"They do marriage differently there. I don't know how important an ingredient that is. I should definitely talk to her."

Leareth nods his agreement. "I am not sure. He was not Kelish and - I do not think their marriage now much resembles how Osirion treats women, Aroden seems just as displeased by Osirion's norms around that as I am." 

Nod. "I am not you, I don't have and cannot easily obtain absolute power, it is obviously to my advantage to keep you safe, and I guess I don't know all of your history but I'd be pretty surprised if I felt like turning on you about any of it? One of my friends went to a school where, for exams, they had to practice deadly necromancy spells on crippled children that the government had decided to stop funding an orphanage for."

"I am sorry. What is that saying they had in Nirvana, I am trying to remember... The people of your country will have so much to heal from." He shakes his head. "I know it hurts very badly for Aroden, that it took him so long, and that perhaps he could have done it faster if he had been more willing to make a leap of faith and place trust in some of his former allies, like Iomedae. He was betrayed by an ally among the gods, see, but did not know which god, and so avoided all of them until after the war. Anyway, I - do think you are less likely than most to be shocked by it. If you disagree that a tradeoff I chose was worth the cost, then, well, I think that is part of what I want - someone who will help me see when I am underweighting costs because I am not the right shape to fully see them." 

 - nod.

"I think that gives me a sense of what you, uh, want from a wife as an advisor? Do you, uh, also want a lover or is that covered with the pharaoh of Osirion." It's a perfectly reasonable question but came out a little differently than she'd meant it to.

"Is that going to bother you? I am sorry, it had not occurred to me at all but maybe it ought have." When he actually thinks about it, he can guess that a lot of women would be jealous. "Hmm. I would not have sought out a lover just for that, I think, but - I think that I could come to love you, you are very impressive, and - that once I felt close to you in that way I would want that kind of intimacy. But this is an area where I do not feel I know myself very well." It's a weird feeling. 

"I don't think it'll bother me - in itself? But being married to someone who wants you and being married to someone who doesn't are really different things and it would be useful to have - I mean, if you don't know then you don't know." It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that'd be hard to know but he did say he was going to be unlike most men.

"I will think about it." Leareth is now wondering if it's the sort of thing Khemet could just tell him, using his ability to sense intent that he claims isn't magical but really seems like it is. "If it is important to you, then it would be important to me." 

"I don't know if it's important to me, I'd have to think about it -

- hmm, no, I think the problem is - if I get to say that two things are important to me and I'd like you to work on making them happen it'd be really stupid to spend one of them on this. And if you have to work on making it happen then that's probably not even the thing that'd be important to me anyway? But it's not - I do want to marry you regardless of how you feel about me as a person, it seems like it'd still be a good idea."

"I definitely - approve of you, as a person?" Leareth isn't sure what the rights words are to use, here. "I was hopeful you would come back and very pleased that you did. I just do not have very much practice linking that to being lovers with someone, in Velgarth it was - mostly a distraction. But Khemet seems to think I am very lonely and need more intimacy with people, and he is generally right about that sort of thing." 

"He's got to have some kind of magic item for it and just be pretending it's instinct," she mutters. "Uh, anyway I think that changes the character of the rest of the things I was unsure about and I don't think I have more questions right now. Did you have some?"

"What would you have wanted to do with your life otherwise, if this had not happened? Imagine Cheliax had still been conquered by Aroden, but Iomedae had not chosen you or tried to send you visions of me. What would your ambitions have been - what is interesting to you...?" 

"Figured I'd keep my head down. Maybe retrain into wondrous items from weapons so it wasn't socially conspicuous that I'd been working for the army before the regime change. I'm good at - stacking enchantments so they don't have interference with each other - there's lots of money in that. Figured I'd just make small stuff until the local government situation was stable enough it was clear who to bribe - I'd have done it legally, discounts for favored customers and so on - and then I could make bigger stuff once important people were invested in having me around. Probably not get married because it - felt like it'd split my attention too much, trying to do interesting work and not attract attention and acquire insulation against someone finding me inconvenient and keep a husband happy and manage a household staff."

It's not surprising, anymore, but it still aches a little. "I am sorry you - felt the need to prepare for a future that was still so dangerous. I hope our Cheliax will be better than that for its citizens. And - making that true is a large part of what I would wish to do, with you. Parmida thought that having a Chelish wife would mean I could be much more abreast of what people were afraid of but would not say so to me directly." 

"It's - hard to be convincingly better, right. If people are all being cautious because they assume if they weren't they would die, and they don't die, they're going to be slow to decide they should be less cautious. It's a bit better than that because you hear of incautious relatives or acquaintances who came out of it all right, but, you know, maybe they knew the right person, maybe they got lucky. I wouldn't want anyone to hear about me and decide it was probably safe enough to be a spy."

"Honestly it would not usually be safe to be a spy. There are scenarios in which Aroden might in fact have had a spy killed, though he would strongly prefer not to do so if they might go to an evil afterlife, we are still figuring out our policies in such cases. And there is no scenario where he would have anyone tortured to death, neither of us thinks that particularly results in aligned incentives given what we are aiming for." Sigh. "But - it makes sense it will be slow for people to update. They are being quite rational given their information." 

Nod. "And lots of things governments do they do in secret, so it's even harder for people to believe they are no longer done."

"That makes sense." He looks at her, a little hesitantly. "Do you - like me, as a person? Separate from thinking that I have resources and power, or could give you a decent life." 

"Honestly it's - a little bit hard to evaluate you as a person at all? You are a version of Aroden from another world, and Aroden's - mostly a legend, really, even when you talk to him in person he says things like how he's going to go yell at Iomedae, and then She shows up - and you are two thousand years old and Abadar's fighting the Star-Eyed over you and it took the two of you two days to conquer the most powerful country in the world out of the grip of Hell itself. But you're - you're trying to make things better, here, and that's really important, and you're competent in a way that is impressive, and you aren't cruel even when no one would care at all, and - you look at me in a way that feels nice though I am trying to keep in mind the possibility I'm reading way too much into it. I can give myself a decent life, I wouldn't marry someone for that."

"I am glad. You do seem like - someone who could be self-sufficient and just fine on your own, I appreciate that about you. Although - it would likely mean being pulled into the kind of surreal life where sometimes gods fight over your husband." 

"I was going to keep my head down because it'd be risky not to, and there wasn't - anything on the table worth taking risks with my life for? I could run a magic shop and insulate myself from trouble and then invent some cool new stuff, teach some apprentices, or I could try to set my sights higher and - what? Be a court wizard? The life expectancy is atrocious and I wouldn't expect Aroden to need one anyway, he can do everything I can do and still have eighty percent of his spells left over. I don't want my life to be boring, I just - wasn't going to trade my life for its final moments being interesting. Until it seemed like it might actually make a difference."

"You thought that you were risking being tortured to death, when you came to spy on me, and - you did it anyway." 

"I figured Iomedae wouldn't ask if it wasn't really important. And if - if we were going to lose Cheliax again, just as soon as we'd found it - 

- and I knew he didn't like to let Asmodeus have people -"

"...I am finding myself wanting to offer you a hug but I am not sure you would actually like that." 

"I'd like a hug." She's not the one who is unsure about whether she would have any interest in being lovers.