"Oh, hi, Victòria. Who's this?" He's giving Jadon a bit of a look. Jadon is professionally stonefaced about it.

Wow, she really hopes Raimon doesn't judge her about having a bodyguard. 

"This is Jadon, he's a Calistrian too. Alicia thought I should have a bodyguard, 'cause of the nobles but also because someone wrote a pamphlet saying me and Alicia tricked Valia into giving a speech that would cause riots and ought to die for it. —Although actually, now that I think about it, whoever wrote the pamphlet didn't know much about us, like, they were saying the Guard should just go arrest random Calistrian women until they found the right one, so it would probably be good for you to warn anyone you know that might be mistaken for me to be on the lookout for really really stupid people blaming them for the riots. I don't think the Guard is going to mistake them for me" because they already arrested her once "but random people who read the pamphlet might."

"Yeah, I can tell people, though most people don't wear the Calistrianism out and about unless they're in the right neighborhood for it. Lovely to meet you, Jadon."

"I'm on duty," says Jadon.

"Of course you are."

"Thanks, I appreciate it. Uh, apart from that, how's your evening going?"

"I have Education Committee homework, going to go talk to the post office folks about turning them into a library on the side. Want to come?"

"Sure! ...Why are you turning the post office into a library?"

"The idea is that instead of there being schools, which we can't afford and most of us don't really want to try to afford anyway, we have libraries, which might be less expensive, and maybe we put them in post offices, since those are already scattered everywhere and it makes it quite clear how to put books in the places."

"Oh, that sounds really nice, I'd've loved to have had something like that back home." She follows Raimon towards the post office.

"Apparently I am now the recordholder for fastest fourth-rate mail delivery from Westcrown to Egorian," he remarks en route. "It's not down to me, though, someone with a teleport to spare just could not wait to have a bit of my time and shortened the way for me."

Giggle. "Well, congratulations on your new record."

It's honestly still pretty weird that the Queen bothered sending a teleporting enchanter against a single random arsonist but maybe she just has a bunch of teleporting enchanters running around doing errands for her or something.

"I'm not sure how long they've bothered to keep records. Could be they only started recently and that's less impressive. Tickles me a bit anyhow, though. City post office for the island is up this way."

Follow follow. "I suppose if someone breaks it you'll have to find another teleporting enchanter to abduct you mid-route."

"I'm sure they're a copper per each if you know where to look."

"Maybe you can get a discount. Buy one abduction, get one free."

"Would that it were so. What hours have you got this fellow working, anyway, I find myself so curious about that for some reason."

"It's probably going to depend on the day, some days I'm going to be out later than others. For today I don't have any more plans after this, I was just going to head back to the temple." 

Raimon and Jadon exchange looks.

If Raimon and Jadon want to sleep together that seems totally fine? It's not like they need her permission, it would be really weird for her to try to control who her bodyguard sleeps with. She feels... a little jealous, actually, but that's probably silly, it's not like she's trying to get either of them to sleep with her. Besides, Jadon's her bodyguard, and for some reason Raimon doesn't sleep with girls.

"The current plan is for him to meet me back at the temple half an hour before dawn, but that should leave the two of you with plenty of time.

"Delightful."

The Westcrown post office is an old building, older than Asmodeanism and mostly going for a classical, imperial look; with some recent literal whitewashing and some wallpaper it looks perfectly inoffensive to the modern anti-Asmodean. Columns and stone steps and vaulted ceilings, dotted with a few Continual Flames up high where anyone who can get at them has better ways to acquire something worth fifty gold that fences for twenty. Raimon waves to an old man. "Hey Anglada, a word?"

"Aye, Pages, you want long haul or short?"

"Nah, nah, a non-written word. Convention stuff."

"I haven't touched any convention stuff, I don't want any of it."

"They maybe wanna turn post offices into libraries too, is the thing."

(Victòria is craning her neck to look around the room. It's very pretty but in a kind of intimidating way.)

"Turn us into libraries," says Anglada.

"Too, not instead. You'd have mail coming in and going out the usual way, and a few shelves somewhere with books on them for people to look at, while they were fetching their mail or dropping off letters or just because. If the Crown scraped together the money for the shelf and the books, what do you reckon?"

"What would be the point of that?"

"Place for people to get some practice reading their letters without anybody staking them in place in a school. If nobody can read any more it'll be a bad day for the post too, I figure."

"I don't want the place swarming with kids, they make noise."

"I reckon you could kick them out if they were rowdy. Same you'd do with a drunk or a loon."

"I guess quiet kids reading through primers wouldn't be so bad. They'd do it here, or I'd have to ride out and shake them down for the book if they thought on keeping it?"

"Could go either way. Louder if they do it here, you'd need more money for your trouble and extra copies if they take them home."

"Hm."

"I think most kids who are old enough to read are old enough to be quiet if they want to? But it'd be nice to be able to read the books from the library at home too, that's probably better if it's not too much extra money."

"Well, how much extra money it'd be would depend how much uptake there was. If every twelve year old in Westcrown were coming here to read or coming here expecting to borrow a copy of something that'd snow us under good," says Anglada.

"Which way would be easier to start with?"

"No borrowing would be easier to start with, they'd fuck off or they'd start something to kick them out over if it got too crowded."

"And then if we found a million pounds in a dungeon, we could hand around extra copies and you could hire a man to fetch them if they didn't make it home?"

"I suppose, so long as we don't have to do that when the million pounds ain't found yet."

Nod. "So probably however you write the laws at the convention it should let post offices do both, even if it also says to start out without lending?"

"Right, minimum viable post office library with provision to expand as funding expands, something like that."

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."

Nod. "How'd you pick the temple of Shelyn to do channels at?"

"Well, I asked for a church to convert, to see if they'd give me one - I'm not too old for the post yet but I could see my way to settling down a bit - but they said no, I'd have to buy it, they don't like us that much. And it would be a terrible hassle to assemble people in the street and a waste to let all the channels go unused, even if I keep half of them for sudden urgencies. So, Shelyn. I like Her. She's about stuff it's worth existing for. Existence as something other than a gift with lots of corners that the Judge'll get mad at you for pawning, existing to do anything other than scrape together the weapons and the grain and the gold to do some more of it next year. I like Desna too for the same reason but I'm not sure they have an address any more than we have."

She touches her holy symbol. "Huh. That's — a nice way of thinking about it."

"Is it? Oh, good, I'm warming up to the preaching side of things and do hope I've got the knack."

She lights up. "I think you've got the knack, the sermon you gave yesterday was really great!"

"Aw, thank you! I worried it was trying to do too many things, though people do stop to listen when I'm reciting it."

"I guess I don't know how it'd sound to people who'd never heard of any of it before. But I really liked it."

"Had you heard much of it before? I sort of had the image of you inventing Calistrianism out of spite and vinegar."

"I mean mostly, yeah, but — even the parts I figured out on my own before I knew almost anything about her are still something, you know? But I don't know if they're the kind of thing that helps with the speech, or if I'd've thought it was just as good without it."

"Well, hopefully it gets a few fellows to pay their companions, at least."

Nod nod.

They reach the temple. Raimon walks into the room where they keep people waiting till the next channel, ironically salutes Songbird Gabriel, and heals everybody in it.

Jadon remains at Victòria's elbow till dismissed.

"Have a great night! See you both tomorrow."

"See you! Thank you ever so for the introduction."

Off go Raimon and Jadon.