- stupid Gift. The most unfair one of all of them. "You...haven't done anything," she says, "but you're very powerful, and I'm Chelish."

Sigh. He sits down again, folds his hands over his knee. "I think I do not understand Cheliax very well, and - perhaps it is important that I understand better. Since..." he stares past her at the bookshelf, "since it seems relevant to - why you understand Ma'ar better than I do." 

"Yeah. Maybe. 

I'm scared to talk about it, because - because you see Ma'ar as broken, because he isn't innocent, and I am much much less innocent than him, and I am not the kind of person who starts wars, I am small and obedient and do what I'm told, but if the thing that scares you about Ma'ar is that he is friendless and doesn't trust people -"

Urtho blinks. Rubs a hand over his face. "I - is that the impression I have given you? I...do not wish, I did not mean, to make either of you feel less safe here in the Tower than you would otherwise, because you - come from places that are much worse... I am so sorry. I have been thinking, since we last spoke, and -" Another heavy sigh. "Ma'ar has been greatly wronged already, and it would be horrifically ironic if I go on to wrong him more because I see the effects it had on him. I - am trying to find a better way to think about it." 

Nod. "I - appreciate that." And don't really believe it, but, she believes he believes it, and maybe that's a way to make it true.

"Cheliax was ruled for the last ninety years by Asmodeus, with the intent to make it somewhere where everyone would be ruled Evil and sentenced to Hell where they could be his servants forever. Children learned in school that this was their duty and eventual fate, and that the thing that really mattered about them - the core of them that would be useful to Asmodeus - was endangered by the activity of dissidents and rebels who wanted to teach defiance and undermine the rule of law and make Cheliax weak and the souls of its people worthless. There were public executions, of such dissidents, after church every week, it wasn't exactly illegal to not go but it would certainly get you investigated, if you seemed to be doing something else at the time, or not looking, or not applauding. They read our minds, every month or so, asked us questions about our devotion to Asmodeus and to Cheliax, dragged people off if they thought something wrong.

I didn't know anyone powerful or important, because it'd be stupid to know anyone powerful and important, because you might learn something you weren't supposed to know and get killed, or they might want something you couldn't do and interpret your failure as disobedience, or they might - think you were pretty - in Cheliax if you tried to wield power and you didn't know exactly who your enemies were and have plans to crush them if you needed to you'd get killed, right away, by someone who was better at the game, so someone in power who acts like they don't know the game is making fun of you, they're telling a lie that you can't possibly be expected to believe, and someone who won't tell you when they'd get fed up and kill you is very dangerous because either they don't know or they want you to be scared all the time, and you won't be able to see it coming or steer yourself to safety. 

I know it's not like that here. I know that Leareth thought very highly of you and he's careful and he's not stupid and - and I know no one else here is careful, at all, and they're fine. But - but I can't trust that it'll work out all right, either, because last time there was a war. And I don't believe you mean me harm, but I have no real idea when you'd start, or what you'd consider it appropriate to do, if you did - I said I don't know anything about Mindhealers but I've met one, I know they can take you apart and put you back together in a more convenient shape -"

Urtho is making various shades of horrified face, and keeps looking like he wants to say something but is holding back, listening, being patient. 

He interrupts at the final bit, though. "I - what - I suppose I should not be surprised, Cheliax sounds like - that sort of place - but to do that would be a horrific and terribly unethical abuse of Mindhealing! Here it is not considered acceptable at all to do anything with Mindhealing without the patient's agreement - you did not know that, how could you have - I am sorry..." 

"You don't write the rules down anywhere where people can consult them without anyone knowing they had to consult them, I have no idea what they are."

"Hmm. I had not considered that I ought write the rules down like that - perhaps I should..." He rubs his eyes again. "Cheliax is the country that your Leareth conquered and took from Asmodeus, yes? I - begin to see what you mean, about why that needed to happen, I am not generally in favour of conquest but in a case like that -" 

"Yes. He was changing it so that people mostly don't go to Hell."

Nod. "I - am very sorry. That sounds like a terrible sort of place to grow up." He frowns. "You knew Leareth, though? You - were willing to be close to someone very powerful, in his case. How did he manage to earn your trust?" 

