"Do you have questions," the local expert asks Jeres.

"How much do the libel concerns with the radio show apply when speaking of people outside of Osirion? Does Freedom need to be more careful with what she says about Abrogail Thrune?"

"In principle, Abrogail Thrune could try to bring us a cause of action about Freedom saying falsehoods about her, if she knew that Freedom were here - my understanding is that everyone is trying to avoid her learning that. In the typical case she could pay us to investigate if the claims were in fact false, and demand they be retracted if so, and then Freedom would either have to correct the falsehood on the radio or pay a fine. In this case, matters are …geopolitically complicated… and probably if Freedom is lying on the radio about Abrogail Thrune and Abrogail Thrune is asking us to investigate the truth of the claims and they're in fact false we'll just ask you to take the girls somewhere else, or take away their radio."

"I do not have any more questions at this time. Thank you for your patience."

"I'm not the one who has to find them husbands. Good luck."

He'll leave.

"Insert legally mandated caveats here but that is in fact a profoundly stupid set of libel laws."

Iomedae squeezes her hand. "I guess I'm unclear on whether it ever comes up in cases like you named or if it's just broad so the government can take cases in a wide range of situations but still mostly decides on them reasonably. Though they didn't otherwise seem all that reasonable."

"Even if it's the latter, that seems bad for people's Lawfulness. And caveats caveats caveats but I don't see that this policy has any advantages over the one where you're allowed to say that the god-emperor does unconscionable things with ornamental dog breeds."

"Alfirin. Stop."

"He's gone and that wasn't illegal and you are not, actually, my father. My father is dead and would not have objected if I said that about the god-emperor, let alone just talked about it being hypothetically legal in some places to say it."

Iomedae tries to imagine what her father would have done if she'd decided that Taldor ought to have freedom of speech and started talking about the Emperor and ornamental dog breeds and unconscionable things…he would not have been okay with it. He would not have been remotely okay with it. "I can think of advantages to making it illegal to make knowingly false claims about the god-emperor," she says. "Even in America I think the thing you just said would be illegal if it was taken as a serious claim rather than an expression of strong emotion, and I'm not sure that's a good way to design libel law either -"

"Well, it's obviously false, the god-emperor is literally Abadar and that means that under the Osirion legal regime anything he does with ornamental dog breeds is not just conscionable, but necessarily the best thing possible to do with ornamental dogs."

Jeres looks about ready to claw his eyes out. "If you are going to keep being like this, go somewhere else and do it in private. Freedom, your friend is a bad influence. Dismissed."

Iomedae watches him go with some distress. "They're going to send you back to Vigil and I'll be worried sick about you - is 'it's illegal to criticize the god-emperor' a wise fight to pick while we're staying in his palace -"

"Love, you haven't seen me start to pick that fight - you're right, though. I will be more restrained. The very picture of women-should-be-seen-and-not-heard civility whenever Osirians are around."

Hug. "We can make it a radio episode once we go home. What's wrong with Osirion? Why can't Abadar, who is a pretty tolerable god who says he likes cities and civilization, run a theocracy that isn't pretending it's still the Bronze Age?"

"Mhm. Without the radio episodes when we go home I would have a much harder time staying civil… I guess I have not yet demonstrated that I actually can stay civil."

"You really, really haven't. Maybe your father would tolerate that kind of thing around important foreign dignitaries from a place with a god-king but mine absolutely wouldn't have."

"Sarkorians didn't have a ton of respect for god-kings, I think. Comes from having a lot of distance from their empires, I guess."

"Well. Good for them. …my father and I had a conversation, when I was twelve and the Duke was coming to visit, because he wanted to bar me from speaking the whole time and I was very hurt. And I shouted at him for a little while and he didn't shout back and then I realized - he was scared. And I figured I could behave myself, at that. …mostly. That's when I asked if I was allowed to say anything so long as it was scripture and spoke in nothing else for three months."

"You're incredible. Did you manage to avoid offending the Duke?"

"Yes. - well, I think he thought I was odd, but 'odd' is much better than 'presumably getting all those heresies either from her priest or her father'."

"The reason I'm sure my father wouldn't have had a problem with me talking around mean things about god-kings is - I saw him do it, I guess. Much more direct, though. Also I learned later that Aroden was not the god-king of Taldor. And I guess they were only traveling merchants and priests and not dignitaries, per se, but he definitely lost business for it… my father might not have been the wisest of men."

Iomedae beams at her. "I wish I could have met him. …we should probably try to be the wisest of men, though, while we're here."

"Second wisest, the Pharaoh is legally the wisest."