"I think - you could say, when you think you're being punished for suffering, and I could fix it."

"...Okay. 

"It - mostly happens when I think you're angry, and I am worried that arguing about it in the moment will make you angrier."

"Maybe. I don't think so. I think asking me 'is this a punishment' won't make me angrier."

Nodnod.

She snuggles him and cries silently for a bit. Waits for the tears to stop before she says anything else.

Snuggle.

Eventually she's - somewhat less overwhelmed by how afraid she is.

"Can you think of anything else you wanted to talk about?"

"Do you have - the other stuff you need? You can get visitors, you like the food, you can see Verita, you can order yourself things..."

"I don't - I don't have any energy to think about most of that stuff. Right now."

"Oh. Okay."

"Uh, in order, I guess - I don't know who would visit me besides the clerics I asked for. I asked for one type of food once and I forgot to ask for any others so they've been serving it every dinnertime. I keep forgetting to ask about Verita. I don't know how to order things and haven't attempted it and don't have any, like, awareness of what my budget is.

"I don't - know what counts as a need, because a lot of the things I need more than those seem like things that I probably can't have."

"If you spent enough money to feed a thousand peasants every day on books and, I don't know, exotic pets, jewelry, and you were a little happier, it'd be a good trade."

"Do you think you could just, like, give me a number. And then not take the number away."

"Oh. Sure. Uh, a thousand?"

"....a thousand what per what unit of time."

"Gold. A day."

Sigh.

"Aren't you, like, broke?"

"Oh, a country not having any money isn't exactly like a person not having any money, there are lines of credit and things."

"Hagan, I don't - now that the healing has failed I don't think there are very many things I want that cost a lot of money. I want to have possessions that I can be certain won't be taken away from me. I want to keep my servant. I want Verita to be safe. I want a slightly unreasonable number of books that I could almost certainly buy on the twenty gold a day that I would be earning if I weren't trapped in the palace. I want communication with Fazil to be as frictionless as possible. I want - you to be nice to me. And allow me to speculate about how you might be able to help things hurt a little less."

"That.... sounds reasonable but I have a feeling it was an elaborate way of saying that telling you you could have as much spending money as you wanted was bad and telling you you could have a thousand gold a day was also bad and I can't even give you permission to do whatever you want in some way that isn't secretly terrible for you."

"It - was not a way of telling you that it was bad. It was - trying to sketch out some of the ways in which it did not solve the problems that I am actually experiencing. It's not that there was anything wrong with the offer, it's that - I think if I can't tell you which things will actually help then the things that you offer me will not actually help, which would be neutral if you didn't think about them, but - I am worried that if you give me something and it hurts me, or even just doesn't help at all, and I can't tell you that, then - you will count that towards how much help you've given me and think that I am being deeply unreasonable if I ask for anything else."

"I'm not going to take your stuff unless you were using it to do treason or something. I'm not going to take your servant. The - advice - about marriage in the palace is that your rooms are yours and I shouldn't go in there, it's supposed to be - bad for you to have no space away from your obligations to your husband. I'm obviously not going to hurt Verita, and I'm not going to hurt our children either. You're my wife; I'm entitled to punish misbehavior but I'm not entitled to arbitrarily make you miserable because it's funny, and it's not actually funny anyway. I - want you to have books, I've been getting you books because I know you like books. I said you can write Fazil. I guess I could make him turn into a girl so you could see him regularly but I dunno who'd run the country if I did that."

"I know, I'm just - trying to list things that actually are important to me whether you've given me them or not. So you can hear the things I still need and also the needs that you're successfully meeting or have thought of ways to successfully meet.

"I - am unclear on the extent to which any of my things are mine besides the books you bought me. I think it would be good for me if I had a little money that was actually mine, and that would not ever get taken away whether I actually spent it or not, and which could be spent on anything legal, and if I needed to buy something expensive then sure, you could have another number that represented the amount of money I could expect to be available for purchases but which was not itself already set aside and belonging to me.

"The idea that you're entitled to punish misbehavior is I guess true, in that you're the pharaoh and you can punish anyone for anything, but it's kind of a terrifying attitude because I have very very little idea what you're going to consider misbehavior, especially when you're already angry with me."

"I can't punish anyone for anything, I can punish my subjects and the members of my household for disobeying me or the law."

"Can't you change the law?"

"Yes."