There is no sign in her voice by this time that she had an emotional morning. "Your Majesty. - would you prefer I communicate through an intermediary or something, I'm not clear on exactly what it is you're afraid I can do."

The Emperor is in a small study. Not the one from his suite. Windowless, presumably underground, totally nondescript. (He's planning to leave and never enter it again after this conversation, in case it gives Caris the ability to teleport here at will - which could of course happen during the conversation but his guards have their orders -)

He was absolutely expecting this and he's somehow still startled, though he doesn't show any visible signs of it. 

"Caris. ...That seems preferable if this is going to take multiple conversations, but it's not at the top of my list of precautions, I - think it's more important to resolve this quickly."

Pause. "- Altarrin's fine - though I hear you checked? We're confident in his identity though can't rule out if he's invisibly mind-controlled. We're– at this point I can say it - whatever else happens, we are deeply grateful for that." 

Of course, maybe Altarrin wouldn't have been in such bad trouble at all if they hadn't sent the Inquisitors after Caris. 

"I did check. I had conditions for handing him over to you, you'll recall, and am observing with interest if they are met. 

And - he saved my life, yesterday. I owed him his, if I could manage it."

Nod.

- his room is unscryable, the mage-guards with him are compulsioned to him more directly than usual and have been ordered not to answer any questions without his permission, he can - this is as openly as they'll be able to speak at any point, probably - 

"I haven't spoken to him yet. He wasn't incredibly coherent yet and we're being cautious about - contagious mind control - minimizing Thoughtsensing him until the Office of Inquiry makes a call on whether the Thoughtsenser seems affected. If so I think one of the Office of Inquiry interrogators will question him this morning, before I talk to him, but I can formally order them to leave off certain topics - which of course will make some people think that I'm mind-controlled, but it was our agreement. It would be helpful if you can narrow down the topics they should steer around. Assume Altarrin may be less competent than usual to deflect, he's under very heavy compulsions." 

"Is this conversation secure on your end? I can just - tell you what you'll get out of him later today anyway, and then you can figure out how you want to steer your people."

That's - huh, a change in Caris' reaction. (Caris with a girl voice continues to be very weird but possibly less so than the alternative?)

...Can he trust it. Well. The same amount he could trust any of this, presumably. And they can check with Altarrin.  

"Room itself is as heavily shielded as my bedroom at court. Guards are loyal to me and compulsioned and under clear orders not to reveal anything that happens in here. I could put down a sound-barrier if that's not enough for you." 

"I do not want your guards to be able to hear us."

He nods to his guards, puts up a sound-barrier - it's fully permeable to the comms spell - and turns away so they can't read his lips. 

"Done." 

"Altarrin developed a way to prevent his soul from being claimed by your world's useless gods when he dies, and to ensure it returns instead to the Empire with at least some of his memories intact. If the gods learn how it works, they will be more likely able to destroy it."

"How did he– ...I shouldn't ask. How, how long ago did he - figure this out -?" 

"I don't know. But it's what he told me the first night, when I - explained that my world had afterlives and it wasn't all right that yours didn't, and explained that I was going to have to fight your gods."

"I..." 

It's not all right, is it, and yet - who but Altarrin would have tried to fight death? ...Not just for himself, he's sure of that, maybe that's the only step he could achieve so far but he would want it for everyone. And if he wants to bring the Empire to a point when they can fight gods on that scale, then of course he feels that the Empire is failing - 

- he must have been so relieved to meet someone who saw that and thought, no, obviously, this has to change and I'll do it myself...

Or, you know, maybe none of that is even true and maybe all of those emotions are the result of mind control. He nods, rather than reveal anything he doesn't technically need to, even though in the world where Caris is telling the truth, it feels like that would help. 

"Is that all? I doubt they were going to ask him 'are you immortal' but I suppose they might ask about - plans for working against the gods, and it'd come up - and it's not a secret that you think there should be afterlives. It's going to be suspicious if I tell them they can't ask about gods, that's - so much of what we're worried about here - is there any way to narrow that down a bit further?" 

“You can ask him about the gods. I think if anything that’s a good angle, compared to asking precisely how our conversation went, or why he was - willing to die for me - you can ask how he satisfied himself of my intentions far enough to loosen my compulsions originally, you can ask him what he thinks the gods are trying for here and now - your majesty, I don’t really have the context to guess, here.”

"So it's safer to ask about - generalities of why he trusts you, rather than to lay out a timeline of the day you met? That may be a problem, your conversation during the period Altarrin claimed to have been in the north is...one of our biggest uncertainties, the part that looks most uncharacteristic to Altarrin and suspicious for undetectable mind control. ...Is it safe to ask him about your world, in full generality, or is anything about that risky?" 

