“I would be pretty surprised. It doesn’t usually work that way.”

"Oh." She looks at Cor. "Sorry, he's broken forever."

"I figured."

"Seems like jumping to conclusions a little," he mutters too quietly for anyone but Rirosseth and Mirelótë to hear him.

"This must all be real interesting for the people who know what's going on."

"Sorry, there's kind of a lot of it and it's all complicated and in half a dozen languages. - was that allowed, since she's not one of the pharaoh's wives -"

“Yeah, it’s only the people seated separately.”

"Do they... like eavesdropping? This just seems very awkward."

“Do people in your world like watching the theatre with their friends and then speculating about everything later?”

"Sure. But that's, like, scripted. Most days can't reasonably be this interesting."

“Oh, we don’t all eat together with people they can’t talk to most days.”

"Fair enough."

"I've met people who do that to their husbands, won't let them talk to people."

"It's not my decision, it's a custom. The best I can do is advertise it in advance so we get applicants who don't mind it, or think it's an advantage. Some people don't really like talking to most people anyway." He says this like it is a very mysterious preference.

"Applicants, is that how it works?"

"Yeah. They present themselves for an interview and if they might do they get extensively harassed by security for a while and then I can meet them. - in ancient Osirion that was not how it worked, but it is now."

"That must leave you with an interestingly filtered set of options."

"Honestly the upsetting thing is when they're not suited at all but they wanted it because they expect to be miserable in a marriage."

"...people try to marry you because they expect being married to make them miserable?"

"Well, I've got a lot of wives, right, so it can't be as often."

This takes her a minute.

"That's a matter of course, is it? They can't shop around for someone decent? Or not get married?"

"There is not a law that they have to get married and no one can force them but there are not very good ways for women to support themselves unmarried, and marriage is supposed to be good for them, and you don't have very good prospects of an afterlife if you're trying to do some deeply unusual thing."

"Why is marriage supposed to be good for them? Why are unusual things bad for the afterlife?"

"Marriage is good for men and women because it provides commitment and stability, and good for men in particular because it provides them with motivation towards decency and honor and personal growth, and good for women in particular because it provides them with motivation towards generosity and affection and obedience. The afterlife that is best for most people, of the achievable ones, is Axis and you have to be lawful to get into Axis and it's much much harder to be lawful when you're doing things that no one has designed laws for."

"I think I'm still confused."