"I don't know what you'd consider a good reason."

"Uh, if she's a slave, if she's disallowed from doing anything interesting with her life on account of her gender, if there are some enormous solvable social problems you're not allowing her to solve..."

"It is hard for women to do things. Ismat managed."

"I pretended to be a man for ten years. I'm not sure that counts."

"It'd depend on her parents."

"Have you considered that it'd be more economically efficient if -"

"Sell us birth control."

"Gladly."

"I'm trying to think who else you might have. Michael's old girlfriends from school?"

"I don't really keep track of his girls but maybe."

"The you has a ton of wives but we're not sure if I'm any of them."

"Huh."

"It's expected of the pharaoh, I don't think he has an unusual appetite for wives or anything."

"Sounds kind of stressful. I guess you could auction it."

"Doesn't work," he says ruefully.

"Why not?"

"Unmarried women very rarely control much wealth in their own right so all the winners would be people whose wealthy parents wanted them to be my wife, and this isn't very strongly associated with themselves having any desirable traits. I wouldn't have gotten Ismat and I don't think I'd have gotten anyone who was even particularly like her."

"I sent my blackmailer a fruit basket."

"I asked her out when I thought she was a boy, too," he says fondly. 

"Huh. I'm not attracted to men."

"Not especially but maybe if he was really something."

"Well, he was Ismat."

"And a good thing too, my other idea was fleeing the country."

"How would that have helped?"

"I could have gotten my money out and set up on a continent that lets women do things a bit more. They mostly use this ability to kill babies but I have it on reasonable authority it's also usable in business."