Jaume returns from his first day at the convention thoughtful. His supper is ready in his room at the temple, and the table is set; Chimo has already eaten his own small portion of the food.
"Chimo," says Jaume.
This is unusual. Chimo knows all the procedures and does not need correcting often. Even in adapting to the new environments en route to Westcrown and in the temple to Abadar, Chimo hasn't required much instruction. His master is a straightforward man with very simple needs. He'll eat whatever the market or the temple kitchen has as long as it's hot and not too exotic; Chimo is expected to help himself to a halfling's portion of the same. He doesn't have special instructions for the laundry wizard. He mostly keeps his own papers organized, so Chimo just has to run errands to refill supplies of ink and paper and such, and Jaume has never found fault with the state of the petty cash. "Master," says Chimo.
"The convention contains some radical elements who would see slavery abolished."\\That explains addressing Chimo but it doesn't really specify what Chimo is meant to do about it.\\"I find it unlikely that they will succeed in their most radical form, but even a lesser victory for that faction will necessitate some change in your situation." Jaume had two more slaves back home, often as not rented out for short term work, but he already sold them; they weren't worth bringing on the journey nor trusted enough to earn income on their own in Jaume's absence. He only kept Chimo, who serves directly and inerrantly.
"Yes, master."
"I believe it would be an offense against Abadar to simply dissolve the arrangement without recompense for my capital investment in your purchase, spent with the expectation that you would be my servant so long as it suited me," says Jaume. "However, I do not think it would be equally offensive to allow you the free use of time during which you have no duties to me, including the option to do paying work as you were accustomed to seeing Twelve and Ivey do, yet with the entitlement to accumulate the wages you thus earn, as it would be your effort and not mine to match your skill and availability to opportunities. Prices are fluctuating tremendously, mostly downward, as the convention's presented risk is priced in; but I would be inclined to value you at some eighty-eight gold pieces, including that risk. Afterwards I would be open to retaining you as a free servant, but it is presently not clear to me what the appropriate wage would be, as free halflings are still somewhat few and far between and the effect of this competition on the market for domestic servants -" Jaume is getting some practice, from teaching the classes, in noticing when he's completely lost an audience. "I would want to hire you afterwards," he says. "I don't know for how much precisely."
"Thank you, master," says Chimo.
"You're dismissed until it's time to tend to the fire for the evening," Jaume says, and Chimo makes himself scarce, but not into his sleeping-nook by the hearth, nor to the alley at the servants' entrance in the back of the building where he sometimes chats with the neighbors' halflings. He has noticed, watching Jaume's colleagues who came from all over the world, that some of them do not have anyone fixing their dinner and ferrying their laundry; that they sometimes have soot on their hands from tending their own fires. And they're all the servants of Jaume's same god. They'll have money to spend.