"Functional societies - and Tantara is one, from what I've seen of it - usually have lots of interlocking bits making them function. And some of the bits look funny on their own, and maybe you can replace them with better ones, but - you have to look for what they're interlocking with."

"Mmm." He takes a deep breath. "I have to get really good at looking for that, don't I. If I want to - fix places that are more broken than Tantara. Like Predain." 

"Yes. You do. If you want to do better than being a normal sort of King who spends more than usual of the treasury on worthwhile things, you'll be trying to build all the interlocking bits, all at once, and it'll be very hard."

Ma'ar nods, seriously, and stares into the distance with his jaw set. 

Sometimes it feels like all he's doing is learning that problems are harder than he thought, much faster than he's learning to be better at solving them. But - well, they were that hard all along, reality is reality, and he can't work with it unless he understands it. And he's already learned so much, in barely three months. He has time to figure this part out. 

Eventually he bounces up off the sofa. "I'm hungry, can we have dinner now?" His robes, Carissa will notice if she's paying attention, are showing noticeably more ankle below the hem than they did when he first got them. 

Good. 

She gets him dinner.

The next few weeks of debate classes seem to go better, from Ma'ar's reports after school. He does less talking, even when he disagrees with people, because it seems important to understand them better first, and learn how to explain himself in a way that bridges the gap more usefully. He says that it doesn't seem like Urtho is upset with him, though he does notice that Urtho seems to watch him more than he watches the other students, and call on him more often, in the one class a week that Urtho is present for. 

He's a lot more vocal about his thoughts in the privacy of their apartment, though, and does seem to be getting better at expressing himself in a way that conveys the nuance. A lot of it is in tone of voice; he's practicing speaking in the sort of level, measured voice that Urtho uses when he talks about history or politics in particular. It feels a bit odd coming from a skinny teenager, but it does add the impression that he's thought about whatever he's saying in great depth. 

Three weeks later, on the day that he has debate class with Urtho, Ma'ar isn't back from class at the usual time. Or an hour later. 

Maybe he got detention again.

She paces.

She could probably figure out earrings of Telepathic Bond even though she can't cast it. She probably should, if only for her peace of mind.

He's back two hours after the usual time rather than at midnight, which at least hints at not-detention. Also he looks incredibly confused. He starts to open his mouth and then closes it again and just sits down on the sofa. 

She starts dinner. "You okay?"

"M'fine." He chews his lip for a moment. "- Do you know anything about Mindhealers." 

" - a little bit. It's a rare Gift. It can be used for - mind-editing, generally - did they -"

Ma'ar fidgets. "Urtho told me to stay after class and then he - said he was worried about my wellbeing, and he brought me to talk to a Mindhealer who works with his school. It was so confusing, I don't get it. He kept asking me all these questions about whether I'd been hit at home, or - had grownups do sex things to me - whether you'd done any of that..." Ma'ar is making such an indignant face about this. "I don't know what the point was supposed to be. I don't think he edited things in my mind without me noticing but - he just kept looking at me...I was shielding but he might've been reading my mind anyway, and I don't know why..." 

"They can read your mind through Thoughtsensing shields," she confirms. "What happened in class, before Urtho said that?"

"We learned that you can use magic to put compulsions on people, stop them from doing things you don't want them to do - did you know that was a thing, I had no idea." 

"Yes. Our kind of magic can do it too, but compulsions require very little power, just finesse."

Nod. "I wish I'd known sooner, it seems like it could be really useful. It's illegal in Tantara though. Even in war, which is stupid, if you can just put a compulsion on soldiers to stop fighting you and then undo it once you've won, that's way better than killing them! I didn't say that, though, I was being so reasonable. I, just - Urtho mentioned that in some parts of the world, noble families have house mages who do compulsions on their servants not to poison them and things, and the servants know about this and everything, if you don't want that then you don't work for a family that does that. And we'd been talking last week about rules of engagement in war and how some countries don't have enough of an army so need to hire mercenaries, and sometimes mercenaries are - bad people, like the guards in Predain, and then they go around pillaging villages and raping women. And even in countries with well trained armies, sometimes the soldiers do that! So I said it seemed like a smart thing to do, to have it be part of the soldiers' contract, that they have a compulsion not to rape people even when they could get away with it."

