"Iobel strikes me as a person with sound judgement. He should definitely have told her sooner but I rather trust that if she's married to him it's because that's what she wanted to be. - married people can't date others?"

"Uh, not typically - it'd be bad if the kids' paternity was in question -"

"Huh. There's a way to check that, incidentally."

"That might be disruptive but good to know."

"She wanted to be queen. She is the best queen but she should not have had to marry him to be best queen. They pretend that he loves her in public so she can't go date not-terrible people but he has his boyfriend who did not warn her even though he knew he was terrible and going to go be terrible at people."

"He wasn't even in the country at the time," he tells Aitim. "...also I do love her. I'm just not -"

"Yeah."

"Bah."

"It is lucky she found Milliways. She can date whoever she wants here. Maybe some Amentans will strike her fancy."

"Amentans are people with stupid hair?"

"That's right."

"I would think she will not want to date anyone with stupid hair but she married Mitros."

"Is brown the only hair color you consider non-stupid?"

"Mitros's hair is not especially stupid but he is terrible in ways that are worse than having stupid hair. So terrible. I hate you," he adds directly to Mitros.

"I know that."

"And it makes him very sad," he tells Cricket sincerely.

"Good."

Aitim and Mitros exchange more descriptions of people they know. There do not seem to be any other obvious matches.

Cricket goes and sleeps some more in front of the fireplace.

And Iobel and Cam return.

"Hey."

"Hey. How long were we gone?"

"Thirty minutes? Long enough for Cricket to explain how intensely he hates me and then get bored of us and take a nap, long enough to confirm we don't think we know any other alts outside my family - apparently we should look for a version of Makel's girlfriend for Macarial, though."

"I like her."

"And Macarial's wouldn't even be running a risk of getting the whole family killed!"