The Unshakeable Scout and the Determined Governor

The colony starts to carve a place for itself on the southern continent. Valanda toys with calling it something that'll make people who have morals think of morality but ends up telling the imperial government that his new state is officially named Ira Sani, Ice Beach in Ilan, because an Ilan name will make caralendri more likely to immigrate and caralendri will want human-friendly architecture.

Things move frustratingly slowly. The plumbing gets planned, parts of the plans get tested, they discuss zoning, they discuss zoning some more, there are always more things to figure out and more ways everything could go wrong and not one single slave saved so far. He wants to move to Hyrule and forget it all. Instead he imports frozen fruits from the mainland and has Dareni check for the presence of known poisons in the native wildlife and pretends individual flakes of falling snow are monsters from Ganon that he needs to beat to death with his staff.

Every day he steps out of the illusions on the tents and creates a record of the slow effects of the drugs he bought in Milliways for when he has a new voice and a new face and needs to prove he's not some random person who killed and replaced Valanda. On most of those days he talks to himself. He sends a letter to the imperial government on the same flight Nik takes listing dates, places, turns of phrase to have their knowledge mages look for in his rambling monologues to find the times he spoke letters to them. He tells them how to find the time he talked about why he wants permission to test the effects of setting the age of majority for humans a year younger, to sixteen.

People come, mostly to visit, only rarely to move to the new world. Under Ira Sani state law there's a fee to bring a slave into the state, a tax on all slaves, an additional tax on all slaves over the age of majority for their species. The only result of all these laws is that one adventurous and introverted agerah sells a slave in Norvand before immigrating.

While Nikolas is on the mainland and has been for a while Valanda ends one of his monologues and decides to head inside and finds Milliways. He says hi to Bar and sits down for some nice sulking instead of putting up his sign immediately.

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He gets the first one on the list and asks how much pencil and paper for notetaking cost.

Bar

1 ring.

He'll take notes.

He sits down and reads.

Kenneth tells him, "If something in there confuses you, I might be able to clear it up. I'm not a doctor but I have a scientific background, at least. The university makes everyone take general science courses and biology was one of them."

The new medical textbook is much more focused on 'this is how to help a person who is sick in this particular way' than the one he has partially translated from Nick, which was more about 'this is how the body works'. For example, It explains the difference in how scurvy and anemia present and how to diagnose them and what one should do about them, but doesn't tend to explain the reasons for its instructions.

"If I take this out of Milliways, will it suddenly not be in Hari anymore?"

Bar

This book is not written in Hari. If you take it out of Milliways, you will no longer be able to read it unless you have some other form of translation magic.

"But my notes are in Hari, right?"

Because if so he's going to just copy everything he might want to tell a structure mage to make.

Bar

Correct.

The book is apparently designed for something like structure mages! There's a huge glossary of chemical structures of various kinds of vitamins and medicines. There is a large red warning on every page in the glossary - Be careful to create molecules with the correct chirality. Molecules with opposite chiralty have extremely different effects even if otherwise identical. This can harm or even kill your patients. See pages 17-22 for an explanation of chirality.

That sounds really unlikely to be news to any structure mages but then again anyone insulted to be reminded of something they already know isn't worth working with.

"Want a copy of my notes when I'm done here?" he asks Kenneth. "You can find one of your doctors to give it to."

"I think they might have already bought similar books, but I definitely won't turn it down! More people looking at a problem is always better for solving it. Want some help copying them down? I am fairly sure I can write in Hari now."

"I won't turn down help if it's free but an illusion mage can do it twice as fast, I'll have a dozen copies made inside a week and I'll keep one and you take one and I'll auction off the rest."

"I read about illusion mages, they sound handy. I meant making the first copy. And sure, I'll do it for free if you check my work, it'll also be practice at writing in Hari!"

"Can you see it as Hari in here?"

"If I focus on trying to, yes. It sort of... Snapped in once I learned enough. I mostly can't understand it yet, but apparently I know it enough to see Hari."

Mahan passes him the first page of notes.

Kenneth copies them, reading them out, muttering, as he does so.

His handwriting is a little strange, but he doesn't make mistakes.

"Looks right to me. Do you understand it?"

"I think so, but of course I would think so, right? So, this says 'blood contains too little liquid for...' He reads out a couple passages at random. He messes up some specialized vocab words, but otherwise does a decent job.

"Milliways is very handy, isn't it? I almost don't want to move into New Dover with the rest of them."

"No, come, move in, the only other person on the continent I like anywhere near as much as you doesn't like men."

He blinks twice in rapid succession. "Ah. Uh. I would warn you not to mention liking most of the other men in our party. There's... A very strongly held... Dislike of that." He looks like he wants to shrink into his boots. "Some of them don't. But. It isn't safe to admit to liking your own gender. I considered moving to Amsterdam or Paris where people are... Were... Tolerant."

"And now you're moving to Ira Sani where no one cares. Except me, I care a lot, I'm thrilled. ...Lifesaving medical knowledge first and then you can show me how they did it in the old Dover?"

Aaaah.

"New Dover will care. Maybe if people talk to them it will... Mellow out. I could stay in Ira Sani..."

He looks at Mahan's face.

He looks away and blushes.

"...Lifesaving medical knowledge first, at any rate."

"What's their problem with it, anyway?"

"I'm not even sure. It's not like I'm going to ask. I just have this background expectation of what they'll say - 'oh, disgusting, that should be illegal', 'what unnatural behavior, they should be able to control their baser urges', that sort of thing."