"I think I'd rather get spellsilver faster. I can read the books when your staff is sleeping, and - the books aren't likely to feature anything that changes my short term plans."

"All right." Altarrin makes a note on one of the papers. "What kind of setup do you need for that? ...We should set up a Work Room for you - I can give it shielding so we could speak openly there, but it should also have whatever protections are actually important for your alchemy." 

"It's not actually that dangerous, our only casualty was a girl who, uh, probably jumped into the vats of acid on purpose. You need good air exchange, that's about it."

"- I am guessing it is not actually relevant for me to know why she - probably - jumped into a vat of acid on purpose -" 

"I can make sure there is good air exchange." 

"I don't know why. I guess I'll never know. Thank you."  

Well, she clearly doesn't want to talk about it. 

Altarrin sighs. "I think that is everything we need to plan for today. ...Breakfast? I can be preoccupied or in a hurry this morning, if that is - easier for you, for the pretending." 

The true answer, insofar as there's such a thing inside a muddled mortal being, is 'please do not make tradeoffs between my safety and my happiness at any exchange rate expressible without complicated mathematical notation for very large numbers', plus 'if you indulge me in being weak, some part of me will learn the habit and start trying to solve its problems by being weak', but that seems awfully personal to say to someone you don't actually know. 

"I don't mind; whatever's convenient."

What's convenient for him is to be somewhat rushed - he really does have a lot to do today! and tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future! - but not too preoccupied to be warm with her. 

Over the meal he mostly talks about the situation in the south, at least the not-especially-sensitive elements of it. It's characteristic of him – he picks women who are clever and insightful, and then likes to think out loud with them – and pretty much anything related to his political work is going to be filling in useful context for Carissa, right now. 

So he can pull out a map, and explain their current difficulty! They recently annexed a region called the Tozoa Plains (now Tozoa Province). It was an obvious choice; plenty of arable land, far enough south for a long growing season, previously limited by its dry inland climate and a lack of major bodies of water for irrigation but the Empire can easily build aqueduct infrastructure and canals over the next decade, at which point they expect high agricultural productivity. It had been inhabited by nomadic herding clans with no state-level structures to organize resistance; it was cheap to conquer. 

They would like to move further south and annex the main body of Oris, the kingdom that on paper used to hold the Plains as an outlying province (but did not especially mount a resistance; they hadn't even been able to administer or collect taxes on the plainspeople, let alone farm the arid plains.) 

The issue is that they're now stretching their non-Gate supply chains rather far, and the canals and canal-Gates won't be complete for a decade. The plains are separated from Tolmassar Province, the region directly north, by a mountain range. Marching on Oris overland, or supplying their army, can only be done via Widow's Pass, which is a difficult crossing;

The straight-line path from Jacona that would avoid inconvenient mountain ranges – the route along which they want to place a canal – would run through Taymyrr, which is (or recently was, rather) a well-defended kingdom, though not nearly as wealthy or organized as the Empire. They've now conquered about half of its total land area; they're now holding Stormhaven, the capital, and have the former king under compulsions. But they're running into substantial remaining resistance – both in the southern half, which consists of a looser patchwork of feudal holdings that shouldn't really be able to coordinate their forces nearly this effectively, and local resistance in the garrisoned region.

The resistance is ostensibly getting support from Zoskin, the small and very mountainous state directly south of its border, but Altarrin is suspicious that those resources actually come from the Empire of Holy Ithik – which, like Iftel, has a state religion, though not a magical barrier to go with it. The Holy Empire shares a border with Jacona province, and has historically been on rather tense diplomatic terms with the Eastern Empire, though there's never been a land war in either direction. 

The military commander leading the invasion in Taymyrr, General Isktar, is competent, and has the important trait of maintaining strict troop discipline and tending to treat conquered peoples relatively well, which matters in this case because Taymyrr had a reasonably functional bureaucracy and infrastructure before this, and incorporating them will be cheaper for the Empire if they can work with the existing nobility rather than replacing them. There's no one Altarrin would rather have in charge. But, at the same time, Isktar is...maybe not paranoid enough to stay on top of an underground resistance. 

(He doesn't outright say that the problem is that Isktar doesn't dislike the gods strongly enough, but it's there to be read between the lines.) 

Cheliax was failing.

She hadn't been prompted to think about this since she started being allowed to think, but it was blindingly obvious, once you got a look at an expanding empire. Cheliax lost Rahadoum, lost Molthune, lost Andoran, lost Galt, lost the overseas colonies, and Abrogail stemmed the bleeding but didn't actually gain anything until Keltham's arrival and the war with Nidal. This - this patchwork of provinces in varying states of pacification - this is what a successful empire looks like. Or one that's overstretched itself and is going to rip itself apart. One of those. "Why do permanent Gates and canals take ten years?"

