Violin goes back on his lap. "- have faeries invented money?"

"Not really. I wouldn't even know what it was but one of my brothers has an interest. Money is a thing of value that behaves like most other trade goods - that is to say, the debt system thinks there's diminishing marginal returns to it in the same way it thinks that about shiny rocks, or turnips - and you can make it be worth more than it ordinarily is by sitting there in the corner being predictably willing to trade things the debt system considers to be worth more for it. But propping it up like that only increases its value to somewhere in between its normal value and the value you're being-willing-to-trade at, so you rack up a lot of debt doing this. Those are the things that we know about money."

"Might want to talk to your brother with the interest at some point, it probably doesn't just solve all your problems but it would be so cool if it did."

"It would."

Tailswish. "Is most of the court directly related to you? Your assorted brothers keep coming up."

"The largest debts exist within families so it's typical for a court to be made up in significant part of family members. Ours is actually less that way than most, being slightly estranged from my parents' parents, and having collected lots of interesting people whose home court wasn't the right environment for them."

"How's that tend to play out?"

"You gather up things worth enough to purchase their debts off their home court. You could do this without their input but it'd be a very bad idea; uncooperative court members are dangerous to everybody."

"You'd need at least the rest of the court's cooperation, right? Or do they have to take the things? I guess the music one you could just launch a hostile takeover?"

"Going up to an enemy court and playing music is more or less an act of war. You need the cooperation of whoever you want to buy the debt from, under normal circumstances; you don't need the cooperation of whoever you're buying, though it'd be really unusual not to have it."

"How do you establish that somebody wants to be bought?"

"Asking them?"

"I'm not clear on the nature of intercourt social dynamics, are there mixers or what?"

"People can visit friends without much overhead. Groups will visit for special occasions, sometimes - performances, which you can plan so each group does one, or parties, or to see something new that someone discovered. We'd have had guests come see the mortal and learn from her about mortal things. Courts send each other assistance when something bad happens, like a storm or a flood or mortals changing what they're doing. It's useful to have goods on hand you can trade for aid in an emergency."

"Mortals aren't a niche interest?"

"I'd say maybe one in twenty people we know would be curious enough to visit?"

"And this'd go toward her room and board, I imagine?"

"Yeah. Two mortals would've been barely within our capacities to feed."

"I guess there's diminishing returns to having a second one if you're mostly running it on using the mortals as zoo exhibits."

He hesitates for half a second. "Yeah. We'd have made do, but people would've been spending far more of their time out on assignments than is generally considered good practice."

"Fortunately I am an infinite font of economic value if you can figure out how to make it feasible to accept!"

"We got very very lucky. And maybe we'll get luckier still and you'll find people whose music and company you enjoy."

"Is 'company' a euphemism or is just socially hanging out with people also costly."

"You ask a lot of questions so with you it seems to be a pretty good way of accumulating debt, actually. Probably eventually you'll run out of questions."

"I dunno, hasn't happened yet and I'm a hundred and seventy two." Tailswish.