"Am I under any compulsions beyond those I was informed of, right now?" She doesn't sound angry, just thoughtful.

"- I had improvised additional compulsions because I panicked when you tried to contact various gods from your world, and may not have removed them perfectly carefully since I was under a great deal of stress, but they should still no longer be affecting you. Other than that, you ought not be - I certainly did not authorize anything - but I can check, if you wish. And if you trust me with that." 

A pause. 

"...I - would also remove the current ones, at least for the moment, as - an indication of trust, if that would help. Though it would be convenient for navigating the politics here if they were in place when we return." 

" - it's useful to know what constraints I'm under, for planning, and obviously it's useful to be under fewer constraints, same reason, but I'm not distressed or insulted, and if you can operate more freely with more assurance I'll be - predictable to the gods and not-difficult and visibly to your rivals in my place, then it doesn't actually bother me. On some level I want to find out what not being Chelish would be like but it sounds like that can wait. Until I'm immortal, if necessary." Really, it feels safer to be a prisoner than not, and she should probably rethink that what with how it isn't necessarily correct. 

"I do trust you to be committed enough to this bit you won't drop it to hurt me in some incredibly trivial fashion." She meant that as more of a compliment than it came out as. 

"- I am going to interpret that as meaning that you do not mind if I check for any additional compulsions that sneaked in." 

He checks. It takes about two seconds. "Nothing else. The standard compulsions for political prisoners are not to harm anyone, not to sabotage any infrastructure, and not to plan an escape. ...Also there is one to obey direct orders from anyone you believe to be representing the Empire, but I do trust you enough now to say that this one is very much not watertight. Compulsions toward taking a particular action, rather than banning a range of actions, are more difficult. And – well, I personally can generally find a great deal of leeway in the compulsion I usually have to serve the Empire, since I built it and in some sense know its true spirit better than anyone else." 

And he hesitates, again. 

"...I was considering whether to offer this earlier, and - figure that I should say it explicitly. If there is a spell you know that would let you read my mind, and - doing that would help you trust me - then I would consider that entirely worthwhile." 

" - I have Detect Thoughts. I - guess I would like to do that, if you're inclined to let me. It'd be - useful to have more grounds for believing things." Though of course one obvious reason to let her is if he can fake it.

(Altarrin predicts that she's going to expect him to be faking it, even though he's not actually sure how you would do that, not in a way that would be convincing to someone reading you while having a conversation. Not unless you were sufficiently smarter than them to believably simulate an entire layer of fake thoughts on the outside of your shields, that shifted and responded plausibly to the conversation, but in parallel with your actual hidden thoughts. There are artifacts that can do a crude version, but only with "recorded" thoughts replayed, and even to passive observation, they're repetitive and "thin", not convincing under close enough inspection.) 

"I expect giving you more grounds for believing things to be helpful to our ability to work together effectively," he says. "Do I need to do anything other than remove any shielding artifacts and take down my native shields?" 

"I didn't prepare it, it seemed pretty unwise to be creative and dangerous and so on. I can prepare it now, in about half an hour, if you have other preparations to make in the meantime."

Altarrin nods. "I do, in the long run, think that this will only work if you have space to be creative and dangerous - I expect I will need your judgement and planning and ambition, not only your magic. But I entirely agree that from your perspective, it is not very wise right now, and - it is on me to provide enough evidence that it is safe at least with me. I do have at least half an hour of other preparations to do." 

"Make me immortal," she says flatly, calling her spellbook to her hands so she can prepare Detect Thoughts. "I don't know how anyone can be creative or dangerous when they might stop existing of it."

And she starts preparing spells.

Sometimes, you need to take that risk, because the alternative is that everyone will stop existing but Altarrin is, in fact, in a much safer position than Carissa, here. Not safe, and he was less safe in the past, but - it's probably more relevant that not being dangerous was never a strategy that made him safer. 

He does in fact have a lot of preparation to do. Really he needs to be planning out how to navigate the politics of revealing Carissa's magical abilities, because they're not going to be able to take full advantage of the Empire's industrial capacity and infrastructure unless they bring a lot more skilled people in on the project, at which point it will be impossible to keep a. secret and it will, inevitably become a political project as well. 

...He's going to look at engineering notes first, though. Figure out what they're going to need to rapidly scale up 'spellsilver' production, that's almost certainly the first step - 

(- and in the back of his mind, he's musing on how to make Carissa immortal - can they safely-yet-reliably test her invisibility from the gods? Would using her magic for the process, maybe in concert with his, help in keeping their work hidden, lost in noise and blur?) 

