"That's one of the things that sometimes trips people up about our law against rape," says Ligaya evenly. "We define rape as nonconsensual sex, and that's possible within marriage. Especially if your spouse also hits you."

"...you consent to sex when you get married? That's like saying if you pay a whore she's allowed to not have sex with you."

"She is, although she might have to refund you," says Ligaya. "In Vanda Nossëo."

"...I mean, if you injure your wife in bed and she doesn't like it she might run you through with her sword and go back to live with her parents or become a rogue cultivator? If her cultivation is high enough. If not she just has to live with it, we can't all get everything we want. --Or if she's Lan, the Lan disapprove of murdering your husband. It's the moral uprightness thing."

"Most people prefer... divorce... to murder," pipes up Tuturio. "We have that. Divorce, I mean."

"Well, we do too and that's an alternate method of solving the problem, although a lot of people consider it to be dishonorable. Or just leaving to become a rogue cultivator. But if she's very angry she'll probably kill you about it."

"Seems like it might be a consideration on voting to make murder illegal," says Ligaya, "but we're probably getting ahead of ourselves there."

"Well, yes, people do like killing other people in revenge for being dishonored or hurt in some other way." Not that he knows anything about this fact personally.

"Yeah, that's one reason some places don't vote to join up, or delay about it, or demand particularly large signing perks," Ligaya nods. "Probably if my planet's shadow government hadn't already been usurped by an anti-murder concern at the time we encountered the multiverse it would have been really hard to get vampires to agree that murder should be illegal."

"Really, it all depends on who you get married to. I would certainly never raise a hand to my wife, if I had one. But the Yiling Patriarch is sensitive when he loses face and, you know, he does have a terrifying fierce corpse army. I imagine Hanguang-jun likes that kind of thing or why would he marry him?"

"...I suppose he might think he could win when it comes up."

"I hope that whatever their relationship is like they're both happy with it," Ligaya replies.

"Well, as it happens, the Yiling Patriarch loves Lan Sizhui. He claims when asked that he birthed Lan Sizhui from his own body but we know that didn't happen because he wasn't pregnant at any point. --Men normally can't cultivate to have a baby but if anyone could come up with a way to the Yiling Patriarch could. So I suppose it worked out well for everyone involved. Except poor Lan Qiren, who has lost yet another of the finest Lan."

"Lost?" inquires Ligaya.

"Oh, Lan Sizhui is the Yiling Patriarch's first disciple now! And he was such a good boy, too. As morally upright as his father and much less prone to ill-advised sexual decisions."

"And this is a problem for his - relative? - Lan Qiren?"

"His uncle, who has in practice been in charge of the Lan for, oh, thirty years even though he has spent absolutely none of it as sect leader. Because the actual sect leaders spend all their time in seclusion-- that means they live in a cabin meditating and never leave or talk to anyone-- for assorted reasons."

"Ah, I see." The shop has been getting set up nicely in the background by the envoy team while they chat.

"The story of the current Sect Leader Lan is horrifying. I was there for some of it! Most terrifying experience of my life."

"Do you want anything else out of the shop? I'd love to hear it," says Ligaya.

"I'd like some art, if you have it."

"We've got fabric, does that count?" They do. It's very exotic and soft. "If it doesn't I can nip up and grab something else but you should be more specific!"

"It's so soft I want it as inner robes but too beautiful for the purpose!"

"You can have the whole bolt for a story if you want to make all your layers out of it!" says Ligaya.

"You are very generous!"