" - I don't think I followed half of that but the other half sounded like if you wanted to do it with our magic you'd use Quest, and Break Enchantment doesn't work on Quest. Remove Curse would, with a caster level of...nineteen, there's one of those in the country and she's not here right now. He'd be reading evil and he'd go to Hell but maybe he could do enough to balance it out."

"There are numbered levels? - sorry, not important."

"So it is not in fact convenient for you to establish the thing."

"Not remotely. Or, we can still get someone in here to cast Break Enchantment but if I were hypothesizing - whatever it is you're hypothesizing - I wouldn't be very convinced by that."

"I'm hypothesizing that the correspondence means I need to be way more paranoid than I was last time I met a Maitimo."

"We were dating before he was the pharaoh, if that helps any."

"Not in the least."

"Okay. Is there someone you want here instead?"

"Nah, you're pretty much it for people likely to be predictive counterparts who I'd want around."

"Fine. Uh, Mirelótê could conceivably talk to his wives, who are too numerous for him to be using Quest to manage, but maybe there's not much to be gained on this front until you all know more about how local magic works."

"I'm... not especially worried about his wives? Depending on why he has wives?"

"Mostly because there's not many people he's allowed to actually properly talk with without a lot of formalities and guards present. Also he's supposed to have heirs but he hasn't gotten around to that yet."

"Yeah I don't think I'd be reassured by his wives having a clean bill of mental health especially if, say, the reason Mirelótë has to be the one to talk to them is because there are lots of limits on who's allowed to talk to them so even if this one has more limits on managing public opinion that isn't an avenue he frets about."

He frowns. "Then I don't think I have any ideas, assuming it would not do any good to explain why I love my husband."

"They're very charming."

He sighs. 

       Someone brings refreshments and someone who can cast Break Enchantment. "Do you think you were affected by a spell, your grace?"

"No. Can someone prepare a limited Wish tomorrow, though?"

       "The pharaoh can authorize -."

"No. Out of my allowance. It is - important to the customs of these people."

       "Of course, your grace."

"Thanks. Assuming this one's different or you're in the honeymoon period or whatever I apologize for wasting your time."

"It's easily worth the spell to put you more at ease. I'm sorry you met someone who was - like that."

"Thanks."

"Were you also -"

"...you wanna know, sure, why not. He backed off once I knew what was going on and kinda implicitly dumped him, he even let me deoath Findekáno so I'd turn him into a backup mage, things were - stable - till I deoathed one of his random soldiers who asked me to. She got away clean and I did not, he thought that seemed like a great excuse for it to be rape time and judged that I wouldn't refuse to kill Melkor over it, which, well, I didn't, good for him, but he swore he'd let me go after I'd done it. There was then a misunderstanding, once I did. Slight assassination ensued. Hadn't wanted to - hurt anybody till there wasn't a clear end in sight, see -"

"Were you in a safe situation, when you came here -"

"Me and Findekáno moved to the south continent on Arda and were helping with evacuating my entire planet there so pretty much."

Nod.

"Stop laughing," he snaps at Anaander.