"Obviously I'm willing to negotiate payment for a truth spell, though ideally the payment would come after the truth spell, so that you could pledge under the truth spell that you aren't going to exploit that specific permission."

"Okay, but you should be the one to loudly announce what we are paying for a truth spell since I would have to yell 'any food you want or you can try to convince this prickly wizard to be flexible if you want a different material object'."

"- I really don't expect people in Aktun of all places to be bothered by extended payment negotiations? But sure, we can pay in food." She will go try to flag down someone who has a truth spell and is willing to be paid in food.

"- yeah, I can do a truth spell for a box of chocolates like the big green one in the store window at First Confectionery."

"I can't do the box unless you convince her," says Cam.

"Okay, the contents of a box like that."

Truth Spell!

"Are there any circumstances under which you would claim you aren't fucking with me about a conjuration authorization but you would, if I phrase it badly enough, use it to threaten or incapacitate me, or to give weapons to my enemies, or to give information to my enemies, or to give aid or material support to my enemies?"

"- how broadly am I to construe 'your enemies' here? Are random people here, or in Bachuan, or whatever, your enemies? Is my mom your enemy? Is my musician buddy your enemy?"

"Let's say, people who you have substantial reason to suspect work for a god or an organization or a person that might invade Cheliax or Hell if you give them the resources to do so."

"Bearing in mind that I am imperfect at tracking which of my authorizations are operative in any given thing, and, for example, would not notice if I ran out of paper budget from my first authorization and then had to switch over to a second authorization, I don't think so."

"Are you willing to agree to tell me if authorizations you're asking for will let you do something you can't currently do which you don't expect I intend?"

"That sounds incredibly tedious so I would be more willing to do that if you did more of the work - your 'next five minutes' thing helps, though it puts me slightly in a hurry and twenty would usually accomplish the same, 'in unoccupied air' also helps."

"I am willing to say those things reliably. Given that are you willing to alert me of other things?"

"Insofar as I think of such things, which I mostly won't if I'm thinking about how to furnish a building, but yeah, I can tell you any I have in mind."

"Is there anything else you want to reassure me about?"

"I would have to be very very hard pressed to use my ability to knock you unconscious because you didn't give me permission to treat any adverse reactions you might have and I don't know if you care to guard your consciousness with my concern for your life but it's what's happening. I am not planning to screw over random people we are trading with by giving them booby-trapped stuff."

"Thank you. Do you see any problems with letting you make copies of extant boxes of chocolates in unoccupied air for the next twenty minutes?"

"I guess I could drop one on your head if I thought it was funny, or pay anyone else who happens to want boxed chocolates for things you could conceivably not want me to buy, or... look up chocolate boxes from daeva chocolatiers who can eat things that aren't safe for humans and try to convince you to eat antifreeze, which I wouldn't do but could."

"- wouldn't just for the other reasons not to kill me?"

"I guess if I urgently wanted to kill you and did not have any other way to do it I might resort to poisoning you with antifreeze but it's an awful way to go and also it takes hours and hours so I'd be hypothetically betting on you not being able to seek medical attention."

"Okay. If you make a copy of the chocolate box from the front of the store that guy asked for, we have fewer problems?"

"As far as I know, yeah. Though maybe dead people eat antifreeze here too, I wouldn't know, so maybe you shouldn't have any."

"We don't eat antifreeze," says the petitioner.

"You're not missing much."

"All right, you can make the chocolate box he specified. Do you want to ask anything of me while the spell is up?"

Chocolate box! "Are you planning to put one over on me in any way?"

"Not really! I thought about it to get back at you for doing it to me but all the people I'd want to deal with in secret are in fact dangerous and might fuck me over, and I really want to not get killed and fix the Worldwound and not get everyone I know killed so I have no such plans."

"Are there plausible circumstances where you'd attempt it?"

"Not if I'd promised not to, obviously. If I haven't - then if I learned you'd slipped resources to somebody to invade Cheliax or Hell I'd probably try to slip some to Cheliax in response. If I thought either Cheliax or Hell were likely to be destroyed if I didn't do anything."