Abrogail was having a lot more fun than that but I don't know that I recommend her methods, Carissa does not say. 

Is there a version of that which would be useful -

"Do you want the shapeshifting hat, so you can go pursue a career as a wandering musician in the extra hours the Ring of Sustenance gives you?"

"I really don't feel like that would - solve the actual problem." 

And he looks plaintively at her. "When you were Caris, I - I liked you. I don't know if I could have fallen in love with you but it - felt like maybe - and it's never felt like that before. I don't know how much of it was pretending. Probably a lot of it was. I don't know if it was always going to be doomed, I'm - not very good at relationships, I think maybe being Emperor just dooms everything, but for a couple of days I thought maybe there was a...nice thing, there, that was real, for once, and I. Don't know. I expect I've very thoroughly ruined everything at this point anyway." 

This conversation she has actually thought about. 

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. Then opens them again; she owes it to him to look at him. 

"I want you to let me go, let me build my wizard tower, where we can meet as equals. I will gladly swear or be bound not to kill you, not to work to bring about your Empire's destruction in your reign, but I want to be free. Because - Caris wasn't all pretending, but he can't be not at all pretending unless I answer to you only as a person who respects you and wants to see your Empire flourish. You have my life in your hands, and neither of us wants that, and I'll play the game for you either way if you ask it of me but you'll know it's a game, and so it really won't work.

I don't think you'll love me. In Jacona, I would have pulled it off, I bet, because I intended to make you my whole world, and give you everything you'd dreamed of, and I was going to be better at it than most people what with the shapeshifting and extradimensional knowledge. But if I'm off on my own, then my whole world is going to be - the whole world.

But there's something that I could never have given you in Jacona that it would delight me to offer you, as your ally, were I free."

Bastran blinks at her, and then involuntarily starts laughing. "I - you do have a point...I need to think about it because, um, because I want that and also my shoulder Kastil is screaming very loudly about the concept of leaving Jacona to go, um. Meet my terrifyingly powerful wizard lover in his wizard tower." Even though this would be approximately the most romantic thing he can IMAGINE. 

Altarrin is making an odd face. "You know, I never thought I would have a reason to say this, but my shoulder Arbas is pointing out that you are, actually, allowed to sometimes use your absolute power as Emperor and overrule your advisors in order to do the things you like. It does not all have to be selfless service to the Empire. Sometimes having nice things for yourself is - important, I think." 

"This is.... possibly not the most advantageous thing to say from my position but - at the point where you send a sixth circle wizard off across the continent to do as they wish unsupervised, you're already betting everything on having read out of my mind an accurate impression of who I am and what I want. I would, at that point, be able to kill you if I wanted to whether you dropped by for dates or not. You've had Arbas look at every piece of me; you know I don't want you dead. But that's what you'd be relying on, not your security precautions."

Bastran is now the one making a very odd expression. (It's his attempt to conceal the expression of 'that's one of the hottest things I've ever heard' because seriously why is he like that.) 

"I know." He looks into her eyes. "I'd like to borrow Altarrin's Detect Thoughts item and read your mind myself, and - I think I want to take off the weird loyalty compulsion you've got in place right now, and ask you without that. After I ask you for a vow not to just Teleport out of here, where I can see it - not that I expect you'll do that, to be clear, just - the principle is to be cautious even when it seems dumb." 

Altarrin isn't wearing it right now but he does carry it on him. He glances over at Carissa. 

"You have my word, presuming this situation to be approximately what it appears to be, that I will not Teleport from this office during this conversation, unless prompted by some external threat, and that in that case I'll return as swiftly as I reasonably can to your custody." She can't get a whole spellform out before a Velgarth mage can counterspell it anyway; someday she'll have Getaway, which is instantaneous, but not yet.

Altarrin hands Bastran the item. 

He puts it on. 

"How much do you actually want to - work with the Empire, trade with us, be my ally? Versus, I guess, how much is that just a concession because you don't think I'll approve you going off to build your wizard tower otherwise?" 

He really wants to ask this question of a different person, a person he can't find here no matter how hard he looks, the person she grows into when she's not mindread and when it's not safer to be small. She will of course genuinely try to extrapolate that person's answers, but there'll be pieces missing, in precisely the places where thoughts are too dangerous to think.

