" - I'm not afraid of you. You have incentive not to kill me and you aren't stupid. Pretending we're sleeping together doesn't bother me; I would really like to say that actually sleeping together also wouldn't bother me but for stupid reasons it'd probably bother me a little, not enough anyone who can't read my mind would notice. This game - isn't interfering, on my end, with feeling safe or being able to think."

...Nod. 

"We can work with that." He stands up. "I have historically been restrained about public affection, so we need not be dramatic about that, but it will be more convincing if I casually touch you sometimes. Is that going to be distracting or interfere with your ability to think." 

See, this is the reason why it was stupid to say outright that she'd be mildly upset if he fucked her, now he quite understandably thinks she's made of glass and needs special handling for her disability of being completely emotionally incompetent. "No, that's perfectly fine and won't bother me at all."

Then he'll offer her a nice silk robe from his wardrobe - clearly tailored to fit a woman's body, though not Carissa specifically, it's a little big on her – and also, at least if she's reading the foreign style cues correctly, clearly informal, the sort of comfortable slip-on garment one might don to walk around in private suite of rooms rather than be literally nude in front of servants. 

(Incidentally, it has some kind of low-powered magic laid on it, probably some kind of minor protective spell, though as usual the Velgarth style of magic looks very different.) 

"How long do you have on translation?" he checks. "Should you recast the spell before we go out where there are certainly servants reporting to other court powers, and likely a dozen mages scrying us?" 

"It should still have nearly an hour on it." Aside from having maybe destroyed her entire world she's so much cooler than she was six months ago. She would happily have killed a lot of people to make fifth circle, to have ninety minute spell durations, if you'd asked her back then. 

There are indeed servants! The young woman polishing the cabinet beside the dining table stops in her work and looks up. "Archmage-General! We didn't know you were back." 

He smiles at her. "Once our problem was dealt with, it was quicker to simply return rather than passing word. ...We did miss breakfast, but of course I hardly gave you much warning. We are happy to wait on your convenience." 

Fond smile at Carissa, and he ushers her to the table. Pulls up a chair on the same side of her, this time, close enough that he could be touching her leg under the table, if he wanted to. (He doesn't.) 

This is so reassuring. Carissa is mildly embarrassed by how reassuring she finds this. It's - Keltham couldn't do it, Carissa herself is only all right at it, and it's such an important survival skill that it's like wandering in the desert and finding out one of your party members knows how to detect underground water. 

Right, stop being an idiot, take your cues. 

This Carissa has never in her life worn a +6 headband and given herself Owl's Wisdom and come up with a plan to fight the gods and take their job; she is a smaller Carissa than that. The disaster in Aksell she's fleeing is not of her making, is not the fruit of her own terrible idiocy, you grow up from things like that and the Carissa here right now hasn't grown up. She came here hoping for this, for patronage and safety and comfort, and she has it, and she understands perfectly well that she did nearly all her steering in the moment of decision and largely isn't steering her life from here, beyond making sure Altarrin doesn't get angry with her or bored before she's had time to find her feet. She thinks he won't. Altarrin - even pretend-Altarrin, the one here with her now - is a steady man, not moved by whims. This Carissa expects it won't be hard to avoid making him angry and that he won't instantly drop her when he gets bored. 

With the headband she can run that Carissa and still have room above it to think about spellsilver refining. That Carissa, it turns out, really uses so little of her. 

She smiles back at Altarrin and sits where she's expected to sit. "Do you travel much?" she asks innocently, this being a question Altarrin's personal guest/prisoners might care about a great deal without being an impolite one to ask about.

Altarrin, too, is running two separate threads, though not as effectively, without the benefit of the headband.

The pretend Altarrin is about as relaxed and unhurried as he ever gets. There's a opportunity here, but he's secured it, and has plenty of time now to exploit it at his leisure. Oh, he knows his rivals might try to interfere, which could be inconvenient, but he's not worried and it's certainly not worth skipping a lovely breakfast over. The clever woman with the fascinating Wild Gift who landed so conveniently in his lap is also charming and pretty, and while Altarrin is never sentimental over his women, it's known that he likes to indulge them when it costs him little to do so. 

