remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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"Well. He'll make time, if you do. He is a slave, legally, but his children are free."

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"I will. Is there anything in particular I should ask him about?"

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"His family, I suppose. What he would do, in my position. I couldn't tell you."

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"I know this is a lot of things to be asked to change at once." Even if they are all stunningly basic things like "do not force people to have sex with you". "We definitely want to talk to people and make sure that things aren't being changed - randomly and confusingly in a way that leaves people who are supposed to benefit worse off."

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He's actually not personally doing that one right now, admittedly not because he hasn't done it many times in the past.

"I appreciate it. We certainly have many changes to make, once we determine how best to make them."

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"Just for, uh, completeness, Lastwall also considers it rape to have sex with children, or with people who do not understand what is happening to them."

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"That's good to know. I'll include that when I ask the Queen about what we're meant to enforce.

...if a child decides to have sex with a slave, what does Lastwall call that?"

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"I don't know. It might depend on whose idea it was. Is... that a situation that comes up."

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"I think I'd have to say it depends on where you draw the line for what a child is. If we mean sixteen - sometimes."

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"Lastwall considers sixteen year olds accountable before the law for their conduct but consider it to be a significant mitigating consideration, if a person is sixteen, because whatever idiocy or evil they got up to they will probably grow out of it, whereas a man who is a criminal at twenty five probably is not going to change. Sixteen is in any event old enough that - if both people were free, and no other feature of the situation was coercive, it would not be illegal to have sex with someone just because they were sixteen."

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"Sixteen is the age of adulthood in Cheliax. It's not especially unusual for young people to begin having sex a few years before that. What is Lastwall's line, for free people?"

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"Lastwall does not recommend marriage at the age of sixteen and does not recommend sex outside marriage but would not charge someone with rape unless the victim was thirteen or younger. Or refused, obviously, but that's applicable at any age."

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Oh my. "Under most circumstances the thing that promotes stable families and children who are taken care of is for both men and women to avoid sex until they are prepared to marry, and then to marry, and to be faithful to one's husband or wife. Of course not everyone in Lastwall lives up to that standard, but - honorable people do. It is not, as a matter of policy and governance, a good idea to ban prostitution or to punish people severely for promiscuity, because it already has very damaging consequences and the people not deterred by that do not tend to be deterred if you make it worse, and because if prostitution is legal you can at least supervise it somewhat. But it is not considered acceptable. People should marry, and then they should be faithful. Or they should be celibate. ....this is probably not the cheapest Good to be purchased here."

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That honestly sounds actively irresponsible, given survival rates around here, and like it would leave quite a lot of people miserable and unprotected for no reason, but it's not like he wasn't already aware that Iomedans are disapproving of most instances of sex. It just sounded for a moment like it might be a weaker recommendation than some of the other things.

"Well. We can talk more about that once we've dealt with the places where Good is easier to purchase, then."

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"Yes. Uh - just one important clarification, if you tell your people anything about this. If anyone has been forcing their slaves to have sex with them, and they hear that that is not allowed, they should not try to cover it up by murdering the slave, that would make the situation worse and not better."

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"I think in most cases it's not secret."

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"I am glad to hear it," he says, somewhat weakly.

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"I'll think about what to tell people, and how to keep it from making things worse."

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"Thank you." More confidently, and very sincerely. 

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The next day, the men arrive.

They can be seen from quite a ways out, from the castle walls - a few dozen riders on horseback, moving a larger mass of people on a forced march along the river. The women get to work immediately. The occasion demands at least a modest feast, and there are preparations to be made before tonight. Some are purely excited, and some are anxious; they won't know whether anyone important died until the mass reaches the town.

Queralt goes to find the Iomedans, to take them up to the walls to see. 

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"Is this - pretty typical?" he asks, watching the mass in the distance. He knew they were taking slaves from the raids. They said last night that it was the Queen's business. He was still imagining...fewer.

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"Only in summer. Summer's counter-raiding season. They have to clear out as many camps as they can find before the harvests come in, or they'll all come down at once. They'll still get hit in the north when it does, but not as badly."

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He should have tried to learn more about the region's history under Arodenite Cheliax. When Iomedae ruled Kantaria for a year and a day she didn't do any slave raids but that's not much to go off. "Anyone you're worried for?"

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