"Except that people are going to want hybrids for the mild springs," says Sinkali.

"If that's how hybrids turn out. You all seem very optimistic about that."

"They've been trying for decades, Amentan decades, to figure out some way to get our hormones under control, and they can't, it doesn't work."

"I hope it does, just, hard to predict and we won't know for a long time."

"If there weren't wizards sixteen years from now is about when we'd have normal population controls on humans, definitely long before cutting their credits would come up."

"Yeah, I know. It just feels like we missed driving my species extinct by mostly luck."

"Maybe we'll have more planets by then."

"I hope so."

"Were you involved in Timothy's midnight interrogation operations?"

"No, he told me afterwards. I wouldn't have stopped him, though - he's definitely toeing a line with Aitim though it's possible he drew it in the wrong place, it's approximately the amount of pressure that would start to affect him negatively but he's a wizard, he hasn't, uh, specialized."

"I would like it if Timothy drew his line in a different place but I do not think Aitim has specialized in the direction of 'being more impaired by pressure'."

Nod.

Nanha gives Imeo to Sinkali and reaches for Malo to feed him.

He hands over Malo. "It doesn't make sense to me that 'as much pressure as can safely be applied' felt like the right way to deal with Aitim after, like, ten minutes of actually talking to him."

"He would be very dangerous if he saw an opening to stop us."

"From the outside it looks kind of like your cousins decided to solve that problem by terrorizing him into submission, which seems like not the best method of solving it or even one I'd expect them to endorse if I asked them about it."

"That was definitely not the intent."

"Then you are maybe miscalibrated in a manner not related to specialization."

"And Aitim wouldn't have mentioned this because -"

"Because he's an idiot," he says fondly.

" - oh. I'll talk to Timothy."

"Thank you."

"Miscalibrated how exactly?" says Sinkali.

"Well, if they weren't trying to terrorize him, then apparently about what would be terrifying."

"I think when people spend a while feeling scared and powerless and then gets handed - well, in this case handed the realization that the people who took over the world are Muggles - it's hard to then decide what the optimal balance of power is on the fly, it's tempting to just take all of it and then hand people the tools they need to do their job as they need them. But there are kinds of reassurance that aren't things Aitim would need to do his job and might not end up handed back over."