If his schedule allows it. What a strange man. Carissa wonders if Emperors are usually like this in places who aren't Evil or if Altarrin went to great lengths to arrange for this man. "I will see if I can fit it in, your majesty," he says, raising an eyebrow slightly but not quite daring to depart without being dismissed.

He does not sigh. He lets a slip a flicker of an ironic smile. "You may go." 

...He wasn't actually finished the work he was doing before, but he's going to take a break from it and go to his private music room to play his harp, and think about how Caris is definitely attractive and also clever and he should - ask his secretary to find out what education he's had, so he doesn't accidentally put the boy on the spot asking him for an opinion on something he knows nothing about. 

(He doesn't do this very often. He's not actually very good at it, compared to the top professional musicians who perform for the Emperor, and he's pretty sure that an Emperor hiding in his private music room and playing the harp badly is deeply undignified.) 

- and then he passes the message on to his secretary - find out who sent Caris and make sure it's the harmless sort of scheme, don't tell him anything about that if the answer is the expected one but do tell him whether he can expect the young man to know much history or magic theory or math - and he goes back to work, and doesn't give the matter any more thought. 

The Emperor's secretary will look up some records and ask some questions and figure out who was involved in handing Caris this particular assignment (and when and how he ended up in Jacona, but that's less important and he won't dig too hard.) 

Merda handed Caris this assignment, and also vouched for him to be hired. Merda could be working for...any number of people, really. She works for Altarrin at least sometimes. 

It's presumably not Altarrin, he's known to be pretty distracted by his new girl, the one with the Wild Gift - the Emperor was impressed enough to fund a project, too, so he's not just distracted by the sex - and also he's been focused on the problems down south, and also it's not the sort of plot he would get up to anyway. 

Anyway, if it's Merda he's not actually worried that it's hostile - Merda works for all sorts of people but her loyalties are fundamentally to her own safety first and the Emperor and Empire second, and plotting against the Emperor is not very safe. 

He'll arrange to bump into Merda, though, and casually ask if she happens to know where the page Caris is from and what sort of schooling he had? 

"Well," she says carefully, "I couldn't speak to where he's from, and I don't think he's had a good imperial education, but he's clever and he can read, and I don't expect him to mind if you check what else he knows."

Most plausible implication: wherever Caris is from, he doesn't want to be specifically associated with it - maybe it's one of the outlying provinces, in the capital there's definitely some prejudice against people who grew up in recently-conquered regions - and he's gotten Merda's cooperation on that, which speaks to...something. (Cleverness, agency, whatever, it's probably something the Emperor finds attractive.) 

He'll go with "limited imperial education but very clever" in his report to the Emperor. 

And the Emperor will be at the concert! They'll all be sitting down to listen once the musicians start, but it's not assigned seating - he dislikes assigned seating - and there's a candlemark first to mingle. There are a number of side tables offering drinks and light snacks, and servants keeping them stocked but not actually moving around the room to offer them to people. 

(These events are, in fact, fairly exclusive; there are less than fifty people present, a mix of important ministers and nobles and mages who like music, and of more junior people who like music and are also interesting.) 

The Emperor is, again, well dressed and groomed, and mostly not thinking about Caris, though he's put some thought into conversation starters with someone very clever yet not very well educated. 

He mingles. He's very charismatic, even when he's not wearing one of those 'Splendor' headbands, which are very useful for some of his work but also make him feel weird. 

Caris attends, obviously. He has picked up that the Emperor seems to want him to play mildly difficult to get but that doesn't extend to not showing up to dates. He's underdressed for the occasion, what with having limited resources for acquisition of fancy clothes which aren't Carissa's gowns that'd give the game away.

Oh, he's cute, maybe especially when underdressed for the occasion

The Emperor is over here! He's talking to the Minister of Trade and the Minister of Trade's current mistress. He will glance over at Caris one (1) time, not quite making eye contact but maybe ogling him a bit, and then make sure to stand so that there's a gap beside him. 

He's really, really not Abrogail.

(And that's a good thing! She wants a long life! No more Abrogails!)

Caris slips in alongside the Emperor.

This will earn him a smile! 

(Does Caris already have a drink in his hand? If not, Bastran has arranged to be standing near one of the side tables, so he can pour him a cup of wine without interrupting things.)

“I am glad to see you were available after all! This is Lord Kasdat, minister of trade, and - Lady Briony, right? And this is Caris - he is new to the capital, I believe this is his first concert -”

In Cheliax that sentence would definitely be part of an elaborate humiliation. Here - he's not sure. If it is, it's not obvious there's anything to be done other than permit it.

He accepts a drink and murmurs, "I'm honored" to Lord Kasdat and his mistress.

(Friendly, relaxed and smiling, but casual, careless, like none of this matters very much but he's still content to be here...) 

((It doesn't matter, so this isn't - shouldn't - even require acting.)) 

He'll keep going with the conversation he was already having - he had been asking the Minister of Trade about supply chains to the northeast, the region near-bordering on the absurd god-sheltered country up there - and how much it really makes sense to allocate for bribes. This is probably a conversation that someone smart-but-uneducated can follow? 

It's very obvious what's going on here and Lord Kasdat has no intention of getting in the way with the Emperor's fun. The Emperor tends to be in a better mood and less strict on which proposals he'll approve, when he's also having some fun. 

