"First, this:  To the things from the Far Tapestry you are a sort of mechanical contrivance whose levers they are prodding, looking for triggers.  To bind them on a level where their words bear any relation to reality, rather than being pure manipulations, is only the first step with trading with them; after that they will be looking for truths that fix reality, true things they can say that move you; and they have more freedom in it than you imagine, because what they say affects what is true.  It bears some resemblance to the art of self-fulfilling prophecy, which the young oracle beside you has barely begun to explore."

"From the perspective of the Far Tapestry, anything resembling a swift emotional reaction is an alien - to them - shortcut through your mind's pathways, which they will try to exploit towards self-fulfillment.  Had I wished to ruin you, using the arts that they would use, I would have - without warning, and with a carefully established previous frame of insufficiently-concealed contempt - prophesied to you that your pride would be your flaw and your downfall, that you would hold yourself too great to heed the counsel of wise elder beings like myself that could have saved you.  I am not using the exact words I'd have used, if I were trying that myself; but with the right choice of wordings, intonations, contexts, I could have spoken those words and thereby made them true.  I could tell you that your reluctance to compromise would destroy you, in a way that made it sound like I was sincerely contemptuous about the fact but maybe also didn't know as much about you as I thought; and you'd think 'hah, I'll show her, then' and refuse to compromise and so seal the truth I'd predicted."

"Dealing with creatures like that is, in fact, unpleasant, and I would recommend leaving such negotiations to my husband."

"I do realize that, and I'm not so easily played, but I'm happy to leave it to your husband, had I any reason to think I could trust him or you."

"You're less easily played when you're in a mood to carefully reflect on things, perhaps.  I can already predict about you that you are not always in a mood like that, and see some of how I'd steer you to not be in that mood at the key moment when you heard my words.  To be a kind of thing that has changeable, responsive moods makes you, from their perspective, a strangely vulnerable sort of thought process; they can consider how to attack every kind of mood you can be prodded to enter, rather than you being in one constant mental state with a more limited set of self-fulfilling claims."

" - sure. And thank you, I guess, for not doing that, if you're in fact not doing that, and if that's what you're fishing for. I notice we're not talking about why I should trust you."

"We cannot yet form the bonds of trust as trust should be, until you know more about me than it's to my own advantage to reveal now.  And you will become smarter than this, and later wiser.  If you came to trust me too quickly now, you would notice then.  That would be an ill start to the voyage."

"Well, then, I'm not sure we have much more to say to one another."

"You know more about me than at the start of this conversation; and I know more about you that I am allowed to take into account. That the process does not complete immediately does not mean there has been no progress."

"But I'll move on, then, to my second advice, which is more of a tangible offer."

"I would guess that Nefreti Clepati has seen you in alternate possibilities, and has seen some of your possible fates.  Learning of those might enable you to break free of them, rather than others using them to move you about.  I will give this oracle girl a private message to bear to Clepati, though it cannot yet come to your own ears, by which I mean to motivate Clepati to tell you what she has withheld.  That is my next offering to you in this relationship."

"Well, I won't turn that down."

The old woman turns then her head toward Ione, and speaks apparently in plain Taldane, though it is also evident that Fe-Anar does not hear.

"Brace yourself and show no reaction to my words."

Oh that's not a good sign.

"I'm braced."

"You made an error, in opposing my interests here, in seeking to warn that man against me."

"It's not to my interest to let Creation be threatened, if I don't think I have a chance to escape Creation.  Having learned this much, in this way, if I failed to come to alliance terms with this man, I would eliminate the threat to Creation after I'd investigated it.  There would be no constraints on how I used that knowledge, which I'd have learned regardless."

Ione Sala shows no outward reaction.  Her heart is hammering inside her, though, for she's finally thinking and yes, that should have occurred to her, and even more it's occurring to her that Fe-Anar himself would be ecstatic if this being did exactly that.

"Understood," Ione says.

"I'd know from having seen him for only two minutes that his pride is his fatal flaw.  He is not ready to lead a voyage out of Creation.  He is not ready to hear how unready he is."

"There is something in the nature of Creation or perhaps what lies beyond it, that makes mortals to matter in it at all, as we wouldn't otherwise expect to be true.  For that reason I consider it a running concern that perhaps a voyage like this one can only succeed if it's a mortal to begin it and drive it, a mortal who hasn't been turned into a full hand-puppet of gods along the way.  But he is unequal, at present, even to the simpler requisite of coming to reasonable terms with me about my aid.  He wants to be sole captain of the voyage and rule it alone, and it is possible to put him into a mood where he does not want to hear from his advisors.  I would not, at present, want to go with him, as he is.  So Nethys's gamble ends here and poorly, unless Nefreti Clepati tells this man everything pertinent she knows about his fates and his dooms, and that enables him to grow beyond those."

"Understood."

"My price for my aid to Nethys in this matter, is that Nefreti Clepati tells me anything she's glimpsed in other possibilities about a power that can control space, or make portals of a vast scale; any such tale, however distant from us, might give me a hint about where to look for a power like that somewhere in Creation.  Success there would also make this a more promising voyage.  And you need me to decide, in the end, that I'll gamble on this being the right moment to go into a greater exile."

"I'll convey that, though I can't speak for my master.  How is Nefreti to contact You?"

"She knows me.  So will you, as soon as I decide the matter is no longer a secret from you.  And that's also a helpful act toward him, for it's better that people begin by seeing me as I am, for good or ill, and only afterward consider the distorted stories of me."

The old woman turns back to Fe-Anar, speaking this time again to be heard by both.  "I will be waiting here in Fire where you found me, if you later become more desiring of my aid.  I'd offer to send some small minion with you, for your convenience, but I don't expect you want that."

"Doesn't really sound convenient, no. I'll think about what you had to say, though rather little of it was about how concretely to do a project like this one."

"If you could somehow lay your hands upon the energies that sustain Creation, the mathematics of them have been the study of an ancient silver dragon who dwells in Kenabres.  I'd help you more if I could, but while I yet dwell within Creation I am constrained by far too many oaths and pacts and treaties and considerations."

He nods, because all the things he can think of to say are sarcastic and that's just bad incentives when she's actually being mildly helpful.

Outward sarcasm would mean nothing to her; only the underlying realities of his attitude matter.  But that he cares at all what she thinks, and restrains his pride in any way, is progress.

"I say also - in case it should matter to you - that I have not truly been here in person, though this form does resemble me and I have been speaking through it quite directly.  Approaching you in my true person without asking your permission about it would not have been courteous."

He figured. Gods tend to be notable to be around. "I thank you for the courtesy, to whatever degree courtesy is how your decision was motivated."

She smiles slightly, and folds her hands into her lap.  Though the metal blindfold is still on her, there is an air about her as if she'd closed her eyes.

Cheliax, at a point in time later than it was before the text earlier said 'Earlier:':

The developing situation in Cheliax is complicated, and of course fraught, and it could hardly be otherwise.