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Siva has a less questionable bad time in Nuime
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"Okay.

I'm not scared of your father. I can handle a lot of pain. It's not likely to be fun, in context, but I can handle it. It's Nahira I'm worried about."

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"I think you should perhaps be somewhat more scared of my father than you are. You seem to be the right amount of scared of Nahira."

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"Well, if I come to his attention I probably come to hers, so it's not like being inappropriately unscared of him is going to do me too much harm."

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"My father takes the absence of fear as a personal insult."

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"Noted."

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"I hope I can protect you from them but I don't think it's very likely."

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"Ah."

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"I'm sorry."

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"Well.

You said they both had those soul things, right? What can they do with them?"

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"It's... not simple to explain. Nahira can hurt people, and heal them, and hold them still for her convenience. My father can... well, also hurt people, but differently. A soulbearer's powers are not perfectly static and predictable, and Nahira in particular I strongly expect to have capabilities she has not generally revealed. I don't think my father would hide his power like that but I also don't think he understands it perfectly."

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"Hm. Elaborate on holding still?"

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"What do you mean?"

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"Mostly I want to know if it requires attention to maintain and if it's purely physical or not."

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"I don't know."

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"So I may or may not be able to set her on fire and if I can this may or may not have any benefit whatsoever. Do you know if her healing is reflexive?"

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"I have never known her to be noticeably injured."

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"Hmm. Okay. So I might be able to kill her if I can do enough fire fast enough and she isn't expecting it."

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"Yes, that is possible."

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"Okay. If this is probably going to happen to me, I'd like to plan for it as clear-headedly as possible while I can. It seems pretty obvious that she's--the bigger threat, logistically speaking; but...if, theoretically, I could kill one and only one of them, would it be better to get her, or go for the more-likely-to-succeed option? Especially if your grandfather would have fewer reputational problems with having her assassinated once the one who was related to him was out of the way."

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"...If you kill my father, you end up with an unstable political situation in the short term, somewhat better prospects in the medium-to-long term, and Nahira very unhappy with you. If you kill Nahira, you end up with no significant political upheaval right away, a slow disintegration of what little order is left in the province, and my father very unhappy with you. But it's also possible that with Nahira dead I might be able to convince my father to relinquish some onerous administrative duties to me, and in that case I could do significant amounts of good even with my father still around."

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"Okay. Well. Maybe we'll get really, really lucky and it won't come to that."

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Nod.

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"What do you need to do?"

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"I should let Ishmiote Odeno go home, if possible, but I know I haven't learned your language very well since we started speaking; have you learned much Nuimena?"

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"Uh--some? Not nearly as well as I know Ansati, and I'm not quite fluent in that yet."

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