Dinner is in a big high-ceilinged hall, which looks like it would normally be drafty and hard to keep well-lit, but this is currently being routed around by the extensive use of heat-spells and mage-lights. There are musicians playing, and servants circulating offering drinks and canapés on trays, and little tables with pretty tablecloths for people to congregate around, both at standing height and with chairs to sit. 

There are about a hundred people there not including the servants, of varying ranks and positions in the government. All of them are very eager to make a good impression on Carissa, and are various levels of anxious and scared about this, and are confused and curious and exchanging gossip in corners with their acquaintances and allies of varying closeness. 

Predain makes sense to Carissa. It is nice how her not really knowing anything about how important government events work can be attributed to her being from a different planet. And...it's kind of fun? It's not as fun as magic, of course, but it's a kind of game where (by mindreading) she knows the rules and can win, and people want sensible things like an understanding of what would be valuable to Golarion and the Yeerks and what those entities want from Predain and other things it'd be scary to not know, if she imagines herself here.

Mhalir appreciates that Carissa is good at this, and it's fascinating to observe even if it's vaguely disconcerting; he's not sure why, this is a way reality is, Yeerk politics was like this too. (Taxxon politics wasn't, it was very refreshing, maybe there was just too much background pressure of 'either your ally or your enemy might suddenly lose control of their hunger and eat you' for it to ever build up much complexity. Hork-Bajir politics such as it was wasn't either, it had its own cutthroat simplicity, they were so childlike in a way; he found that sad, feeling like he could see all of their schemes miles ahead of them, but also straightforward to interface with.) 

There's a LOT of alcohol served; people in Predain seem to drink a great deal. It's mostly wine, sometimes littler cups of fortified sweetened wine for toasts, they don't seem to have much in the way of distilled liquor. There's a sort of game going on in the background, of people angling to get their conversation partners more drunk than they are, faster, but there's also a genuinely jovial, friendlier atmosphere that emerges after a while, as the snacks on trays switch to decorative sweets and desserts, the mage-lights dimmed and the big fireplace lit for atmosphere.

There's a feeling that this is something people look forward to, a time when their world feels softer and more plentiful and - like there's plausible deniability, maybe, for toasts to the country they've built, toasts to each other's work and health, flowery speeches on Predain's accomplishments. No one, or at least almost no one, is fully relaxed and letting down their guard; there's definitely still a dynamic of trying to learn more of a drunk rival's secrets than he can learn from you. And there's a vague sense that none of this will be quite real in the morning, that the declarations of friendship and flowery speeches made here aren't the sort of thing you can put weight on. It has the feel of a game that people look forward to the opportunity to play. 

- huh. That makes sense too, in a way, if declarations of caring about things are normally anywhere near as - naive, and accordingly contemptible, as they'd be in Cheliax - but allowed as part of a game, so that you get to say them at all...she wonders if Ma'ar differs from Mhalir in liking all of this more, finding it beautiful the way she does, or if he's on edge and wishing humans were different the whole time.

He's not visibly on edge, though he's also not playing the game as visibly as most of the people present; he moves around the room, mingling, proposing some toasts of his own, accepting heartfelt toasts and speeches from others with good grace. His body language is as controlled and level as always, his smiles gracious but not at all like the way he's smiled at her. 

A few times he Mindspeaks her from across the room, meeting her eyes briefly. :You made a good impression on Lord Ekar: he'll say. :The young man in red over there - that's Councillor Janes, in charge of city planning - is hoping to talk to you later: 

And there's a smile in his mindvoice if not on his face, and the sense that he likes this element at at least; that he's noticing her skill at the dance, planning how he can wield it, and not expecting that he needs to hide this from her at all and appreciating this fact. 

Huh. Well, she can work with that. Less effectually as she gets more drunk, but still. (To do: look up spells for cheating at drinking without getting drunk.)

It is slightly surprising and off-model for Ma'ar to be ...nicer to her because they hooked up? Presumably either whatever amount it was advantageous to be nice to her either still applies, or part of the incentive to be nice to her no longer applies because some of it was about an objective that has since been achieved. Is it possible he actually is confused about whether she'll have his kid - no, that'd be stupid, which she isn't. 

She is going to have to add to the downsides of hooking up with people who she'll ever see again a serious layer of mental overhead figuring out what they're doing.

She takes his cues and meets with people and has a lovely time. Their lives make sense and she wants to make sense in exchange and she's drunk enough it's mostly fun to talk to them.

