"How many languages do you know? I speak English natively, Russian fluently, French conversationally, and Greek inadequately," says Miles.

"I'm not - fluent in any of them, but I understand Huttese, Bocce, Binary, a bit of Durese and Cheunh. And the - native Sith language. Then a number of dead languages useful for..." What's the word for archaeology? "..... digging up dead things."

"I'm going to assume you were reaching for 'archaeology' rather than 'graverobbing', although the line can be thin."

"Archaeology," she agrees, amused. "... Some graverobbing. The robbed dead were terrible, so it's fine."

"Whose graves have you robbed?"

"Sith Lords. Terrible ones."

"I suppose I could've guessed that. I'm tempted to ask what you found there, but I'm not sure it would make good dinner conversation." Pause. "Because 'whose graves have you robbed' is perfectly good dinner conversation, of course."

Callida smiles. "Of course."

He laughs.

She was correct, it is easier to deal with how atrociously hot he is when she has a plan. She can just vaguely enjoy his laughter while still keeping the necessary emotional distance.

"Sometimes there were holocrons." And other things she can't talk about. "Buried with the Sith Lords because -" and then vocabulary fails her. She makes a face and waves a hand. "They didn't trust anyone. Took everything they had to death, or tried to."

Meanwhile, does Cordelia want to hear about all of the interesting stuff about the galaxy Envee knows? She knows so much interesting stuff! A lot of it's language based, but she knows the history of the languages and some of the culture surrounding the languages, too.

Cordelia is absolutely fascinated!

"The more I hear about the Sith, the more surprised I am that the whole system has not yet collapsed under its own weight," Miles admits. "There's got to be something I'm missing here."

"I think things were more -" she does not know how to say the word stable, she will just have to steal the word he used and use it differently, "... less easy to collapse, before the Sith returned to the galaxy to attack it. Everyone was all - stuck together and if they fought, the Sith Emperor would be upset. So if they fought they did it quietly, which kept the deaths - less?" Was that grammatically correct? She thinks so, but it seems weirdly worded. Usually her grammar's pretty good, but English is difficult. "Or they'd leave to quietly gather power alone, and then die. Their places of power became their graves."

"Hmm. I see," he says. "That does make more sense. Still, though... none of these people can trust each other! Maybe I'm overestimating the importance of trust in maintaining social cohesion. Unsettling thought."

"They worked okay when they were - pointed at something. They could get -" lack of vocabulary frustrated handwave, "they could kill non-Sith and still get to kill a lot. When it seemed like the Republic was going to lose, they started fighting over the pieces they'd get. Or - making statues instead of roads. Sure of victory instead of getting it. And then a lot of them died and their newer apprentices would just kill? ... I think you're not, it's very. It's very itself."

"Statues instead of roads, I like that. Very evocative. Well. Then there's an empire out there hundreds of times larger than the entire wormhole nexus that's only managed to avoid falling apart because it hasn't had time yet."

He reflects on this analysis for a moment.

"I'm torn between hoping transit between your galaxy and mine is never reliably established so we're not caught inside the event horizon when the Sith Empire implodes into an astropolitical black hole, and trying to figure out where I'd need to stand and with how big a lever to fix it somehow..."

She smiles a little at the compliment, but the smile soon fades.

Callida shakes her head, somber. "Don't. Hope transit is never reliable, and stay far, far away."

"My ego isn't quite big enough for me to actually try to save an entire multiplanetary empire all by myself."

...he thinks over what he just said.

He starts laughing.

Callida tilts her head, inquisitively.

"... I'm missing something."

"...I can't give you the full story, I gave my word I wouldn't make gossip of it," he says, "but, ah... while it's not strictly false that I've never saved an entire multiplanetary empire all by myself, it's close enough that I should really have picked a more specific descriptor than 'multiplanetary'."

"Ah," says Callida, and now oh dear she is looking at him like he's edible she should stop that, his mother is here.

"Do you have stories you can gossip about?"

"I'm an ImpSec courier. Most of the interesting things I've ever done are classified, I'm afraid."

"I understand." She's disappointed, but she understands.