Nod. "I'll get you the ink and paper."

"Thank you."

She can read a little more about elves, then.

When she has some paper she can write a letter to be delivered to the largest temple of Shelyn in Absalom. She requests a female cleric who speaks Taldane fluently and has extensive experience with marital counseling, and, if possible, some background working with abuse victims. They should send someone to the palace in Sothis as quickly as possible, where the specific problem can be explained to them.

"People'll be able to get this where it's going, we don't need an address - ?"

"If you know one it'll speed things up but otherwise we can send someone who will figure things out."

"Someone else'll figure it out faster than I will. Largest temple of Shelyn in Absalom. How do you think we go about getting someone from the temple of Erastil, send another letter - ?"

"I guess so?"

"Okay."

She writes a letter requesting the same thing from the temple of Erastil, minus a background with abuse victims because she doesn't actually have that problem and doesn't want to turn Osirians against her and the point of this request is just to have someone at the table who probably understands that forcing people to have sex with you is evil.

"No word from Fazil?"

"I can go check for mail."

There's a letter. 

Korva,

I hope you're doing well. 

I have told the pharaoh I think it's very unlikely we'll find a replacement. Most avenues of doing that were explored before he returned, since it wasn't known when or whether he would. Members of the royal family die young and refuse resurrection relatively rarely, and usually for reasons that are still applicable now. I think we could make do with a candidate of questionable legitimacy if they possessed impressive competence, or of questionable competence if they possessed indubitable legitimacy, but I expect Abadar would have let us know if either were available. Abadar is of course deeply grieved by the evils visited upon Osirion's royal family, and interested in providing whatever support is feasible, if there's some other avenue you think we should explore. I wish I had better news, of course.

I think the pharaoh's high regard for you competes with his desire not to make compromises that diminish his office or that are appealing because they maintain some pretense he doesn't believe in. His summary of your concerns about protocol suggests to me that he is very troubled by how best to navigate that. I think that it will do a lot of good for a lot of people for us to help him as best as we can.

If you or Verita need anything, I'd be delighted to try to help.

- Fazil

...well. She didn't really understand half of that second paragraph, but at least she can be sure that Hagan is being overly optimistic about how likely they are to find someone else without making them.

She gets out more paper.

Fazil,

Thank you for the honest assessment of the situation. I appreciate it enormously. I also want to thank you for whatever you said to the Pharaoh; he has agreed to compromise on protocol in private in ways that will hopefully be good for my regrettably fraying sanity.

If we can't expect another pharaoh from the outer planes, this leaves me with some fairly dire personal problems. I hesitate to discuss them because of their sensitive personal nature - I'd rather not give lots of people lots of information about the Pharaoh's marriage, and I've been told that my letters will be vetted for appropriateness - but if an heir is necessary then solving them is probably very important, and I don't know that I'm equipped to solve them alone.

When Hagan and I were first married, we discovered that I have some kind of problem that makes penetrative sex completely agonizing. We didn't know it before; I'd never been with anyone else. I'm not an idiot, I know some women hurt the first time, and I know that women typically need a lot more time building up to sex than men do, but I think it has to be a lot worse for me than for normal people. It stops every other emotion dead.

It was so obvious to him that he was hurting me that he would be the one to stop, when we tried. I never felt like I had to convince him of how horrible it was to earn the right to stop, because he was good, and wonderful, and cared about not hurting me. Obviously we both really wanted to solve this problem, and we've been experimenting with attempted solutions for the past three months, but nothing had worked. Ordinary magical healing doesn't touch it at all. I was worried he'd get tired of it, and he was frustrated, but never with me. He was so patient about it. I felt so grateful to have married someone who didn't regret his decision even once we knew there was something wrong with me, and who never felt like it was a reason to compromise on his promise to take care of me.

Since being exposed to the helm, this no longer holds. He has given me two weeks to find a solution. If I can't make substantive progress in two weeks, I have agreed to try his new plan. (His new plan is that I endure it without fixing the problem first. He's agreed to stop, once, if I ask, but I am supposed to do my best. My best is the effort that I employ when cultists are threatening my niece and I need to move over twenty meters of snow at the North Pole with a broken leg.) He says he thinks maybe if we try again it will make the problem go away. If it doesn't go away, we're going to talk about it again, but he's indicated that if I can't find a solution in a timely manner, he will force himself on me regardless of the cost.

On top of our existing problems, I keep getting panic attacks when he touches me. I get nauseous, or lose the ability to process language right, or have to focus all of my effort on not panicking or crying. This doesn't seem to concern him; he doesn't stop kissing me or ask if I'm all right, not until I ask him to, and afterwards he complains that I'm being unreasonable. Last night he accused me of not loving him, and then said that that was all right, that he didn't need me to love him. I objected, and it seemed to make some impression, but I don't know whether he believed me. Mostly I just - don't know how to go back to feeling safe, or like I should trust him, if most of the previous signals that he cares how I'm feeling aren't there anymore.

I've sent for some clerics of Erastil and Shelyn to talk to for counseling. Maybe they can help. I don't know. 

I don't even know what I expect you to do about any of this, really, but I don't know if I can solve it alone. I'm scared. I'm scared that I'm not safe. I'm scared of him hating me. I think most of all I'm scared that nothing will work, that he'll ignore my warnings, that I won't be able to stop him from breaking me, and he won't even realize how badly, and that someday he'll take the helmet off and realize what he's done, and he won't be able to get me back.

I wish I had better news.

- Korva Tallandria

She considers mentioning that she's scared that the pharaoh is reading panic responses as signals of approval or affection, but she can't think how to communicate it without also potentially communicating this to Hagan, and she doesn't really know whether the effects of that will be good or bad, so she leaves it out.

She folds the letter up and writes "To Fazil, Cleric of Abadar" on it. 

"Do you think... if I give it to my husband to give to Fazil then there's no question of the censors stopping it, right, even if it contains stuff they might not be entirely sure is unobjectionable?"

"That seems right to me, your husband can read it himself if he wants to."

"Teeeechnically he can't? But - presumably if it's in his possession he can ask someone to read it to him."

" - hmm?"

"He can't read. He's plenty educated, obviously, he speaks like seven languages, it's just - something about processing letters. Probably shouldn't be common knowledge, but - yeah."

- nod. "Well, I still wouldn't expect the censors to care about anything he's seen."

Nod. "Okay. I'll hold onto it then. It's - I think it's the right thing to do but I could see other people thinking that it was dubious."

"Well, it only really matters whether the pharaoh would."

"Yeah. I guess. Hopefully."

"Can I get you anything else?"

Sigh.

She needs to keep moving, needs to keep doing things, needs to not run out of work to throw herself into until there's a solution on the horizon.

"I need to learn Osirian."

"That does seem like a good idea."

"Any idea how I get started on that?"

"There're language tutors?"

"All right. It'd be good to find one to teach Osirian. Can we start that today, or are we going to need to wait until someone's free?"

"I think they're mostly pretty unoccupied right now, with all the kids dead. People aren't sure if your husband's going to cut staff or what."

" - yeah, I guess that makes sense. Uh. Do you - know where I'd go to find one?"

"I can ask one to come upstairs. Uh, the stairs are the cutoff between this part of the palace and the rest of it, and the rest has men in it, so mostly we call people upstairs when you want them."