Mhalir hangs back, mostly, though he can help out with the drunk-ness, lending his brain to help her phrase replies and track her surroundings. 

He's not sure if he shares her confusion about Ma'ar. It does seem surprising if the hooking up is why he's warmer toward her now - though that could just be because he's human, and humans have biological circuitry around that which affects their emotions afterward, which Mhalir lacks. He thinks vaguely it might not be that, though; that it might instead be related to whatever caused Ma'ar to want to hook up with her, when he showed no interest before. Is he nicer to her because they sparred and she was impressive and gave him a good challenge? That feels - less confusing to him, but still some amount confusing. 

Mostly he's enjoying seeing Carissa happy, and doing something she's good at. 

The party goes until well past midnight, at which point it looks like some fraction of people intend to stick around even longer, but some sort of consensus is achieved that it's no longer embarrassing to leave now, and about half of the people give their goodbyes and trickle out in clusters. 

Ma'ar heads to join Carissa. "Back to the ship, tonight?" 

"I can call for a shuttle pickup." Mhalir is guessing that Ma'ar would prefer not to Gate, though he bets the man can Gate even when he's got to be pretty tipsy. He seems less tipsy than Carissa, at least from the outside, maybe he has some trick for appearing to drink more than he actually is. 

"Thank you."

Carissa wonders vaguely if Ma'ar feels safer on the ship than among his own people. He very well might, the ship's very safe. ...or plausibly being known to his own people to be hooking up with Carissa would undermine her, so it's more useful to be on the ship for that? Maybe she could make more sense of things sober. She should ask him what his trick is.

Maybe it's that, since he doesn't touch her at all as they head out into the courtyard for the shuttle, even though he seems like maybe he'd like to. The courtyard is chilly, this late, and dark; Ma'ar gives them both heat and light for the couple of minutes they spend waiting. 

He doesn't initiate conversation until they're on the shuttle. "So, how did you find that?" 

"Nice! Do you have a secret for not drinking as much as you'd - like to appear to be -"

He looks amused. "If you take the silver cups rather than the crystal ones, and then hold onto your cup and make sure you are the one to pour as often as possible, you can frequently appear to drain your cup while having only a sip, and then refill it only halfway." A chuckle. "Also the wine here is not as strong as whatever it was you were giving me on the ship. And it helps to make sure to eat the canapés too, and every time I excused myself for the privy I would drink several cups of water in the hallway. I have...a lot of practice with this sort of event." 

"'s a nice kind of event. Everyone was allowed to act like they cared about things without people holding it against them, right, isn't that the idea -"

Something complicated flickers across his face, and then he smiles a little. "Yes, I think that is right." He slips his arm around her. "You made a good impression, I think. Exotic, but not so much as to be incomprehensible. You are - hmm, you are good at figuring out the rules of the game and then playing it, I think? It took me years to do that." 

"I think Predain isn't very different from Cheliax, in some ways. What people are expecting, what they want to see. ...I guess I miss Cheliax. I haven't been back since the war, except to meet Aroden."

"Mmm. You were living in - Absalom, right, one of the places where many wizards live and work? What is it like there?" 

"It's a good place to be a wizard, there are lots of other powerful casters around. It's rich, for a city in Golarion, and - it's got more kinds of people than Cheliax, it's safe to want all kinds of things. The Starstone's right there. Even if you have no intention of going for it, I think that - changes how people see things."

"That makes sense. It sounds– hmm, not really like Urtho's Tower, but...maybe like what I thought Urtho's Tower would be, when I was fourteen." 

"I don't really feel comfortable in Urtho's Tower. It's - nice, but Absalom is more a place where everyone can be relied upon to have - reasons for what they're doing, and for it to have been stress-tested against bad actors, and - it's not as Lawful as Cheliax but I think it's more Lawful than Urtho's Tower."

Nod. "I think that Urtho means well, and was - trying to build something good - but there are many aspects of how people work that he did not try to understand. And I think his sense of what he means by 'something good' is...not one that he questioned extensively, or tried to test against the world." 

"I got that sense. He seemed very sure that the things he personally was motivated to do were good and that other things would be evil, even if they were just - responsible, or common sense, or would end up reducing bloodshed -"

Ma'ar sighs, and leans against her in silence for a moment. (He doesn't especially want to talk more about Urtho right now; it feels like an old, worn road, one he's retrodden so many times, without ever finding the clarity he hoped for.)

They reach the ship. 

"Your room?" Ma'ar says quietly. "...If you would rather not, that is fine, I still have the guest-room they offered me."