"At home, then."

Ismat and her brother get on their way.

In the morning Khalil answers the door, but Ismat is inside, sitting at the kitchen table looking through customer sketches, wearing a nice champagne-colored dress.

"You look very nice."

She snorts. "Thank you."

"I've been telling her that all morning," says Khalil, "and she keeps saying she passed for a man for a decade and is pretty sure that means she does not in fact look nice just by putting on a dress."

"Well, I thought she was a good-looking man, too."

"A fact I appreciate," says Ismat. "How are things?"

"Lovely. The pharaoh'd like to meet you. - so would a lot of other people but we have more of a choice about them."

"...who-all is it?"

"I have five other brothers, four of them in town, and parents. And advisors and so on but all those can wait for the formal announcement."

"Well. I'll see how much meeting the one brother takes out of me, shall I. Bit intimidating."

"Security'll want to talk to you first. Under a truth spell. They'll ask about other illegal activity, secret lovers, so on."

"Oh, I've been squeaky clean apart from the one thing, didn't want anyone to have a reason to look into me."

"I trust you. They don't trust anyone but they won't take too long."

Ismat nods. "Itinerary such that I don't need to bring Khalil to chaperone?"

"Yes. I wasn't sure he'd want to meet the pharaoh."

"Aaaah," says Khalil solemnly.

"All right. You'll be all right by yourself? Your backup prompt's over there if you need to go to the neighbors -"

"I'll be fine, today's pretty good."

Ismat hugs him. And then she goes over to Merenre.

"Thank you," he says to Khalil. "For translating, yesterday."

And he takes her arm.

"You're welcome!" Khalil calls.

Ismat mutters under her breath but attempts to figure out how to correctly put her hand on his arm. "I have," she says, "no practice - not since I was twelve - I don't think I'm going to wander out after dark, I was generally very conscious of myself when I did that, but -"

"It's not really the most important thing to spend your time on, right, I expect it's only worth it for most women because their opportunity costs are really minimal - or to get married, but look, managed that anyway -"

"Not by aiming at it very effortfully, funnily enough. When we left my mother'd been making intimations at a neighbor who didn't come across as very choosy but she'd still tell me to do things because otherwise he'd be put off."

"If you've got a very small pool of prospects then you probably want low-variance strategies but if you've got a large one you probably want a high variance strategy, right, it's better to be someone's favorite than to be indistinguishable from a thousand other people. You see that anytime people are choosing the best of their options instead of satisficing - secretaries don't pursue high-variance secretarial strategies but adventurers sure do -"

"Well, I wasn't envisioning myself as having prospects at all, I was just going to die single, probably irritate Pharasma, and try to get lawfuller from there."

"We should thank your blackmailer."

"I've considered it. Send him a fruit basket, maybe. You have rescued me from my sins, friend, have a pineapple."

"We could coordinate its arrival so that it arrives along with the fine and penalty notice for blackmailing."