"Scary how?"

"He thinks fast, and assumes you are thinking just as fast, and once he can see which thought someone's pointing at he'll extrapolate to their conclusions and challenge them on those, and he has very high expectations and likes very few people."

"That does sound intimidating."

"You two will get along, I'm more confident of it than when I asserted it at the party. But I shall endeavor no matter who has the crown to keep him well away from anything requiring of tact or caution."

"So he can give a month of lectures encouraging caution but doesn't practice it himself?"

"Not at all! The King says his first son is skilled and his second son wise, and that seems true enough, though if the second one were as wise as the first one is skilled I'd be endeavoring to pass the crown to him."

"Rumor has it this would be truly staggering amounts of wisdom," agrees Iobel.

"Instead I think he's been allotted about the average, and mostly looks good by comparison. Clever but unwise describes most of my family."

"Only most of it?"

"Makariel's not particularly unwise. Telars is dreadful - you may tell him I said so, he knows how much I love him. Nistar's probably even worse, Ruafar's my father all over again. The twins have not done anything like trying to paddle an ocean since they were six; that's something."

"And you?"

"I wouldn't call wisdom a particular strength of mine, but people are a strength of mine, and one can compensate for the shortcoming with people more easily than one can compensate for it with a giant wolfhound or with spellbinding or with an obsessive knowledge of economics."

"If I had to pick one skill for a monarch to have delegation would have to be it, on the general principle of 'what do you mean one skill'. Although I wouldn't want to discount economics."

"Nistar'd tell me that economics is basically the study of the most efficient method of delegation known to human societies. Luckily there is no more a law about only having one skill than a law about only having one interest."

"I like that way of phrasing it a lot."

"Me too. It's satisfying to feel awe towards something big and yet comprehensible and usable for human good like that. It's almost like the feeling when a spell clicks.

He would make a good king. And even has a girlfriend, but she's foreign and speaks just enough Marlese that she could laugh in his face when he showed her the royal wedding vows."

"Oh, are they that bad?"

"'Man do you swear to protect, cherish, and guide Woman as your wife in sacred ordained marriage? Woman, do you swear to heed, adore, and support Man as your husband, in sacred ordained marriage?' If it's not a royal wedding one can be a bit more flexible, but I think that monstrosity might have poisoned the well of matrimony permanently for Nistar and Riavka."

"Oh wow. They can't just elope and do a ceremony from her country and then present themselves as sufficiently married?"

"Her country doesn't do interreligious marriages."

"Inconvenient."

"Isn't it! I suppose they could shop around for somewhere that'd marry them but they also don't want the crown very much. Nistar's a bit of a misanthrope. Likes people in general, not often fond of any specific ones."

"I wouldn't call myself a misanthrope but the followup description fits..."

"The difference might be in how well you can work with people for whom you harbor no fondness. He tends to call them, to their face, tedious sinkholes of value and productivity."

"Oh dear. I don't do that. I just quietly fail to find most people interesting and feel no need to follow up on that verbally."