(The real Altarrin is still calm, being tense won't help, but the real situation isn't yet fully under his control. In particular, he needs to secure the full cooperation of everyone who already knows things that could break open the secret. Ellitrea is fine; he has her loyalty, much better than compulsions. The Healers who responded to the initial scene could be an issue, he'll need to consider carefully what they might have seen. The mining-expert mage who talked metals with Carissa will need to be handled delicately...

...The young Thoughtsenser who Ellitrea pulled in to relieve her is potentially a problem. Altarrin doesn't have a good sense of him. He'll pull in Ellitrea for advice on that, ideally during breakfast - he can't get her attention directly from here, he's not a Mindspeaker, and given that the new protege-or-prisoner now sharing his bed is visibly shielded against Thoughtsensing, having a page summon her here will stand out. He'll contact one of his loyal mages with the most secure short-range communication spell, though, get them to alert her, and she can initiate the Mindspeech link... But not quite yet, he'll wait until he manages to establish a conversation that doesn't take his full attention.) 

A lazy hand gesture has the servant-girl trotting to the sideboard and bringing them the tea set - she knows Altarrin's routine - and then making to take the water-pitcher to fetch boiling water from the servants' side-room. Altarrin waves her off; instead, he uses a heat-spell to boil the cold drinking-water from the pitcher at the center of the table, and fills the teapot. He's a powerful mage, and unusually skilled at control and efficiency. It's not very expensive for him, and he'll fall back on it rather than the enchanted artifacts the servants use when he's in a hurry; it's barely showing off at all. 

"Rarely on such rudely short notice!" he says, replacing the lid on the teapot. "And less than I once did. One has to at first, but having people you can delegate to is really much better for efficiency. And avoiding interruptions." He lets his lips twitch. "I expect you yourself never expected an opportunity to travel so far north. They must seem fascinatingly exotic to you." Altarrin has complete faith in Carissa's ability to ad-lib a response. 

(Pretend Altarrin isn't exactly apologetic about hauling the pretend Carissa, who after all fled a potentially fatal disaster to seek his protection, out of her bed and into some minor local intrigue. Her Wild Gift is so convenient when one needs a translator and doesn't have a reliable local contact on hand, and it's his to use now. She handled herself well, in the face of said unspecified local Iftel-related intrigue, particularly impressive given that he was hardly going to fill her in on context she didn't need to know. He was already quite pleased with himself last night, and moreso this morning. He's in a generous mood. 

And being nice to her is free. That's one of the mistakes that some of the younger, more hotheaded and arrogant court nobles make. She won't interpret it as anything stronger than it is, which is nice, the naive ones can sometimes get so attached. But she's not stupid, and he isn't uncertain of his footing here at court; he doesn't have to prove his power over her by being cruel.) 

You don't become as important as he is, in Cheliax, if you don't enjoy being cruel, if you'd need further reason than 'you can'; but probably Aksell isn't Cheliax, and this small Carissa has considered the possibility he's toying with her but isn't nearly certain of it. Perhaps he just enjoys being friendly, and having her be friendly back; why shouldn't he?

Friendliness is of course no reason to give up information with any strategic implications, like whether she was able to follow along with any of the proceedings she participated in. "They dressed very strangely! And I'm glad your business was done quickly, as I don't think I would've much liked the food I saw for sale. ...the empire is so big. I know you do it with Gates but it's still hard to fathom - at home no one'd pay taxes even to another island over."

(Altarrin isn't thinking this right now, but he has before: this is one way the Eastern Empire does better than Cheliax, however low a bar that might be. It may be the case that ruthlessness a prerequisite to power - which, in some sense, seems very hard to avoid - but not cruelty that isn't even strategic.) 

"Well, our reputation does help! We are the best-run and most prosperous Empire on the continent, and provinces that join us can expect, in the long run, to be better off than they were before. Of course, we owe our success to the centuries of work offered by our best mages and generals, and engineers, and even philosophers – and we had a starting advantage, as the first real state to rebuild after the Cataclysm. But I think we go on to earn it, still, year after year." 

It's the standard propaganda, more or less. But the Altarrin of a week ago wouldn't have said it was false. And - it wouldn't have hurt nearly so much, to repeat those tired words. 