“Your Majesty, are you trying to convince some third party or yourself? If you want to know everything ask him everything, just don’t end up in a situation where half your staff knows. If you’re trying to convince your inquisitor you need to brief them, let them report without the secret bits, and then kill them, that’s what I’d take in their place. …are you in fact safe presently, I can arrange to rescue you if not.”

"I am not currently in danger and please don't, being 'rescued' would really not help - one of the factors I'm juggling is, in fact, not tempting anyone to try for a coup, I just arrested the top Mage-Inquisitor at the Office of Inquiry in order to work with you at all and I don't know what contingencies he set up - but I'm not incredibly worried. One in...twenty odds, maybe, if I can avoid doing anything spectacularly stupid and assuming that I am not, in fact, mind controlled and this will at some point be verifiable." 

Sigh. "In terms of who I'm trying to convince, it's - complicated? I'm mostly trying to take literally any precautions against the world where I'm compromised in a way I can't detect and so whether I'm convinced isn't actually evidence – in which case probably the best outcome for the Empire is that the Office of Inquiry does stage a coup, and I need to - avoid getting in the way in that possible world while preventing it in the worlds where you're not our enemy.

"I realize having that as an ongoing consideration makes it very hard to make other decisions and is probably going to cause me to make some stupid mistakes in the opposite direction. I'm trying very hard to avoid that. ...A consideration is that, entirely separately from whether there's any mind-control involved here, I like Altarrin, personally, and I'm worried about him, and I really don't think this is a useful attitude to be carrying into an adversarial interrogation and so it should not be me. I'll speak to the Mage-Inquisitor and - suggest that as an option - possibly with a plan that they will carve out exceptions and someone else can do a second interrogation and still be around to fully debrief on it..."  

"That seems reasonable. Do you require anything else of me at this time?"

"If you have it I would like a sense of - the most you would agree to, in terms of compulsions or contingency measures on our part or whatnot, in order to surrender willingly. ...And whether you would accept more restrictive conditions in exchange for access to Altarrin - with compulsions in place and precautions to make it difficult for you to teleport him out, but I think just letting you speak with him doesn't, actually, cost us very much here. I'm not sure how valuable you would consider it or what you'd be willing to trade for it." 

"I want to be confident I won't die in your custody. If there are people who might contemplate killing you about this, there have to be far more who'd try at killing me. And while under ordinary circumstances I am hard to kill, if you've made me defenseless anyone who can get near me and Final Strike can do it. I want to be in a location known only to you, staffed by people bound not to kill me unless you tell them to, and to release me if you are assassinated, and I want the chance to ask Altarrin if he thinks that's sufficient and modify it if it's not."

Nod. 

"I'm - not sure if I can give you that. It's going to depend on how questioning Altarrin goes. You're welcome to talk to Altarrin; I will instruct his guards not to interfere with your spell. He's currently under compulsions that don't allow any spontaneous voluntary actions including speaking but I think we can bend on just letting him talk. Probably."

"Should we speak again in six hours? I can suggest a relay-person, but - we might want the option of discussing the topics you don't want anyone else to know, and I'd prefer not to kill every guard I assign to the job, if this might take more back and forth." 

"I can contact you directly in six candlemarks if you don't convey otherwise before then." She has no idea whether he has any means to do so. 

"Agreed." 

S/he can go on not knowing! They don't, currently, but plausibly Altarrin does, and it sounds from the preliminary report like the Healers thought he was mostly lucid - 

- he needs to talk to the Mage-Inquisitor in charge about the interrogation– ....no. He needs to stop and think and assign at least some vague probabilities to whether he was acting uncharacteristic in that conversation in a mind-control-y way. In which case he...still needs to keep to their conditions, because he's not sure this process can recover from another betrayal in either direction, and he doesn't want to be first - is that mind-control - he doesn't think so, he thinks that's the sort of thing Altarrin used to advise him, that often you're starting from a position of no trust and nothing left to burn but when that's not true, when you've built anything especially if you took risks and went out on a limb for it, you don't carelessly break it - 

He needs to go track down notes on pre-Caris conversations with Altarrin– he doesn't have time to do that. He'll give himself...a candlemark. 

Carissa is going to move locations in case they were able to track her and then go back to her Boots of Teleport. They're going to take longer than all this will probably drag out if it goes well, but if it doesn't go well she'll be very glad she has the mobility. 

She rereads Altarrin's notes for her every few hours.  

Is she going to Dispel Magic the ancient chest that apparently contains Altarrin's private research notes from past lives? 

(There are probably some considerations against, if she's planning to surrender to the Empire and does not want the Empire able to find Altarrin's secret records cache locations.)