He gets an exaggerated bow. "What does your god say?"

"That he'd stop me if I tried to randomly order lots of people murdered. Among other things."

"Oh, good."

"I'm really not very worried about this but, you know, seems worth asking -"

A person appears.

And goes to sleep.

"Are the intervals consistent?" he asks an attendant. 

       "No, your grace."

Sigh. "Fine. Figure out what this one's deal is - is it a boy or a girl -" He examines the person more closely. "Figure out what his deal is."

"- he looks like my and presumably Cor's Maitimo. Apart from the hair and he's shorter and not an Elf."

"Detect alignment. 

- nothing. Which could mean he's not very powerful or that he's true neutral."

"- powerful in what sense? I get a read, right?"

"I have been assuming you are understating your responsibilities at home," he says mildly. "It tracks - power, very loosely, whether magical or political or interpersonal or religious."

"My responsibilities at home haven't really come up. This would be the first one of you without political power..."

"A neutral alignment isn't that implausible. Of course, he could also have a way to conceal his alignment."

"With magic? No two worlds have compatible magic yet."

"That's true." He gestures for some people to drag the sleeping person away.

"At this rate I will never translate any books if I want to keep up with what's going on."

"I suspect that figuring out what's going on should be a higher priority than changing local governance. It's - I feel like I would have been more credible on this before the murderers started showing up, but there's not low-hanging fruit."

"That would be very disappointing."

"What were you two discussing?"

"Why you're so incompetent at turning power into happiness."

" - well, I'm not trying."

"There you go, then!"

"We were talking about how her hive mind arrangement works and if there's any prospect of getting in touch with home I will have to warn my Maitimo not to try it."

"You think that's what went wrong with her?"

"No, but it's a thing that went wrong and it's the one that might be relevant in my world since all my Maitimo's loved ones are immortal."