"In the mountains we have orcs, and I think a dragon;" - because it survived attacking Vyre after she talked to it ten years ago - "most of what comes over the Nidalese border is refugees and horsemen chasing them but neither is easy to deal with peacefully and undead and kytons spill over as well; there are monsters in the deep sea not far off shore and we don't know what kinds yet, I need to deal harshly with the druids of Ravounel Forest some time soon if the little girl they sent doesn't prove much more useful than she acts; and Barzilai Thrune almost certainly left some greater devils around before the archmages dealt with him. That I know about. Menador has it worse, but their Archduke and his nobles are much better suited for dealing with them personally."

"I hope it not outrageously presumptuous, Archduchess, to observe that were you to offer your hand to the man who got rid of that dragon and saw the border villages a year of peace you'd have a thousand men spring to the work at once. ...what sort of dragon is it?"

"Red. Building-sized, last it was seen, so an adult specimen. I'm reluctant to entrust the future of the archduchy to pure strength at such a volatile time; foreigners or borderline Asmodeans could both be quite destructive in different ways, but I hadn't given the possibility much thought, I am still used to thinking myself married to Kintargo. ...You're probably correct that I ought to try it."

How can she get herself out of this...

She absolutely can't! "It is to you that the archduchy's future has been entrusted, and it's yours to rule no matter who you choose to aid you in that task. Where was the dragon last sighted?"

"Either near Terapsillion in the northeast, or about fifty miles from the Menador Gap, but it's been quiet. For certain, ten years ago in Vyre. Shortly after I convinced it Kintargo wasn't worth its time." Okay, she can boast a little, she likes telling this story. "I told it Nidal would be a better target and it didn't want to face the Chelish army teleport reserves, which made it go away. I could not possibly have anticipated that it would have a short attention span and attack Vyre instead of going a much longer way."

And now she's responsible for Vyre. She's really not happy about that.

He will happily listen to the story for as long as there's more to tell of it!

Valentia is aware that she is supposed to be looking for a husband. It is important. For her, for her father, for her mother. For her brothers, with their terrified heartlands wives, who her father forbade them from divorcing.

Unfortunately, almost everyone here is too important for her and looks utterly miserable, especially the other young women about who are being more diligent about their work than she is. Half of them are not Chelish, and she can see the distress written all over their faces. She does not want to compete with them, and is sure she could not if she tried. So -

"Hello. Valentia Napaciza, niece of the countess of Ilnea, in Menador. Forgive me for introducing myself. The sheer volume of strangers here makes it a problem for which we ought to have hired a logistics officer." Many nobles would be offended, but she thinks -

She smiles. "Scholastica. My mother is Duchess of Anferita. We were of Kortos, before."

"Near the city? I've never been, but they say it's something out of legend."

"Further north. The countrysides aren't so very different, but it's much safer. Very little you could call a real monster, and dozens of adventurers looking to kill anything arguable. My sister is a bit of one, but I'm afraid I spent most of my time raising pegasi before this."

"Pegasi! Do you train them yourself?"

"My father is the expert, but yes. They're mostly wanted by adventurers, so training is a long process of building rapport, training their flying skills, and exposing them to new situations, so they don't panic the first time they come across something unexpected. It's an odd business. Without magic, one can only usefully sell to men the pegasus judges worthy. Some people simply charm them, but then you run the risk of being dumped off one the moment it's dispelled, or the pegasus feels you are taking unnecessary risks with its safety."

"How many do they find worthy?"

"Depends wildly on the individual. You can breed pegasi to be more accepting, of course, but it cuts against other things one might want. As a rule, the best ones know their worth, and have high standards."

Pegasi are...intelligent good creatures. They don't speak, but they understand language fine, and in emergencies there are plenty of accounts of them finding a way to communicate something complicated. She doesn't really want to pick a fight with her guests, much less to jump into a conversation just to do that, but -

"It strikes me that there is something troubling about breeding pegasi, in that I would expect them to have their own patterns of courting and to have all the distress humans do at being assigned a spouse - or, really, all the notably worse distress humans feel at being commanded in an assignation without marriage." Carlota would absolutely oblige some people to marry under some circumstances but obliging them unmarried to sleep together would be horrendous.

Ah. She's really more used to fielding criticism from the other direction, but this is a different place.

"I don't disagree. To my knowledge nearly all creatures have their ways of courting, though pegasi have higher standards than most. They do not marry, of course, but they are loyal creatures, and prefer to care for their mates and children. In general, a pegasus physically forced to bear children cannot be ridden after, and can be permitted no significant contact with her children. Some breeders would say one makes it up in volume, but I don't think it improves quality in the most important senses, and would claim it's a poor business decision on the whole. But I agree that it also seems a wrong to them, and have been told that it clouds my sense."

