"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Noted."

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

"Ah."

"I'm sorry."

"Well.

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

"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."

"Hm. Elaborate on holding still?"

"What do you mean?"

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

"I don't know."

"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?"

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

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

"Yes, that is possible."

"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."

"...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."

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

Nod.

"What do you need to do?"

"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?"

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