"Hey forest," says Cam experimentally in the Speech.

"What are you doing?" says Steel. This is the only response.

"Seeing if the forest'll talk to me. Either it's not a coherent entity by itself and I'd have to address an individual tree, or it is feeling unfriendly, or stuff on this world doesn't talk even as much as stuff on other non-Syntropy worlds tends to." He turns to the nearest tree. "Hey, tree."

"The forest is not traditionally friendly towards non-residents," says Steel. The tree says nothing.

"Hey, tree and/or forest, do you want to talk to Princess Sherlock, I can translate for you," offers Cam.

"Nope. I want to teleport briefly to someplace that isn't this forest and talk to a rock or something to see if it's the forest or the world, can you suggest a destination?"

"The former dragonsbane cultivation site, in the Mountains of Morning."

"Hi!" says the pebble. "I'm a pebble."

"May I see it?" asks Steel, holding out her hand.

Cam hands over the pebble.

Sherlock accepts and studies the pebble.

"Uh, on Syntropy, everything talks, trees and stars are as smart as humans and it varies on down from there, stuff wizards talk to gets smarter. On other worlds I've checked out, stuff talks, but nothing is smarter than grass - which is to say incredibly stupid."

"This seems to be an ordinary pebble," says Sherlock. "What did it say?"

"It said, 'hi, I'm a pebble', it will not be helping your children with their geography lessons anytime soon."

She laughs.

"The Speech is useful even if you aren't a wizard. I haven't been able to make any other Bells wizards, but I think that might be just because they're too old. Aegis is youngest, at fifteen, and even fourteen is pushing it - I was fourteen when I got wizarded up and that's much older than typical. I might be able to wizard the miscellaneous Bellspawn except Dominique, but I don't know if that would get Iggy's attention between worlds, so it'd require thinking about."

"Iggy?"

"It's not its real name, but when I was fourteen it pretended to be a rock named Iggy to talk to me. It's sort of an - evil god? It's a Power. And it's really unclear how powerful the Powers are, like, I'd be surprised but not astounded if they could reach across worlds with something like an offworld wizard to get their attention. And every time a new wizard comes to be, it tries to kill them. Jellybean and Matilda saved my life."

"Do not make my children into wizards," Steel requests.

"Not on the agenda," agrees Cam. "Although whether you expect Powers to make attempts on their lives or not you probably want them all torchable."

"Yes."

"Iggy doesn't usually try very hard - either that or it's got seriously limited resources - and it doesn't try more than once. I have a student, it sent a rabid dog after him, when that was taken care of nothing else happened. And if it's noticed anything I've been doing since pealing and minting it's been quiet about it. I can't really figure it out."