(This thought doesn't show in his face at all.) 

It's not a bad thing to be the thing you're required to believe. And she has a Thoughtsensing talisman and doesn't even really have to believe it. 

"Well, so far you're terribly persuasive."

The pretend-Altarrin, who has touched and possessed every inch of Carissa's body and now finds this casual affection unremarkable, reaches out to run an affectionate fingertip through her hair. 

...He wants a less serious topic of conversation, though, and ideally one where Carissa will do most of the talking for a little while. It doesn't have to be interesting talking, he just needs enough attention to spare that he can hold a Mindspeech conversation with Ellitrea. (Companionable silence would do as well.) 

"Indeed," he says cheerfully, and reaches to pour tea for both of them. "The food looked unappealing, you said? I admit I quite like the northern style of charring root vegetables in ground-ovens, but it does look unappealing at first glance. - Tell me, what are your favorite dishes from Aksell?" 

Aksell has been assigned Corentyn's traits where it needs to have them, that being the only port city Carissa has ever lived in when not part of a secret government project. She is happy to tell him all about it. 

For the most part this doesn't conflict with anything Altarrin knows about the real state of Aksell - meaning that he puts negligible odds on anyone else in the Empire knowing enough to be suspicious - and so he nods and smiles and takes the opportunity to share a few things about the Empire, like the fact that the Palace cooking is heavily automated with mage-artifacts. (He does at one point provide a hint by asking if a particular foodstuff is a regional thing, he once spoke to a traveling merchant who had crossed through Aksell and never mentioned it, though maybe there's some oddness with the translation her Wild Gift provides.) 

But he can mostly listen, offering responses that don't require any thought, and once breakfast arrives there can be more pauses in the conversation.

He reaches out with the communication-spell, asks one of his mages to (discreetly) alert Ellitrea that he wishes for her to contact him by Mindspeech, now that he's returned from his inconvenient emergency travel. 

Ellitrea is not having a good day. 

She's been on edge ever since the stranger who might or might not be from ANOTHER WORLD (well, probably is, the evidence is awfully hard to reconcile with anything else, it's just so bizarre and implausible...) arrived unexpectedly in Altarrin's office. Which is, you know, also incredibly suspicious, whether or not Carissa is knowingly part of any plot.

Carissa's world supposedly has life after death, which is - well, it's pretty self-evident why this is huge. Carissa's world, if it's real, has an entirely different set of gods, some of them even more terrifying than the ones Ellitrea has heard of, some of them...maybe potential allies? And Carissa herself is confusing on a level that Ellitrea has trouble pinning down. She's so scared – not that it's a surprising fear, she comes from a place that's dangerous in the same ways the Empire is, except so much worse, whether or not Carissa herself seems to see it that way – but it is surprising and strange for it to coexist with planning to fight the gods. 

And then of course there's the even more confusing and implausible aspect where Carissa claims to have encountered someone from a third world. One without magic, at least as far as she could tell, but with sophisticated non-magical engineering, and maybe even more sophisticated governments than that.

(Which the part that feels hardest to believe, really, because it came across like they were - aiming for the same sort of thing the Empire is, prosperity and good infrastructure and ongoing improvement, innovation and trade and wealth and abundance, a world where everyone does their part and in exchange children never starve – but Ellitrea is very confused about how one would do that without compulsions, while teaching all of their people mental techniques that Carissa thought would make it hard for her to survive in the Empire, and - somehow at the same time - apparently without 'Keltham' having arrived even slightly prepared for Carissa's claimed country of origin. A world that destroyed the records of its own history without anyone managing to interfere or rebel, and one where an elite order learns secrets and apparently doesn't leak them constantly to clever underlings, despite the fact that Carissa seemed to believe that everyone there was very, very clever...  

Maybe the premise is just that dath ilan natives are aliens who...can't do political maneuvering...? Or, you know, maybe the reason it doesn't make any sense is that it's not true, though it's not like she has a different explanation for why Carissa believes it, and it was obvious in her thoughts that she did. Maybe it's just the lack of gods, or - if Carissa's guess was right - at least a lack of gods with any ongoing influence. Ellitrea still isn't sure how you pull something like that off, though.

