"An opportunity cost, if you don't use it. I see. Well-" He frowns. "I would want to see your efforts first and confirm it with the Director, but the name of St. Cavendish commands some amount of respect. It could be that we could connect you with wealthier patrons in exchange for a finder's fee. That may even do more good for the impoverished over time than your direct service. It would be difficult to set up in a tearing hurry, however. Likely not today."

"I'd definitely be amenable to something like that, and I am set for money for the next little while, I'm not in a rush. I'm also not sure how long I'll be in the area, I'm just here because I appeared here, but I imagine it won't take all that long for me to heal all the wealthy who need it right now, in any case." He shrugs. "Anyway, I can show you what I can do now, if you'd like."

Mr. Roseberry tests him on a staffer with a sprained ankle who consents to the experiment, and then talks to some people, and then conveys him around to the worst cases. Those who wished to accept the mysterious help, at least. Doctors carefully inspect before-and-after results. The nurses and doctors look a bit less tired, and nod approvingly.

One of the discharged patients asks him, "So, God gave you healing powers?"

"It's a bit of a long story."

"Well, forget I asked! I'd like to know where this all came from, glad as I am for it, is all."

"I don't mind telling it, I'm just not sure what your religion is like, here, yet. I'm from a different world, you see."

The man shrugs. "It's all variations on the same thing, mostly. But the priests have been struggling to explain themselves for decades now. The Fall. Sin. The New Sequence. Some contort their thinking into ever more complicated shapes to make the same teachings still make sense. Some break off into lots of tiny sects ready to shout at each other over whether John the Baptist preferred wine or water, or something like that. I don't believe much of it anymore, meself."

"I suppose that'd happen, without magic. When we need to know what our gods think we should be doing, we can ask them." (His hand goes to the wooden pendant around his neck, which he's also been touching each time he casts a spell.)

He startles. "Plural? There's only supposed to be one. Suppose some of His servants could be powerful enough to look like gods themselves. What you can do is damned convincing. And like I said, I hardly believe anymore."

"Maybe there is only one here - I've only been here a day, I wouldn't know. We have probably a hundred or so, maybe closer to two, but only about a dozen of them are commonly known. I get my magic from one of the well-known ones, the god of travel." The delight shows through his professional facade for a moment: "He doesn't usually send people to new worlds like this."

"Huh, I suppose if your vocation is travelling getting lost is almost a blessing, eh? I'll invite you to tea as thanks for fixing up me leg, at any rate."

"Oh, that sounds good. I mean, you certainly don't have to, but I'd be interested in hearing more about this world."

"Least I can do. My home is on the humble side, mind. What's another world like, I wonder?" He starts walking off towards the east.

"Well, I haven't seen enough of this one to compare, exactly, but -" Elves and their tree cities; dwarves and their underground metropolises; halflings and their caravans; gnomes and their directly-democratic half-anarchic towns; catfolk, dragons, wizards, druids, elementals - he can go on for a while.

The patient - Stephen Claredore - chimes in when something sounds familiar to things he's heard rumors of. Elves inspire him to speak of the titanic Bronzewood trees and uncertain dangers of Traitor's Wood, the researchers probing ecosystems in the Leadbeater and Stainrod Nature Reserve. The Regent's Tears are a set of celestial waterfalls that are supposed to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world. Dragons sound fantastically dangerous, worse even than the giant sky-bat Curators. Titania is an artist-colony that is said to be half-anarchic by some. Sky-sailors have a culture of their own and sometimes furtively worship gods of the Sky - the Waste-Waif, the Burrower, the Storm that Speaks. Druids sound like they would be really useful in the Reach - the flora is erratic. The other kinds of people who are so close to humans throws him off. The closest people to humans he knows is Devils.

The city grows quickly less dense as they head east. It's moderately-sized at best, as cities go. Soon the buildings are one or two stories high, with gardens and vigorous plantlife intruding around them. They come to a little building subdivided into three littler houses, and Stephen invites him in. It seems pretty run-down, but reasonably cared for. He starts steeping tea, heating the water on a gas stove.

So many new things to explore, here.

He's curious about devils, when they come up - his translation magic is using the same word for them that he'd use for a group of species in his world, but the creatures he'd use it for are much too dangerous to let walk around where anyone could meet them, any more than you'd let an evil dragon wander through your city.

"Some say the devils are evil, but I heard they're just interested in souls - they don't care to hurt you or help you, they just want your soul. And they don't care for Rattus Faber because they don't have any. There's even Carillon - you can go there to have the flaws in yours worked out, they're very good at it since they can smell 'em or something. Priests insist that you need to keep yours if you want to get into Heaven, but they don't seem to do much otherwise. I knew a lad who sold his, or said he did anyway, and he didn't seem any different after." He frowns and whispers furtively. "I heard a rumor you can burn souls."

"-huh. That's mostly reasonably close to how things work at home, except that losing your soul kills you; I don't see how that wouldn't be common knowledge if selling them is more than unheard of. And our devils are well known to be evil, but we have magic for that."

"You can buy souls in jars. They hover and glow. They don't talk or anything. Maybe they're not the same thing? Hold on, you can tell if people are evil?"

"Not right now, I don't have the spell prepared for it. But if I want to, yes."

"So there's magic that just decides if people are evil or not? On whose accounting? The Khan's marauders are great heroes when they're at home, I'm sure."

"It's based on your intentions, whether you think that in general people should be helped, as a principle, or harmed, or neither in particular. Someone who thinks they're making the world a better place, where people will have better lives, will show up as good even if they're wrong about what they're actually accomplishing - though you'll generally have a much better time of trying to talk someone like that around than someone who says they're trying to make the world a better place but knows in their heart that they're not and doesn't care, or thinks it's right to make it worse."

He judges the tea done and serves it into white porcelain cups with flower patterns and the Empress's face. It's not particularly good tea- not particularly bad, either, though. Aromatic.

"So it's some other thing, some specific rule, that gets called good. I don't think you can really just - capture good and evil like that. I mean, that sounds like a good attempt to do it but..." He shrugs. "Doesn't sound right."

"Fair enough. A lot of people want it to be as simple as whether they can trust someone or not, but you're right, I don't see how any magic could answer that. Even truth magic doesn't."

He sips the tea. "Very nice. Reminds me of some halfling teas. And - who is this?" He points at the Empress's face on the cup. "She was on posters outside the hospital, too."

"Oh! That's Her Eternal Majesty, the Empress upon the Throne of Hours. Rightful ruler of Albion and the Reach. Queen in three different worlds, now."