She prepares Detect Thoughts. Tries to detect the compulsions in her head, even though she's been told she can't. Obey direct orders from anyone you believe to be a representative of the Empire. So he could just say - trust me - what would it feel like, would she notice - has he said it - 

It's a bit of a pointless exercise. They have her, if they want her; if they're playing nice at all it's to waste less time on making her cooperate. And they don't have an afterlife and she does need to fix that. That's - enough for trust, really, when you think about it. 

Altarrin will be sitting on a crate and using a stack of two crates as a desk, making a list of shorthand notes from three different engineering and mining-related treatises that he has open. His shields are, right now, still firmly in place, but he intermittently glances up to see if Carissa looks done with spell preparation and ready to read his mind. 

She sends her spellbook off to safety in another plane. Turns to him. 

...Altarrin nods, unsmiling, and lowers his shields, and waits. He's paying a lot of attention to what parse to him as the 'surfaces' of his mind, once his shields are down; he wants to see if he can notice Carissa's spell. 

- aside from that, there are multiple threads of thought in his mind, that he's sort of bouncing between.

He's been trying to figure out what he could think about that would give Carissa the most information. His internal framing of it, right now, is very much not 'convincing Carissa to trust him'. He has that skill, it's a mode he can operate in, but it's not one he likes - or considers himself especially skilled at - and, in particular, it's not something he does with potential allies. (The distinction makes perfect sense in his head. It's mostly below the surface of what Detect Thoughts can read, but there are hints, that Carissa might be able to pick up if she pays close attention. ...To Altarrin, the true goal in an ally is someone who he doesn't have to manipulate into taking the correct actions. And it's hard, obviously, because Altarrin is hundreds of years old, and he so often has experience and context that make it obvious how everyone around him is wrong. Which is a terrible footing to start off a working relationship, and - well, he wants to know the ways that he's wrong, and convincing someone to trust him - based on anything other than verifiable information and theories - is not a good way to achieve that.) 

He needs to figure out how to navigate the politics around Carissa's arrival and Carissa's abilities. So far, he's kept it fairly quiet. A number of people know that Carissa is from another world and has unknown magical capabilities, but they're either directly loyal to Altarrin or afraid to cross him. If he wants to draw on the logistical capacity of the Empire, though, then they need to bring more people in, and so this whole project will inevitably become political. (Internally, when Altarrin thinks that word/concept, it's almost a curse.) He would on some level prefer if Carissa could work directly with the mage-research division; he feels like it would be good for her, somehow, to spend more time with people who are trying to build things, trying to better understand reality, oblivious to whether or not their peers are scheming against them, whether their superiors consider them worth protecting -

(and, to be fair, the only reason they can afford that obliviousness is because Altarrin has spent precious time and social favors on it, but it's worth it, to have a pocket in the world where clever, creative people can focus on figuring out how things work and how to build something new and better...) 

He's still deeply confused about her world, on multiple levels, but particularly its magic and its gods. Especially the things she said about how humans can ascend to godhood. He still isn't sure whether or not that could work in Velgarth, even in principle, but figuring that out one way or another is obviously a top priority. He's been mulling on it, and he still can't see how their mechanisms could be mapped over to Velgarth's magic - actually, he's still pretty confused about it. Neither eating the residue from a dead god, nor Carissa's non-explanation of the "Starstone", give any particular hints about where the information comes from, to take a human mind and reshape it into a god-level-entity's mind, while still keeping its original value-structure intact - though, actually, he's not sure Carissa actually claimed that, just that human-derived gods could "use more" of humans than the more ancient nonhuman gods... 

He's curious about dath ilan. This is almost certainly a curiosity that he won't get to fulfill anytime soon, because the downside risk here is that dath ilan would decide to destroy all of Velgarth. But he still, on some level, desperately wants to learn more – about how and why their world developed the lessons that Keltham, an ordinary teenager stranded in another world, taught to Carissa, who then went on to explain it to him - and it felt almost like recognition, almost like being seen and understood, when he hadn't even been aiming for that...

