"Yeah. Inconvenient, that."

"We're doing a lot of refuting rumors that Cheliax is going to invade, see -"

"No, no, I understand. Really.

"I'm just - weighing the cost of what I've offered and wondering again whether it's more than I actually have."

"I think probably your servants know how to keep a secret, I don't think my brother would've tolerated otherwise."

"Yeah, probably. I trust her for most purposes, but - I don't know if I trust anybody's discretion enough to not be worried about this, right now. Besides possibly Fazil's."

"I assume you don't care to threaten your servants but if you do care to you can, in case that wasn't clear."

"I think it would defeat most of the purpose of having her."

" - mmhmm. Okay. I - regret adding burdens to your plate. If they're too much and you change your mind I won't be angry."

Nodnod.

"Wanna try. At least until you can get out of bed again."

"Four days. Need to figure it out by then."

"Yeah.

"Optimistic about getting you out of bed in the next four days. Pessimistic about a lot of other things, but I think this is maybe within our capabilities."

"I think so. - I think I could maybe get out of bed right now if it wasn't for anything and it didn't mean anything. But a state dinner with the satrap of Qadira is the worst sort of thing to have to get out of bed for."

"I figured."

"He'll bring slaves. As a present. It's traditional. There was a lot of finagling about it when my brother ascended to the throne because he was planning to restrict slavery in Osirion but didn't have affordance to pick a fight like that."

Sigh. Nod.

"I think probably you shouldn't attend."

"I didn't think I'd be allowed to anyway."

"Oh, no, you're allowed, if you want. There's a table for my wives and we could pad it out with my brothers'."

"I dunno. I guess I've been low on scenery lately. But it does sound... depressing, in other ways."

"Stupid, evil hypocrites - and if we haven't deterred Cheliax from invading then probably the smartest thing to do is to un-declare independence and fold ourselves in with Qadira again, right, so we can't burn that bridge -"

- nod.

"I dunno if I can talk politics for hours. Or make very many - might be better at talking about this if we take a break and come back to it later."

"Okay." Patpat. "I wish - I wish I was good at all this and you didn't need to worry about it and I could sometimes complain about it but only in a way that was interesting to hear about, nothing you had to solve."

"That would definitely be better for Osirion. But I guess it just has us."

"Yeah."

Sigh.

"Still - scared that I don't know how to interact with you safely but I don't know if I know how to talk about it - constructively."