"Downstairs people eat 'em, if they're really so feeble they can't even keep a kid out of your hair or cook or spin, but I figured that wouldn't fly here."

"Evil, see."

"Eating 'em or just killing 'em?"

"A good question I have never given much thought. I think maybe both? I know you get credit for treating the dead with respect."

"Good credit or just law credit?"

"I heard both but it is possible this was lawful propaganda."

"It can't be too good or all those dead people you aren't eating would kick you right into Heaven."

"I think probably 'treat the dead with due respect' means, like, bury them according to local rites and stuff, not just 'don't eat them'. But it hasn't really come up enough in my life to be relevant. - we try to bring corpses back if they might've made arrangements for a raise, obviously."

"Those of us who may have made such arrangements appreciate that."

"Is there more - royal attention stuff - to do?"

"Ongoing vocabulary lessons tomorrow. Otherwise nothing specific scheduled, why?"

"No good reason. Worrying you'll get attached to all the important people and leave us all alone, I guess."

"That wouldn't be very conducive to incipient godhood, I hear the pharaoh doesn't share."

"Right."

"He probably already speaks all the other languages I know besides the sign language, anyway, and I'm not sure he's planning to overpay for two language courses, so he will lose interest in me after, what, a week?"

He looks a tiny bit cheered by this. "I guess."

"We have a sign language to talk in excessively echoey spaces, and also in dark rooms with slaves around so they can't hear. But it's useful in so many situations besides those that I do kind of wonder about societies that manage bilingualism at all, like here where most people speak Osiriani and Taldane, and don't slip any sign in."

"It seems useful! I think it might be hard to pick up from a standing start. Not for - Prince Fe-Anar, though."

"Even a few signs are handy, though. Like, you nod and shake your head, that's like sign and it's useful on its own."

"Yeah. And I think lots of people have more than that, for 'stop that argument you're having' and 'you're embarrassing me' and so on, and maybe that gets them most of the utility? ...I don't really know what normal peoples' lives are like."

"Oh, let me think, most-used signs - 'wrap that up and find me when you're done'. 'I have already gotten what I came in the room for and you don't need to ask'. 'Sorry' without interrupting about it - makes compulsive apologizers less annoying. 'Can I have some of your food'. 'Wait a minute'."

" - huh. Those seem like awfully good ones and I don't think most people have any good substitute at all. Maybe you can get it to catch on."

"D'you want to learn?"

"Sure. -'m not as fast as Prince Fe-Anar."

"Man, imagine if everyone was. All languages would collapse into a single monstrous creole as everyone learned everything. People would differ only in accent, and then they'd all learn to do all the accents and it'd devolve into class signaling or something, and you'd break your back trying to carry a dictionary. I am capable of repeating a phrase more than twice, Hagan."