"Well, it sort of depends what the powers are, I assume they're not actually limited to assassinations and explosions? Where I grew up people conceptualized them as - bigger kinds of minds that could comprehend each other, communicate with each other, but barely with us, and which steered the world using Foresight - so they could pull off my payment schemes. And if that's what's going on then you can teach people to have more - regularity in them, to have there be more of a fact of the matter about what they'll do, and that'd help with communications ..."

"... but really the thing I'd do is a life after death. I hate it, that there isn't one. It feels like it's lurking over my shoulder, every day, every waking hour, that this is it, and it's so fragile, and they could find somewhere to let the souls go on - I mean, I don't know if they could. I'd figure it out."

How is he so perfect 

Altarrin would have liked him damn it that's a sad thought, not a sexy thought, because he's never going to get to introduce them now and it's so pointless... 

- well, he doesn't think he actually feels like pretending to be cheerful and charming, right now, though certainly if Caris doesn't like maudlin he is entirely within his rights to order Bastran to quit it and do something more pleasing instead but he's not going to - try to guess that pre-emptively, right now. 

"You'd have had - interesting conversations with him," he says wistfully. "- Altarrin, I mean. I don't know if he ever - had that idea specifically - but it's the sort of idea he would have. He– he wasn't just an Archmage-General, he - had bigger ideas than that." 

" - we met, actually. He mostly seemed a ...very sad man. And a very busy one. I am not surprised that gods that are - the enemy of progress, civilization - would be enemies of his.

I'm sorry for your loss."

....Emperor Bastran has kind of a lot of questions about that but actually maybe he mostly wants to gulp more of his wine and snuggle up against Caris shoulder and - 

"What would you - have of me, tonight?"

It's probably way too much to ask for Caris to know exactly what will work to make him stop thinking and - feel for just a little while the way he did the other night, like he was small and didn't matter and all he was for was beautiful music and sexual favors and this entire mess couldn't possibly be his problem, what could an ordinary harpist do about merciless gods and religious extremists and deaths in the top ranks of the Empire's hierarchy - but probably a lot of things would be...at least sort of good...and he's done so much steering today already, he is out of steering right now. 

Your Empire, he doesn't answer. That's a third date sort of joke. 

Probably when a man is grieving you want to - distract him, more than challenge him. Kiss him and grope him and pull his hair and tell him he's pretty. Carissa would want to suffer but she's - not sure that part applies, here, and it remains such a dangerous thing to test. 

It will at some point occur to Caris to carry the Emperor over to the bedroom. He did see the pointedly open door, and he can take a hint.

This is good. This is much better than wasting his evening not having a good time just because a moderately bad thing happened, the sort of bad thing that happens at least a handful of times in every Emperor's reign, and Altarrin knew what he was getting into, took on those risks willingly, and Bastran is pretty sure that Altarrin wouldn't want him to be sitting around being maudlin in not even a productive way. So he's definitely not doing that! Not even a little bit! 

It's going to take somewhat more effort on Caris' part, since the Emperor is starting out more tense and with more purely internal distractions, but Caris is almost certainly adequate to the task. 

(Bastran would...on some level maybe kind of like to be hurt until he's definitely not having any thoughts, but Caris is not wrong that he might not be calibrated on the right level of pain to aim for, or wrong that it's dangerous to test.) 

- it turns out that being snuggly and clingy after sex is a persistent trait the Emperor has, and works out more conveniently now that they've actually ended up in a bed. 

He's not even going to make any particular move to shoo Caris out, though he also seems pretty disinclined to start a conversation. 

She needs to tell him.

She told Merda she would, and Merda's going to be angry, if she in fact doesn't do it at the first real opportunity. Quite plausibly march in here and tell the Emperor herself, actually. 

He's not in the right mood for it. She wanted him curious, intrigued. He's - sad and sleepy. This is going to take - more finessing.

He enjoys being clung to for a while.

"I actually need one more thing from you," he says evenly, firmly, like they're still playing the game they were a few minutes ago. "I need you to check the protections on the room - I'm not a mage, I can't see them."

This is - mildly confusing and he thought they were DONE what is Caris planning for him NOW  it's fine he will still do a good job

(- this would definitely be the leadup to an assassination attempt except that Caris continues not to be Gifted or wearing any artifacts or carrying a weapon - that is, uh, even easier to verify now that there's hardly anywhere concealed he could put it - and the protections on the room are incredibly extensive and rivaled only by what Altarrin has, the paranoid bastard, how did he manage to get himself killed anyway, was he even trying, and include not just thorough shields against any outside attack, but an extensive ward and alarm setup to summon guards to the room in case of any unauthorized discharge of magic or change in the Emperor's life-force or at the presence of a magical artifact with any of these properties. And that's not even mentioning the protections he's wearing on himself, as discreet jewelry that he doesn't actually remove even in bed because he is not stupid, on top of the fact that he is Gifted and a powerful mage and he stays in practice with combat sparring.) 

