"Billions. Our information source is a bit unreliable because he is from an awful planet where everyone is - enslaved by the government for ideological reasons - but definitely billions."

"There's an entire planet where everyone is enslaved by the government for ideological reasons and Asmodeus or similar is nowhere to be seen?"

"There is a lot we don't understand about the question but the slave planet understands there to be no gods and prohibits worshipping any and the ...flavor's all wrong...Ibyabek decided that people wouldn't be poor if there wasn't money, so they banned it, and the government picks a job for everyone and forces them to go do it all day, and then distributes food and supplies to everyone based on what it imagines them to require."

"Okay, I realize you're extremely allergic to the concept, but did it in fact from a non-Abadaran perspective work at all -"

"No! I was trying to be open minded about it but it's a nightmare. He's in their military and he looked - very thin, I thought at first he was sick, or had been until recently - and the ones we scried, too. I asked him how many days they work in twenty, and the answer is twenty. And I asked if there was anything that was newly available, or much improved, in the last five years, and he couldn't think of any - you would expect it to discourage innovation if no one gets any rewards for their labor and no one gets to choose their job, you'd expect there to be shortages of things if the demand for them changed over time, since the numbers the government was using wouldn't - and that's what it looks like. It's just awful. Tragic. - I want to fix it."

"To be perfectly honest with you I don't know that I could name any non-magical innovations from the last five years, I don't keep up with the developments in weaving and glassblowing."

"If there weren't any magical ones you'd be doing something else and you'd know about the innovations in the thing you were doing, at least. And I bet you could think of some - used to be you couldn't buy spider-silk in Sothis, now you can, that's a development in textiles for you..."

"Yes, but spider-silk wasn't invented recently. Spiders have been around for much longer than five years. Still. Skinny humans without days off, we have some of those but we don't have billions and ours can hope for better luck next time as long as they don't stab anybody..."

"And we're going to have less someday. They can make all kinds of things cheaply. You shouldn't have skinny humans with no days off if you have that."

"So what are we doing, going to their planet to check things out?"

"Not yet. We'll need a Gate, for one thing, and secondly I think the paladins want more of a plan of attack. No, you are most proximately here because of a secondary problem created by the world-hopping man. He - didn't land on us. He landed on Cheliax. And after they stole him out from them the paladins went back and stole the Chelish agent he'd landed on, and they think Asmodeus doesn't know, they think she hadn't told anyone yet. But now they have her, and she's a wizard and hard to hold, and they can't let her die and go to Hell and warn Asmodeus."

"And they can't do soul bind because they're paladins?"

"They haven't mentioned that particular constraint. They are planning to petrify her if they can't hold her anymore but they are shopping around for improvements on that. They ask what Osirion would do if she were our problem and I said, well, we'd get her married to someone who could contain her, so that is now an angle they're exploring."

" - I am not sure that solution works when the problem is not that she is Osirian and has gotten in over her head but that she is Chelish and we are preventing her from killing herself. Have they tried convincing her to not be Asmodean."

"I would be delighted if you figure out how to do it."

"Sounds, uh, diverting, I've never actually met an Asmodean. Were you in fact planning to set her up with Mahdi -"

"I mean, it's not an ideal solution, but it seems worth checking whether it's a workable one."

"- I have to say that Chelish, hates us, currently a prisoner, doesn't check a lot of my boxes -"

"Third circle, and she's twenty-three."

" - I didn't say no, just, you know, as a matchmaker I am not giving you high marks. - is she pretty."

"Yes."

"Does she want to do this."

"I wouldn't propose this if not! I think she's - obviously undecided right now - but she wanted me to have the impression she'd be suitable, if she ended up wanting to."

"Congratulations, Mahdi, you compare favorably to the sweet touch of calcification."

"I might. She is reserving judgment."