....He's scared. This is not particularly a live thread of thought, in Altarrin's mind, but it's ever-present in the background. It's a fear that he's stared into the depths of, many times, and so if Carissa is paying attention, she can probably pick up some of its component pieces. Altarrin has always (almost always, but his thoughts bounce away from that brief interlude in Urtho's Tower, what little of it he remembers, and so Carissa isn't going to see even fragments of that) - he's always lived in a world hostile to his goals and values. A world that wanted to destroy him – at least since the Mage Storms, and he sees it, now, he gets it, what the gods of Velgarth are trying to protect, Owl's Wisdom is so useful for that – but he still can't talk to Them, not yet not until he burns millions of lives as fuel, even if he knows exactly what he would say... 

She's not actually sure what she's looking for.

Yes, she is. She's looking for him to be so credibly safe and reliable and not-going-to-destroy-the-universe and interested-in-protecting-her-personally that she doesn't have to do any further thinking about what goals she was working towards and who she was working with. And she was never going to get that because that's not actually how anything works.

And she wasn't going to catch him in a lie, either, because he wouldn't have offered this if there were a way for that to happen. 

He's smart. He wants to pick a fight with the gods, and -

- well, she wants to hide away and not pick a fight with the gods, but she has to grant that if there aren't any afterlives then you do have to fix that. 

"Under what circumstances do you see yourself killing me?" she asks about as casually as one can possibly ask that.

- what?

(Right, she's reading his mind, he doesn't need to carefully consider what words to say out loud - it's honestly such a relief...) 

Altarrin is having trouble even imagining a scenario where he would want to kill Carissa! Since, you know, she continues to be his only source of information on TWO other worlds, and also her magic (including the spell and her artifact that directly increase intelligence and other mental abilities!) apparently still work in Velgarth and so she has absurd comparative advantage at magic here - though, fair enough, that situation might not last, but - 

- but he doesn't kill his allies. (This is a mostly-atomic thought in Altarrin's mind, enough that it would be hard for Carissa to notice any of the pieces of it.) He is not, yet, sure that Carissa is his ally. He's more sure that he wants her as an ally, but - on the premise that his goals sufficiently match hers. Altarrin thinks that they do, but he's not sure, not yet. 

...No matter what else happens, though, Carissa is still valuable enough in expectation - and he's made a strong enough internal commitment to that investment - that he intends, quite strongly, to keep her alive. (Even if only to learn more about all of the things that Keltham said to her, since he can't safely try to contact dath ilan but he's so curious.)

And he'll do his best to make her immortal, one way or another. He has some ideas about that. He's vaguely musing on whether her magic is alien enough to the Velgarth gods that it would blind them even more, and so combining his and her magic could make this cheaper....

If that's not good enough she doesn't know what would be. (She should've made predictions in advance, she can feel the impossibility of trying to assess properly if this is better or worse than she expected.)

"What odds do you give of that working. Of my becoming immortal and not dying, if I work with you."

What a reasonable question to have! 

...He's going to have to think about that for a few seconds, a lot of the component pieces of that estimate have been hanging around in the back of his mind this whole time - it's important to figure out, for him personally and his goals, not just on Carissa's behalf - but it still takes some conscious thought to turn his attention fully toward it. 

So. He would normally not be optimistic about this? He would try anyway, obviously - he has the resources, now, it's not like 500 years ago, all the brilliant children he taught and then lost 

Given Carissa's magic, he - is maybe 80% confident he can figure out an immortality method for her in the next couple of years? Though he's more confident than that - hmm, say 95%, 19 out of 20 - that he can keep her alive for the next decade, whatever happens. And the more time they have, the more they can figure out something -

(and she won't be gone forever, not fully, no matter what not unless the gods manage to destroy him after all this time – because he will someday find a way to bring back whatever pieces still exist of the dead spirits in the spirit world) 

He can't promise her certainty, on becoming immortal and not dying. He doesn't even have certainty of that himself. 

"Is there anyone who has better on offer?"

...He's doubtful in general, and certainly doesn't know of anyone specific who she could seek out! There is the other continent. They would have been less affected by the Cataclysm.

(Altarrin is pretty sure that ships crossed the ocean and traded with them before the Mage Wars. He hasn't really invested in that since. He can scry that distance, using artifacts, but power trades off against finesse, and at least according to his memory of past-lifetime notes he read at the start of this incarnation, he hadn't managed to pick out any sign of a major magical civilization there.) 

Altarrin would, of course, want to help Carissa find other people who might make better offers. He's just...not sure where to look. 

"Right. I guess I have lots of other questions but not ones I'd need mindreading about."


