He raises an eyebrow. "Is that so."

"Not— I'm not planning to. His promise not to kill me expires if I do anything, and I'm pretty sure plotting would count. So. Not that. It's just, I don't want to never try."

"But if you were to, say, only hypothetically answer questions about how to best deploy certain tools in certain hypothetical nonspecific situations..."

"With the number of unnecessary fights you get in? Of course I will. I'm not going to not help just because you'll probably end up opposed to the Lord eventually too."

"'Unnecessary' is a matter of point of view."

"Fair. Point being, he has to know already and if being a likely future enemy doesn't count as acting against him then helping one can't either."

"Has to know you'd want to challenge him, or has to know I might?"

"Huh. He might know about you too. He's hoping I will, and he probably knows I'd want to because he has Doug."

"Well. Don't do anything without talking to me?"

"Oh, don't worry. I won't even decide to do anything without talking to you."

He smiles. "Good." Then frowns again. "...how long has Doug been there, exactly?"

"A bit over a year. That wouldn't be very long for time between credible attempts on the Lordship, but I don't need to go that far for a rescue mission. Though you might want to if only to get rid of the current one."

His frown deepens. "We shouldn't do anything until we're sure we'll win. It's—horrible—that he keeps Doug there, but doing anything without being certain we'll win is just throwing our lives away."

"He's not actively being tortured as far as I know. And I think his time perception is...more like a ghost's. Not that that's good, but it makes things less urgent?"

"Yeah. We'll figure it out."

"We will probably decide on something, eventually. It's got to be pretty much inevitable." She's choosing her words carefully, as much for her own benefit as anyone else's.

So is he. He hugs her.

Possibly relatedly, she hugs him. Hasn't stopped since trying to convince him not to get himself killed, actually.

Sigh. "Don't worry, this kind of—miscalculation is unlikely to happen very much."

"As long as it doesn't happen at the wrong time. Or against the wrong enemy."

"Mmhm. Today I learnt that car crash ghosts are very good at distorting the appearance of metal so that mistake I won't make again."

"How does appearance lead to you getting slashed by an Other?"

"I'm an illusionist, the shark cage we were using for protection was—not entirely real."

"Ah.

And ghosts are something he has a lot of, even if we don't count the Shepherd."

"Yeah. Your magic, though, is—extremely powerful."