And Keltham wanted to destroy Carissa's world, which Ellitrea hasn't even really bothered to try to make sense of. Altarrin was upset about it. Ellitrea...apparently isn't buying the premise enough to have an emotional reaction.) 

It's not that it isn't, in some ways, very good news. It's a resource. It might change everything. You don't turn down opportunities like that.

But, at the same time, it's a resource they don't understand, with implications not yet explored. And - being the first person sitting on a novel resource in the Emperor's court is risky, especially if you're keeping secrets. Which they are. 

The secret isn't out yet. There are, of course, rumors and speculation, and Ellitrea is sure she's only aware of a quarter of it – but it's not that unusual for Altarrin to shelter "political prisoners", and when he does, some fraction of the time he takes them to his bedroom. (The common story is that he's good at maneuvering to be the first to notice if someone in a dangerous position - someone whose loyalty is unusually cheap to buy - is also unusually talented and worth securing. The second half of the story is that he kinks on having leverage over clever competent women. Ellitrea is pretty sure that this is at best a very oversimplified gloss on the situation, but it's not like Altarrin discourages that impression.) 

Altarrin wants to make full use of her claimed magical abilities, and find ways to cleverly combine it with mage-work. This is an entirely reasonable goal and also will make it very difficult to maintain the secret. He's not in a hurry, and she's sure he has a plan, but - 

- but throughout all of this, Altarrin has been reacting...confusingly, in a way that reminds her that she doesn't, really, fully know him. She's always thought of him as - legible, predictable, someone who can be counted on to keep his promises - but she keeps having the strange inexplicable sense that he's looking at Carissa and Carissa's knowledge and resources, and seeing an opportunity for - something she doesn't understand - something that might be big enough to be worth burning decades worth of cautious alliance-building. At moments he's seemed reckless to her. 

And she's pretty sure he isn't, she's pretty sure it will turn out to be something perfectly consistent with the man she's worked with for years, because Altarrin is one of the most deeply consistent people she's ever known. (Maybe. If she ever really knew him at all. In some ways, he's a hard man to know.) But, either way, she's confused, and she's been doing her best to keep everything under control ever since he dropped out of contact in order to bring his political prisoner to his bedroom. The report of his urgent trip to the northeast, which was immediately relayed to her even though she was still asleep at the time, hasn't relieved her concerns. Ellitrea is pretty sure it's a cover story, and she has no idea for what. 

- anyway, it's both a relief and a burst of fear-worry-stress, when she finally receives the message that Altarrin is back and would like her to contact him with Mindspeech and hold a conversation at a distance. 

She reaches out. :Altarrin. What's going on: 

Ellitrea knows everything that Carissa was thinking up until the point that Altarrin sent her off to a guest room to talk spellsilver mining and read history books. (So - another world's gods, Carissa's impossible intelligence-enhancing magic and translation magic. Keltham. Dath ilan. The fact that Keltham wanted to destroy Carissa's world. Probably other things, he's behind on his notes and in any case doesn't have them in front of him right now, and is half-distracted making the right faces and noises in response to Carissa's convenient supply of small talk.) 

:No problem with Iftel. - Well, there is the usual ongoing problem, but unrelated to my disappearance this morning. I...think it is safer if I do not explain everything for right now: not to mention easier, he's really not operating at full capacity in this setting, :but - Carissa's magic is very powerful, in some unexpected ways, and Carissa herself has an agenda – and I mean that as a compliment. We discussed plans for the future, and in the long run we cannot take full advantage of her magic without revealing her origins, but - we need time. We have a cover story prepared. How well is the secret still contained: 

Ellitrea is not really any less concerned. She can summarize what she knows or can infer, though.

She and Altarrin were alone in the room with Carissa during the most substantive conversation that she's aware of. Someone might conceivably have had the skill to scry them anyway, but it would take quite a lot of talent and prior preparation. And short-range directional Mindspeech still isn't detectable by any known mage-technique, so they wouldn't have gotten Carissa's thoughts or Ellitrea's commentary to Altarrin, and without that, Carissa's spoken words are a lot more confusing.

