"If you were a god, how would you rule them?"

This feels like a very unfair question - it's late, he's tired, he's spent all of today and of the last week and of the last forty years thinking constantly about how to work within the constraints of the Eastern Empire as a– well, not a mortal, but as a human alongside other humans - 

...It's an interesting question, though. He considers it. 

"I think - the sort of god I would want to be, or build, would not need or want to rule over the people of the Empire? I think - ruling is a human concept, that makes sense in a world of other humans, but I would not want to rule over - fish, or ants, or forests." 

...That feels like the wrong connotation, for what he's trying to say, but he doesn't have the energy to correct it right now. 

"- I think if I were a god, working - for mortals, in this world - I would want to...build a stable foundation for them. Give them - safety, predictability, wealth and resources and many affordances to try different plans that might or might not work but - would not burn down the whole world if they failed. And then I would - want to see what they– what we - could do with that." 

Carissa would want to rule them. She doesn't say that, though. It doesn't feel like a spectacularly safe thought, even. 

Instead she cautiously edges closer to him. "Sounds nice."

Altarrin notices her sliding closer to him, and - this is confusing - they're behind his shields right now, they don't have to pretend - so Carissa isn't pretending, right now - but she might still be playing a game and if so it's one he doesn't really feel like playing. 

"Does it."

....The tone is off, it's one Carissa might read as hostile. He didn't mean it that way. He's just - tired.

(He sort of misses having his bedroom to himself. All of this is presumably much, much harder on Carissa than it is on him, but.) 

She keeps aaaaaaaalllll of her screaming internal. She's very good at that. 

Was he - angry with her for lying? Does he have a way to tell? Why betray that there, though - 

- however careful you're being, be more careful than that -

"...dunno. Good night." She sounds calm, and not scared. Being easily scared is a form of being tedious and hard to deal with. Besides that, she's Chelish. If he wants to make her act scared he has to earn it. Everything she's been her entire life has to be worth something. So, calm, relaxed, not upset, not injured.

She'll scoot away once he's not looking and not parsing it as part of this interaction.

...he hasn't failed to notice that Carissa sounds calm like that when she's upset or stressed. 

It's very tempting to just...sleep, and let Carissa ask him for things in words if she wants something to be different from how it is right now, because right now he desperately wants the space between these four walls to be one where they don't have to play games - he would just say that to her, if he expected it to land rather than making her even more anxious and confused. He's not sure there are any words he could say that would convince Carissa that he does, genuinely, want to be allies, it's not any more complicated than that, but she's just going to take any string of words he can possibly say and try to infer what complicated game he's playing with her, and she - doesn't endorse him spending this much thought on figuring out what she needs to feel safe. 

(What would it be like in a world where they weren't pretending, where they didn't need a cover story to survive the Empire he built around the invisible constraints of the gods. Where he wouldn't be instinctively worrying what she was playing at, where he could - take it at face value, that she wanted to be closer to him, and decide what he wanted, and go from there.) 

He looks the other way. 

"I am sorry I was snappish," he says, as gently as he can manage right now. "I am not - upset with you, I am never going to be angry with you for disagreeing with me - I am just very tired." Sigh. "It would be good to have a ring of sustenance, I suppose, I am probably too old for this pace." He meant this particularly body, but right now it feels true on a deeper level, which is ridiculous.

He lies down. "Good night." 

She doesn't know what to make of that either, but she'll lie down far away from him and try to sleep.

Altarrin has her make headbands of Wisdom, Cunning, and Splendor, and puts together a demonstration (and bribe package) for the Emperor and the ministers involved in approving a new mining project. 

They open a new mine in Isk. It's not just for Carissa's spellsilver, they'll get other metals from it too; he doesn't think it's terrible conspicuous or likely to draw attention to their project. Altarrin makes a day trip to the site. He doesn't invite Carissa, though he does talk through most of the relevant decisions with her. It'll be a week or so before they're getting any spellsilver back, and he's not going to push hard on volume unless Carissa thinks she could actually make use of hundreds of pounds of spellsilver per week.

