Where the concept can be laid out. "I think it's a little legally awkward - like, does she need to be a slave on paper to be in the household without being married, or is there some intermediate category for, uh, captive fiancées -"

"Osirion has guardianship but an unrelated man can't be an unmarried woman's guardian."

"I can't really - release her into slavery."

"But you can kill her?"

"I am also not actively intending to kill her! It'd be different if we did need the handcuffs for something - we don't, yet -"

"But if you do it might be suddenly, right? - can he adopt her."

"There's not a mechanism other than guardianship -"

"If he was elsewise married then could he be her guardian, is it specifically an unmarried man who can't?"

"I don't know offhand."

"What's the law in Absalom, we can shop around for jurisdictions a bit and she can make me some pearls of power to make up for it."

"It's unmarried women, right, if we're letting her do magic she could Alter Self and I could marry her if we can get in and out of a temple of Nocticula without my great-aunt noticing and then you can still marry her later if desired because Nocticula's cool with divorce but I don't see how that helps anything."

"I don't think a man unrelated to the husband can be the guardian of a married woman either."

"Spellcaster exceptionalism doesn't help?"

"I'm not sure! She could get declared independent easily enough - this is not really a situation we're set up for -"

"Us either." Tiredly. "It has been constructive for the conversations about how hard it will be to fix Cheliax after we free it."

"I don't even know what you have to fix! I mean, there's lots of things you have to fix, but unless showing up to Asmodean church and executions and watching them is not just non-Good but also actively Evil I have no idea what's going on!"

"It might be the reporting people to be tortured to death for heresy? I'm hoping it's that. That and the active discouragement from doing things altruistically. But - I don't know. It doesn't quite add up. She might be lying to us about there not being anything worse though it admittedly doesn't seem like she has much reason to do that."

"I don't think there can be enough heretics for everybody to take even partial credit for one."

Isavel scowls at the wall. "They also - make the children beat each other, and hurt each other in sports..."

"Is making children beat each other worse than hitting them? I don't think hitting kids is understood to be damnably Evil."

"I don't know. One theory is that lots of things are a little Evil but most people also do some Good, just incidentally, so it's mostly a wash, and if you just blot out all the Good that doesn't get you Neutral it gets you Evil."

"I... guess I wouldn't be floored if that were the explanation."

"Anyway. If we find some legal framework that's not technically slavery you'll sign off?"

"I'd need to also be very very sure it's adequate for the security considerations involved, and I'd need to pray on it. But - yes."

"I nominate one of the Lawfuls to look through reams of Osirian law about it."