She doesn't actually know how good the Empire is, how much she cares if it falls to god-cult states, so long as enough remains for the god-project to commence somewhere out of the reach of the gods. It might be that it's much better than everywhere else, not just in - day to day standards of living, Altarrin talks about that, but in - potential for growth, potential to be a place where people can build Civilization to their own sensibilities. Most places aren't that, but it's a spectrum. It's ...not a spectrum along which the Empire looks particularly good. People can't change very much, when their minds are bound by magic. 

She has no trouble believing the god-ruled places are even worse. After all, Cheliax was. But ...the Empire isn't very good in her view, just the least bad thing. 

This doesn't mean she isn't sincere about wanting to trade with it. You can trade across even quite a gulf in priorities, and the Empire is clearly the kind of place - well, the Emperor is clearly the kind of person - you can trade with. Powerful wizards usually end up independent. They're hard for even a powerful ruler to truly control, and they want their own things. You don't become a powerful wizard if you aren't somewhat monomaniacally obsessed with some aspect of magic. Being an admirable powerful wizard, in the conception thereof in Carissa's heart, is being Lawful and possible to trade with, while you live in your wizard tower which rivals many nations in treasury and exports. 

(Cheliax kept a handle on its. But - a loose handle, much less of a handle than Bastran has on Arbas for a lot of people of the same character - and only because they were soul-sold.)

She wouldn't betray Bastran; he had the chance and didn't betray her, because he saw in her that she would return his cooperation. There's complicated theories here but this really isn't complicated; it is the sort of thing where the shards of Law in humans pull the same way as the true Law. She'd take some risks for him, if he asked it, though not readily the risk of having her values and priorities distorted for the rest of time. 

She's terrified of a compulsion that lays fine on everyone else but that catches the wrong edge of how Carissa sees the world. She can imagine laying waste to the whole world to strengthen his Empire, if she was bound to serve it as best she could and not able to lie to herself about whether a given plan did that. She's terrified too that he'll tell her he can't allow the god project, that he'll kill her if that's really what she means to do. She'll promise not to do it, in that case, and hold to the promise, but - it'll be so much lost forever.

She knows that if she were not afraid of him she would admire him, enjoy his company, enjoy surprising him. She is terrified of him, so this is an abstract feeling, sort of like a memory, though in fact in her memories of being Caris she was mostly trying to invent a new kind of sex on the spot rather than contemplating his character. 

She did, sincerely and with uncomplicated intent, intend to love him, before, to memorize him and amuse him and accept him and surprise him and be a dozen lovers for him and bear him children; she doesn't think it makes sense to do that, now, not because she wouldn't if commanded but because he'd have to command it and she understands him enough to know that'd ruin it. 

Bastran - is going to flinch away from that final thought because he really cannot be thinking about that at the same time as the future of his Empire. Feelings, box. 

"You thought Altarrin wished he'd built dath ilan," he says, slowly. "Or at least - his version of it. A place where people can build Civilization to their own sensibilities. Honestly dath ilan doesn't feel...plausible, to me, it doesn't feel like something you can build out of humans, but. Can you - imagine what the thing Altarrin wants - the thing you want, that's - in that direction, could look like, in this world?" 

" - I don't know. I've - never been a place that was good. I've never seen one. But if you - didn't have to fear assassination at all, if I had a demiplane with clones for you so you could wake up and walk away, and didn't have to mind control everyone just to stay alive - that'd be better -"

Nod. "But - not just for me, right? You want that to be the world for everyone in the Empire. ...In the world, I guess, probably once we have - the power to do that - we can get that for everyone in the world more cheaply than by having to conquer them. Conquering places is - bad. I know we do a lot of it and - I think the people in Oris and Taymyrr will be better off for it in twenty years - but I'm not blind, I know it hurts people." 

...He looks down at his knees. "I don't– Altarrin can do that. Be - responsible for the whole world. I'm scared that even if I weren't bound to serve the Empire specifically, I don't know how to - carry that much. Why do you think you can?" 

