"I don't, in fact, always think that. I'd have told you pretty confidently before Elie arrived that she was not likely to betray you. Now - I have no idea."

"I think she just - likes Elie. A lot. Trusts him, wants to impress him, has grandiose archmagery plans with him, may or may not be sleeping with him... It's probably good for her. She doesn't make friends very readily." The two of them are probably the people who would've come the closest to counting, and if Alfirin is pulling away from them now - well, Iomedae doesn't think it's for geopolitical reasons.

"Isn't he married?"

"He is. Or was, I'm not sure if he's - sure he can get back to his world. He is also Galtan, though. I couldn't guess at what he and his wife have agreed on and cannot think of any way of asking that wouldn't be a spectacularly bad idea."

"Alfirin's not usually that - irresponsible."

"I don't think she's being irresponsible! I don't know exactly what is up but I expect if I did it would seem wholly responsible to me."

"I don't know exactly what's up either but if the answer is that she's sleeping with her new married archmage ally whose wife is also an archmage then she's absolutely being irresponsible, and if she's not doing that and is just irritable and standoffish and keeping secrets for some other reason then I really hope it's one that doesn't come back to bite us."

"I can't argue with that."

And when they are back in their demiplane – the slow one, the safe one – he'll ask

"How much do you think they suspect?"

"That we're hiding something, for sure. That we're hiding something from the gods specifically. I'm sure Marit in particular suspects that the story about Asmodean Cheliax is a fog cloud - I'm sure he suspected it as soon as we told them, the only question is how strongly. A lot of our time is unaccounted-for, from their perspective. I'm not sure there's anything we can do about that."

"Do you think they'd try to stop us if they knew?"

"Not if they knew everything. It's possible that they would consider themselves bound to not help us but they definitely wouldn't stop us intentionally."

"And – do you think they'd try to stop us if they don't know?"

"...Not as a first resort. Maybe if they learn some things but not all of them, but even then - I think Iomedae would try to talk first if she thought she could. Marit would not think he could."

"So we just carry on, then."

"Yes. We just carry on."

Élie only sleeps two hours a night, but he does need those two hours. If he has to watch himself more closely around Iomedae and Marit, it's not going to keep him up at night. Much. He has a particular horror of dissimulation, but he can do it – or at least do it well enough to not seem worth the trouble of investigating. The last time he had to count on not being worth investigating, of course, it didn't save him. But being an archmage has advantages, he's told. And he can sleep through just about anything, even bad memories. 

And Elie is standing on the blasted, smoldering ruins of an island, with a handsome man twenty feet away, hovering in the fashion of an archmage who uses Overland Flight so often he may have grown unaccustomed to his feet ever touching the ground. 

"The spell will not permit us to kill each other," the man says, "so it's convenient for negotiations. Or, really, where are my manners - for introductions, first. I'm Tar-Baphon."

If he was using Dream, Élie wouldn't be able to respond, and he's clearly expected to. Mindscape, then? But Mindscape doesn't work across planes – 

Not important. What is important: ensuring that when and if he wakes up he's able to tell Alfirin his mind may have been tampered with. Self-suggestion? Can he do magic here?

And while he's trying to figure that out, he'll say – "My mother always said I hadn't any manners. Forgive me if I don't respond in kind."

"Well, I won't insist on pleasantries. What are you in this for? Fame? Fortune? Godhood?"

First things first: does he feel compelled to respond?

Hardly. Maybe lightly nudged.

"It seemed as good a use of my time as any."

Can he cast spells here? Not that he's going to make any sudden moves, mind. 

"What do you suppose would make something a better use of your time?"

(He cannot cast spells here.)

The fact that he can't do magic points towards this being a dream-message, in which case Tar-Baphon probably can't cast spells either. Though it's not like this is how dream-messages work to begin with.

"All sorts of things, but I'd be rather surprised if any of them were in your power to offer."