"Well, there's only so many spells to sling around - if you're not Tar-Baphon, who seems able to just pull more spell slots out of his pocket - so much of it's about rationing them better, and timing rests better, than the other side. But you certainly get fields that are messier and more confusing than this one. You'll pick it up."

Marit is pretty sure there's an archmage trick for pulling spell slots out of one's pocket - Alfirin could do five in a day not all that long after she first got one - but there is no point in letting on that he knows this, whether Élie has the trick or not. "I think the key factor driving the glut of extremely powerful people is that the liches come back and the Empire's genuinely generous with the diamonds because they realize that if only the liches come back then we lose in short order."

"Hmm. There's the theory that access to magical healing is part of the process by which combat makes people more powerful – if that's so, I wonder if frequent resurrection has a stronger effect." 

"Pretty sure the effect in the opposite direction - that there's less at stake for you once you're raisable, and so grow in strength more slowly - is the stronger one. Most of us got more powerful much faster earlier in our careers, and - all the wizards were stably at eighth, before Arazni died and it looked like we were going to lose everything."

"I considered leaving the war with the unkillable half-divine undead archmage to do something more dangerous and push through to ninth but in the end it turned out not to be necessary."

"Marit's stuck at fifth because he has spent his whole life relentlessly avoiding being in dangerous situations," Karlenius says. 

"It may be one of the most important forces on Golarion that sensible people can never become archmages," Marit says. 

"I'm looking forward to all of you meeting my wife, when she finds us. She can raise two people from the dead each day at no cost – in addition to her many other sterling personal qualities. Though I'm not sure if you'd find her sensible. I do, but that's only with reference to myself."

That sentence makes no sense unless -

"...is she also an archmage?"

"Oh, yes. One does meet so few people one can truly grow old with."

"I am sure we will eventually be delighted to meet her."

"I guess that's one solution to the puzzle of who one marries as an archmage."

"Alfirin I am sure is just waiting on Tar-Baphon's proposal," says Karlenius.

"I got it! Turned him down. He lacked almost every trait that one would find desirable in a spouse."

"We were just at – fifth circle, I think? – when we married. But I think we knew even then that neither of us intended to have typical lives." 

"I congratulate you on your happy marriage but feel compelled, actually, to dwell a bit longer on the news that Alfirin got a proposal from Tar-Baphon."

"Had you not been assuming that was the case? That was your mistake."

"Can a lich marry? I think by Imperial law, no."

"Because they're dead?"

"Specifically because they cannot consummate; I think some kinds of dead might be able to wrangle it."

Everyone present is slightly too professional to say that that can't be the feature Alfirin was holding against him. But only because Elie is in the room.

Élie probably has more context on Alfirin's personal life than any of these people up to and including Alfirin, but he's too polite to comment.

"I'm not sure why you'd assume marriages in Gallowspire are conducted according to imperial law."

"I'd really been assuming they weren't conducted at all, but if they are, I presume they are done according to the latest fashions in Oppara."

"Ustalav may in fact have more comprehensive law specific to marriages in which one party is undead."