Sir, I'm exercising my right to tell you when you're making a mistake to say that you need more friends. Better ones, too.

…I'm not - trying to reassure you or anything? I just - it's important, I guess, that if you're upset about it it's because you're upset about the real thing that's happening and not - something you've imagined that's worse. Or if you're not upset, it should be because - you think it's okay, the actual thing that's happening, and not because you're imagining something that's not as bad - and I keep - not remembering, I guess, that you know her and - are probably imagining the right thing and not the thing you imagine if you just hear ‘possessed by an evil thousand-year-old wizard'.

I think I'm probably imagining the right thing. I'm upset about it but not very upset about it because enough awful things happen to people who deserve better, and enough of them have happened to people I know personally, that when I think about them I mostly just feel mad at Iomedae for making me think she could fix the world. 

Alright. Thanks, Commander. Marit. And, um -

- I can't really regret it, given what came of it, but - I'm sorry for kissing you that one time. Won't happen again. Sir.

This would not actually have occurred to him as a thing for which he could conceivably be owed an apology. He spends a little while rotating it in his mind. You didn't in fact misread me, the situation was just complicated in a fashion you had no way of knowing about. I'm not sure what you could conceivably have to apologize for. For my part I regret being inappropriately familiar. 

You weren't being inappropriately familiar, for people who've been adventuring together as much as we have - I thought you were Chelish, were using the same norms as I was instead of - wherever you're from.  I guess even if you're from Cheliax, 39th century Cheliax is different - Is it like the Osirian thing where women are - not really considered capable of aggression, I guess? If Daeran had kissed you unexpectedly would you think yourself wronged there?

…yes, he admits. He would not in a million years have identified this as an Osirian sort of attitude to have. …obviously women are capable of aggression, it's not that exactly, it's - I don't know. I have never examined it at all. Daeran would've had no reason to think I wanted such attention.

He has plenty of reason to think I might and I'd still object, if he kissed me when I didn't want! I wouldn't blame him for it, if it was an honest mistake, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a mistake?

…all right, but what about if you did want to but just hadn't had time to check in with Alfirin about whether she was all right with it? …I am not sure this situation has useful analogies, actually, it's just too strange. 

Look, setting aside the number of people in my body, for the moment - Because that is an uncomfortable thought, in this context - it's bad form to kiss your adventuring companions if you're not very sure they want you to, and - if you do and you're wrong, then you should apologize. So I'm apologizing. And if you don't feel that you were wronged because of your complicated feelings about the evil wizard sharing my body, fine, I guess that situation is strange and unusual and things like it won't really happen very often. But if you just don't feel that you were wronged because I'm a woman and not a man I'm going to be a little annoyed with you about it. And also a way you're identifiably from - not a modern-day place where people name their kids ‘Aspex', and I think you care about that.

Yes, I do, and I'm grateful for your pointing it out. I will try to learn more about whether and for what reasons the social attitudes with which I'm familiar migrated south of the Inner Sea, and I apologize if I am unjustly not annoyed with you.

When you put it that way I guess I'm being ridiculous. Sorry for snapping at you. I don't know what it was like in 3800. In Osirion - where I was living for a couple years before I came here - the local women were not allowed to…own anything… and if I ever had a conversation with a man with no chaperone present everyone would assume I was sleeping with him, if I ever went out for a walk after dark I must be out whoring - you get the idea.

That seems unjust and unpleasant. ..I left the place I grew up when I was quite young. The environment in which I spent my life was the Crusade, and nineteen people in twenty were men, but Iomedae led us, with Arazni and then after that with Alfirin. The attitude that I was familiar with among Lawful Good people was that men would need to, and should, go to significant lengths to ensure the safety of the women in their command - who were nearly all of them wizards or celibate religious - and that it was worth these lengths because they were all of them people extraordinarily valuable to our cause.

 Also there were whores and a great deal of fretting over related harm-reduction measures.

 Also in principle somewhere behind us in civilization there were women who weren't wizards or whores or celibate religious, who one would marry at some point.

Iomedae joined the Crusade before my time but she told me once that Arnisant had at first refused her, on the grounds that he was unwilling either to flog a woman or to take on a soldier he wasn't willing to flog. It was a new idea, that you could let women do men's work and hold them to the responsibilities of men.

We were - doing something radical, compared to what we'd all been born into, but looking at it from this angle I can see how there would be some problems. It's…good, if people are doing better, now.

…Did the men never give each other trouble, or - was it just considered not a problem if nobody could get pregnant from it. I can't really imagine it was the latter?

… if you injured another soldier in a fight you provoked that was a matter you'd be disciplined for. 

Are you using ‘injured' as a euphemism or did you not understand what I was asking about? Some men fuck other men. I didn't think this was a recent cultural innovation.

It's not. But if they're both happy, and one doesn't command the other, we don't care, and if someone tries to force someone else then he'll get disciplined for starting a fight, doesn't really matter what he was trying to start a fight over.

And - it was assumed that any man would start a fight over it, if another man came on to him? And women wouldn't, so there's extra rules protecting them?

Well, a man might be perfectly happy, and if he's disinterested hopefully he would just decline in a civilized fashion, but if someone pressed the point, yes, I'd expect he'd start a fight. A woman would too but - in the typical case she'll be worse at it, right, and has wildly more to lose. 

Well. I suppose that's…mostly true. I think - some of what's different, now, is something that you might call progress, and some of it is - more experience with more different ways people can be horrible to each other.

Is the Mendevian Crusade code missing something important? I mostly wrote it off what I know, though Irabeth was a cultural consultant what with how I'm not Mendevian. 

Nothing I remember, but it's possible I interpreted something like 'Any officer who makes sexual advances on one of his subordinates' as a local grammatical quirk rather than a meaningful distinction in the code.

- no, that would be inappropriate from a female officer as well. Less of a problem, to be sure, but I didn't intend to permit it by statute.

Well, some would say the punishment for sexual assault should be the same regardless of the sex of the perpetrator or the victim, but that's a bit of a far back-of-the-house position. I think it does matter, that men can get women pregnant and not the other way around. There should be some punishment for a woman who forces a man though, even if there's no injuries, even if she's not his commander.

Sure. And to command someone in your power to provide intimate favors is a great evil even if no concrete harm results, it's an abuse of their oath to you. 

…probably I should see how Lastwall handles this. Every time he thinks the word Lastwall it's with detectable annoyance.

Does it not live up to your hopes for it?