They hammer out a contract agreement on paying Carissa for her work. It's a lot less than Altarrin thinks the work is actually worth - and he says so to Carissa, apologetically - because one of the constraints is that it needs to come out of the Emperor's discretionary budget, to avoid drawing any further attention to Carissa. Maybe at some future point she can openly sell items to the court mages and nobles, and get closer to a fair market price for work that only she can do. 

It still comes to a substantial salary. She could afford to rent a (small) house in the city, if she wanted, and her own servants, and definitely an extensive wardrobe and jewelry. In practice, right now, she lives in Altarrin's suite and doesn't really have...expenses...but Altarrin does make sure to point out that she would have that option.

The Emperor wants rings for translation once Carissa figures that out; they have enough spellsilver for it even without the mine's production. Altarrin asks her to make him a Ring of Sustenance. He's not sleeping enough, and having those extra hours at night will make it much easier to keep up with an entire side project without letting any of his other routine work slide. He claims one of the headbands for Splendor. It helps a lot in meetings, and it makes it easier to put on a face that isn't tired and sad. 

He wants an item of Detect Thoughts, but if Carissa still expects that to take four days, the Emperor's requisitions should come first. 

One of the mine personnel dies in a horrible and rather implausible accident. Altarrin is upset. He speculates in private with Carissa about Iftel, about Vkandis, but he can't figure out how to causally isolate the project from god-influence any further, he doesn't seen an obvious human route of interference. He redoes the safety protocols. The first shipment back of purified spellsilver - ten pounds of it - is delayed by two days. 

Altarrin hosts private dinners in his suite, sometimes, and briefs Carissa on the attendees in advance. He brings her to a couple of small formal events. He explains that she doesn't speak the language and can use her Wild Gift to make artifacts that imitate a little-known Gift that does translation, but the simpler version of it only lets her understand them and not speak. 

He checks in with Merda and Ketar - what's the status on rumors about Carissa? Altarrin would like to at some point let her go to court events without him, if and when Merda thinks it's safe. 

Rumors have definitely spread that it's an incredibly useful WIld Gift! People are variously impressed or annoyed by this, depending how they feel about Altarrin. There's some speculation that the pretty girl Altarrin drags around is a distraction or cover of some kind - maybe someone else has the Gift and he's trying to keep attention off them? Maybe it's a technique he or she or someone else discovered and he's just trying to make sure people think that no one can do it but her? No one's gotten anywhere trying to do it themselves, though. There's a conspiracy theory that the headbands don't actually do anything, they just make you think you're clever.

A few people have of course asked Altarrin if they can employ Carissa for their own projects, but not with any real expectation he'll say yes. 

Merda thinks it's probably safe enough for her to go to events, assuming she's guarded against someone just grabbing her; none of the rumors get at the truth, and none of them seem to grasp that the implications go beyond nice jewelry rich people will have. 

(Carissa does not at all believe she could have a nice house in the city with servants. She carefully tracks her salary, but she doesn't really believe in it either.)

It's not even suspicious to assign her a personal servant and bodyguard. He picks a young woman, a lowborn mage who he's pretty sure wants to marry into nobility and will consider it a significant favor from him to get to follow Carissa to court events. Merda can pick which events - ideally ones Ketar can attend as well without it being suspicious - and be in range to read minds and warn Carissa if he thinks she needs to leave. 

Ketar continues to be somewhat awkwardly solicitous around Carissa whenever they interact!

(He is perhaps, maybe, occasionally having the hopeful thought that it's not like Altarrin is in the market for marriage and it's rare for him to keep the same woman around for even a whole year, and obviously he can't step on Altarrin's toes now but maybe Carissa will be available later? Though maybe she hates him. Or worse, thinks he's a naive child. He's going to try really hard to act less naive around her.) 

In public, Altarrin does not especially show any sign of getting bored of Carissa! He's casually affectionate, and talks about his work with her and praises her advice and insight. He gets her presents - mostly books and protective mage-artifacts, but he makes sure she has enough nice gowns to wear to events. 