"Well, I mean, I'm going to make myself immortal first, and then my allies and my friends, but - I can't really imagine that after that -

- I'll go walking down the streets and I'll see people going about their lives and I wouldn't want to leave them without an afterlife, any more than I'd want to strike them dead on the spot, right? It's not - a burden to take up, it's not like realizing you need to fight Asmodeus and might lose. It's just, you know, if you want buildings and you're not a thief you have to build them, if you want countries and you're not a warlord you have to build them, if you want the world to be nice and you're not a god you need to build one or become one or intimidate one into submission and you won't have nice things until then -"

Bastran nods. Shakes himself a little, as though to clear his head – it keeps feeling oddly as though the conversation is sliding down a hill, like he can't stay balanced on the actual concrete decisions that need to be made here and now. 

Focus. Now isn't the time to try to wrap his head around the concept of a centuries-long plot to overthrow and replace the gods or to dwell on how badly he wishes he could leave everything behind and go with them.

"I don't actually think you want to kill me, or harm the Empire, but - everything about the Empire is built around not relying on that, and - if I can be tricked by the gods into killing you, probably the reverse is true as well. Are there compulsions, or - other commitment measures - you'd be willing to agree to?" 

"I have no objection to compulsions not to kill you or help anyone else do it; I do expect that compulsions I get won't stick, because I want the ability to Dispel Magic myself sometimes, as is extremely useful when I'm doing experimental spell development, and because even if you forbid that I'm going to invent an antimagic field at some point, and conceivably get a familiar who can spellcast for me, and conceivably spend a bunch of time in forms with different brains and I'm not sure how that affects compulsions. I also have no objections to giving you my word that I won't kill you or try to bring your death about, either 'at all' or without some kind of external checks that it's in fact the right thing to do like because you've gone mad in your old age and I can't fix you. I'm also willing to just give you my word I'll stay out of the Empire outside authorized excursions, if you want that."

"Do you expect things to go better - both from your perspective and from mine - if you're in contact with the Empire and can come and go freely?" 

"Probably. I want to recruit apprentices, at some point, and buy supplies, and all of that is easier to do without involving intermediaries if I can travel freely. But it's not a terribly costly precaution. Honestly, from my angle, the likeliest way the gods arrange to use me to try to kill you is by some other Velgarth mage being able to compulsion and subvert me, and so close relations with the Empire seem probably protective, as does having Altarrin, as do some obvious things like not inventing Phantasmal Killer even though it'd be convenient to have."

"...I would, actually, appreciate if you're willing to not prioritize inventing assassination spells. And if you're willing to commit to telling me what spells you have, and providing defenses against them if you can. I - understand that you want to be able to hold your own in a fight, just..." 

"No, I'm pretty much with you there, if we assume that we're forced into unlikely situations then the unlikely situations where my ability to easily kill you is useful seem probably scarcer than the unlikely situations where it's either directly a liability because someone has power over me or indirectly a liability because it causes you to freak out and kill me. I'm not going to develop Phantasmal Killer or any arrows of slaying, though I am going to develop Antimagic Field because that has very broad utility, and I'm not sure what the best protections against it look like. I guess you can have some guards who are trained in nonmagical combat?"

"And wear nonmagical armor in high risk situations, and have nonmagical protocols for conveying a warning, or maybe a central ward that triggers an alarm if any of its nodes are suppressed by an antimagic field and drop out of contact... What is the maximum range of the spell, actually, is it small enough that someone could always just shout a warning, if they were not in a soundproofed room?" 

"Yes, it's a ten foot radius. Also, wizards at home wear special hats which are turned into a harmless piece of cloth ordinarily but, if the magic on them is suppressed by an antimagic field, expand into a lead cone which covers them and blocks the antimagic field, which they can then Teleport out from. You could do that, though it would look very strange and there might be more security in pretending that I'm not in fact at large."

Bastran bites back a snicker. "I could do that if I leave the palace, maybe? Wouldn't be conspicuous if I were wearing the full ceremonial regalia, assuming the cloth can look like anything, and I do usually dress up if I'm going out for a parade or something. I'm guessing it would have a magical signature, but most of my possessions do. ...Not sure we can realistically pretend you're not at large, anyway, if we're trading with you for new fancy magic items."