"Oh dear."

Shrug. "I can dodge the bloated royal procession most of the time, that's only really for foreign affairs or very important things. For most things I can get away with a guard or two if I'm somewhere public, or not at all if I'm in the palace or one of our estates or something. But it does get a bit old."

"I can imagine. Is your sister better at avoiding it?"

"Yes, for two reasons. First, she can absolutely defend herself and doesn't really need guards. Second... well, I'm the heir. I both need to be at important social functions to look pretty more often, and people are more inclined to freak out if something happens to me."

"How much do you suppose they're freaking out now?"

"Some, but it's not to 'declare a war over it,' levels. They know my situation, and that I'm not in any immediate danger, and that I have help getting home."

"Your magic lets you communicate with them from here?"

"Mhm. Though, communicate implies that I can just - talk through it, which isn't quite what's going on. How much do you know about magic?"

"Very little."

"All right. So think of magic as an... heirloom, I suppose. Something that is held by a person and then passed down to their children when they die or are ready to part with it. Except instead of an object, it's alive. Sort of like a - a magical family pet that you pass down from family member to family member. It grows bigger and smarter the longer you take care of it, and over time it learns different tricks, or new ways to use old ones."

"...Huh." It's a charming description. "That explains why it's all nobles and so on who have it."

"Right. A person acquires magic, they set up in a nice little place somewhere with superior magical power, and they declare themselves nobility and pass the magic and the title down to their children. Or in my family's case, we conquer a bunch of different warring territories that had their own magic warlords, declare all of them vassals, and name ourselves royalty. But that was a while ago, it's been some time since we were conquerors."

Nod. "What happens if a line dies out?"

"Depends. Moving between heirs is easier the more closely related they are, but it's not trivial. There's a loss of size and power every time it happens. Start jumping to more distant relations and you start taking major power hits. If a line dies out, and there's nowhere the magic can jump to with the power it's got left... then that's it. It's gone. Dies with its last user."

"Damn. I hope that idiot had cousins somewhere."

"Yeah. Me too. But I'm a little surprised that his magic participated in kidnapping. They gain personalities over time, become more and more like people. At the point my family's magic is at, it's sort of accurate to say that it helps rule the country with administrative helper humans that happen to wear crowns. It can absolutely refuse to do things if it disagrees with me."

"Uncharitable thought: maybe it agreed to kidnap you because it knew I would kill him and thought he was too crazy to go on having it."

"That's possible, but unlikely. They can jump without their current holder dying, it's just avoided because doing so loses power. And it can choose who to jump to - my mother wasn't a direct descendant of her predecessor, she was a cousin, but our magic picked her because it thought she'd be the best at it."

"Well, maybe he comes from a long line of unpleasant people."

"Maybe. It's happened before, there have been some nasty magical lines throughout history."

"Maybe it's not so bad after all if he didn't have cousins."

Shrug. "Maybe not. I'd have to know more to say for sure, I didn't get so involved in foreign affairs that I could rattle off the history of a random Callae noble house from memory. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now. If anything, suddenly being shunted to a cousin might have taught it a lesson."

Nod. "Not much use in speculating at this point," he says wryly. "It is what it is, and his cousins are or are not, and none of it changes what we have to do next."

"Nope! And the hole in my defenses should be patched now, so the opening he took advantage of isn't available for a cousin. Aside from that, it's a problem for either my mother to deal with, or for after I'm back in my country."

"Or, if we're very lucky, for the Callae royalty."