"And I can just pet a horse and probably stay on it from there, or make a walking chair. Forge it is."

"The best one in the region is my father's, but I think the ones attached to the palace are pretty good," Maitimo says, "and there are lots of people who can help if you have a sufficiently specific idea of what you need."

"Cool."

"I don't know if anything's going to look familiar - I can show you what we use it for -" and he sends some mental images as he picks things up.

Some of it matches, some of it doesn't. Kib sends back images of the forge he worked in at home.

"Do you have a plan in enough depth to actually start here?"

"I should actually do a design on paper and write out the program so I can confirm my guess of how big I need it, first, but figuring out what I'm working with is good, might affect the design."

"For sure. Supplies - well, if you decide to do it in solid gold I will have to exert charisma at people but anything else I can get you with no trouble at all."

"I've never worked in gold! That, like diamonds, is hard to come by. And it'd be too soft to hold the instructions if anything thwacked it. Iron's more customary."

"Yes, using gold for things is stupid. People do it anyway because it's pretty, but the stupid is the reason I'd have to exert charisma at people. Iron is easy."

Kib explores the forge a bit, identifying replacements for things - "Oh, of course you don't have a puppetable etcher. I'll have to make one of those first but that's easy. Especially if you just have diamonds lying around."

"We do, in fact, just have diamonds lying around. We have had discussions about what we can most ostentatiously pave the streets with, I'd be eager to hear suggestions. Need some diamonds?"

"I need one pointy diamond in its capacity as a really hard thing so I can etch golem instructions into the iron. It's doable without a diamond but the really nice servantmaker-catering smithies have diamond-tipped ones."

"I am having someone fetch us one. Pointy as in faceted?"

"Yes. Pointily, no cushion cuts. The finer I can get the lettering without making it too shallow the better."

"I will get you a very pointily faceted diamond," he says agreeably. "Copying books would change everything."

"Then you shall have a book-copying golem. Are books a standard size here?"

He gestures for proportions. "Not all of them, but that'd be the closest to a standard we have."

"It matters for how much range of vision the golem needs and how long its arm needs to be, it's no big deal if they're smaller but it matters if they're sometimes bigger. Does color ever matter?"

"If it could just copy black ink for now that'd be sufficient, people can do the illumination manually."

"Golems are hard to upgrade, if you want one that does color later it'll have to be a whole new one."

"How much time does it add to the project?"

"That's almost all program work, not assembly, maybe another day or two?"

"Ah, all right. In that case I'd expect it to be worth it. We do have a lot of books with color."

"How many colors does it need to be able to distinguish and - considering how important handwriting is - how finely does it need to be able to place lines?"