"You've only been on the planet for a century?"

"A little more. The system longer than that."

"They did not give this context. How many planets are there? Can you trade with the other ones for food?"

"Yes. Ships take a lot of power and time, you don't do it for bread, but strange fruit and things like that."

"Have the other planets also put someone in charge of forcing everyone to do jobs and confiscating and distributing the output or is that just yours."

"The others still use money."

"What are the other ones like."

"I've never been," Kyeo says. His voice has been getting croaky, off and on, and it's very hoarse now.

"Do you know of anyone on them, so we could scry them?"

"The ambassador has a son."

He looks at the paladins because this should be handled with more delicacy than he has personally managed.

"Wulaar Peng? Has a son?" Isavel says quietly.

"His -" Cough. "His name is Sarham. He is presumably on a Kularan planet now."

She nods. "Thank you."

"I think - your government is making a very tragic mistake - but if the other planets are different I don't see how they wouldn't have noticed the mistake -"

Kyeo isn't really paying attention any more.

"Please tell me we are going to do something about the slave planet," he says to the paladins.

         "We - need to think. Obviously it will be - somewhere on the list of priorities. It's - far away, and confusing -"

"I am not very confused about it at all. And it'd fund other work, they're - they're doing some things we don't know how to do."

        "Yeah," she says.

"A planet - that's so many people."

        "We need to think."

"Of course. I'm sorry. I can stick around for a week."

"Can I see," he says. "When you look for Sarham."

"Of course," Isavel says. "A - friend of yours?"

"We didn't know each other long. But I'd like to know how he's doing."

"Of course. Tomorrow morning. I think - we can discuss some details elsewhere -" and she escorts Fazil out to do that.

- oh, he'd meant to ask about Carissa's request. Maybe he will do that the next day.

They have three people scry for Sarham the next morning; two succeed.

Sarham is in a lecture hall, folding his glowing rectangle into its shiny case and stuffing it into his bag, elbowing his friends and vice-versa as they file out of the row. They emerge into rain, put up umbrellas, buy steaming drinks from a cart they pass, duck under an awning to drink them.

The paladins crowd around to observe this. They look at Kyeo uncertainly.