"God. What distinguishes dungeon crowd from weaving crowd?"

"Which arrangement seems like less of a liability and whether I might need to have them around to make a point."

"To make a point? You give a lot of dungeon tours?"

"Apparently not enough of them or they'd have sent you somewhere else."

Sigh.

"This is the course of action I'd have chosen if you weren't here, and it's far more generous than the typical response to a court attacking you unprovoked."

"What's typical?"

"Lots of courts have a policy not to spare anyone if they win a war unless the member in question communicated their intent to sit it out before it starts."

"Can they do that? Declare intent to sit it out?"

"Yes. Of course, then you're betting pretty hard on the other side, because yours won't be pleased with you if they win."

"God." Cam thwacks his speaker. "Wish electronics worked. I could - show you things. Haven't had a war in a long time."

"We haven't either."

"I mean the entire civilization."

"That's impressive."

"The humans you have had available as examples are not exactly paragons but it gets better than that."

"I want that. I really do. A world without war sounds like a wonderful thing to me and if I saw a path towards it I'd walk it. 

If I predictably ignore assassination attempts I will be dead before the mortals have had ten more winters to get better."

"I have ever read anything about game theory. Just. At some point for all the wars to stop somebody has to go to bed all grumpy feeling like they could really have used the last word. Against some stupid assholes who did something they really shouldn't have."

"I'm not grumpy that they tried to murder my family I'm terrified. 

I haven't been to war in seven thousand years, I can swallow my pride when that's the problem."

Sigh.

"I won't do anything this day, all right? Let's get you and Mortal set up somewhere comfortably and then we can discuss this more later."

"All right."

"Should we carry you or did you have a kind of chair you wanted to make -"

Cam produces a wheelchair. On the floor, since apparently it's not "in midair" it's "touching people". "There are some I might, depending on how this binding snugs up, be able to pilot independently, but unfortunately they're all electronic."

"We can assign someone to it. Or Mortal might want to do it, she feels safer around you anyway."

"I suppose I don't actually know if this thing isn't working or if it merely isn't producing appropriately magically fast sound."