"Fiducia?", Mar asks, fortunately having learned the proper title in the first city, and having observed that Abadarans prefer more directness, "I've come to the city to represent Abadar at the Constitutional Convention. Where should I find lodging? And receive tutoring, I'm very new to Abadar."

"There is space in the rectory. Have you read the holy books yet, Fiducia...?"

"Rossell. I will take the space if the price is reasonable. I have the Order of Numbers and some excerpts from the Manual, but I was barely in the city to begin it when I received the request for native-born chosen to come to the capital."

"Well, welcome to Westcrown, Fiducia Rossell; I'm Cicerone Hikmat - Osirians use a different title, though while I'm here I'll answer to Fiducia too. Once we've verified you by either you or one of us doing a Truthtelling you can have a room in the rectory for two silver a week."

"Nice to meet you, Cicerone Hikmat. Is there, um, anything nearby which would get other use from the spell?" Wasting valuable things seems like something Abadar is against. And it might be a test for that.

"Not right now, but we usually sell more in a day than we have so far, so if you wait I'd expect you to be able to sell one if you have it prepared. If you don't then at the end of business hours I can cast a spare on you if there is one left."

"That sounds good. I'm happy to, I've prepared one every day I'm passing through a town, but it seems wasteful to use one without actually using what it creates. Um, I would like to get tutoring in the meantime, should I ask you or someone else?"

"I'm available until someone pays for my time!" says Hikmat cheerfully. "Where do you want to start?"

"Well, I know Abadar runs insurance and banks, and likes business and trade, but I don't really understand Him or why He chose me. So maybe what you think is most important to Abadar, or which differences from Mammon are most important, or maybe I should tell you about how I was chosen."

"- well, Mammonites are anticompetitive," says Hikmat. "Which I suppose must sound like an awfully anticompetitive thing for an Abadaran to say, now that I think of it, but I do think it's an important difference... Competition is the yoke that harnesses avarice. By itself greed is just one of the many human impulses, nothing special about it, but if you put it in the right environment of Law and other contributors to the economy, so that each business has to fight - not with blades but with quality and innovation and cost-cutting - then it drives civilization."

"Hmmm. So, if Mammon started offerring insurance... well, no, he's Evil and would trick people. If Irori did, then Abadar would be in favor?"

"You know, I have no idea how Irorite insurance would tend to work out! But assuming it was an honest product, yes, absolutely. And... Osirion is Abadar's country, but we have plenty of other temples, too, and if we want to charge and the Sarenrites want to give things away, well, we'd better make our services better in some respect by enough to capture the customers who have money, hadn't we."

"I don't think they would, Irorites, but it seemed likelier than Iomedae or Erastil. Erastil would call it city nonsense and Iomedae is too busy fighting wars. Irori would just say that if you didn't buy it or bought too much then it's your own fault for being foolish."

"How does Abadar make his temples better than Sarenrae's?"

"It depends on the temple! Usually we would have refreshments, and someone circulating among anyone waiting for channels to see if they can be made more comfortable, and one place offered Detect Poison at no extra charge for anyone a channel didn't seem to help so they'd have more information about what might be wrong, and of course there's always the fact that some people would rather hear Abadarans preaching than Sarenrites and might pay to be in earshot of the one rather than the other."

"I can understand that, certainly. We'd listen to archdevil priests instead of the Asmodeans just for getting us out of the main sermon and a little variety, and I'd have paid coppers to do it, surely. ...What does Abadar think of guilds?"

"It depends on the guild. The older and more entrenched a guild is, the worse it tends to be, so I'm personally suspicious of the entire enterprise, but it's not really clear when something turns from something that's just like any other voluntary exchange of goods and services within a group of people to something that's suppressing market clearance."

"Hmm. Then I'm more confused about Him picking me, because I definitely made the guild in Roda de Mar - the Weaver's Guild, the main one - stronger."

"Then I'd like to hear all about it to learn more about what He thinks is the right amount of guild power!"

"Well, we're weavers, of course, the Rossells and the other families. So the archmage ruined us and we were very worried we'd starve soon. But I had the idea to ask the local Countess what she'd want, that visibly couldn't be made with the damned spell, which is plaids, mostly, and we started making that, for her and her neighbors. But I realized we couldn't make enough for the duchy, and talked to Grandfather about selling the secret of what we were doing to the other families, and now the Rossells get a tenth of their profits for three years and they're making plaid and I'm a Fiducia."

"- so that's a very restrained amount of guild power! You came up with an innovation and you are taking a small cut of the surplus it will generate for only a short amount of time. That doesn't stop new weavers from entering the market or try to directly control the prices at all."

"Well, yes, but no one else will be competing for a year and otherwise the guild would have collapsed, right, and just been a family business and four families of paupers and laborers."

"The thing I think of when I think of guilds gone bad is guilds that won't let anyone operate in their field and territory at all, ever, without paying dues and agreeing never to undercut the guild's set sale price. It sounds like if someone shows up in your duchy, notices the countess is wearing plaid, and starts weaving plaids too, they don't have any new problems that they wouldn't have had doing the same thing before you had your idea, because they weren't one of the families who agreed to buy your information. Right? And you're taking a cut of profits, not a fixed due, and you're not setting a price - so if someone comes up with a way to make plaid twice as fast or gets a great deal on dye, you'll make more and so will they, while the Countess gets her plaids cheaper."

"Probably. I think they will fix a price, probably, they did before for normal cloth until it was triple or more the price coming upriver. But it wasn't in my deal. I suppose if I make it home I'll have to tell them Abadar frowns on it and hopefully explain why."

"Oh, yes, price-fixing is bad. In either direction. Do you have that intuited or should I go on about it a bit?"

"Um. Go on a bit, please."