"Yeah, but it really hurts and I'm not gonna give you a book to burn for it."

"I'll cut it off early," she says, although honestly she is way more in favor of throwing up after this than of trying to explain Rainfold's legal code in charades. She gets Peth to give her the tablet and tell her the activation words, and then -

" - I'm giving this, like, two minutes, is it working?"

"I understand you."

"Good. Rainfold's laws are simple but given the givens it would be negligent not to at least attempt to spell them out. If you're not planning to start a business or buy land or become a government official or have any children in the immediate future, then probably all you need to know is don't steal, don't trespass, don't defraud anyone, don't damage the property of others, don't dump waste in public or in the river, don't assault anyone - I am not going to define assault perfectly but anything that could injure someone is out of bounds - don't kill anyone, don't kidnap anyone, don't verbally threaten anyone, don't grossly disturb the peace, don't rape anyone, don't use necromancy. Do you need any of those concepts explained."

"Rape and necromancy?"

" - well then. Necromancy is the branch of Kaltish magic associated with death. I am almost but not entirely certain that your magic does not count, and since you're using it responsibly I expect that no one will be inclined to use an uncharacteristically expansive definition of the term, but it is illegal. Rape is having sex with anyone who didn't unambiguously tell you that they were all right with having sex with you. You're gonna want to err on the safe side of that."

"Thank you. Now that you know more about what I can do do you think healing and water treatment are still the best use of me?"

"I think that if you're right about where our diseases come from, then sterilizing the water is the best thing you can do for the city in the immediate term. It's also a great first step for getting actually important people on your side, which you'll need if you really want to go about conquering other cities. If you were less powerful I would probably be spending more effort trying to convince you that you shouldn't do that, but given the givens I'm just going to try to give you the information you need to do whatever you're going to do without getting completely ridiculous numbers of people killed in the process. And without running off and trying to conquer the rest of Kalt for someone less, ah, committed to the concept of human rights."

"Why shouldn't I do that? And what are human rights?"

" - oh God help us. I don't have time for the first argument, suffice it to say that I am against killing people and that good intentions don't generally prevent people from committing unconscionable atrocities after they've embarked on a quest to unite a continent with bloodshed. If you are set on uniting the continent then you should at least attempt to do so through nonviolent means, with your powers I bet you could make some real headway. Human rights are the concept that everyone should be able to expect certain things while living in their society, like - like not being randomly murdered or enslaved, people should have a right to not be randomly murdered or enslaved. If you conquer the continent for Rainfold you'll at least have a shot at ending up with a society where people are mostly free and mostly safe; if you head next door and conquer the continent for Regnas then we all go back to men legally owning their wives and unmarried daughters. Which is stupid, so don't do that."

"Right, have to make it nice so people don't rebel. I'll defer to your government about how and when to get Rainfold in control of the world. Any chance you could use me for materials so we can talk longer?"

"Well that's heartening, thank you for that. And I seriously doubt that it works like that, but if we can somehow exploit your - whatever it is you do - to get infinite materials for Kaltish magic then that would be pretty great, we should at least test it. Probably it won't work and it'll make you a little sick. I would genuinely love to spend hours figuring out all the concepts you don't have, but I think that was more than two minutes and wow I hope I don't regret this conversation. I don't think I will but - augh."

She takes her hand off the tablet and - yep, she feels horrible now, she's going to duck into the back for a bit and hope there's something bucket-shaped around.

"She's bad at not talking," Peth informs him.

Sigh.

These people just have the worst world. They're as clever and hardworking as anyone in Har and they just don't have any resources and they have too much land and too many people for all of them to cooperate.

And now he can't ask them if there's anything he can do to pay Imrainai back for talking to him. He gets that it's just because she'd be in trouble if he broke a law and she can't just stop him. It still feels like a favor.

"Talking was good. Thank you."

She nods. "Nobody knew any of your languages. Nobody who'd talk to me, anyway. I think there are things that are less costly than the translation tablet, but I need to talk to more people to find out what they are. - I don't know if you understand all those words, you probably don't?"

"Don't." Sigh. "Understand everything later. Other people don't understand Kaltish, come to Rainfold, want to understand Kaltish, do what?"

"I think mostly you pick it up on your own or you go to the poor orders, unless you have money to pay someone to teach you. But you don't wanna go to the poor orders. They try to help but they don't have enough people. Imrainai's order taught her, but for a long time she couldn't really talk to anyone."

And when he's done fixing their diseases and getting them indoor plumbing he's going to have to reinvent public language education.

Sigh. "More fountains, more words?"

"Yeah. I can't today, though, I gotta work. ...I guess Imrainai was gonna help you but I guess she might be out of commission for a bit. You want to go with Spite?"

"Spite is good!"

"OK then!"

She makes her signal whistle again.

A couple minutes later, Spite crawls in through a window and climbs up to Mahan's head.

Mahan needs Spite?

Spite! Need more fountains and more words.

Spite knows words and fountains!

He can pretty easily direct Mahan to the locations of the remaining fountains, especially once he gives Mahan the words for 'left' and 'right' and 'forward'. After that he's happy to show Mahan pictures and name them, or give names to whatever Mahan pictures.

Mahan wants so many words. He seems to think he can learn dozens in a day.

He enchants the fountains and tries to ignore how hungry he is from secretly testing his magic earlier.