"Huh. Cool. Do people fly all around, the whole planet..."

"Sure, when they have something to do on the other side of it."

"That's so neat. What places have you been to."

"The best school was in the same city I grew up in - my father's fairly important, works in the capital - so I was mostly there, planetside, but military training was in another city about a thousand miles away and then I went into space."

"What's space like."

"There's no gravity except in the parts of the ship where the ship makes it. The view of the stars is very good. The ship has to be very sturdy to keep all the air in, and you need a spacesuit to go out of it, so we usually don't."

"Do you like it?"

What a weird question. "Of course."

She is feeling as if she's very incompetent at talking to this person which isn't usually how she feels. "Do you have questions -"

"I - suppose I need to know how money works? And how to get some." Since this planet is too primitive to have given it up.

"It's - coin, or paper, issued by the state, you're not allowed to make your own. You get it by working, you have to spend it for food or housing, though not at the Worldwound, when you're an active duty soldier you get fed and housed on base usually. But if, say, you come back to Corentyn with us when this shift is up," he doesn't have a reason to do that but she doesn't want to let this float into more important hands just yet, "you'd pay for a house, and for servants or slaves if you want those, and for food and drink, and then you want some savings for magic healing if anything happens to you, and some savings for new clothes. You pay by giving the coins or paper in the right quantity to the person who owns the house or the food, and then it's yours. There's ten copper in a silver and ten silver in a gold, which is called a gold but we mostly have bills, now." She shows them from her purse. "If you want things as fancy as you're accustomed to it'll be a lot of money probably since we haven't invented all those things you mentioned."

They have slaves? That's fucked up. Maybe the slaves will have a revolution soon or something? That is probably hard when the slaveowners have magic but it is probably also hard when the ruling class has all the guns and the liberators of Ibyabek managed. "Working on what?"

"Uh, whatever you expect people will pay you for? I'm an arms and armor enchanter, but people do all kinds of things."

"...I have been trained to serve on a military spaceship," he points out.

"Yeah, for you you'll just go to the government and I can give you a stipend in the meantime while we figure out, uh, the right part of the government to go to."

"You don't need your money?"

"I am a wizard, I have lots of money, I can do a stipend that will only slow down my headband savings by a month and that should be comfy unless you have very expensive tastes. Which I guess you might, we have very expensive tastes by the standards of hunter-gatherers."

"They don't let us get too pampered in the military but I don't know what you might be missing."

"Well, if you're willing to live like this you'll be able to save lots of money."

"If you say so." It's a little like being told that if he never sings - not that he can anymore - he'll be able to save a lot of oxygen. You have to fix the air recycler if you have this problem, not take shallow breaths. But he doesn't know how the revolutionaries pulled it off besides that it required a revolution.

Eventually Tongues wears off and she gives him fluency in Taldane and lets him wander off so she can make magic items.

He doesn't wander very far, but he paces out the area of the Chelish section of the Worldwound defenses, looking at this and that, sidearm ready should wildlife attempt to trouble him.

The horrifying creatures seem to burst through the force-field a couple of times an hour; the teams stationed nearby fire on them when they do.

...he will wander up to a team and ask if he should be helping. He doesn't really know what to do with himself; he is used to being more scheduled.

Yeah, definitely, he...doesn't look like he does melee, is he a spellcaster?