"No, but it's good to give things away. If you steal lots of things from rich people and then give them to poor people, that can be a good thing. It's not lawful, though. It's wrong that people care so much about good. I think lawful is more important, because if everyone doesn't follow the rules, then you can't trust anyone."

"Nu-uh! Trusting is easy! If everyone shares, then that's trust!"

"Good is important but law is necessary, one person by themselves can be good without the law working well but you can't do a whole government that way."

Brynn looks like she wants to dispute that but doesn't know how!

Daernir is unimpressed by his sister's rhetorical skill, but he seems engaged by Lintalai's.

"Yeah! That's why the Kingdoms of Arcadia are mostly lawful, and a little bit good. Because you need the government and the laws to care about what's best for the most people, but mostly they should be consistent and clear and make sense."

Nod nod nod. "I go to blue school at home and we're supposed to be getting ready to run governments, big ones with millions and millions of people, and you can't just expect millions and millions of people to be good. You need to give them clear incentives."

"I think you'll like it here. It's a good place to care about law for lots of people. I don't, really, I just care about it for me, so I'd make a bad blue. What would Amentans do for aliens? Would aliens just not have castes in Amentan law?"

"Yeah, I think you don't have castes and it would probably not work on the first try to start them and I want what I do to work on the first try so I probably won't suggest it even once I have a city."

Nod.

"Castes seem like they make a lot of sense, but I didn't start with one, so it wouldn't really work. What do you think you'll try? You should write a constitution."

"I will! But I can't just write a constitution without knowing who in general I'm writing it for, and there are no Amentans here, so I have to adjust for that, and there is magic here so I have to adjust for that. So I'm going to go exploring. ...that, and I should probably own a change of clothes."

"Oh, right. Do you...have a job yet? You should get a job."

"She's a kid, she doesn't need a job!"

"I have a job."

"Do not."

"Anyway. Do you need help getting a change of clothes?"

"I'll need money unless the Internet on my pocket everything works so well I can pay with that. What's your job?"

"I'm a scribe for Marduk. I write things down that I see so that we can enter them in Marduk's records. I hope I can work for Azuth when we get to Buxenus, though. You should look for a job in Heliopolis when we get there."

"It's not a real job," she sing-songs. "Marduk just wanted him to feel special."

Instead of dignifying that with a response, he adds, "Marduk is like Azuth; it's the name of the god and the realm."

"What are gods like?"

Blink.

"That's a big question. I've never had to think about it before. Uh, gods are...like governments, but they only make laws about certain things, and you only have to follow those laws if you decide you want to. If you do follow the laws, then the god will do things for you, too."

"So they're like... um... contracts anybody can sign?"

"...sort of, except they're people? Really big, really powerful people, who don't have bodies. So people worship them. Some of them made species, and they can make more changes on the Outer Planes than we can."

"What does worship mean?"

"Worship is like loving something a lot, and paying a lot of attention to it. Usually people do that for gods."