He screws up his face. "I was being so reasonable! I thought about lots of other things you could do that seem like a good idea on the surface but would be - complicated, like the blood-magic thing. And I figured that soldiers usually sign contracts anyway about following rules of engagement, so if they were going to be Lawful about that, it wouldn't even make a difference, all it does is - protect against the worlds where sometimes you can't tell by looking if a soldier will be Lawful that way. I said a bit about the problem in Predain. And then everyone was so upset and I don't know why!"

"Wow! 

I'm proud of you, for thinking about the most reasonable way to make your argument. I...don't have any idea why they reacted like that. You are - entirely right, that's how the man I know who is a King does it and it works very well. I wouldn't have predicted that - I mean, maybe they would've said that they still think it's bad to even teach mages how to do compulsions, since if you can do them at all you can do them sneakily? But I wouldn't have expected them to -" She wrings her hands, a little. "I don't like it."

"I was really hoping you'd know why they were like that! I don't - they said I wasn't in trouble, Urtho and the Mindhealer both said it, but - I think I must be secretly in trouble, and I wish they'd just tell me what thing I did or said was bad so I can stop!"

He gnaws his fingernail for a few moments. "- Urtho did say the thing about teaching compulsions, and - he had an interesting point about how making it seem normal for one thing also makes it seem more thinkable for other things, and then over time you end up with everyone thinking it's fine to mind-control their servants. Which he seems to think is obviously really bad - it's not obvious to me but I can at least see why it's complicated, I wasn't even disagreeing with him about it."

"I think it's mostly dumb. You can mind control them against poisoning you, in particular, but if they really want you poisoned they could just let someone else into the wine cellar and tell them what they plan on serving for dinner, and you can mind control them against not alerting you of plots against their life but that's much more expansive, and gets even more expansive by the time you've come up with all of the ways around it that are that easy to think of. You end up doing a lot of work for a little increase in safety." Shrug. "I think he's probably right that if it's done at all it gets more expansively used, over time, but I'd worry less that then everyone mind-controls their servants not to kill them and more that then they mind-control their servants to sleep with them, or their children to obey them, or their wives to not nag - it's about power, right, same as last time, do we want mages to in general have more power against everyone around who isn't a mage or do we want them to not.

I still don't know why you got in trouble, though."

"Oh, that's a good way of putting it, I'd been trying to say that it didn't seem like it'd - work as well, for that, but I didn't have it clear enough in my head to say properly. Whereas - I don't know, soldiers are people who have power over others, that's kind of the point, and I guess having your army do that would give the mages in it relatively more power, but - mainly it'd mean the soldiers don't hurt innocent people just because they can - I'm sure really nasty people could find things that weren't banned, like how the bullies were mean to Elwa without breaking any rules, but - it's still better for Elwa that they couldn't get away with hitting her, and I think it'd make nasty people less excited about being soldiers, maybe." He's bouncing a bit on the sofa. "This is really interesting to think about and I wish we could just talk about the interesting complicated parts in class! Instead of everyone being so weird about it!" 

"I don't know why it's not like that. I'm sorry. I think whether the power argument makes sense depends a lot on how hard compulsions are to do on your own once you know they exist. If they're easy enough to figure out, then you can't reasonably have your plan to avoid abuses of power be a taboo, because it's not like blood magic which is conspicuous, there's no real way to stop a mage who knows how to do compulsions from doing them, and not much way to notice if they did, unless you truth spell all your mages regularly to ask. If it's hard to learn on your own then maybe you do want to very severely restrict who can do it, to some number of people you can truth spell or vet very extensively, but even then the soldiers thing might work fine, it doesn't take a lot of mages to compulsion an army."

Nod. "That makes sense. ...Anyway, maybe I'll - stop saying things in class for a while? Until I figure out what part I got in trouble for, and why they wouldn't just tell me what rule I broke." 

Hug. "That makes sense. I'm sorry. Hopefully you can still learn things about how the other kids think."

Ma'ar leans into her arms. "I think it's good practice. Listening and not talking. It - means I have to be patient, even when I'm frustrated." 

"An important thing to learn. And by reading your minds you can tell how much they're deciding what to say and how much they're saying whatever they think, and what else they're using to decide, if they're not saying everything."