"No, go ahead, if that's all," he says, with a welcoming/inviting wave of his hand. "Sometimes having a long time to think about something just means having a long time to get used to repeating all your mistakes."

"Well—suppose you wanted raising the dead to be something available to most people without you having to do it yourself," she says. "Which I'm not sure you do, but if you did. You could find—or have someone find for you—likely-looking children, sensible ones who seemed like they might make it through, and—is it Life that does it? Death? Both? I bet it's both, if it's not everything—and have them try the self-dedication, and raise the ones that fail, so it's not such a cost to them to try. And then once you have a few they can help with the rest, and soon there's enough of them to take the burden off your hands entirely."

"...huh," he says, impressed. "I could do that. I think the only obvious reason not to is that right now the only way I have of keeping a lid on people who make it through a long self-dedication and come out looking like trouble is to kill them, and if there were hundreds of people out there who could bring them back to life, somebody'd try it eventually and then I'd have trouble on my hands."

"Is this a problem that could be solved with the law of the empire?" she wonders. "Making it illegal won't stop people from bringing back trouble, but—then instead of saying 'don't do that' and murdering them too, you say 'you knew what you were getting into' and execute them, and then anyone who brings them back is in the same boat and knows it, and... I don't know, it's just a thought."

"It's a good thought," he says. "I might not try it, but I'll keep it in mind in case I ever want to."

"Why not try it?" she wonders. "—sorry, that was rude."

"Don't worry about it," he says.

"Well, for one thing I'd have to find room for all those people, but," he gestures at the little flying island he made for this conversation, "that's not so hard. The harder part is that anyone who can raise the dead can also make themselves... maybe not quite as impossible to kill as I am, but at least very, very difficult. So I can't necessarily just execute them, and I can hurt them a lot but that doesn't, actually, stop them from having power, it just gives them more reason to be angry with me. People who have power and are angry with me cause a lot of trouble—I can't remember if this made it into the history books, but that's how we lost the old capital. Someone tried to kill me, it didn't work, he decided the answer was to try harder, and most of the city was gone by the time I finally took him down. I guess with a few dozen people around to share the work of bringing them all back, that's less of a problem, but I still don't like it."

She looks thoughtful, shifts as though about to speak, hesitates—

He waits.

"...you won't mind if I'm rude again, will you?"

"Go right ahead. I actively value people who are willing to be rude to me."

She smiles slightly. "Well, if you'll excuse me for saying so, it seems very strange for you to be so concerned with the lives of your people given what you do to some of them."

"Yeah, I guess it does," he agrees. "But here I am, feeling that way. I like my empire. I want its people to be happy and healthy and prosperous and not have to fear sudden death by careless rebel. Might even be nice if they didn't have to fear death at all, though I'm still not sure I can pull that off—where are you going to get that many volunteers? And it's an unfortunate truth that the kind of person who'd take Life and Death to help bring the dead back to life and the kind of person who'd blow up a city trying to get to me are all too often the same kind."

"...if you'll excuse me for saying so," she says, "if you care so much about the health and happiness of your subjects, why keep torturing them, especially when people are blowing up cities trying to stop you?"

He shrugs. "I do care, but I care about other things more."

She's hesitating again.

"Yes?"

A little nervously, she shakes her head.

"...you still don't have to say, but—I'd like to be someone you don't have to be afraid to say things to. If I scare you out of speaking your mind that's a loss for me."

"That's good of you to say, but—forgive me—cold comfort if I tell you something you don't like hearing and you toss me off the edge of the island about it."

"As much Sea as you've got, would that even hurt?" he wonders, smiling, then shakes his head. "No, no, I know what you mean. But—that's the thing, you see. If you tell me something I don't like hearing because you trusted that you'd survive saying it, then... I have something valuable, there. I have someone who's willing to speak frankly to me, and I have—whatever it was about me that led them to expect that. And if I kill you I lose both. If I kill you I'm saying that whatever you just told me, I hated hearing it so much that I'm willing to destroy, not just you as a person who's willing to talk to me, but my right to claim that I'm safe to talk to. And there's very little that's worth that. Honestly, if you told me you were thinking of going home and organizing a rebellion, I'd be thrilled because maybe I could have a reasonable conversation with you about why you wanted that and whether I could address your concerns some other way."

"Well, I'm not thinking of going home and organizing a rebellion," she says, half-smiling. "Sorry to disappoint. Although if I were, I don't really think you could address my concerns that easily."

"That's fair. Just—I really do want to be safe to talk to."

"Where does the throwing people off roofs fit into this?" she wonders.

"I lose my temper sometimes. Less often than I used to. And—it would be very fair to not want to be thrown off the edge of the island even if I apologized afterward, but for what it's worth, I would apologize. Doing something like that after making so much noise about how safe it is to tell me things would be stupid and impulsive and short-sighted, and sometimes I am stupid and impulsive and short-sighted, but that doesn't mean I like to be."