"That... sounds much less like my father."

"I assume your father is not millennia old."

"He is not. Many things can happen in a thousand years, I suppose."

"Yeah. And you remind me a lot of his daughter Irikaino."

"He has a daughter?" Pause. "Is she... okay?"

"I think so. We don't talk a lot."

"I do not think I would do well spending thousands of years alone in a castle with my father and his victims. Or does she live elsewhere?"

"She lives in the castle, the victims have a village thing."

"Well."

She shakes her head slightly.

"As fascinating as this is, I don't think it's as important as finding a way to protect you from my father and his court. If he takes an interest in you, it will be bad; if his friend Nahira does, it could be much worse."

"His friend. Nahira. Yes, that...that sounds bad.

If I'm guessing right, and I think I am, we had one of those too. Tanaikon warned me about her just on the off-chance she might somehow have set something up to stop being dead."

"Her name is Den-aminde" ('long shadow') "Rysher Nahira and she shares many of my father's tastes, but she is more interested in making people suffer than physically hurting them and she understands the point of having a functioning government."

"The latter part didn't specifically get mentioned in regards to Halieve Narafaer, but the former, yes."

"I have the feeling that it would be very useful to understand all these coincidences, and I have no idea how to so much as begin to do that."

"Yeah. Maybe from the other side; pain magic is fantastically versatile."

"The difference in how magic works is also something it would be very useful to understand."

"...Yeah. I should check to make sure pain magic still works here; do you have any convenient blunt objects with which I could break enough bones to check?"

She blinks in mild surprise.

"...If it doesn't work, the most powerful healer in Tairasante is Nahira. I would not be able to find you another soulbearer with healing magic without her noticing."

"Point. Broken ribs aren't too inconvenient until they heal, but I don't think I could do that to myself without risking a punctured lung..."

"If my father decides to ask you what you did with my betrothed, you will have plenty of opportunity to experience pain."

"I did not want to pull an Anlei," she mutters under her breath.

Kelora blinks.

"Anlei is another pain mage," she clarifies. "Tanaikon tried to kidnap her so she set him on fire. Twice."

"I see," she says. "I... cannot, unfortunately, recommend doing that to my father or Nahira. Unless 'set him on fire' is a euphemism for something significantly more destructive."

"I mean, depending on how much pain is involved, there can be a lot of fire."

"There is likely to be a lot of pain."