"I think in general you're better than you give yourself credit for." 

"Of course you think that."

"Doesn't make me wrong!" 

"But-- all the adults are there like 'this is fine, would the nonhumans even know how to interact with people in an economy, fairies and genies are dangerous and we need to control them, it would destroy the diamond industry' and I'm like 'but... keeping people as slaves seems wrong' and they're like 'they're not slaves, slaves are human, they're nonhumans treated with appropriate regulations for nonhumans' and I'm like 'it definitely does seem like slavery to me.'"

"...genies being dangerous is fair but —" and he doesn't know how he was going to finish that sentence, only that he definitely was going to finish it. 

"Any human can torture a mouse to death pretty trivially but if the mice locked us all in solitary confinement cells I think... that would be wrong."

"Yeah." 

He's just. Going to pull Ben closer. 

"All of Asher's great-grandparents were slaves. Two of his grandparents were born slaves but they don't really remember it."

"— I didn't know that," is the only thing he can think of to say. 

"Last time we had an advisory council meeting, when we left he literally punched a wall."

"That does sound like him. 

I don't think he's wrong." 

"About what?"

"About it being something to punch a wall over." 

"He thinks-- if you add together all the nonhumans who aren't animals and who don't live in their own communities, it's maybe a few thousand people, and some of them are very dangerous, and we should negotiate with them to figure out a compromise that keeps them-- in their current position-- so we have goodwill that we can use to convince Morgendammerung to increase its efforts to adopt industrialized agriculture so they stop mass-murdering sapient pigs and cows and chickens-- and, and it all makes me want to throw up--"

He — 

He doesn't know what to say and there is nothing that seems like it will help and he's already holding Ben but he's just. Going to hold him tighter. 

"There are lots and lots of bad things in the world and in five months literally all of them will be my responsibility."

"I know," very soft, "I know," and he puts one hand firm on Ben's back and — doesn't do the thing he's aching to do — puts the other on the back of his head, threads his fingers through Ben's hair. 

"I talked to a dwarf whose whole family died in a mining accident and the mine owner refused to make the mines safer because 'who cares, you can always make more.'"

"I'm so sorry." 

He knows it's empty but it's all he can say. 

"But I keep thinking... my dad is a good person, right? And he knows about this. And he's telling me the strikers are just demanding and entitled."

"...entitled and demanding is something you say about a child throwing a tantrum. Not about someone who just lost their family and wants other families to be safe." 

"But. That would mean my dad is... doing something really wrong."

"It would." 

"He's my dad. He's a good person. He loves me."

"....he's your dad and I'm sure he does love you but — people can be very, very good at not seeing things they don't want to see."