"I can't at all."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a side effect of something, if I try no sound comes out." Shrug.

" - huh. I'm sorry. If it's an injury they can just - heal it, a place like this has lots of healing."

"I don't know the details. I suppose I haven't tried since the cleric fixed my concussion?"

Shrug. "Side effect of what, a poison?"

He shakes his head. Tries to sing a note, gets a sort of backward gasp.

"Does it persist when you're polymorphed?"

"I have never been... polymorphed... I think."

"Well. I can't do magic anymore but it's not a hard spell, you could get them to try, it'd be a useful diagnostic."

"Seems a bit frivolous, it isn't as though I have to sing."

"Right, but you're important, I bet they'll do frivolous things if you ask. And - it's not even spending something, not always, sometimes people feel friendlier with people they're doing favors for."

"They seem perfectly friendly already."

"So then why not get a favor out of them?"

"Because the magic is a limited resource and I don't need to sing."

"It's not that limited, they'll get more again the next day and most people don't use all their spells every day. And they don't need to...what do they even do. Sit around talking about how much better they are than Evil people?"

"...gossip," says Kyeo.

"Good for them." Sigh. "It's your call, I guess, but I don't think you're stealing any resources from anything you'd care about."

"I'll think about it."

Nod.

"Anything else I ought to ask?"

"I don't think so? I guess I'm curious what else the handcuffs are doing. They're antimagic but they're also -" Shrug.  "That's not important, though, it's just, professional curiosity. ...and how expensive the cuffs are is probably more information than anything they tell you, about how long they'll keep me alive."

"- right, of course it would be."

"I'll ask." He gets up. Knocks on the door.