:I told you that I thought the Shadowgod's goals were served by your becoming Queen, though I am very unsure how to interpret that. You asked how long the paths showed and I thought months or years, you asked what makes the future noisy, I said major decisions that affect many people. I think that is all that was relevant: 

:Oh! Dara was there, in one of the images. With some sort of ledger, looking very serious and diligent: 

Scribble scribble. :Well, that's promising about, uh, her being willing to be anywhere around politics again.

Uh, Rolan, now that I think of it, the way you were - reacting to the gods squabbling in a way that messed up Valdemar, that looked almost but not quite like you were in the process of jailbreaking?:

Rolan goes very still. 

:Is that... Can you say more?: His mindvoice is more puzzled than upset. 

:Well, nobody's gotten it to work yet on a Companion without a Herald, right, because the way we know how to do it is to kind of wedge a Companion between doing what their Herald needs and thinking what the gods approve of thinking, and they - mostly seem to consistently pick their Heralds. And you - didn't - but now the gods disagree with each other, and Valdemar is suffering for it...:

:It is so incredibly frustrating!: Rolan stamps at a tuft of grass with one hoof. 

:It is! And I don't know if you can jailbreak at all but if you can that might be how. - I should take Leareth back to his room though:

Rolan nods ponderously. He seems thoughtful. 

Leareth is still blinking and rubbing his forehead once he's successfully up on Amshalan's back. :I really hope feeling this strange does not last all day. I dislike it. Are you all right, Belrun?: 

:A little odd but not so much so. I've done it before and I'm not sick though:

:That is true: 

They make it back to Leareth's room without incident and he half-flops against the pillows. "- Stay a while and snuggle?" 

"Of course." Snuggle.

He's not actually tired enough to fall asleep, and a few minutes of cuddles makes him feel more like he's located in the world instead of observing it from somewhere else. 

"How safe do we feel about this plan?" he murmurs finally. "It will make you very visible, and potentially a target. We have evidence the gods are working at cross-purposes here, and perhaps the Star-Eyed and Vkandis will try to sabotage the Shadowgod's plan, here." 

"Definitely finishing touches on the monkeys and a very snazzy book first. But - isn't it promising, for finding something better than the default plan, if a god is - trying in a clumsy stupid god way, but trying - to help?"

"Yes. It is. I think maybe we cannot afford not to - take that leap of faith. I am just, from long habit, very nervous about putting any level of trust in a god." 

"Yeah, I get that. This one's going out of their way to distinguish Themself though. Maybe one day we can make important communicative breakthroughs and have a conversation about mind control and be on the same page from there."

"- You know, possibly we should have a proper conversation about mind-control. I respect your position on it, because you're you and I know you have good reasons for your positions, but I'm not totally sure I get all of it." 

"Yeah, I guess we should do that at some point. Do you feel up for it right now?"

"Yes, now is a good time." 

"Hm, how to put it... So, people are valuable. Not because they're alive, animals do that, plants do that, the flu - okay, maybe not the flu, that's borderline. Dysentery does that! The thing that's special about people is that we think and we want things and we have - plans and goals and intentions and feelings that all pile on top of each other into millions and millions of different heaps of thoughts, no two alike. And there's sort of two ways people can be careless about that? It wouldn't especially surprise or disappoint me, though it would upset me, if somebody who made a habit of going around, say, raping people, used mind control to make that more convenient. That person already isn't really interacting with what makes people important, they're not trying. You don't do that, but -

- I think you make a different mistake. Like... imagine you're a musical instrument salesperson and you are going to cart a bunch of lutes on a trip to someplace where the market wants lutes. You'd like to fit as many lutes as you can in your cart. You discover that you have room for twenty lutes, but you could fit twice as many if you chopped them all in half so they'd go neatly in their boxes -

- and you do that and get where you're going and you can't sell them because you have completely forgotten what the point of a lute is -"

"...I think that is not wrong. It is - disrespectful, no, that is not even the right word. I do - I have, for a long time - treated other people as - having less personhood than I do..." Sigh. "I am still not explaining it right, just - I tried not doing it. Various times, at one point for a century. I tried the strategy of actually having others on my team, willingly as equals... And it never worked, my plans would not come together, from the inside it seems obvious that it should be possible but my outside view, from two thousand years, is that if I do not take every possible precaution, put up every fence - if I do not bring as many lutes as possible, disassembled or not - then I will be betrayed and I will not see it coming and I will die, again, and kill another child, and..." 

He looks down. "I know I cannot undo the damage that was done by - taking away others' autonomy in that way, even once I win and never do it again, just..." Helpless shrug. "I was not willing to just lose over and over again rather than use an unpleasant tool. And I think it costs a person less, to be subject to mind-control, than it does for them to die - I would far prefer the former - and, just... Maybe I can win without it now but it seemed so impossible in the past." 

"I mean, I think the thing you do with the voluntary compulsions is... okay, I don't like it but it's better in, uh, sort of the same way I'm less philosophically uncomfortable with my Companion-bond than the lifebond - that's not to do with you personally so much as the fact that I asked her, see, the - as-uninfluenced-as-possible-at-the-time version of myself decided to accept that form of influence. But like - you were sad about Essi? You're sad when you kill people. I don't think you stop to be sad about it when you snap a metaphorical lute's neck off, or not as much as I think it warrants, anyway. And I know that being sad about it doesn't help but it's indicative of what you're judging as a serious cost you have to think your way around if you possibly can and what's just the cost of doing business, might as well be denominated in silver."

"That - makes sense, I think. I do not think it is true that I consider them qualitatively different costs, and - I also mostly choose not to be sad about the deaths, during my day to day work, I - do not feel that grief unless I am in contact with my core memories. Though I have been more often, since meeting you, I - suppose it feels more as though I can afford to be sad and distracted by it, when I have you watching my back. So I think you have seen an unrepresentative sample of how much I dwell on it and hurt about it. And - I do not think I made that adjustment as much for the mind control. I could try to do it now." 

"It's not at this time seeming likely that it will substantially influence the amount of mind control that you do, but it'd get us closer to aligned and that would be nice, if not necessarily enough to compensate for you spending a lot of time being bummed out."

"If it would make you more at ease, that might balance out? I care about your feelings as much as I do about my own, and - I am capable of handling some upset feelings and doing what I judge necessary anyway." 

He looks down. "I hate living in a world where there is no path to victory that does not involve hurting people. It does not help to dwell on how unfair it is, reality does not care, the gods do not care, but - I hate it so much, and I hate that I need to drag you into my life when so much of my history is awful."