they cannot afford mercy and must execute everyone who threatens them. A king who is not threatened and is not desperate will always be a better king. And a third analogy, for a third angle - in Axis everyone is safe and they are so much better to each other."

"So you don't find it obvious that giving women more power would get them treated better, rather than creating the - tribulations of a strong vassal relationship -"

"It very well might. I do think I'd try various ways to give women more power anyway, because - it is a good idea to check, if one is doing a terrible thing, whether it's a terrible necessary one or not."

"The last line of questions I had was - about Chelam. Tell me what about it - I love Cheliax. I have loved Cheliax all my life. But I think that whoever we select to rule Chelam should see in it something they do not see in every part of Cheliax."

"Oh." A wistful, slightly pained smile. "Chelam had some of the richest farmland in all of Cheliax, you know, and flat as far as the eye could see. You could imagine that the whole world was civilization, fields of grain and little villages - and density is good for people, you know. If a great many people live in walking distance you can have a cobbler and a smith and a priest not on circuit. You can have roads! We had a great road, all the way from the castle to Longacre, with the brush cut back two hundred feet out so no man or monster could lie in ambush, a road safe enough that children would walk along it on their way to temple - I do not have the right to ask anything of the people who freed the country when we failed it, and I have very little money with which to buy favors because I gave most of it to the mysterious though probably related matter. But - I would be very grateful if whoever rules Chelam were to know that, and want it, and clear those roads until they are that safe again - that was gone by the end of Gaspodar's reign -"

"I spoke to her and I" want Chelam? No. Lilia doesn't want things. Certainly not from the people who freed the country when she failed it, when she has nothing at all which with to buy favors of them though admittedly because she committed it all already to their service. Lilia also does not have Carlota's habit of impudently making requests she does not believe herself to have any grounds to make; that would be pathetic. "...don't expect to run across a better opportunity. No one living, nor anyone else we have contemplated resurrecting, remembers her, and she said she does not ordinarily answer inquiries from the Material, nor visit where they could reach her. The only question is whether it is more convenient to have me in your direct service; if we are to do this, she's the one to do it with."

The disadvantage of having Lilia in her mother's direct service is that Lilia still has dreams of Volnugar, and so is compromised. The advantage is that her mother does not have a secondary candidate who is nearly as good. Lilia has formed no opinion on the tradeoff. If she has failed her mother and is rightly rejected for it she wishes to believe that she has failed her mother and is rightly rejected for it.