"No. I don't think I'd be a very good husband, right now, and she'd be a target. After the war."

"...I had been wondering if that was everyone or just Arnisant." 

"General Arnisant is married, and has grown children and grandchildren, though he's cautious about speaking to where any of the living ones are."

"Oh, no, I mean – you do all work for a woman, yes? I do think I'm unusually lucky in the married state, but it can't be that unusual to enter into it as equals."

"To enter into...marriage, as equals? I am not sure I understand what you're driving at. Obviously one could... enter into a marriage where both parties have separate property with approximately equal income?"

He shrugs. "You might marry someone who's as difficult to kill as you are. – Probably you personally shouldn't. But one might."

"There are very few such people and I do not think any of them want to leave their Crusade careers to have children, though if one did I'd certainly talk with her about whether we ought to marry."

" – I suspect that marriage means something different enough in your culture that this isn't a useful line of conversation. I think the thing I'm trying to say is that the thing Alfirin and Iomedae are doing makes more sense to me if I imagine myself believing that loving another person makes me weaker instead of stronger." 

"I think Iomedae would tell you that loving another person makes you - less of a Lawful god of making whatever tradeoffs are best and not just the ones that best serve the specific people you've had the chance to fall in love with, and that she is pretty set on becoming such a Lawful god. 

I think love probably does make you less of a Lawful god but she could probably do it anyway and still be a Lawful god. But I - one also might reasonably not want to pursue a romance with someone with Iomedae's life plans, and I think Alfirin quite reasonably decided that she did not want to, maybe for reasons that have changed in the intervening years but maybe for reasons that haven't."

"It's quite plausible that they shouldn't pursue a romance. It still seems sad to me if the way they get there is by never managing to tell each other that they've given something up."

"One kind of advice you find yourself giving a lot - to yourself, to other people - in this line of work is - if there's no space for it here, take it to Heaven. Because - war isn't good for people, and loss isn't good for people, and everyone has times when it's all too much. But our work now is worth more than it will be later, and it's all right to limp your way into paradise having done yourself injuries you don't know how to undo. 

But not for Iomedae or Alfirin, I guess. There's no - part where they heal in safety and do all the things that they delayed."

"I was sure I was damned until about five years ago." 

He isn't sure why said that. It wasn't what he meant to say at all. 

"Your situation sounds quite different, yeah. I don't know where I'd start if I were trying to give advice to a man who has buried his whole family, can't get out of bed sober, doesn't remember the last time he went to sleep preferring to wake up and was also damned. ...probably I would give up on advice and go for petrification, really."

"We tried that. Someone invented an executioner's blade that automatically trapped souls. I can't tell you how relieved we all were – 

– well, I can tell you that the public executioner eventually had to forbid volunteers. War isn't good for people and loss isn't good for people and sometimes there's nothing better waiting and people need to find a way to live with it. That's the world I come from."

Marit is pretty sure he disagrees with that, in that Elie's world did in fact still have Heaven, and trying to hold everyone to the standard of 'does not need to believe that things might someday get better' sounds like it'd actually just be horrendously bad for them in most cases, but he doesn't know enough context for it to be wise to describe how he thinks they ought to have handled it, and even if he knew exactly how he strongly suspects it'd be undiplomatic to just say it. Elie seems to feel - angry at the Shining Crusade, for not in fact being mostly damned? Or at least angry that, not being mostly damned, they might think they know things about loss and suffering? And that does not seem like a good pot to stir, at all. "Huh, how'd that get invented?" he says instead. "Continuous casting of an eighth circle spell sounds next door to impossible, and you're speaking of an invention not a miracle."

Élie isn't angry at the Shining Crusade. It's not their fault their biggest problem is a Lich and his mindless undead hordes and everyone who fights for them started out Good and stayed that way, because Tar-Baphon doesn't particularly delight in forcing his enemies into traps where every option is Evil. It's not their fault that none of them had to choose between fighting Hell and their own salvation. It's not their fault that in 900 years a nation of sanctimonious paladins will look at Galt and say things like "our resources are better spent elsewhere" and "in light of the Goddess's withrawal of support from your government" and, yes, "just take it to Heaven" – 

– well, maybe that one is a little bit their fault. 

He doesn't want to go down that road. It's no problem if none of them ever have to live in the real world. He wouldn't wish the real world on anyone. He can talk at great length about Margaery San Trayne and the design of the Final Blades and new advances that let them get the souls back out and various design improvements he's thought of that would keep them in anyway. 

It feels like much safer territory, and an interesting problem besides. 

" – and politically complicated, besides. There were a lot of wrongful executions, a lot of people who want their families out. And at least as many who were promised – and expected, and deserve – certain safety and certain peace." 

"Of course. I imagine no one had the organization or record-keeping to note the preferences of everyone they were executing."

"Believe it or not, we tried for the first few years." 

" - that's one of the most encouraging things about human nature I have ever heard."

"We weren't any of us Good people, back then, but it wasn't because we didn't care. ...Before you start thinking too highly of us, I'm sure that policy lead to more executions than there would have been otherwise."

"I'm not saying it's the optimal policy, it doesn't sound it, but it's - taking the stakes appropriately seriously, and thinking - like you might win someday, like someday there might be something better than Hell waiting for everyone."

"I've never doubted it. I think you're right about that much – we can't live without something at least standing in for hope."

"I'm off to Absalom," Alfirin informs Élie the next day, "To talk to Tilbun about when he wants that teleportation circle, now that your existence is public. Should I see if he'll buy more than the one, while I'm at it?"