...doing those paranoid checks should be unsexy but there's - a sort of thrill to it, actually, for all that it breaks him a little out of the hypothetical of being a harmless fragile powerless harpist - he's curious, and happynervous again as he sits up and leans into mage-sight and goes one by one through all of the magics laid on his walls. He's thorough. He explains it on the assumption that Caris does, actually, know quite a lot about magic, and wouldn't prefer the simplified layperson explanation. He includes the wards and alarms, which are on the room, but not the talismans which are on him. 

"Good," says Caris approvingly, and kisses him.

Deep breath. "I am from another world."

...He goes very still. 

(Oddly, the Emperor is very sure this isn't a joke, or some sort of misdirection to distract him. The rumors about Caris were wild, and this is - moreso - but it feels like the answer to a question he hadn't quite realized he had, falling into place.) 

"Who else knows?" He says this softly. Not angry. Very level. He hasn't moved a muscle but somehow his posture is not at all that of a pretty unimportant young harpist. (It's not the thing Altarrin does with his body language, it's subtler than that.) 

Bastran is, meanwhile and without giving any external indication of it, reaching out with the communication-spell; there's a gap in this shields for it keyed to his own magic or to a particular rare and secret version of the spell, and one of his guards is probably stationed right outside the magically soundproofed door. He knows it makes them...nervous...whenever he takes a new lover in private.)

<Maximum alert> he sends; they'll set all the wards and alarms to the most sensitive parameters. <Don't intervene yet but - check in ten minutes, if I haven't interrupted by then> 

It's sort of the bare minimum precaution to be taking that isn't just being completely negligent, now that he knows the beautiful man in his room might have unknown capabilities that he can't detect, but - his gut, which can of course be tricked by sufficiently good acting but is pretty acute, still tells him that Caris isn't here as a threat. 

"Merda. Two of Altarrin's Thoughtsensers - Ellitrea, Ketar. And Altarrin knew, when he was alive." Caris is trying very hard to walk the line of not seeing terrified and obedient but also not seeming like a threat. Relaxed, calm, focused on the Emperor. Hopefully it's obvious that if he wanted to kill him he'd have done it before alerting him.

Yeah, that's part of why the Emperor's reaction isn't mainly one of alarm, and why his first act wasn't to set off every ward and defensive mechanism in the room. 

"How did it happen, that it's - that set of people?" It - rings a mental bell, but a quiet one, so far. "- Actually, backing up. How does one just - end up here, from another world? Did someone send you with magic? Why?" 

"I don't understand what happened. My world has magic that can be used to travel between worlds, but I didn't use it and wouldn't have had any way to target this place. I just - ended up here. Landed on Altarrin. He would have alerted you of, uh, a girl."

"Oh." 

(He doesn't look angry. He definitely looks something - kind of upset, actually - but not angry.) 

"....Never mind that doesn't actually - answer my questions - I'm still confused. Were you pretending to - be a girl for Altarrin - because he prefers that - and I guess maybe you could have gotten it past him, even, if you were - one of the ones he didn't sleep with–" He looks puzzled and perhaps faintly impressed. 

"I can have whatever body I like. I made a magic artifact for it. I was a girl for Altarrin, as thoroughly as I'm a boy for you, though in fact he didn't want me and never touched me. ...to be fair I didn't exactly try seducing him. I was nervous and disoriented and by the time I found my footing I'd decided I wanted you."

"What were you–" 

He shakes his head, not as though disagreeing, more like he's trying to dissuade flies. "I - don't - I'd thought maybe you - needed another patron - but you were trying for me before he died - did he know–"

"I told him that I planned to try. He didn't mind, because, again, he didn't want me. He would've - sheltered me and pretended in public, as long as needed, but that wasn't what I wanted. Even aside from - what just happened."

Nod. 

...It's hard to think. Some part of it is crying out that it feels wrong, that - Altarrin should have gotten to have this, Altarrin who– he'd never framed it this way, but Altarrin was sad, and busy, and - never indulged, never took advantage of his position even in ways that wouldn't have traded off against his service to the Empire - even though he's one of the people who advised Bastran on taking his pleasures where and when he could. It is a heavy load to carry, to be the most powerful man in the Empire, he said once, behind shields, when he had just been appointed. I would not have you make any unnecessary sacrifices on top of that. And Bastran remembers not really understanding at all, or maybe thinking it was mostly about the long hours, but he thinks he sees it better now. Except he's not sure if Altarrin ever followed his own advice, and maybe before it felt like why would he, maybe he too was carrying a heavy burden but it didn't strain him, surely, he was a man with magically-reinforced-concrete at his core, he could have stood a thousand years with it. 

(Maybe that wasn't true. Maybe that was the thought of an inexperienced thirty-year-old Bastran, tutored almost since birth as one of the candidates for Emperor, with elite skill at sparring and a thorough education in the Emperor's history, clever and handsome and charismatic and as ready as anyone could possibly be, but - still absorbing it.) 

He's awed that Caris, who could have been anyone and had anyone, wanted him