"If you have so much of a problem with someone that you want to kill them then you should do it to their face," says Sigrun.

"Yeah. If Father had a problem with someone and they hadn't broken any laws then he would duel them," says Tyr.

"I see."

The children nod decisively. Catherine sips her milkshake.

When they're done Melody puts the leftovers in the refrigerator and explains refrigerators, and freezers, and the ice machine in the door. She puts the dishes in the dishwasher and explains that, too. She puts breakfast croissants in the oven and sets a timer on the oven - "so it'll start cooking them tomorrow, just after sunrise" - and then she shows Sigrun how to pull up history and current events articles and videos on the smartphone.

Catherine is only moderately overwhelmed by this many new appliances. Hopefully she'll still remember how to use them in the morning. (Hopefully she won't be dead on her feet by morning; she doesn't have any servants here and she feels like it would be a bit unreasonable to ask anyone else to help Ragna go to sleep when she inevitably wakes up three or four times.)

She hovers around the children and tries to get a sense of what they're all planning to do with themselves (and how long Sigrun and Tyr are planning to wait before marching back to their father). She nurses her baby. She turns in early and prays at her bedside and thanks the Lord for deliverance. She asks Him to tell her how not to be superfluous.

She sleeps.

The top headlines in Vanda Nossëo are:

The group of researchers studying the effects of atmospheric gas mixtures on human cognition saw startlingly large effect sizes in their early studies, prompting them to call for much larger-scale studies even before they've published the first results; the news anchors are speculating about whether it'd be a good idea to change the atmospheric composition of every human-dominated planet, and if so how to do it. 

New member state Alllavia is under investigation for unlawfully taking provocative actions against their neighbors in the hopes their neighbors would declare war and trigger Vanda Nossëo's defense agreement. Thirty top officials have been indicted. 

All two million chickens rescued from a factory farm on a newly-contacted industrial planet have been rehomed, thanks to a massive volunteer effort; the news anchors talk with some rescuers about everything known about managing trauma in chickens.

Sigrun and Tyr talk about the fact that these people have weird priorities. Eventually they go to bed and quietly talk about when they should leave until one of them insults the other and both of them go to sleep upset. Sigrun wakes up at some point, when she hears Ragna crying, and scrolls through the news website with her head under a blanket for several hours.

Such weird priorities. She's mentally making a list of weird priorities, not because she expects them to make any sense as a whole but because maybe that way she can memorize the full list of things they hate and things they think are great, and then she'll be better at predicting them, if nothing else.

Other things on the news: 

- there's a new member state, Mxeir. It accepts immigrants from the following twelve species. Humans aren't on there. There's some incomprehensible speculation about which political coalitions it might align itself with.

- twenty orc planets are considering prohibitions on forking. this is causing intense controversy, and some emigration. 

- the price of resurrections fell for the third year straight despite a thousandfold increase in demand; an opinion columnist is of the opinion that this suggests insufficient caution with the powerful abilities that enable resurrection.

- the price of immortality necklaces, on the other hand, just keeps going up; it's debated whether it makes sense to sell them on the open market at all rather than distributing by need.

- Elendil has reopened talks with the Federation, last derailed due to profound differences of opinion over genetic engineering.

- a man who murdered someone in a fight, and whose victim turned out to be nonreductionist, is arguing that this unlawfully influenced his sentencing.

- here's a transcript of Loki's speech to the general assembly about project priorities for the next decade, and the Q&A that followed the speech. 

- it's Smallpox Eradication Day, observed on most Earths! visit your local Earth and buy a bauble and attend a ceremony!

- member planet Sfax bans Loki's boyfriend from visiting; this is purportedly because they're scared of him but widely interpreted as a protest against a change in policies on religious tolerance

Such interesting opinions. It's a good thing she's reading this, because it's going to take her a long, long time to understand all the potentially relevant things about these people's situations. Fortunately she is a very diligent person.

Vanda Nossëo presents the emperor with a bunch of options for ending slavery. For example, they can help compensate all the ex-slaves and ex-slaveowners, and if desired they can replace slave labor with robots, and if that's not workable they can try to arrange immigration of people who are interested in doing that work. Or if he'd rather, they can just send guards to assure the freedom of all the slaves and not interfere beyond that.

Oh but this is going to be troublesome.

He sees no reason to assume that the majority of slaves will seek to leave their current work, though it is of course natural that they will jump at the chance to be free men. Compensation for the ex-slaveowners will of course be necessary, and as he does not independently have the power to offer it he will be more than willing to accept Vanda Nossëo's assistance in solving the problem that they caused. Starting the new freedmen off with some amount of resources to get started in life sounds like a fine idea, although it should be noted that many of the villages do not use currency for internal transactions and that monetary aid alone is likely to be insufficient. He will leave it to his individual vassals to report labor shortages and request aid in the form of robots or other available options, though the electors of Scandinavia are considering some form of immigration restrictions and would prefer not to be immediately overwhelmed by foreigners.

They set off to arrange nonmonetary compensation as needed to keep the slaveowners happy and get the freed people on their feet. They set up communications for necessities.

They let him know that he's no doubt noticed several of his concubines have fled; amazing what happens when you kidnap women and rape them. They'll arrange for him to visit the kids every day, if he'd like, and for any other supports he needs in order to make that possible.

"I had noticed that," he says, much less delighted than he's been. "I thought I'd give you the chance to offer an explanation that doesn't involve you having kidnapped eleven of my children on no notice."

"Oh, I thought that you didn't consider kidnapping objectionable, since by all accounts it's one of your major preoccupations."

"I understand it to be an act of war, which I've been told you people don't favor as a problem-solving method."

"Custody cases are decided by a judge, who evaluates which adult is best suited to be the primary guardian of the child. Kidnapping and raping people is fairly disqualifying, on that front. But we want to enable any parent who can safely be in their child's life to do so, which is why we'll help you with visitation."

Vigdis pipes up; she's allowed to pipe up if she's got a good point. "What, are you gonna kidnap the kids of everyone who's ever kept slaves, too? You going to kidnap me?"

"You're old enough to decide where you want to live; custody cases are for children too young to express such a preference, or who decline to do so, or whose preferences are somehow impossible to accommodate."

"I see. I take it those who are as old as Vigdis will be given the chance to return, then, when they wish to."

"Absolutely."

"That is less concerning, then."

"That'll still be five or six they've taken, majesty."

"Yes! Yes, it will be." He sighs. "But those who have neither the strength nor the respect necessary to enforce their laws should not be permitted to write them. We've no choice."

They explain how he can arrange to visit his kids.

He will have to think about whether to do this. On the one hand, Scandinavia has never been in more dire need of its ruler, its ruler has never been more busy, and he very much dislikes having to crawl to someone else's hostages. On the other hand, he likes his kids, it will likely give him a better idea of what's happened here and what's likely to happen in the future, and he's going to have to get used to crawling at some point.

He'd like to visit his kids.