"Yes. We're the only place I know of that has universal public schooling at all."

"Is that where you're getting most of your information on, like, divine power levels and long term conflict projections and the supreme importance of whatever the fuck Asmodeus does in his spare time and all that jazz?"

"I also talked to people at the Worldwound, but yes."

"And you think the church of Asmodeus is really committed to giving you an accurate view of the world, uh, why?"

" - I assume they're lying and you're lying and everybody's lying and checking whether everybody else's lies are persuasive enough only apparently Atonement runs off some level of conviction it is hard to access just from lectures. I am trying to believe the locally correct thing but it is pretty confusing even figuring out what it is and figuring out how to believe it is harder than that."

"Do you want me to go and get Fazil and come back with an Abadar symbol for a hat and say some stuff?"

"I know everyone's lying all the time and I can still pass a truth spell if I'm lying only the ways everyone's lying all the time and not the way where you - directly misrepresent something observable you just observed."

"...well, if you can be specific enough about in what ways you think everyone's lying all the time, I'll know what to say once I have a hat, won't I."

It is so profoundly unfair that she is going to die if she can't win this game and absolutely no one seems willing to acknowledge they're playing it.

"Lots of things happen. People pick which things they are going to talk about and which examples to bring up and what to imply and what to consider on topic, and they do that so they can continue having their ideology and not listen to other ones. Truth spells do not object to this at all, they're for things like, did you murder that man. People also lie about that but it's not - the thing that is going on in schools, and in paladin orders, and in holy books and at the Worldwound and when you are a prisoner and people are trying to convert you to their religions."

"I don't have a religion, I just think it'd be a terrible pity if you wound up having to marry Mahdi, neither of you would really like it. I guess I cannot claim to not be... exercising decisionmaking power over what I say... without losing my hat, but I'm not sure how you come by any of your beliefs if you have this outlook actually?"

"...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."