Nod. "A Harbinger Archon of Heaven. I have a Useful Spell known among Lawyers making the Calling easier for Legal Work. Though I shall not hold up this Committee discussing it."

Lots of people have outsiders working for them. Obviously she's not going to volunteer any information about hers.

"That sounds like a fantastic resource, thank you." She is so tempted to try to figure out how to talk to an archon. This is not actually relevant. "Last request, then. Archduke Blanxart, you mentioned that the convention was currently the third largest expense to the crown, behind the orphanages and the military, is that correct?"

Eumenes was unimpressive, but maybe a Harbinger Archon can describe its training better.  She can see if she can get the chance to talk.  Also, if the ‘useful spell’ Lluisa mentioned is lower circle or is otherwise better than lesser planar ally, that positively affects one of her proposals for Forms of the Convention.

"The President clarified that he considers the convention a personal expense rather than a Crown one, although in practice the vast majority of current Crown revenue comes from the Cotonnets anyway—that's not officially a state secret, by the way, but if the Queen is displeased to see it mocked in the pamphlets tomorrow she'll know whom to blame—as far as the magnitude of the expense, though, I don't know of any others larger. The wizard academies are officially self-funding, though most students repay their debt in the army."

"Sounds like we could save a lot of money by shutting them all down. We don't need more soldiers for the Worldwound, if we ask them to repay their debts in the army we're just lighting money on fire."

“Scaling back the army sounds like a good idea to save money for better causes like ensuring basic literacy, but there is a committee focused on the army, so we would need that committee to agree.  At least, I think them agreeing and being the ones to propose it are much better for the chances of it passing the floor.  And wizardry is still a decently paying profession even without the army, scaling back army wizardry would reduce the demand for wizards, but not enough to shut down the wizard academies entirely I think?”

Thea is wishing she was better at sums and numbers… she’s going to raise it in priority for subjects to learn.

"I don't see why we need literacy or soldiers. Soldiers are worse than bandits, at least when a bandit steals from you the baron might do something about it."

"Isn't the Worldwound closed now, anyway?"

Emphatic nodding!

"I don't think it's our job to recommend that Cheliax stop having an army, although if it's relevant to the question of funding we can certainly ask those on the army committee where it's going. But I do think the scope of our job depends enormously on how much money we have to work with, where it's going, and if possible any estimates of how much money an educated populace makes for Cheliax. I was hoping, Archduke, that even if you don't have numbers now, you might have some idea where to get them, so we could look?"

"Wizard academy enrollments are, as a matter of fact, down significantly from before the war, as we no longer force anyone to attend. Those who do attend pay tuition to do so. The only way to save money on wizards at the moment, I think, is to pay fewer of them, or pay them less, to defend the world from the demons that continue to occupy the ruins of Sarkoris. Whether or not that may be called a good idea, it is, I think, not in the remit of this committee."

"I do have a summary of current Crown expenditures and revenues here, though these should be taken with the caveat that, by this time next year certainly, we ought to have our ordinary tax revenues again, but possibly much less archmage charity."

"It's also not the case that Cheliax can do without an army even if we abandon the wound, certainly far less than it can do without schools. If we don't have schools, in a decade we will have wasted fewer children's time. If we don't have an army, in a decade Cheliax will be reduced to those parts of it the archmages personally defend; our army as it stands is a poor one, and the army committee is working to see it improved, but it is foolish to go without in times of peace and madness to do so when the convention has declared its intention to reconquer the empire."

“How essential are the army wizards?  How much worse would the army perform if it had to cut back on wizard support?”

"The extent to which wizards are helpful is, I think, wildly overstated. A wizard before third circle is less valuable than a skilled soldier, and the main reason they're kept around is because the Chelish army did  not know how to inspire loyalty and tried to make do with detect thoughts. It would be painful to do without them entirely but I expect we could do with significantly fewer, especially once the mop up at the wound finishes and Endure Elements becomes less valuable."

"So we can close down the schools without messing up the army at all."

Why does Lluïsa's response to a stressful day include finding that illiterate tin can attractive. You're a grown adult, you idiot.

"I see no Financial Reason why an absurd Abandonment of General Literacy would have bearing in either Direction on Military Expenditure, the Wizard Academies fed by it Aside. Archduke Blanxart, I would look over those figures, if you please."

Korva is reviewing the numbers. Around ten million for the army, whatever, the army is the backbone of the machine that they crush up all the children in service to, of course it costs unfathomable amounts of money.

Nearly six million gold for the orphanages. Starving, no longer offering daycare services, a third of the staff paid a quarter as much, limping along with goats instead of orcs, and -

" - I'm sorry," she says, a little more quietly than before, "Are you telling me that after halving expenses, the orphanages still cost more than half as much as the Chelish Army, which bore more than half the weight of saving the world for more than fifty years?"

Thea thinks wizards are really handy and was hoping to make a point there, but apparently Dolor has already thought of it and disagrees.  Well there is still a point to be made…

To Dolor: “Where do you think third circle wizards come from?  If you cut the supply of first circle wizards that eventually cuts your number of third circles.”

To Lluisa: ”And the relevance to this committee is that first circle wizards come from smarter children who were identified as such in the school system.”

And circling the conversation back around to Korva. “Would the opening of schools alleviate some of the labor of orphanages?”

"I am not a wizard, but my understanding is that first and second circle wizards at the wound gain power more slowly than if they had been adventuring instead."

"Adventuring is by far the Best and at some point the Only means of improving in Wizardry and also the Deadliest, exceeding even Soldiering, and I am not aware of the Magnitude of the Differences, which perhaps an Abadaran might know."

"Are similar Documents to these available for Earlier Years, for Comparison? Years when the Schools were in Operation? I do not see the Cost of Literacy."

"If true, that only means that the value of a wizard's education is likely to go up in the future."

"Schooling has as I understand by far the greatest Efficiency as measured in Circles of Wizardry per Slain Corpse, and it is for this reason that the Wizard Schools of the Empire are to be Prized," agrees Lluïsa.

She had not really previously understood the extent to which men abandoning their children were not just inflicting enormous costs on the women and children they abandon, but enormous costs on the state.

You could get the army people on board with figuring out how to make fathers parent their children, with numbers like that.

"....bringing back mandatory primary schools would make the orphanage problems worse," says Korva, even though it's completely against her immediate goals here, because it's - true. "At present the orphanages are no longer operating as free childcare for women who work, meaning that children who have a mother but not a father are largely being cared for by older children who are out of school. Probably the effect of voluntary schools there would be fairly negligible, since a child who can't be spared just won't go."

"According to these numbers, we're dealing with a national financial crisis in large part due to lack of childcare. Possibly this is more a concern for the Family committee than for this one, but - it's certainly adjacent to our problem, and worth knowing about. May I keep these numbers, Archduke?"

Well that’s disappointing.  Korva didn’t try to spin that fact either… does she think she can win anyway?  Or maybe she’s trying to win an argument over on the family committee?