"The gods, in our world, can choose people to act as their servants in the Material World. They grant them power in exchange for - acting to strengthen Their church and advance Their aims. Shortly after I did an Atonement at the direction of the new regime, Iomedae, a Chelish woman who was a warrior-priest of Aroden's and became a god eight hundred years ago, chose me. I had been planning to lie low and not do anything dangerous or interesting but I thought it seemed good, to have a god choose you, and I tried to discretely do some research about what kind of god she was and it seemed like her church was doing good work in making the conquest go as gently as it could for people but I didn't get very far before she sent me - visions of Leareth, and very vague instructions I understood to oblige me to - get close to him, learn something about him.

I figured it had to be important. And I figured it would almost definitely get me killed, if I was caught, but - but he was going to be the King, if he was a danger to my country I had to know, and if he was in danger maybe I was supposed to stop it. So I got a job at the palace and spied on him, with a lot of magic items I'd custom-made to get away with it. It was very dangerous. It was easier to do very dangerous things at that point because I was lined up for Axis if I died and Axis is nice. I figured that if I found anything I'd take it to Aroden, and he might be lenient if it was very important. And if I got caught, well, lots of people get tortured to death and they're not any worse for the wear afterwards and I'm not unusually weak or something. 

I got caught. They were - very kind, and patient, I thought they were making fun of me - and once the situation was explained Aroden announced he was going to scold Iomedae for scaring me, and they were very oddly insistent that I was free to leave if I wanted to, and I agreed to stay while they explained, and Leareth explained that ...that he'd asked Her to find him a wife. Expecting that She'd, you know, introduce us, but gods don't work like that."

He makes such a face about the torture part.

“- So you are...married, to Leareth? Ma’ar’s adult self? That - must feel very odd for you.”

"Little bit. I'm not - planning to marry Ma'ar when he grows up, or anything, that seems like a terrible idea on every possible level. But - yes. We got married. I told him I needed a month to think about it and fled the country but - I thought about it, I looked at all of the things they were doing, I came back. Iomedae had said I could trust him. I don't think I possibly could have, without that."

“You trust Iomedae?”

"Yes. Well. I think She doesn't exist yet. But - in my timeline I trusted Her."

He nods, thoughtful. “It - sounds as though Leareth would also have been surprised by your expectation of being tortured to death? He - does not sound like a man who would default to doing that. To be honest I have difficulty imagining Ma’ar growing up to be - sadistic, in that way, for all his ruthlessness. It is not the dimension on which he seems troubled.”

"He's not. He was surprised, and - upset that he hadn't fought Asmodeus sooner - I tried explaining to him why it's strategic to torture spies to death, because I wasn't very safe if the situation was just that he wasn't familiar with the argument, but - actually he just cares a lot about people being okay -"

He nods, slowly.

“People like him - do frighten me. But he is not a man who commands an army, yet, he is a scared child, and - it would be deeply unfair of me, to cause him further hurts by fearing his future. I hope to do better but I am not sure how or what he needs. I do not think I understand men like him very well.”

"I think - the reason for most of the rules about being decent to people are that what matters isn't really the direct results, what matter is power, and who has more license to wield it, and who has more license to object, and he's very patient about learning that. But if you just say, that's bad, so we don't do it, then he doesn't have any idea why it's wrong and has to try to derive it himself."

"Is that what most of the rules are about? I...confess it is a framing on it that does not come easily to me." 

"What do you think of most of the rules as being about?"

"Hmm. Treating others fairly, the way one would want others to treat oneself... And not hurting people for one's own gain, of course. We cannot make kindness of heart a rule, it does not work like that, but - I hope that the students here will learn to be kind and moral people, and not merely people who do not break the law." 

"Hmmm, so about - improving the students, not improving the world? The sort of thing that in my world would be about making sure they get a nice afterlife?"

"- I suppose that might be the best way to translate it, yes. Obviously I do think it is part of a mage's duty, to give back to our world, but... I am not sure how to explain this. I - think it is dangerous, to feel responsibility for too much, on too large a scale. It - drives people to reach beyond their capacities, to act in areas where they lack the skill to do only good and not harm. It drives people to seek power, and very often they are not as responsible with it as they believe themselves to be, and - there is a slippery slope there, of doing terrible evils and rationalizing them as being for the greater good -"

"So, improving the students not the world, because if the students are motivated to try to improve the world, they'll end up making it worse, so the best thing that can be done for the world is directing ambition away from it?"