Chimo is wearing new shoes.  Jaume wouldn't notice, except that the halfling has much more in his little coin jar than Jaume had expected him to be able to accumulate, and Chimo explains at Jaume's suspicious inquiry that he sold his old shoes to one of the free halflings present for the convention for a grand sum and bought cheaper used ones that fit better.  "The old ones were big for me."

It's such a small thing.  It should reasonably be nothing.  A trivial economy in footwear, which Jaume had overlooked when he had bought the requisite number of sets of halfling-sized clothes in a bundle because they were all about the same size.  If there was any jockeying between the three of them, when there were three, any bickering about who got which pair of shoes, which shirt, then they left Jaume out of it, because he would not have wished to be troubled with such a thing.  And then of course when Ivey and Twelve were sold, they had clothes on, they had shoes on, the ones they happened to be wearing that day regardless if there'd previously been some rotational arrangement, and Chimo wore what was left.  And of course Chimo did not previously attempt to complain about the shoes, did not previously try to trade them with another slave whose shoes were worth less money and would come with the difference in negotiable goods, because - why bother, if the surplus wasn't - if the - whichever convention halfling Chimo met must be walking around with gold burning a hole in its pocket, but not want to deal with human cobblers -

Whatever that ridiculous bird-monster with her broken Chelish says, Jaume never forgot that halflings were people.  Of course they're people; they speak and think and Chimo can even read and write, which is more than can be said for many humans even with the benefit of compulsory schooling.  Chimo has here, instead, demonstrated something else which Jaume was never going to see in the insane murder-slip.  Chimo is a rational economic actor.

Or at least, he can be.  Can be, if Jaume isn't claiming all his time and obscuring with possessive coverture his opportunity to create demand in the markets around him.  Can be, if there's something he can achieve with the virtue of greed instead of just the restraint of fear.

Jaume strides into his study abruptly, without explaining any of these thoughts to Chimo, and writes the manumission papers then and there.  He tots it up in his personal account books.  He will take what Chimo has saved up toward this end in respect for the desire that has driven its accumulation, but the rest he writes off, marking, under "notes": for the glory of Abadar, Whose creature this is.

He gives Chimo the manumission writ.  Chimo can read.  Jaume doesn't look right at him.  He feels the coin jar pressed in his hand, and he takes it and dispenses its contents into the appropriate receptacle.  "You may," he says stiffly, over Chimo's head, "remain at your present post and duties for a wage of three silver per day plus your historical quarters and portion of food purchases.  At your discretion."  He has discretion!  Chimo has and can use discretion!

"Yes, uh," says Chimo.  "- sir?" It wouldn't be "master", anymore.

Jaume nods, once, stiffly.  He hears Chimo go out the door, and he doesn't know if he'll see him back or not.  But if he does not, it will be because Chimo found a better wage elsewhere, and his departure will be in accordance with the will of Abadar.

One thing is for sure, though.  This is not the committee's business.  It wasn't self-interest, the advice to compensate the owners.  Jaume's finances are in perfect devout order. Jaume can weather this just fine.  Even if a farm or a tailoring business or a papermaking concern or a sailcloth manufacturer or an apiary is, in its persistence, stifling the natural propensity to healthy transactive activity in its labor force, the firms still have to be let down as gently as possible, with as much time for the economic wounds to heal around them as possible, or there will be disaster.  His arguments at the convention were never about Chimo and they still won't be, for to argue in such a way when consulted for his sacred expertise would be blasphemous and, more importantly, doing it wrong.