"It's more effort to make sure we're not alone. Though that's also - it's okay to be a bit less strict here -"

"Is it?"

"You were our prisoner, before. You can't -  there's lots of things it's lots more important to be careful about when someone has no recourse -"

"I guess Elizabeth would probably not put up with people being unwilling prisoners. I think. She doesn't seem to have any principled objections to slavery."

"I don't really know all what she would or wouldn't put up with but I'd be really surprised if she wouldn't send us home if you told her to."

"I dunno, I think you're a lot more important to her plans than I am."

"I am?"

"You know a lot more about the situation on Golarion than I do. You've been teaching her to fight. I mostly sit here wishing I could still offer sarcastic commentary."

"Connor is her slave and I am, as far as I can tell, here in case you turned out to have me or want me."

"I'm pretty sure people's reasons for being here are now more complex than the reasons they were initially summoned."

"I guess. I think having us here is a good idea, to be clear. I just - it seems really unlikely that Elizabeth considers us more important than you."

"I don't think there's any particular reason to believe that she values her other selves particularly more than other people. - I don't actually think there's any reason to believe that she values her actual self more than other people. As far as I can tell none of the other Imrainais do."

"Huh."

"I don't think you're being stupid for assuming that Elizabeth cares about what happens to me. I do think it's kind of stupid to insist that not being alone with me was serving some important purpose before. If I didn't trust Fazil and Mahdi to object to anything, then I wouldn't expect their presence to limit you, and if I didn't expect accusations without witnesses to be taken seriously, I should have expected that there was nothing stopping you from leaving the house with me and coming right back while Fazil and Mahdi were selling spells. It would have been only a tiny bit more difficult to take me somewhere else where they would definitely not have happened to walk in on you. The only thing that's ever kept us safe, this past month, is that the three of you are decent people, and that you don't intend to hurt us no matter how convenient circumstances make it for you. - plus or minus a copy of the Disciplines, I guess."

"I think - good people won't ever hurt anyone, and bad people don't need much of an opening, but I think there are other kinds of people who - will if they can rationalize it, or will if they don't have to cross any particular bright lines to do it -"

"I'm pretty sure most lines are just as bright regardless of whether there's anybody there to watch you cross them."

"So one of the things that's awful about the palace is - 

- and it's a lot better than it used to be, right, lots of it now is about maintaining the trappings of something that must've been awful in its original form -

- I never witnessed any violence. I think there was very little of it. But there were lots of reasons people might not - argue, or complain, or refuse - and so you could, actually, hurt people without ever noticing a line -"

"I don't know how things are in the palace, but I'll bet however it is is not mostly because people are alone a lot. 

"I don't think that being mindful of your power is stupid. I don't think that being conservative about touching people is stupid. Most of the stuff you said to the fairy about keeping slaves made sense. I think that not being alone with people, specifically, does absolutely nothing but keep up appearances, because you have to know where the lines are to follow them in public, you don't stop knowing where they are when nobody's looking. A person who genuinely didn't know what was appropriate would be just as concerning with other people watching as they were without. At least if they were trying to avoid doing anything they'd want privacy for."

"Maybe with prisoners that's true."

"Not with anyone else?"

"I mean I think another common situation being guarded against is reckless teenagers getting carried away and I think it works great for that."

"That's perfectly fair. But most of the population isn't reckless teenagers."

"Yeah. If I ran a country - which I super super shouldn't - I'd probably say grown adults could do what they wanted. Maybe it'd be fucked up somehow but maybe it'd go all right."

Nod.

"I don't think it matters how many houses there are."

"It really doesn't. I did say it was stupid."