It feels like - not fully acknowledging, somehow, what he's trying to do. But she doesn't have the words to do that, somehow, and instead of admiration she's just full of a ridiculous intangible wanting for - if the world's going to be complicated, for it at least to be complicated in the way she knew and understood, to fix everything she did wrong and go to Keltham and have a chance at fixing everything else. 

She'll get over it.

(Altarrin does not have Thoughtsensing and can't read her mind - and is also pretty distracted - and so has not particularly noticed what Carissa might want the world to be like.)

"- If you have more time left on Detect Thoughts, I - can do some magic and let you read my mind while I do that? Or whatever else you would find useful for - better understanding our world."

"It'll last a while. I guess what I most urgently need is - names and faces, factions in the Emperor's court, what you know about the Emperor himself -"

Good questions. And ones that may, in fact, be much easier to communicate via mindreading, especially if her mindreading works to pick up faces - which he assumes it does, based on the fact that she asked, Thoughtsensing does. Altarrin is distantly pleased.

- and then he's going to think very intently about the answers to those questions, to eke as much as they can out of these limited minutes (she didn't actually say how many minutes, inconveniently, he's trying to remember if they ever discussed the duration on her various magics and he can't.) 

The factions most relevant at court shift over time, as fortunes rise and fall. The factions most relevant to the Empire, less so, they're so much more tightly determined by the cold hard limits of resource constraints. (Based on the way Altarrin thinks about this, he pretty clearly sees it as a positive thing.) 

The main power bases are, predictably – and he sort of expects this to be predictable across worlds, he'll be interested if Carissa instead disagrees – the army, the nobility, the bureaucratic administration, and the (current) favorites of the (current) Emperor. The last one being, again very predictably, most subject to the whims of changing fortunes. 

Right, names and faces. 

So the head representative of the army in court is, well, himself. It's a little more complicated than that; there's a high-level division between the chain of command for mages and for un-Gifted soldiers. There are head representatives of both sides at court:

General Astar, looks like this, head of the non-magical forces. Born to minor nobility, but did very well in his time at the Hall of Learning–

- brief mental pause, he's not sure if he explained that. Roughly, all the noble children in the entire Empire are fostered at court as children. It is, very obviously, a way to centralize the Emperor's control, in an Empire far too large for the Emperor, or even his mages directly loyal to him, to personally visit every duchy and barony regularly enough. It's...not a terrible place to grow up. And, well, not all noble houses are good places to grow up. Altarrin did well enough in the Hall of Learning, though being a thousand-year-old immortal mage stealing the body of a random mage-gifted blood descendant of Ma'ar (who he barely remembers being, but he is not having any feelings about that right now) probably helped. 

Anyway. General Astar, especially when you take into account his lack of any Gifts, did much better there, and managed to impress all of his teachers and earn the personal - not compulsion-driven - loyalty of many fellow students. If Altarrin had a single complaint about the man, it would be his sheer political-mindedness, sometimes coming at the expense of tracking basic logistical constraints, but - well, it makes sense given how he ended up where he is, and it's a necessary skill in a position like his. He's reliable at what he does, and not especially vindictive; he does manage the key basic skill of 'protecting and promoting competent subordinates', and he makes sure to personally knows enough about his subordinates' work that he can assess their performance. 

Mage-General Kottras, head of the mage divisions, looks like this. He...is, unfortunately, mostly a politically-motivated appointee, and not one where skill was taken as an important prerequisite. His qualifications are, one, being the younger brother of one of the Emperor's current favorites, two, having a measurably unusually powerful mage-gift, and three, being sufficiently skilled at the games of court to have many, many friends there. Which isn't entirely a bad thing. He, too, is a predictable man, in his own way. He prefers that his subordinates not send trouble his way, but is willing enough to throw gold at them if they promise they can spend it and make a minor unimportant problem, that he certainly shouldn't concern himself with, disappear forever. He is only vindictive about social slights, in the sphere of the Emperor's court; as far as Altarrin can tell, it would never occur to him that a report back to the capital, indirectly describing how a decision he signed off on two years ago led to unwanted consequences, was in any way personal. 

...He likes his women. Especially like mage-gifted women. Inconveniently, his department is also likely to be necessary to any large-scale engineering plans, and so Altarrin cannot rely on making sure that Carissa doesn't come to his attention at all. It's not urgent, though - he'll need to involve the administrative mage-engineering department well before he pulls in the military mages, and those two factions do not get along at all - and so he's still mulling on what to do.