"...well, you check which things you have to believe so people won't kill you, and then you backfill with other beliefs that make those ones work. - why do you think he wouldn't like it, I am not trying to give the impression I'll be hard to get along with."

"There have been worse marriages, I'm sure, but keeping you a safe distance from all the parenting decisions would be hard even if all the kids were some future second wife's. And also normally the extent to which Osirian wives are serfs in pretty earrings is disguised considerably by the wives agreeing that the earrings are terribly pretty because they grew up in Osirion themselves, and you are not actually doing that. What... do you mean you backfill with - what the heck is your brain even doing."

"It worked fine until something really weird happened!"

"But what actually is the thing that worked fine?"

"Identifying the beliefs that you have to have or people will kill you. Then figuring out what other things would need to be true so you can have the beliefs you're supposed to. Then - the worlds that aren't like that aren't worth dwelling on, since you'll just get killed if you can't figure things out, so you may as well focus your attention in the worlds where you're basically holding it together right and you believe the things you're supposed to. And then you do that."

"That's... not normal."

"I mindread about sixty people a week and it's very normal."

"Maybe it's normal in Cheliax."

"It does seem like people here are working with different concepts which is why their explanations don't work well for me. What would work well for me is a list of the beliefs I'm supposed to have, and then of some heresies so I know what amount of divergence is too much, and then some time and - usually other people are doing it too and that helps..."

"I... don't know enough to guess if that would actually work well enough for an Atonement."

"Me neither. Which is why I was looking for another plan - his worry is that I'll be bad at parenting? Why would you - I don't need to be allowed to interact with the rest of his life at all - and if he does want me to do that I can learn -" This is pathetic too but she's so tired.

"I can try the list of beliefs and heresies thing, just - I'm not sure that amounts to believing stuff as opposed to playing very elaborate pretend?"

"I don't know. I haven't really thought about it much before."

"If I go to Shazeun - drow country under Osirion - with Hagan pretending to be my slave because that's what's legible in Shazeun, then in front of people I'll boss him around and make him carry my stuff and whatnot, and he will in reality do what I tell him and carry the stuff, and if he suddenly broke character in the wrong place at the wrong time I might actually backhand him to try to salvage the illusion so we could both keep doing whatever we were doing, and - do you see the sense in which there is a meaningful difference between 'we're pretending so we don't get much attention' and 'actually, he's my slave for as long as we're down there and then I just set him free with very little ceremony when we hit surface'?"

"Uh, sort of? I think it matters - whether, if you suddenly changed your mind and decided to enslave him, you could."

"I guess I could in the middle of our shopping trip decide to rent an apartment there and move into it and not give him a minute to go 'what the fuck' without making it conspicuous to third parties but our friends would at some point come looking for him. But that's also true of slaves drow acquire through ordinary kidnapping, that someone may come looking for them."

" - it matters a lot how likely it is? And how - I don't know. If I'm sparring with a friend, that's pretend. If we go to some country where murdering each other in duels is legal, and we're sparring, that's pretend. But I don't know for sure it's pretend because he might at any moment decide it's real, and then it would be, his deciding would make it so. I think if someone else's deciding would make you a slave it's not entirely pretend anymore."

"So I guess it's kind of a spectrum of pretend and the thing you described sounded kinda too pretend. Presumably you have less-pretend beliefs about, like, what the word 'potato' means, even though you also have only everyone's say-so to go on there and a sufficient conspiracy could have fooled you, or... how many siblings you have, so you'd be genuinely surprised if your dad were hiding a second family with a bunch of extra brothers somewhere even if that's probably happened to somebody at least once and you wouldn't have said you were certain-sure your dad would never..."

"He has three acknowledged children? It wouldn't actually be surprising at all if there were others he has nothing to do with. A secret family would be surprising because I've lived with him and I know how he accounts for his time. I guess it wouldn't be surprising if it was recent. If I've directly observed things then reality is going to be consistent with what I directly observed, obviously counting that people might've been trying to trick me."

"Are there things you can think of that are consistent with reality but that would surprise you?"

"If ...Kyeo weren't gay that would surprise me. If Mahdi were that would surprise me. ...making predictions there is extra important, right, I think I try harder at it.

"How did you identify Kyeo as gay, it didn't sound like he confided this to you -"

"Mostly that he wasn't into me at all, not even halfway in the 'but for X she'd be my type' way. ...I know in principle some people just have different tastes but in practice people who are attracted to women are - evaluating me in a way that he wasn't."

"And you've honed your ability to tell whether people are into you because historically that's been relevant to you, and you get - feedback on it - yes?"

"Yes. And I read sixty peoples' minds every week."