"That sounds difficult to navigate, your majesty."

"You know, you're not going to like it if I do decide to start doing my job, because I'll be a lot less patient with you wasting my time."

"I don't want to waste your time, your majesty."

"Then give me advice, don't talk about how difficult everything is."

"You are more important than your wife. Being reminded of this makes your wife sad. It seems like the diplomatic thing to do is to avoid reminding her. I do not think that she will end up confused about how important the pharaoh is if she's permitted to meet his eyes in private."

"I'm worried it won't just be this, and lots of things will make her sad."

"They probably will. There's a lot of grief to go around. Sometimes that'll be her burden to bear, and sometimes it'll be one you can take on for her."

"Does it make you sad? That I'm more important than you? When you followed all the rules and I followed none of them -"

"I owe you everything, your majesty. Osirion owes you everything; what you've bought us is beyond measure. If I were sad, it'd be an error."

"Okay."

"Mahdi can go back for your girls but I want you to stay here. He should take enough support that I don't have to hear about any problems."

"I understand, your majesty."

"Go find me a replacement."

He finds Verita when he returns to the temple. "I heard you were looking for me?"

"Mhmm. Korva told me to talk to you about some things, if you have time and stuff."

"Sure! Are you two settling in okay?"

Well, they're in the middle of the temple right now, so -

"Sorta. Could we - take a walk or something?"

"Sure. I don't really know my way around in here, though."

"I'm starting to! I've been working on it all day." 

And she can take them somewhere that she's pretty sure counts as public and visible to other people but which also doesn't have a lot of other people who're likely to overhear quiet conversations?

Sure.

"I don't actually a hundred percent know what I'm supposed to talk to you about but - Korva's scared."

Sigh. "That makes sense. I think it would have served everyone better if there'd been a spell to make the pharaoh lawful neutral, but there wasn't."

"Obviously that'd be better than this. But - he's not and she doesn't know which things're different yet."

Nod. 

"I think she should probably expect that a lot of things will be different."

"Yeah.

"We all had dinner last night and they barely said two words to each other. Something dumb about windows and then - nothing. And I don't know everything that's happened but she keeps looking like she's been captured by orcs or something."

"Having a pharaoh in Osirion is really important. A lot of countries could win a war with us if we didn't unambiguously have Abadar's backing and a strong head of state."