Nod.

Sigh.

"I don't know that we even have expert advice on promises, most experts will advise you not to make them at all."

"Well, that's even less helpful, then, isn't it."

Shrug. "I want to learn things and I want to help if I can."

"I appreciate that."

"My brother says you dislike it when people are - ruthless because they aren't bothering to count casualties as a downside of any of their plans - but, uh, an obvious plan would be to speed up someone entangled with him and then bury them in misfortune."

"He isn't entangled with anyone. We don't have that."

"You've got something that - interacts with us like that. But I guess that doesn't say much about how it works internally."

"Not like that. There's nobody you can - hurt or cause to take unwise actions or anything - that will reverberate back to him."

"Well, that's too bad."

"Depends on who it'd be if he had such a person."

"How about the magic, is that secret for the same reason?"

"That's me holding on to leverage in general out of paranoia."

"You'd have more leverage if you taught us something, though."

"I can't perceive debt. I don't know how much anything is worth - or how easy it would be to oblige me to make it up in some insane and possibly deeply unpleasant way - or how binding my agreement to try to keep things even is - or how to do anything with that leverage even if it turned out I actually had it!"

"I would be astonished if anyone asked you for something binding about keeping things even, that'd be - stupid and evil both -"

"I cannot go by my assessment of what things would be stupid and evil and therefore not something I should expect anyone would do! That wasn't a good way to predict people even under a system I understood perfectly!"

Nod. "A binding agreement is entanglement on both parties and the one thing I was expressly warned about by everyone was not to allow much entanglement with you, as you behave oddly and have other external entanglements. Also it's not typical. Normally you just ask about intent to follow the rules."

"Even with the understanding that a thing isn't typical I don't have a good model of when it might happen exceptionally."

"Fair. I'm the wrong person to ask about that. Lohte's the right one."

"I've gotten some useful working knowledge out of him but you all intuit the foundation it's all built on and I can't."

"I just - really want to learn magic and want you to feel steady enough here that you can, and I think you'd be correct in doing so."

"I know. I do think about it, I'd really like to teach you."

"I'm a really quick learner."