Thoughtful frown. "It might be a good idea to add in a rule about letting people copy them, even before you're ready to lend them out to everyone, as long as the copyist pays for the ink and the paper and doesn't hurt the book they're copying."

"Isn't that going to be a little noisy?" asks Anglada.

"You can do it quiet-like, Scrivener's Chant Scrivener's Chant."

"I'd been thinking of something more like, letting people borrow a book for a little while just to copy, even if most people aren't allowed to borrow them, but if you can get it that quiet that probably works too."

"Well, presumably he doesn't want to have to do this before he's got the resources to retrieve a stray book."

"Right," says Anglada.

"Oh, I guess I was thinking you wouldn't have to do that much if it was just copying that people could borrow them for, but maybe it'd still be enough to cost a lot of extra money."

"In a smaller post office in a village, there's one guy," Raimon explains. "He'd either have to close up to chase down the book or he'd have to wait till somebody like me came by and see if I fancied a little adventure in which case he'd have to pay me."

"Oh, that makes sense." For most of her life she probably wouldn't have been allowed to go visit the nearest post office, and she wouldn't have had anyone to write to anyways.

"I think that's about all I need to know," Raimon says, "take care."

"Much good may it do me," snorts the old man, and he goes back to his work.

She follows Raimon back outside. "I'm going back to the temple, do you want to walk with us or are you headed back home?"

"It's such a nice evening for a walk, I believe I'll join you. Maybe drop a channel on the Shelynites while I'm there."

"Oh, I bet they'd like that! It's a nice temple, I like the mural on the right-hand wall, the one that works the windows into the painting."

"They picked them a right decent canvas."