"You don't have to be here if you don't want to." Does Cheliax have the things you would normally put in a stir-fry? No. Is that going to stop him? Also no.

"When your students are here and Chrisor has found a couple more Security wizards, then you can decide to have someone else follow you around all the time."

"Gotta make sure Levrolurment doesn't get me while my back is turned."

"Most of the time, people are attacked when they think they're safe."

"... That is probably true."

He returns to glaring at the kitchen like he wants to murder the stove. 

"I feel pretty safe around the stove though. They haven't managed to get the drop on me since I was eight."

"I hate my dad."

Oh dear. "Has he done something?"

"...As of right now I've used this room more than he has."

"--you cooked for him?" That image doesn't seem to fit.

"Well, I did just hand you a knife. --I didn't grow up here, I've never met him."

... Okay, so Tanidio hasn't met any of his kids either, but still. "I'm sorry."

"He could have sold a couple of his fancy bottles of wine and got my mom enough money that we always had enough to eat, even when there was a famine. So I hate him."

"He should have done that. Even if you can't stop everyone from starving, you were his family--"

"Not his real family."

(Tanidio doesn't expect his father to behave differently, but he also doesn't expect himself not to resent it.)

"--he had a wife." (He now feels absolutely no guilt about the winestealing stunt.)

"If there's anyone you can expect not to cheat on their wives you definitely can't expect dukes not to."

"Doesn't mean I have to approve." (The vegetables are being fried very aggressively.)

"I hate him because he doesn't do real things."

"He just...dukes?"

"If you're a doctor, you can tell if your patients get better or worse. If you're a wizard, you know what circle you are. If you're a farmer, you know how many crops your land produces. And-- my father doesn't do that, none of the nobles do. They play stupid social games with each other where they see who can come up with the most cutting insult, or humiliate who in the most plausibly deniable way, or get who expelled from court, or backstab who on the way to power and honor. There's nothing real there. You don't ever test yourself against reality. --The nice thing about the Worldwound is that, no matter how brilliant an excuse you have for why the demon should be dead, if you didn't kill it it's still alive."

"They could test themselves, though. They could-- see who could make their land most prosperous, and if people whisper about them not playing games they could ignore it."

"If you try to ignore it then someone else will take your lands away from you. --Even Chrisor has to deal with politics, even though he hates it."

Grumbles. "I still think they can do better."