"Oh." Pause. "Where will we go though?"

"I don't know. A major city. If I had money I could pay the local wizards to contact home and ask them to try to rescue us."

Segda is quiet for a few minutes and then veers off to the right suddenly to pick flowers.

"I'd have an easier time earning money if you'd live in the woods and stay out of things."

"I don't want to do that," says Segda, sticking flowers between its feathers.

"Course you don't."

It covers itself in flowers, about half of which fall out as it skips along to rejoin her.

"Are you gonna get upset if we get home and I get a subtle artist to fix you?"

"I dunno how subtle artists are."

"They can do lotsa stuff but I'd just want you to - be able to wait for something you want if it's a bad idea to go take it right then."

"But I want stuff when I want it."

"Yeah. But when I want stuff I don't always immediately go do it and it makes me a lot safer to be around."

Segda doesn't reply. It starts brushing flowers out of its feathers, trailing them as they go.

And they head off.

Iris reflects on how weirdly non-hazardous everything is. She comes up with questions to ask when they reach the next city.

Miaoma is days away. En route, Segda tries to swim in a river again and is nearly swept away, is violently sick after eating the wrong mushroom, steals Iris's dinner straight out of the fire once while Iris isn't looking and once while she is, and, when they encounter a trading caravan, chases a human four-year-old accompanying this caravan into a thornbush and throws a fit when the four year old doesn't want to play with it after that. It also makes mud sculptures and sings odd stranger songs and climbs trees and catches fish and digs holes and brings the horse handsful of grass and clover to munch out of its hand.

Iris is so, so tired. She reminds herself that as far as she can tell, Segda literally can't help it. She grumbles a lot. 

They get to Miaoma.

Miaoma is big. It has an elaborate palace with a campus surrounded by guarded walls, and broad boulevards and fancy temples full of shaven-headed monks and nuns and a sprawling market and thousands upon thousands of people.

"We don't want to make a stir here. We want to earn a little money and learn about magic and that's it, okay?"

"I want to see inside there," Segda says, pointing at a temple and approaching it.

Sigh.

The nuns do not want to let Segda in the temple, but since they can't talk to it this conflict takes the form of thwacking Segda with a stick. Segda bites a nun in the leg.

"Segda come here right now or I'll zap you."

"Yeep!" says Segda, as it is thwacked with the stick again.

But is it coming over.

It's been knocked to the bottom of the steps of the temple and isn't getting up right away.