"So, most countries, Tapa included, are democracies. To get anywhere in a track where you need to win elections, you need to know what people want and how to convey to them that you're the right person to give it to them. But if you just read randomly selected parts of the internet or talk to random people in the street you will get very poor quality information. My track was about how to manage the trusting relationship an elected official has to have with the voters. If I'd gone ahead with that I would be attaching myself to someone on an election track, and figuring out what they should say in their campaign and how it was landing with the voters."

They really do all live in cities. "When you say you would attach yourself--which side is courting the other?"

"Oh, both, I would select someone with policies I could believe in and defend to the constituency so the would-be candidates would be trying to sell me on it, but they certainly wouldn't have to add me to a campaign they didn't think I'd serve well."

Hm. She'll signal for snacks, and also to give herself a bit of time to think.

This dimension of Chiko feels like a double-edged sword. An expert in knowing what the people think seems important if they are to have influence on this world. But she seems flighty and noncommittal, full of independent ideas. If Isidonia knew the landscape, she could probe to see whether or not they already agree, but she doesn't.

She perhaps can answer her questions indirectly. "What does being blue mean to you?"

"It means I can decide to matter. A lot of blues decide not to. I've thought about it too. Other castes might matter, or they might not, but it's usually not something they can just take up as a mantle - they get lucky one way or another, they succeed at something. But even a blue whose campaign loses changed the landscape of politics doing it."

"And do you think taking this position would make you matter more, or less?"

"Oh, more, a lot more. I'd expect solely in soft power, but the key word there is power."

"Tell me the outline of how you would use that power, once acquired."

"Absolutely everyone wants this - 'this' being our first encounter with aliens, let alone magical ones - to go well, and I'm no exception - based on the job description I got I think that's going to, for your attaché, involve explaining Amentan cultural stuff to you, picking up what I can about your own culture to explain it to others, putting you in touch with people and filtering out the ones who are wastes of your time. So obviously that involves a lot of judgment calls, how to describe things and what to emphasize and who to dismiss versus invite in. In that respect I'd be aimed solidly at 'it goes well' - we all learn a ton and the greens get to play with magic and so on. But I also think - once the secrecy is lifted, if at all, not immediately - anyone who can credibly claim the ability to give you a ten-second pitch on any policy or interest group is going to have as much cachet as she knows what to do with. You're one of the only two aliens on the planet. Absolutely everyone wants to keep you happy. If you mention that you're in favor of dockworkers' unions or against differential execution by caste or something, that's worth any ten provinces full of votes in the same direction. And you're only going to mention those things if you find out they exist, instead of hearing about dual-casteing prostitutes or the military action in Imde, and it sounds like you're hiring for somebody to help you know what exists."

She is good at controlling her reactions; there is no value to be gained from sharing her shock at a blue mentioning prostitution. But if Chiko is an ideologue, she is hiding it well; her examples seemed more like hypotheticals than issues near and dear to her heart. She will feel out Chiko's sense of the world and the electorate--a skill that Isidonia only recently developed for the convention.

"How did you estimate ten provinces, and what do you think we could do to raise or lower the number?"

"Ten provinces worth of votes is about what it would take to advance any unpolarized, relatively neutral political agenda. Like the ones I mentioned, as opposed to, say, dropping the war on Voa, that'd be harder, you'd probably have to make more than a brief mention and have a serious argument that demonstrated that you understood what was going on there; or lapsing to protectorate-grade population control enforcement, that'd be easier, you could just wait for the right person to bring it up and make a face. If you want your word as a magical alien to carry even more weight than it already does, well, it currently has the weight it does because of the potential you represent for solving problems that bother the people of Amenta today. Realize the potential, reap the clout. If you want less attention, the opposite - or just don't let them break the infosec around your existence."

She'll nod at that. She's not going to ask which problems they can solve--that's a question Felip will presumably be figuring out with their greens. She thinks she has the measure of Chiko, or enough to move on to questions.

"Are there any questions you have for me?"

"Why in the world do you specifically want a woman for this?"

She considers this. "Are men and women so similar, on your planet, that they may be freely interchanged? The role involves quite a bit of personal closeness, which would be inappropriate to have with any man who is not my husband."

"I'm pretty sure the only other jobs I've ever heard of with gender requirements were 'wet nurse' and 'pregnancy surrogate', and the right meds can get a man to do the first thing, it's just not worth the health insurance premiums, but I guess if the thing isn't the job but the degree of access I could imagine where the norm might have come from. Is your husband hiring a man?"

"Women are held to a higher degree of propriety than men are," she says delicately. "I do not think the Duke is hiring anyone yet; the management of the household is my responsibility, and the management of the realm is his, and it remains to be seen what realm we will obtain on this world."

"Is that... also a gender thing, or just the specialization you two happen to have."

"There are three factors, of which gender is one. The second is who has personal power; my husband is a magician and I am not, and so he is much more able to defend the realm in times of need. The third is who holds title; my husband is the Duke of Fraga in his own right and I am a duchess by virtue of being his wife. If anything, we were unusual in how much of the administration of the realm I handled, because of our history. Both of us were born aristocrats, but my father held his duchy in Taldor while Felip's father was exiled from his lands in Cheliax, and so my education was more focused on the practicalities of administration than his was."

Chiko's eyes go a bit wide at "defend the realm", but she seems to be following along, and nods.

"Did you have any other questions?"

"Can I bring my own purple?"

"Of course. They've only issued us with one so far, and while she seems to be quite efficient I can't imagine that'll be enough for the household once it is active."

"They probably don't know what-all you want them for - and also might be expecting you don't know how much purple work is managed with appliances now, like laundry and dishes - and don't want to tell too many purples what's up till they're sure which ones, but I've got a factotum I trust implicitly."

"The importance of trust is difficult to overstate. I am feeling the loss of my old companions quite keenly."

She sips from her drink, giving Chiko an opening to ask another question.

"Do you expect this position to also involve managing yellows? I'm not sure of the scope of 'the household'."