"Oh good," Merenre says. "In that case I think there are - no further obstacles, aside from the time for the jewelry and the wedding planning."

"Is royal wedding planning very elaborate?" wonders Ismat. "Or are there so many traditions and obligations that there's nothing to choose?"

"Mostly the latter, we have virtually no control over the venue or invite list, or who officiates. None at all on the vows. We can pick the color scheme and the food."

"No invitation discretion? The three friends I have left will be devastated. Red and gold."

"Oh, we can squeeze more people in, we just can't leave anybody off. Do you want your family?"

"Khalil. - And a few of my more decent cousins and the nice aunt if you can invite her without the corresponding uncle, maybe, if they'd like to come."

He writes this down.

She has names. Khalil suggests an additional cousin and Ismat nods.

"And for setting up the household, you can pick your servants as long as security approves them, and you can pick furnishings for your private rooms."

"Does one put out a job ad or is there some particular process?"

"I don't pick mine, there's a process they normally get hired through. I guess you could talk to some of the results of that process and just pick from among those unless they're all terrible or something."

"I'll give that a go. There's a neighbor I might want to take on for Khalil."

"Security'll just be the same nonsense it was for you, mostly, maybe a few differences in the specific questions. If the neighbor's up for it, it shouldn't be any trouble."

"I assume they won't care who he's been sleeping with."

"I'd expect not."

"Very sweet boy, came over and talked Khalil through making me dinner on my birthday."

"We'd be happy to have him. It'll probably be good for you to have some familiar people around, too. So it's not too isolating."

"Can Rabab get screened so she can go in and out, run things on-site for me?"

"I think that's slightly more trouble but not that much so."

"I won't need her by in person every day, much of it can probably be by correspondence."

"They'll mostly want to make sure no one can commandeer her to smuggle things in." He sighs. "It adds so much friction - I have pointed out that routine resurrections would be cheaper than all the costs incurred in preventing assassination attempts but people feel that it'd be bad for national stability if there were a lot of assassinations even if nearly all of them were pointless."

"Were you pricing in emotional distress? I'd much sooner not die even for a few minutes."

"It wouldn't especially bother me. Just a plane shift, right? - I guess I haven't tried it."

"People come back rather frazzled, I hear, when their insurance kicks in, even more than you'd think from having been assaulted which is frazzling on its own. Maybe the pricier kind is a different matter."

"The guards seem all right but I suppose I don't know what they were like before. Anyway, the security people have thoroughly won this fight and they'll give your people whatever screening and then it should be fine."