"Huh. That makes sense - I think maybe that's a problem in Predain, that all the King's guards are - kind of horrible people, because of what things they're hired for, I don't know if it's exactly the same but it seemed related, and putting compulsions on them not to rape people isn't a good solution, they can just find other ways to be horrible if they're the sort of person who thinks it's fun..." Shrug. "Torturing people mostly seems stupid to me, and - even if it'd sometimes help a little bit, also it hurts people which is - the whole thing I want to stop... I don't know if I'd never ever do it but I'm almost sure I wouldn't." 

She nods. "I think you are very unlikely to run into situations where it will help you. - and also, because you are young and still learning how to correct for your uncertainty and see all the distant consequences of your choices, I think it is better to err on the side of not doing terrible things, it fails much more gracefully. That is a common understanding of Good, actually, that it embraces the strategies that fail more gracefully, but I don't think it's quite right; war is very ugly, when it's conducted wrongly or needlessly, and yet we fight it. But it is true that Good proscribes many things that people are usually wrong to think they're right to do."

"Mmm. I - think it's more important for me to try to be Good than it is for Leareth. Because I'm young and still learning how to do hard things. But...Carissa still thought that it wouldn't've been better, if Leareth - if I - had been all alone in Predain trying to fix things and also trying be Good, like Vanyel is. I wanted to know what you think of that." 

"It would have been better because I think Urtho wouldn't have gone to war with you," she says flatly. "This is unfair, because - it was one test, and it could've been a different test, and there are other tests where it wouldn't have been better. But if you were like Vanyel, he would not have feared you enough to push for war."

Nod. "I - think that makes sense. Knowing what we do now. And...I mean, he didn't know it, when he was Ma'ar, but - there are always going to be lots of things I don't know - and I guess that's part of what it means, that Good uses strategies that fail more gracefully..." 

"Yes. Fewer people will see patterns, in you, that almost always conclude in tragedy."

He walks to the window, looks out at the stars. "I wonder if there's any way Leareth could have known that. The first time. I think Urtho is Good but he is - very bad at explaining it." 

"Urtho considers it acceptable to not win. I think that Leareth needed to hear it from someone who considered it totally unacceptable to not win. I am not sure he could have known, with no history to learn from and not much time to spend learning history and no one he trusted to be trying."

"You think it is unacceptable not to win." 

"It is unacceptable not to win."

Impulsively, he crosses the room - it's oddly easy, as though he just has to think it rather than exactly moving - and hugs her. 

She holds him - not in precisely the position he was standing in to hug her - and hugs him back, very thoroughly. 

"I am so glad you understand - I was not sure anyone else did," Leareth doesn't count as someone else, "even Carissa - she wrote in a letter to me that I ought not look for her, necessarily, if she died and came back, she thought she was not a pattern that would leave an impression on the world every single time..." 

"It is rare, I think, and people like you in Cheliax under Asmodeus's rule did not survive, if they did not manage to escape very young. But you are not alone. Aroden is like you and Leareth. It is why he left Leareth his country."

"Oh - that makes sense, why the thing he saw underwater was - like what I saw, at the Tower... Carissa is very good at pretending, I think. Even to herself." It scares him a little. Really she's good at lying, but 'pretending' feels like a more charitable framing on it; it's the same skill that would have helped him frighten Urtho less, but that he couldn't do. "It - feels like it would break part of me. If I had to learn how to do that." 

"I think it would." Hug. "For the things you want to try to do, it is very dangerous to pretend to yourself, even the little bit that most people do all the time unconsciously."

"It feels really scary. It's scary when other people do it - it makes it hard to understand them and know what they'll do. I guess there are other ways to predict what people'll do, probably Leareth isn't upset that most people do a bit of pretending all the time."

"It is not very useful to be upset about features of reality and Leareth has had a lot of time to stop feeling un-useful things about situations that come up all of the time. It does mean that their sincere declarations about their priorities aren't good enough. I think it makes sense for you to be afraid of it."

He hugs her tightly. "But you mean what you say, right, about your priorities -"

"Gods do not lie to themselves in the same way. Gods are very good at lying to mortals, if we want to, because we are smarter and are reading more than just your mind. You should ask other people why they trust me. But I do mean it, and I have been working on it, for eight hundred years."

"Mmm. I'm going to ask other people. ...Can gods read other gods the same way? If Aroden is like me and Leareth - I should check that too, but I can ask Leareth, I trust him to know if it's true - but anyway, he's a god now, and he knew you before too, maybe I can talk to him." 

"Aroden knows me. I was His paladin, a very long time ago, when He was first a god and I was a human your age. Gods can make themselves knowable to the other gods in - inflexible ways, committing to be shaped a way in the future as well as the present, conditional if we like on symmetric shapes in the other gods. The Lawful gods are in significant part committed in such ways."

"Huh. I...don't know if I'd like that, having to be stuck being a certain way in the future too, but - I guess gods know more, and so you'd know better what the right shape is to be. Aroden doesn't mind it?" 

"There are contexts in which it is not useful but there are many contexts in which it prevents conflict, to know how it'd go if it happened. It would be unwise for humans to make such promises, I think, because they wouldn't be able to describe the whole space of possible futures in a way that'd make it reasonable to make promises about them. But it works for gods."

Ma'ar takes a minute to absorb that, while he keeps hugging her. 

"What do you think I need to learn now?" he asks. "If I want to grow into a shape where I can be Good like Vanyel is, instead of - being the way Leareth used to be before he came here."