"No. For all the obvious reasons, and - well, also the fact that it is apparently the main reason I read as Evil initially, which was very inconvenient for a time. I think it is worth making other tradeoffs to avoid that, here." 

"I think I'd take learning a new magic system over that but if you find something better then that'd be cool."

"I understand."

The next bit is even harder to say. "Related to my - age - I am, well, not like most people. I will - probably not be the way you expect men to be. Also, I–" he's not quite embarrassed about this, that isn't really an emotion in his repertoire, but it's close, "I - had not had a romantic relationship with anyone in at least a thousand years, before Khemet who is himself - an unusual person. For a long time it had not seemed worth risking even to have close friends. So - I apologize if I am to start with not very good at being a husband. I think I can learn it in time." 

"What were you doing for a thousand years?"

“Trying to fight the gods. I spent the eight hundred or so years before that trying to - fix everything - but the gods of Velgarth were adamantly against change.” Slight sigh. “I was going to create my own god. But becoming a god did not work out for Aroden, in the end, so it was time to reconsider anyway.”

"Trying to fix, like...what things in particular." She is going to marry him either way because if he's wrong he'd better be married to someone who understands people and doesn't want to fix all the things about them.

"...This might take a while." 

He can tell her a little about Predain as it was when he was a child, which he remembers only vaguely, with its sky-high infant mortality and extremely dubious rule of law - and Tantara, where he studied as a young man, far from perfect but better off in many ways. (He does not, for now, mention Urtho, though he will have to, that part of his history is in the present now.) 

And then about the awful century after the Mage Wars, when magic itself was unreliable and the logistics of every civilization in the world relying on it had mostly collapsed. And then the long, long centuries after that, when the world had pieced itself together again but as dozens of frequently-warring kingdoms whose citizens lived mostly as subsistence farmers, and he tried over and over to improve crop yields and invent labour-saving and transport magic and build education systems and legal systems and banking and all the other subcomponents of civilization that would let people coordinate peacefully and - build better things for themselves. It seemed like all people really needed was that foundation to build upon, but it never worked, even when it should have, and eventually it seemed obvious that the relentless unlucky coincidences were the gods' work. 

(He has a little more sympathy for them now, he tells her, Abadar confirmed that among other things They wanted to avoid a repeat of the Cataclysm, but didn't understand its causes well enough to block it any more precisely.) 

She listens and doesn't say anything. It's not the kind of thing she has experience with, Cheliax was the richest country in the world even before Hell and richer under it, and the gods here don't act in that way though maybe they once did.

"You world has different problems," Leareth says quietly. "I am going to have to learn different solutions. Trusting others and working with them still does not come naturally, my world shaped me to be very paranoid - and what happened to me in the pharaoh's palace was not exactly a good reward for letting down my guard - but I am working on it." He smiles a little. "Sometimes when it feels very scary, I pray to Iomedae and then she hugs me." 

"She doesn't do that to me! - I guess I wouldn't find it very reassuring. 

Are there things that would help with trusting me? If that's something you want?"

"- I think it is something I would want. Aroden and Parmida thought it would be the main benefit of my having a wife. Honestly, you should perhaps talk to Parmida, since I am sure being married to Aroden gives her some insight into what I would need, maybe more than I have myself." He looks thoughtful. "The thing that helps me trust Aroden is that he is me, and with Khemet it is that he has absolute power and it is in his self-interest to prevent any harm from coming to me, since I am quite valuable to him - oh, and also he loves me, but I think my mind finds the first part easier to understand. And - I suppose I also trust Vanyel quite deeply. I am less sure why. I suppose...that he is Good, but also he is genuinely trying to win, and he is quite open-minded and already knows all of the worst things about me so will not betray me in anger if he learns of something I did." 

"Parmida is... Qadiran?" Ethnically she could be northern Garundi just as easily but it's a Kelish name.

"I believe she met him in Sothis, but before Osirion was separate from the Kelish Empire." 

"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...?"