"...So the thing is a mage can kill a non-mage trivially. With normal murder you have obstacles, like, you need to find a weapon, you need to overpower your victim or figure out how to get poison into their food or whatever. There are barriers to normal murder that don't exist for a mage killing a non-mage--mages have a level of inherent resistance to magic being done to them without their consent--so there have to be higher incentive barriers."

"I don't have a record, if you want to background check me."

"Already did."

"Why the mental magic thing, if somebody's got a disorder or something they want fixed, I mean I'm purple but you were taking orange applications too -"

"Because it's all but impossible to tell with magic what mental magic was done. Suppose you go to a mage and ask them to remove your phobia of spiders, and they do but also rearrange your mind so you tip generously and also find their niece who they've been trying to set up intensely attractive, mages can't tell the difference between that and 'the mage did only what was asked for, and the client independently decided to tip generously and go out with the niece.'"

"And people aren't allowed to decide they trust the mage or it's worth any risk -"

"And if no one checks if they've been mentally altered between them making that declaration and going through with it then it's possible the mage already did something to them and was covering their tracks."

"But you could have somebody check. Go, 'I have depression, it's gonna kill me if I don't do something, I have not been mentally magicked before but I want to get mentally magicked now' -"

"Most people who are that desperate are willing to learn enough magic to do it to themselves."

"S'pose. If it doesn't take that long."

"Little enough time that it hasn't been worth it so far to come up with a sufficiently strict way of checking. Possibly little enough that it wouldn't be worth it to go through one if it existed."

Nod.

"So you said you wanted to do agricultural things like Odette's been doing in Tapa?"

"Yeah. My family owns some farmland and grazing area - free and clear, if you were worried about blues breathing down my neck, it's not rented out - and if it stepped up production that'd be swell."

"Okay. There's one more thing you need to understand. The magic murder and mind-affecting things? They're not just incentivized through social stigma. People who break them die."

"...so does getting magic like - constitute acknowledging that you're entitled to kill me -"

"Only if you do one of those things but yeah kind of."

"Okay... uh, I don't mind personally, I wasn't going to go into mental health or commit murder, but maybe make sure you're on the same page as governments about stuff before you start doing DIY criminal justice."

"It's understood to stand separate from conventional governments back home but this is not back home and I will do that."

Nod.

"Okay. I'm tentatively willing to teach you. I'll let you know when I've done enough interviews to see if it's worth doing a class or just individual teaching."

"Okay."

"Congratulations, then."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

And then she and Odette leave.

They go back to Tapa.

So I ended up agreeing to teach some clean Amentans magic conditional on them convincing me they weren't interested in using it to make reds' lives uh, obsolete, do you want me to come over very discreetly and see if I can teach you now? she asks Peka.