"A standard permanent Gate threshold - one that can move people and lightweight goods at small scale - is much faster! Tozoa Province has one each in Tatanha and Naushahan, and several in Tahahau as well as a larger road-Gate for heavier cargo. But the most efficient way to transport bulk goods through a Gate is on a canal, and canals take years to excavate unless we are executing an unreasonable number of dissidents for the blood-power, and I prefer not to incentivize that, so the standard project timeline is a decade for a province the size of Tozoa or Taymyrr. And we try to plan canal systems that can be used without Gates, for non-perishable goods like ore, and that could be operational even if the Gate-network went down entirely. It is - less necessary, now that centuries have passed since the last mage-storms, but - there could be other disruptions to magic."

(And the Mage Storms will come back, someday, and at the start he hadn't been sure if it would be in five hundred years or twenty-five hundred. It's closer to the second one, it turns out, but he still wanted to build his Empire to last.

Will it last? Even if he abandons it to go off somewhere with Carissa and build a new god, a project that might take them centuries? ...He thinks so. He isn't sure, and it won't be - nice - it'll be worse than it is now, even, more like Cheliax - and he's suddenly so so tired. He mostly hides it.) 

"How many dissidents does the Empire kill for blood power?" Fake-Carissa isn't Chelish and so doesn't instinctively sound entirely blasé about this, though she's also obviously determined not to be a dissident in this Empire so she doesn't sound that bothered either.

"It depends on the Emperor." Altarrin's unhappiness is only very very faintly noticeable. "Or the regional governor, for provinces that - operate more independently. I would have to look up the figures for this year, but our current Emperor is - relatively conservative, the death sentence is mostly reserved for treason and he does not especially put pressure on the judges to meet a quota. ...Tozoa has a high rate, but they are recently conquered, they are still going to be rooting out dissidents loyal to the previous regime. Several hundred a year there, I think - the population density is still low - my guess would be around five thousand per year across the whole Empire, but our population at the last full census was thirty million, per capita it is not very large." 

(That's not actually most of it. The mage-General in charge of the military operations side of things has ambitions, wants to move on from purely military positions and advance in politics, and Altarrin is fairly sure that he's leaning on his people to get enough blood-power that he'll come in ahead of schedule on canal and aqueduct construction, and the regional governor assigned to the province isn't the sort of person to get in his way.) 

Does fake Carissa think that's high? Low? Real Carissa thinks it's pretty low. If you could build canals with blood power at home it'd probably be a considerable drag on population growth and the entire object of overseas wars.

Fake Carissa has no sense of the numbers but does understand that she's not one of them because she broke into the palace while useful.  She smiles at Altarrin. "Thirty million. That's so many. So you have to advise them on how to take Oris? And don't want to wait for the canals to be built?"

"I have been advising them not to try to conquer Oris until we have pacified Taymyrr, our supply chains are really quite stretched. Once we have Taymyrr, we can very cheaply re-pave the existing trade roads that run to Oris, and run a road from the core Empire land and place cargo-capacity Gates on it - and within a decade have full canal access, but that does take longer - but even just the roads would be enough that I would feel confident we can take and administer Oris." 

Pause. 

"And it would be - doing them a favor, right, they are so poor - only one in twenty people know how to read, there - according to our spies, which is admittedly not the most reliable information source, but -" 

(It's the standard propaganda. That any state or kingdom or nomadic people conquered by the Eastern Empire is better off, in the long run, because it's worth it, to give them schools and aqueducts and canal-Gates that will send shipments of grain if their region sees a drought. And Altarrin still isn't sure that's false, but...it's more complicated than that, isn't it.) 

Chelish Carissa would've agreed wholeheartedly. It was where she stuffed all her Good-shaped impulses, in the conviction that smart children should be found and sent to wizard school.

Fake Carissa, her mage-school extinguished in conquest, her Good impulses having never needed stuffing in any particular place, isn't as sure. She shrugs. "You're stronger than them. And if you weren't, someone else would be."

Altarrin cannot read Carissa's mind and can only guess at her thoughts, but he's...even more tired and sad, for some reason. 

"No one else is stronger. At least not yet - maybe someday, when the world has had longer to recover - but the Empire is the richest and most organized civilization on this continent, I am confident of that. I suppose unless you count Iftel, they might have considerable wealth inside their god's barrier, but - well, when you trade for protection with a god," and he says it scoffingly, like something that doesn't call for any further clarification. 

There are a lot of things he could say, and some of them he even wants to say, but unfortunately they're being watched, here, and also he's not sure Carissa wants to hear it. 

He reaches out to stroke her hair; he's overdue on casually touching her. "I need to go soon. My work never stops." But he can look at her like he's mildly disappointed about this, and it's not even really acting. 

Fake Carissa leans into him, happy, relaxed, annoyed that he's so busy. "All the things you've done for them and they just give you work and more work." And also pretty girls and the right to station a guard at their door, but fake Carissa isn't thinking of it that way, not exactly. It's a Chelish framing.

