"I was planning to go back to the front in about an hour. And bring you with me, if you're going to talk to the defector."

"Then I'll tell you in an hour." Iomedae feels very unsteady but probably an hour will be long enough to fix that.

He leaves to go plan the defense of Lastwall with Jan.

"Hey…something's wrong."

"I have an hour," says Iomedae. "- so we can ration which parts we spend how much time being upset about. First, Cheliax is probably going to attempt to kidnap me some more so I am being relocated to the Dome in Osirion, as of Wealday, and you are invited to come too, but you're going to hate it."

"...Okay.  Why am I going to hate it - I assume you want me to come with anyways -"

"I honestly don't know - I mean, of course I want you with me, I always want that, and I want you safe and I don't know if Cheliax knows enough by now to try to grab you too but they might. But I - can't ask this of you, you've just got to figure out what you want to do - apparently in Osirion we need a chaperone who is our legal guardian."

"A…chaperone."

"That is what Cansellarion said. Also, I have to moderate the content of the broadcasts to comply with Osirian law."

"Honestly I'm still surprised Lastwall let you get away with as much as they did - glad, obviously, but - not what I expected from a premodern dictatorship…" That's not the important part. "I have to decide within the hour?"

"No, by Wealday. What we have to decide within the hour is also upsetting but much stupider. Nefreti Clepati says that it might help with something secret if we invite a specific Chelish defector to our wedding."

"...That's stupid. How does she even know - we don't even know -"

"That's what's so upsetting! It's not upsetting to decide to get married, that would probably be excellent, but it's upsetting to have it prophesied when we haven't decided! That's our decision!! Prophecy being broken seems to mostly make everything worse but if it were to make anything at all better you'd think it'd be this!!"

"I know! It's -" She hugs Iomedae, "...I promise I'm not going to refuse to marry you out of spite but I'm noticing that I have the impulse. I don't want to invite random Chelish defectors to our hypothetical wedding just because some mad priest said to. But. I'm not gonna veto it if you think the secret thing is important enough."

Hughughug. "I don't know what the secret thing is except that I've never seen Cansellarion so - something. I figured I'd talk with the defector and see if once I spoke to them it made sense how it would help. I don't know. If it's something like 'once they heard about what America is like they'd want to make Cheliax like it' and the wedding is mostly metonymy, that'd be fine. And it might be mostly metonymy, she's a mad priest. But I don't mean to do it unless it actually seems like a good idea for reasons that aren't 'a mad priest said so', and with the qualification that we don't know if we intend to marry, and I'm fine with not doing that either, just out of spite, if you want, because it's really an extraordinarily unreasonable thing to ask. And while spitefully not marrying people because someone said you were going to is manipulable by our enemies, spitefully not inviting people you weren't going to invite anyway isn't."

"It is such an unreasonable thing to ask. If we get married and we invite them we can put this person and Nefreti together at a table in some dark corner."

"We can. I love you. I'm sorry that this apparently causes your love life to get mad priest attention. …if I'm willing to talk to the defector I leave with Cansellarion in an hour and I didn't ask if I'll be back before Wealday when I'm reassigned to Osirion. Probably I will be because I have to hand off a lot of work tasks. But if we want to talk about that we might want to do it now.""

"I wish we had Google here and I could just look up Osirion and tell why we need chaperones and how much power a legal guardian has over us and if I'd just be able to leave and whether they hate gays."

"Well we don't have Google but I have been told that I am supposed to treat my secretary like very slow Google and it has mostly worked so far."

"I guess. We'll see if he's fast enough." Alfirin can ask her secretary to get her the answers to those questions, clarify mortifyingly that 'gays' means 'people who habitually engage in homosexual acts,' and then return to Iomedae. "I think as long as I'm free to leave I want to go with you. And if I'm not - that's a lot scarier but I'll also be a lot more scared for you, waiting out here -"

Squeeze. "You'll hear me on the radio. And I can listen to a frequency we set in advance, if you want to talk to me and probably not have the whole world hear. We don't have time to develop a proper code but I think Tongues won't be very helpful if we communicate entirely in Earth literary references."

"I love you. If I wouldn't be allowed to leave we can talk on the radio and at least I'll know if you're okay."

Alfirin's secretary gets back to them before the hour is up with some fairly basic facts about Osirion. They need chaperones because they are unmarried women, who do not have independent legal standing in Osirion. Their legal guardian is responsible for interfacing with the Osirian government for them, is accountable to the Osirian government if they behave badly, and has…this was not clear on limited research but probably more power than a commanding officer in Lastwall has, because Osirion like all of the unfortunate countries in the world that aren't Lastwall doesn't have a well-developed body of law around illegal orders. Lieutenant Jeres is of course still subject to Lastwall's rules whatever country he's in.

It's kind of unclear if a person can leave Osirion as a matter of law over the objections of their legal guardian? Probably not? Alfirin could of course ask Jeres for assurance he'd let her leave, and Osirion won't otherwise attempt to keep her.

Okay. Well. In light of the fact that Osirion is the sort of place that requires all unmarried women to be chaperoned, she'd really like to know whether it's illegal to be gay there.

Her secretary is not sure why that would be an issue or what those facts have to do with each other?