"Now I'm curious what all of us are."

"I can't read any of you but that's not informative, you mostly can't get reads off normal people. If they're very politically powerful sometimes you can."

<If you can move our ships around or cloak them with magic that'd be helpful.>

"Wizards count as normal people?"

"I didn't check you in particular but Minor and Aaron didn't read as anything earlier. This could be either because they're not powerful enough or because they're neutral."

"Is this an expensive test?"

"No. Detect Alignment." He raises his eyebrows slightly. "You read chaotic good."

"Huh."

"It's a fine afterlife. I don't know if you get to go there, but if you do you'll like it all right."

"What's it like?"

"Vast uncharted wilderness with different magic in different places, fairly sparsely populated with reportedly bizarre but fascinating persons of lots of different species, and only temporary coordination for big projects that require it. No laws, of course, or any bodies that could enforce them. I'd be unhappy but it's the one my brother Telcar wants."

"It doesn't sound that great but if that's the brother I think he is I guess he'll love it."

"Axis is the best one by more conventional standards but really any of the ones that don't warp you and aren't dangerous and let you do your own thing are places you can have a perfectly fine eternal life."

"I suppose that does seem like the minimum standard, sure. We don't have any reason to believe this happens to us either, right? Even if it's impossible to get wands in the afterlife we can do some things without them... there are however far fewer wizards than Amentans and we look less distinctive so I guess you couldn't expect to know."

"Yeah, I couldn't guess. I'm sorry. People retain some but not all their innate magic in the afterlife and there are a lot of sources of innate magic."

"Not having magic any more would be really upsetting!"

"It reportedly is! I am not looking forward to it."

"Why is that a thing?"

"Cleric gifts are for the material world and expire when you die. A lot of other innate magic is altered by the process of dying, in different ways; wizards can often do a few spells at will and can't do others at all anymore, and I know at least some sorcerers have to relearn their abilities. I don't confidently know what causes it but I know that it was a goal of the gods that the material world not be ruled by the dead, which it would if they could just go right back or if they had a lot of capacity to give orders from beyond the grave, so maybe they made magic depart the dead for that reason."

"Are orders-giving and magic so strongly connected that if someone stops having magic everybody starts ignoring them?"

"It depends on the country, I think. Certainly if Abadar revoked the pharaoh's cleric gifts he'd no longer be the pharaoh. ...I guess if it happened because he was navigating some disaster and hit neutral good we might try to proceed as normal and hope he could get it under control quickly, but if it happened without serious extenuating circumstances."

"What would he do if he bumped up to good, go kill somebody's unwanted baby for them? Is it lawless if the pharaoh does it?"

"Wow."

"Depends if we had time, probably," he says quietly to Ismat. "And it can be but the calculus is a bit more complicated."

"Time to do what?"