In private, he's - less tired, once the Ring of Sustenance kicks in, but he's hard to read. In private he still doesn't touch her. 

(Sometimes they talk about magic, and those are the only times he seems excited or happy or fully present. When he talks about politics and isn't trying to wear a face, he's always resigned and sad. He asks her to cast Owl's Wisdom on him sometimes, and then he's sadder, and doesn't usually explain why.) 

(When he can carve out time, he's been sketching out possibilities for immortality. He doesn't mention this to Carissa, yet, it's not going to be reassuring until he has something more than preliminary not-yet-workable ideas.) 

Carissa is fine. It's actually kind of impossible for her not to be fine if she gets to do nice things like crafting for sixteen hours a day until her fingers are shaking too much to continue and she's itching in the places where the devil used to hurt her. ...that's what being fine is, right?

Merda gives her summaries of who she's talking to and why she's talking to them, what they believe and what it'd be useful for them to believe, and that part is easy. She's a very good liar. She once convinced someone that Evil wasn't evil for four entire months. 

It puts her on edge, being dependent on Altarrin when he seems to regard her mostly with weariness if he doesn't have to pretend at anything else. But she doesn't worry too much about it. She's obviously valuable. It's obviously to his disadvantage to let anything happen to her, and he's clearly good at what he does.

At one party Merda points out another former girl of Altarrin's, maybe Carissa's age, a mage who's been here since childhood as part of one of the hostage-taking schemes. She and Altarrin had a dalliance, maybe a pretend one, a few years ago.

Altarrin continues to try to track what kinds of thing are stressful for Carissa, and what sort of security would help her be more fully focused on their mission.

He mostly doesn't bring it up with her explicitly, because communicating things to Carissa, in a way that doesn't pattern-match to a wide range of dynamics she knows from Cheliax, is hard and tiring and mostly doesn't work very well even with his Glibness pin and his Splendor headband. 

He does not to be too obviously miserable in front of her. It doesn't seem like good incentives.

- the situation in the south is not improving. 

"I will be away for a few days," Altarrin tells Carissa over breakfast, one morning. "Hopefully not longer than that - I am going to miss you, I wish you could come with me..." 

(This is true, even – despite all of the confusing and tense social dynamics, Carissa is someone he can speak more openly with than anyone else, and she's clever and has good questions and insights – but he still has to ignore his discomfort when he kisses her goodbye. Thought the headband for Splendor helps.) 

There's a scheduled court function that evening, if Carissa feels like attending it. 

Does Merda think it's a good idea?

(She does. She usually does. She thinks that the more people see Carissa the less mysterious and thus less interesting she'll seem, and pretty soon they'll forget to gossip about her at all. There's no point in gossiping about things that everyone knows and that aren't very interesting.)

Then off she will go, pretty and well-dressed and happy. If she were sad, it'd be something to gossip about. 

It's a party Ketar can reasonably be invited to! He'll be there on time, nicely dressed, and definitely very ready to notice any potential assassins or kidnappers after Carissa, though it's not like this is very likely. 

Carissa will smile at him! She's happy to have people around whose job is to keep her from getting killed, though she's felt safer as time has gone on and Merda has assured her that all of the conspiracy theories around her are of the flavor "maybe she is irrelevant to the cool shiny new stuff Altarrin's producing" instead of "maybe they are even cooler and more impressive than they appear".

She recognizes like half of the people here by now. That's substantial progress from recognizing nobody but it's still nervewracking.

Dianta hangs back, watching as people arrive.

- She doesn't desperately need anything from anyone here - it's great, it's so much better than before - but if Altarrin's new girl wants to talk to her, here she is. Smiling in a welcoming sort of way, even, because she's curious what Altarrin is up to lately. 

Carissa was told her name last party, remembered it, and then didn't talk to her for - no good reason, in hindsight. She needs to understand Altarrin better for her own safety, the deeply unhappy man he is in private. 

"Dianta, right?"