Xavier cannot help overhear this conversation, and is, as happens fairly rarely to him, struck dumb. It's not that he hasn't heard people talking about breeding hippogriffs before, and it's not that he doesn't envy Lastwall's elite pegasus archers, the fastest cavalry in the world, and he's sure Molthune's leadership has discussed ways to try to try to copy it, but they have some moral standards -

Seriously what! He is currently imagining this conversation making its way back to Skybreaker, who understands Taldane perfectly well even if he can't speak it with a beak and imagining trying to talk him out of a dashing aerial raid on the pegasus breeding facility. He might be able to convince him that pegasi are more like hippogriffs than gryphons for all the obvious reasons but that's false -

" - I've never heard anyone speak so ill of their own conscience," she says, perhaps ill-advisedly, once she's found words at all.

Oh dear. She's spent so long expecting to be horrified by everyone she meets in Cheliax, and here they are being horrified with her. For something she agrees with the duchess about, but - 

"I don't personally produce new pegasi without the parents' agreement," she says, which she worries sounds an awful lot like 'I don't personally torture my children, but all of my friends do'. "It is, unfortunately, a common evil on Kortos, though I can't say I think it's a worse evil than humanoid slavery, which of course is far more rampant."

"Actually, Duchess - if you'll forgive my ignorance, I've heard from my mother that the convention passed a resolution against slavery in Cheliax, but I am uncertain exactly what situations it applies to. I will be happy to see slavery go, and if the law should interfere with owning pegasi as well, then so be it, I suppose. But long experience with them and with other beasts has left me uncertain of the lines that seem so obvious to others, and I am curious what line this convention draws."

"It is our hope to introduce the first measure addressing slavery on the floor on Moonday, but it addresses only the slavery of halflings, precisely because it is difficult to define, and give force of law, all of the distinctions that strike me as being of importance. I hope the convention will address those too, but the slavery of halflings is widespread enough, and widely-speculated-on enough, that it seemed ill-advised to bundle it with what I expect to be a very complicated debate.

But that's to speak of the law, and - what you said sounded, to me, like you feared that your concern for the wellbeing of your charges would cloud your judgment. And - that is your judgment; there is no greater thing it approximates. If you desire to do right by pegasi then I hope you will not wait on the rest of us, or better yet that you'll advise the rest of us. I do not know there to be a pegasus breeding industry in Cheliax but if there is I do think we should ban it." The Archduke's looking horrified, hopefully that's because he disapproves of enslaving Good intelligent creatures to force them into the service of men not fit to ride them as a matter of character and not because Molthune actually has a slave pegasus army she's managed not to hear of.

"Indeed," Xavier says. "There is no pegasus breeding industry in the north, at least; horses and hippogriffs, yes, but no pegasi. It would provoke a revolt." Though to be fair, everything does, in Molthune.

"I ought not to wildly speculate on policies for an industry I have just learned of but 'all pegasus breeding must be done by men judged worthy by the pegasi, with no charms involved' is the first idea I thought of."

"Others have not thought very highly of my opinions on these matters, but if you are interested, I will give them. I see very little difference, morally, between pegasi and horses. This is not to say that I think it is fine to mistreat both; I mean the opposite. Pegasi have more complex needs, and higher standards for their riders, and for that reason raising pegasi is more demanding work. But I think there is a great tendency among humans to hear that a creature reads as intelligent as they do, by a wizard's tests, and only then consider its wellbeing. In fact, its pain would be the same, however much or little of us it understood. Pegasi are choosy, both with their mates and their riders, and should not be forced to bear children or riders that they do not wish. Horses are much less so, but it is not unheard of for them to reject a mate, nor for them to reject a rider, and I know of no civilization that cares. Pegasi understand what happens to their foals, and will mourn a foal that is given to an unworthy master. Horses love their foals when present, but cannot understand when a master is responsible for taking them away, and therefore can be robbed of what they love without much consequence. They each feel the sting of the whip in precisely the same manner. But a pegasus is far more capable of resistance and escape, while a horse is easily rendered defenseless, and easily made to accept such treatment. I am not certain that this does not make it worse to strike the horse, just as it is worse to strike a small child than it is to strike a man. I certainly do not think that a man who beats his horse is any kinder than one who beats his pegasus. I only think that he is less foolish."

"But I do not think that either species is very well equipped to make its way alone in civilization, and I have heard that those raised in captivity generally do very poorly when released into the wild. I do believe that we have a responsibility to see to the welfare of all creatures we raise, but I do not think this is in any way the same thing as saying that the law should act towards all of them as it acts towards people. What specific treatment the law should prohibit, I am not sure."

This is a very long speech.

"There are a great many moral matters that aren't properly legal matters, and I'm inclined to say that the right treatment of horses, and children, is mostly that, because it is hard to imagine how a lord might intervene on the situation and improve it thereby, where improvement could come readily from men cultivating - more patience, more virtue, more awareness of their duties. But - the pegasi do seem a matter, to me, readily improved by a law. Or possibly not because perhaps there is no such industry in Cheliax. Not in Menador, I take it, Valentia? I know you have gryphons....used to have gryphons." She knows that in Acts Menador had gryphons, which is really an embarrassing amount to be out of date on knowledge of your not very distant northern neighbors.