They don't really have anything else to discuss urgently, right now, and there are about a thousand important though non-urgent things they could and really should talk about but they can't do that in his living room with servants watching and some unknown number of mages scrying them. 

- he leans in and kisses her on the lips, briefly and hopefully in a way that isn't too startling. (Should he have warned her that this was something he might do? He isn't sure. He - is fairly sure that she'll handle it, that part isn't in question, it just - still feels like there's some cost being paid, there, that he doesn't fully understand, and won't until she actually trusts him, on a personal level, enough to talk to him more openly, and he needs to earn that trust, and doesn't really expect to succeed, he's - not exactly shaped for personal-level trust and intimacy -) 

He leaves. 

Carissa stays where she is, looking happy and relaxed and mildly disappointed in his departure, until her heart has stopped pounding for no reason because it's taking marching orders from some idiot which isn't her brain. 

Then she retreats to safety to study rings. Rings make sense. Rings aren't weak and pathetic. 

Altarrin will get her a Work Room. That's obviously high priority. He has it set up by that afternoon, and he doesn't make it over himself to tell her - he's in fact very busy and he's not sure it would help anyway - but a (young, un-Gifted, and clearly inexperienced and scared-of-her) palace messenger arrives, and escorts her to said Work Room, while nervously explaining all of the protections on it. 

(They include shields against scrying, and Thoughtsensing, and half a dozen other kinds of mage-technique that may not even translate for Carissa. Altarrin will explain it to her later, if necessary, but the end conclusion is that her Work Room is almost as thoroughly shielded as his bedroom suite.) 

It has all of the materials she requested, and good ventilation, and a half-pound of partially purified spellsilver waiting for her. (It's cheap to do with Velgarth magic once the initial spell is developed.) 

They meet for a late supper - he'll send someone to summon her over, if she's still working by the time he finishes his own meetings - and he hurries it as much as he can (which does involve some more demonstrative affection, though he tries to telegraph it in advance, as much as he can without being able to talk about it) -

- and once they're back in the privacy of his bedroom, he can immediately back off and sit on the opposite side of the bed from her and update her on his plans and their other research - (the south is still a problem; Delias thinks he'll have a second-phase spell in two days and Altarrin is more confident in this, it doesn't seem worth revealing more of Carissa's magic to him to accelerate it) - and ask her how her spellsilver alchemy is going... 

Delias gets the spell within two days. Even just siphoning off raw ore of probably-the-right-type from existing mines, it looks like they're going to be able to hit 10 to 12 ounces of very-nearly-purified spellsilver per day. 

Altarrin checks with Carissa whether she still thinks the best plan is to focus on making headbands for a week or so, until she has enough samples for the Emperor to make some generous gifts to all the ministers who might quibble with directing some of the treasury funds to a new mine in the Isk Province. They've already scoped out the site. It's very far north, and unfortunately close to Iftel, but the main reason they've been holding Isk at all is that their mage-engineering surveys suggested it had substantial ore deposits - of a number of metals, mostly ones that were more clearly useful to the Empire before they knew that "spellsilver" existed, but they have records of ores meeting the description Carissa gave.

(....Altarrin's vague geology theories hint that the northeastern bulb of Iftel – it's really such an oddly-shaped border, which would make more sense if not for the immutable magical barrier being the actual determining factor – probably has an even higher density of potentially valuable mining sites. He - is going to be pretty frustrated if it turns out that Vkandis set the borders of Iftel in order to deny him, personally, access to useful natural resources. 

He doesn't dwell on this much, but he does mention it to Carissa at one point, when they're lying carefully apart on opposite sides of his bed, safely behind shields.) 

Carissa may be literally the most qualified person not just in this world but also in the world she's from to set up a magical crafting and spellsilver mining operation and she is happy to work full time on that and have daily updates for Altarrin and stay out of trouble and not rattle the bars on her cage even a little bit. (This is, someone who knew her well enough might guess, not a good sign. A fully functional Carissa would definitely have tried complaining about the breakfast pastries by now.) She can make a headband a day and have plenty for the Emperor, would Altarrin rather Wisdom or Cunning or Splendour? She's tinkering with rings and thinks she can probably do one, which would he like to have first?

She tells herself that Altarrin is handsome and sensible and generous, but she hasn't actually tried moving closer to him, because she doesn't have any idea what will happen if she breaks the rules they're presently playing by. 

"You don't think He wants the mining deposits for His own operations? Even if His people can't use spellsilver, there's plenty of uses for iron."

"...I cannot be sure, but I think I would have noticed if Iftel were mining iron at a large scale. I am sure they are using it at a small scale, for - swords, and such. But, they do significant trade and exports, despite the barrier, and I think it would be noticeable either in what they were selling or in what they were buying."

Shrug. "Or perhaps I am unreasonably biased against all of our gods. But - it certainly seems as though Iftel is a country that mostly - has vineyards, and trades in fine wines and exotic strains of flowers. And not - the goods I would expect to see from a society that is industrializing."