"Yes!" they both say at the same time.

"I would have to ask the pharaoh's permission but I would be very surprised to be denied it."

"Do you have to go through our parents?" Ismat asks.

"It'd really be better to but if you came to the city with him and their permission we could conceivably go through him instead. It makes it look like I'm trying to get away with something, though."

"Does it count as permission if our father told him 'maybe you'll get off your ass and learn to do what needs doing if your baby sister's going hungry over it' and we assume he assumes that's what happened?"

Sigh. "I can take a wife without asking her family at all, I just don't like the look of it. I guess asking questionably the right bit of family's better than that."

"I can deal with them if I have to. It wouldn't be too difficult to turn them down if they came sniffing around for favors, they just would have turned me in."

He nods. "I won't insist but I'd prefer it."

"They're in Qalil Wahah. Our last name's real."

"I should talk to my brother. - he'll want to meet you."

"...suppose that follows."

"I'd say he doesn't bite but that wouldn't be true. He doesn't bite unpredictably. We get along."

"What makes him predictably bite? I did rather commit some crime."

"But not anything you'd normally expect to find the pharaoh involved in handling, right? You fudged some paperwork and confessed under a waiver and the system will handle that normally. You didn't try to murder his family or sell out his country or solicit an invasion from Hell."

"...do people often do that last, that's concerning."

"More often than you'd think. Sincere efforts to destroy the world or a big chunk of it aren't publicized to discourage copycats."

"I suppose that's a good reason."

"The beetle's not dead. The one that left behind the Black Dome."

"- okay. Apropos of..."

"An example of the category we were talking about. It's sleeping. Sometimes people try to wake it."

"I assume that's a secret."

"Very much so."

"Safe with us. - I really do need a dress. I'm not right up against my grace period deadline but it'll be pushing it if I wait till morning."

"Right. Why don't you go, and I'll talk to the pharaoh and come for you in the morning."

"At home? I'd rather not just show up to work in skirts unannounced, I was going to work on things at home and send Rabab in to tell everyone."