Carissa does so as fast as her fingers can move but Ketar can still catch plenty from her in the meantime. She feels stupidly relieved and grateful, considering she knew perfectly well that the hostility was a performance for an audience. She feels confused about him, and curious what he's playing at, and - some desire to make the world make more sense to him, because he seemed actually curious about it - 

- and then her mind is gone. "I'm listening."

" - honestly I was expecting some whining about how you're just a magic researcher who doesn't want to engage in politics -"

" - why would you possibly care about that."

"I don't! This just isn't obvious to put-upon magical researchers most of the time, for some reason. Ketar, who in that room was reporting to who?"

"...I don't know who exactly Hakkon reports to in general and he didn't think about it where I could see, but - he's not discriminating, probably whoever he talks to next in that order." (And he has some context on the servants, and can add that, but it doesn't amount to anything interesting, either on who they report to or on what he saw them notice.) 

"In a proper Asmodean tyranny, Altarrin would just dismember a few of the servants and the rest would keep their mouths shut. - I wasn't going to say that, because the less you know about the place I'm from the better, but on reflection I think it's an important confusion. Why does anyone put up with this rate of leaking and spying? Is the problem that anyone well-resourced can grab and compulsion anyone at any time, or mindread them, so putting the servants in fear of their lives doesn't even reduce leaks all that much?"

"Also, dismembering the servants sounds messy," Merda says dryly. "Gotta say, I'm not sure I like the place you're from."

"It's complicated but I think in some respects it was - worse for human flourishing - than human societies will naturally tend to be. - doesn't matter. It really is mostly better if you know less about it."

"Anyway I think the answer to 'why all the spying' is that Gifted people are valuable, you can't get away with executing them for minor misbehavior, and non-Gifted people are - yes, easy to spy on, easy to mindread, easy to manipulate. They're compulsioned into obedience, usually, but there are ways around that, especially for small things like gossip about something that might not seem to them to be of strategic importance."

"Like Altarrin's latest girl. How much of a habit does he make of this?" She didn't want to ask him because there's no way to ask that without sounding insecure.

"Every few years. He's fairly picky, but I don't think it's to our advantage for anyone who hasn't noticed that already to notice that right now. - I wasn't lying that he won't get attached."

"I wouldn't respect him if he did." And probably, being an immortal lich-like thing, he can barely relate to humans emotionally anyway. 

"Were you trying to disconcert Ketar for some strategic purpose, or for fun?"

"I wasn't trying to disconcert him! it's just that all the reassurances I know are Asmodean reassurances, or - even more complicated than that in a respect you don't need to know about. Also I - don't understand," she added to Ketar. "What you were trying to satisfy yourself of. Obviously you may not want me to know."

It feels like the sort of thing that would be hard to put into words at the best of times, but it's especially hard because he was - trying to check for various possible threats, while also - (a mental bounce off one of his compulsions, which he steers around) - while worrying that Altarrin wouldn't notice if he was hurting her and neither would Carissa - 

"I needed to be sure you weren't - working against Altarrin's interests," he says, looking away rather than meet her eyes. "And - also I wanted to know if you were - all right, if you needed help or advice - but it seems like you can look after yourself." 

That sounded incredibly stupid. Which is fine because whatever Hakkon thinks he doesn't actually have a crush on Carissa

"I think he hadn't noticed before that Altarrin could do that," Merda says, "or at least not that he would."

"You couldn't build a world that worked any other way, not really."

"Sometimes I think all you'd have to do is put women in charge."

"That does not in fact do it."

"Huh. Anyway," she says to Ketar, "if you want to be in a position to help people, you have to know what you're doing, and you don't. If you try to rescue a drowning person, and you can't swim, they pull you underwater, you both drown. If Carissa were a fragile little flower crying into her pillow while Altarrin fucked her, you couldn't help, because you don't know who else would trade for her, or whether they'd want the same thing, or what'd be worth more to Altarrin than she is, or where you could get it. You can buy people out of trouble, if you're rich in the currency people accept around here. You can wrangle people out of trouble, if you know enough and have enough latitude. But you have to get good, and also they won't be grateful."

"I know that!" Ketar says, half indignantly, "I just..." And he trails off, because he's starting to realize that he doesn't really know what he was aiming for, and that's - yeah, that's the sort of thing that gets you in trouble. It's an uneasy realization. Before today, he would - mostly have said that he thought he did know what he was doing, he's definitely not very experienced or respected or anything but he can navigate life at court. Being a Mindspeaker makes that much easier.

...And safer, because nearly all his life he's been indispensable to the Empire, and - in a way where it's hard to use him against his will or self-interest. That's an uncomfortable realization, that maybe he's spent his whole life - seeing a nicer face of the Empire, because everyone is just a little afraid of powerful Mindspeakers, and wants to avoid giving him strong reasons to personally dislike them. 

He hasn't really tried to get anyone out of trouble before, because he mostly hasn't seen the side of the Empire where people get in trouble for reasons that are fundamentally unfair. 

(...It's a fair point that probably way too much of his motivation has been that Carissa is pretty.) 

He shrugs. "I guess I - wish this wasn't a place that would use people in ways that are - bad for them." Not like Carissa's home country, which seems to do that on purpose even in situations where it seems like surely there's a way for everyone to mutually benefit. "But - if it is like that - if Altarrin is like that - then I guess it's important to know."

"Altarrin let me keep my headband. That's - if you want to know what kind of man you serve that's what I'd look at."

"A lot of people would kill for access to some kind of safe way to be smarter, think more clearly. ...if they could trust it."

"He trusts it, he tried it. He just gave it back afterwards, because - I don't know, exactly" - because he wishes he'd built dath ilan, except for the destroying worlds - "for permission to use it once a week for an hour I would have gladly given myself to him, if we were trading, which we weren't, he could've had it and me."

"Altarrin's not a piece of shit," says Merda, somewhat grudgingly.