"Of course you do."

"I didn't really like that one Orvaran social worker much, even individually."

"What one Orvaran social worker?"

"Oh, I was curious what Isel's job looked like moment-to-moment and she was busy so I tried red liaisoning for Orvara, and a red tested the anonymity of the contact form by denying the Aradeh massacre, and she decided to stall the whole transition and escalate all the way to the council over a sting operation to catch the red who said such a thing."

"Denying the Aradeh massacre?"

"Aradeh was a province of Orvara's. They lost it in a war with Surefet and Surefet cleared it out so they could live there themselves. Which they now pretend they didn't, of course. Denying it happened is illegal in Orvara - but the red wasn't, really, just checking whether the form was really anonymous."

"Ah."

"They were kind of taking quite a chance, I don't get the sense they'd necessarily have survived the social worker's reeducation. But maybe she was just having an overzealous day."

Iobel nods.

"Everyone else, though, I like."

"No other exceptions ever?"

Aitim leans back and thinks. "I had a math teacher when I was two who bullied the students who were least likely to have her fired for it? ...but it was because her wife had been executed over a death at the daycare the year before...no, I can't say I really disliked her. My neighbor's secretary in my first overseas assignment agreed to be monogamous with his wife and then slept with lots of locals, and also told me to my face that my father should 'hang like whatever color he thinks he is these days' - I can't say I like him very much..."

"Just a little bit? He has a charming way of pronouncing a word, or something -"

"I told his wife and she owed me a favor and I leveraged it to get Shasali's office."

"And that causes you to like him."

"It does! Where would I be without him?"

"In theory you could find his existence instrumentally convenient without liking him as a person!"

"I suppose. But - people are lovely and fascinating by default, they get a strong presumption, and if they're useful on top of that it just feels so uncharitable to dislike them after all that."

"Uncharitable," she snorts.

"His wife gets to dislike him! - or go to his grandparents with it and get them to pay a larger share of the credit, I think that's what she in fact did, and then get a lovely boyfriend on the side, she's also entitled to do that. But it'd be uncharitable for me to dislike him."

Giggle.

"I know it's more fun for someone to like you if they don't like people indiscriminately."

"I have Cricket for that. I am at least reasonably confident that Mitros likes me more than most people."

"He did not marry any of them, I imagine that does it."

"It's a pretty strong signal. Though I wouldn't actually put it past him to have married someone he didn't like much."