"If you need two people to do a project and you couldn't do it without either of them, they should perhaps each take half the profit. If you could do it without the second fellow, and not without the first, then perhaps the second fellow only merits half of that part of the profit which wouldn't've happened despite him. Now, ordinarily it's hard to track how useful people are and how hard done you'd have been without them, but if you're an Emperor and have lots of fancy accountants, you can set them to projecting how much richer the Empire will be with this thing done, and then pay half that. Really I suppose this is why there's Foresight, so people can know how things would go otherwise and pay accordingly, except apparently it's no good for that."

Well. That's definitely intriguing and - this young man is not uneducated, though 'not a typical education' he could certainly believe -

- and now he's bringing up Foresight, which - actually sort of makes sense, assuming he has minimal education in how Gifts actually work. 

"I guess a more easily harnessable version of Foresight could be used that way! It's a very rare Gift, though, and we usually see the shorter-range kind - possible to learn to control, but only looks ahead minutes to candlemarks. I'm not sure we have any clear examples of people learning to control long-range Foresight, we don't have many examples of it in general." 

Pause. 

"- What do you know about accounting? Sounds like you have some opinions." His expression is trying to indicate that he would be delighted to hear them. 

(Does Caris look relaxed? Like he's having a good time? Bastran is ready to top up his wine-cup whenever it seems reasonable and like it would help.) 

Cheliax does not, actually, especially have as a common relationship script "getting someone drunk so you can sleep with them". Students at a bar would do that; powerful people have no need to compromise your judgment when they can just ignore it. And Keltham, of course, had been disapproving of impairment.

Carissa had taken it, the first night, as an Altarrin thing, and is now rapidly realizing it's an Empire thing. Of course. If as a culture you prize willingness, you figure out how to induce it. 

Caris drinks in moderation. He can't actually afford many slips, here. 

"Old boss of mine ran expensive projects up north, actually," he says. "Can't tell you who, I don't think he'd be very happy about being spoken of here. Myself, I only know how the numbers work on paper, where they always behave themselves, and not in reality, where sometimes they don't. But on paper, you split the gains even, and no one can do any better than that; and if you do less than that, then the other person oughta at least sometimes laugh at you and walk away."

(...The Emperor is definitely neglecting the conversation with the Minister of Trade, who may or may not be following any of this or even slightly interested. Not that it was an important conversation, but - h'll catch Lord Kasdat's eye anyway, briefly, and make a sort of shrug-flavored-smile expression, meaning that Lord Kasdat is free to go if he's bored but Bastran is not actively making a bid for him and his mistress to give them privacy, just yet.) 

"I see." (Again, the words are so carefully chosen - it's intriguing - almost familiar, but he can't pin it down.) "I do think that is very - simplified. In the real world, there are many reasons not to laugh and walk away, that are not about how much someone is being paid." 

(- like compulsions, that's the obvious example, but that's such a moodkiller -) 

"- I mean, usually there are are longer-term agreements, right, between different players - no choice is made in isolation, it matters what your reputation is, and usually that pushes toward people - working together." 

(He honestly feels stupid, right now, like he's not managing to keep up with this conversation, which - wow - he had not actually predicted this would be so - attractive -) 

"No, reputation is why to laugh and walk away sometimes if you're not getting a fair cut. Or - there are several reasons, but reputation's the clearest sort of one. If everyone knows you're the kind of person who'll walk away if you're offered less than half, then they'll offer you half, won't they, if they want a deal. - you might ask, well, why not ask for eight parts out of ten, then, but what happens if two people who always demand eight parts out of ten meet? It's worse for both of them than what happens when the people who want half all meet."

The Emperor isn't going to be extra proactive about refilling Caris' wine-cup if he doesn't seem tense or anxious – which he doesn't, right now, he's very - something - but it's a good something...

"I follow. Though in practice I think it's usually not a situation where both parties have equal leverage, and in real life the - gains - aren't actually split half-and-half, most of the time? ...I'm curious about the other reasons that aren't reputation, if you care to explain. Though maybe give me the quick version of it? The performance is starting in a few minutes." 

"Well, even if you're never going to meet again, there's advantages to being someone who won't go lower than you're worth. Most people can't bluff that well, so if you say 'I'm not going any lower' and you mean it, that's an advantage. ...plus if you're a rich place like this, there's Thoughtsensers, and mage-works to make people honest. So there's ways it's an advantage to be known to be a particular kind of person which aren't strictly about reputation. 

In practice, well, I can say things about what kind of person it'd be the most clever to be, but that isn't the same as being that kind of person, and the kind of person I actually am won't turn down a good thing for being an unfair split. And....yes." He smiles at the Emperor without quite looking at him. "If one party can't walk away then the other gets to name the terms. That's how it goes, sometimes, once you take it off the paper."

The Emperor smiles back, and does look directly at Caris.

(Caris has excellent lips. And eyes. And - everything - Bastran would probably be less distracted by this if not for the fact that Caris is also clever and confusing and– seriously, though, who found him and where and why...) 

It would be really hot if he couldn't walk away and the other party, for example Caris, got to set the terms is what Bastran is not actually thinking at all, because it doesn't fit into any preconceptions he has about how this could look. 

...Also he is now definitely noticing a sense of familiarity with - how Altarrin talks about things? Which is - uncomfortable - he doesn't actually enjoy his conversations with Altarrin. And it doesn't exactly match anyway, and also this is weird so moving on. 

"You have such interesting ideas," he says, dryly but not disapprovingly. "And I think the performance is starting, we should go sit down -" 

"As you wish," says Caris in a tone that manages not to sound obedient at all.