She can't rule out that someone scried the room and heard everything after the point when Carissa cast the translation spell. (Implicit: if someone had, they would probably hide their hand anyway - anyway, unless and until someone shows up to try to blackmail one of them, Ellitrea isn't worrying about it.) 

The Healers who responded to the scene aren't all fully Altarrin's people, but they didn't actually see that much, and Ellitrea has checked up on them and confirmed that they haven't gone selling rumors for favors (and has discreetly read their minds and confirmed that they're confused and curious but not especially pursuing that curiosity. Healing Gift is rare enough in the Empire that their day-to-day is very busy). The mages brought in on it were all Altarrin's – except for the mining expert, but as far as Ellitrea knows he's still heads-down in his lab trying to develop a better spell for extracting spellsilver from various ores.

The remaining factor here is the kid, Ketar, who ended up assigned to Thoughtsensing duty. Ellitrea isn't criticizing that decision; it was a terrifying and high stakes situation, and there aren't a lot of Thoughtsensers they can count on, she can't herself think of anyone better. And she's pretty sure Ketar is loyal to the Empire and to Altarrin, just...in the way that youngsters are. 

Anyway, she wanted to keep him busy while Altarrin was - figuring things out, or whatever he's been doing, she genuinely doesn't have to know - so she sent him off to read a number of thick textbooks on the Empire's history and on obscure mage-techniques, with the premise that Altarrin was going to want him to do more mindreading later and have more of the context he needs to translate things. 

- they're going to need to find a different project for the kid, if the kid needs a project, because Altarrin gave Carissa a talisman that blocks Thoughtsensing.

Altarrin realizes that this probably seems like a very bold and risky move, on his part, but. It's important. Carissa was used to people frequently reading her mind to check for - thoughts that indicated disloyalty - and she can't use her full, magically-augmented intelligence to help make plans unless she has enough confidence that no one is going to murder her for thinking the wrong thing.

And her priors on that are - the predictable result one would expect with someone who grew up in Cheliax, which given the throughput limitations on Mindspeech, Ellitrea probably knows more about than he does - and so, since Altarrin very much does want Carissa's full intelligence and expertise available to him to serve his interests, he needs a Carissa who credibly believes that her thoughts aren't going to get her in trouble. Ellitrea, as a Gifted Thoughtsenser who can maintain shields, probably sympathizes. 

Ellitrea is NOT ANY LESS CONCERNED but - she has to keep in mind that Altarrin is busy and distracted and will give her the full explanation later, once they can actually have a conversation behind shields. 

:What is your cover story for her?: 

Altarrin can convey their cover story!

Carissa is from Aksell, one of the numerous coastal city-states in the far southeast, where she studied at one of the particularly secretive mage-schools – she hasn't even shared the details of it with Altarrin. She has a valuable and versatile Wild Gift, one that lets her make a very unusual style of artifact - mostly one-time-use, but at great expense, and in some cases with the help of teachers she no longer has access to, she was able to make the permanent ones that she wears now, which exploit some kind of natural phenomenon in a particular metal and as a result don't need to be repowered. 

A few days ago, her mage-school had a change of leadership that put her in danger. She knew Altarrin's face from a previous trip he made to the south, and was able to make a one-time-use artifact that would transport her to him – Altarrin hasn't been able to study even the spent artifact for it, since it was left behind and making another would be a very large project for her, but he suspects it was closer imitating the very rare Fetching Gift, rather than a Gate. One of the easier artifacts for her to make, conveniently, is one that allows her to understand a speaker even if she doesn't know their language, presumably via some kind of limited imitation of Thoughtsensing; a more powerful (and correspondingly more costly for her to make) version also lets her speak the language. 

For now, Altarrin would prefer that her arrival not make waves. For one, she's obviously very much on edge after her desperate escape, and Altarrin expects he can buy quite a lot of her goodwill by sheltering her from the attention of powerful people in the Emperor's court who would be eager to steer her toward their own purposes. He would also like some breathing space to learn more about her Gift and formulate his plans on what to do with it. Of course there will be rumors, but he would prefer they coalesce into a picture where Altarrin has found another useful political prisoner to rehabilitate.