Beka resumes singing happily.

It's kind of startling how many different ways Beka is pretty or likes pretty things or seems more at home with prettiness. At this point Teru is starting to be confused that Beka's not also wearing the most beautiful clothes she's ever seen, but maybe she just couldn't get nice fabrics and dyes in Angband or didn't have time.

Onward. The beach has flowers of its own. Not all of which are in bloom this time of year but that just means there's stuff to look forward to later, right?

Start scouting around here for a nice spot to put your house. There'll be a tradeoff between it being in an awkward or unstable spot or it displacing some farmland or it being further from Iral or further inland or something, but if you don't need it big we should be able to arrange something.

(Her idea of a house that's not big is very small indeed, about enough space to lie down in either direction. She figures keeping one baby doesn't require much room and a nicer house directly trades off against garden space.)

Okay!

Beka slides down from the horse and starts... jogging, if you can call it that when it's a jog in gait but faster than Teru could run flat out. Looking for a nice place to put a house and flowers.

It'll depend somewhat on how much construction knowhow she can import and how much she would mind having to redo the place. There's an old ruin that's barely shelter, all jagged half-rotten wood and lichen and mushrooms and the occasional scrap of paint; it could be... maybe less fixed and more remade. Besides that there's a stretch of sand, a huge rocky outcrop with tide pools, a lightly managed forest that gives way to an orchard. There's a fort to the northeast and a different fort slightly further to the north; there's eventually a port town to the southwest, but it's not close.

She likes the dilapidated shack! Mushrooms and all! She tastes one.

That would be a mistake if she were a human but she isn't a human.

I can try to figure out if anyone owns that place. I can't imagine it'll cost much to buy it off them, I can probably lend you enough to cover it.

How does that work, buying things?

She's not sure if the confusion is about trade in general or currency in particular but she can contemplate both those concepts one after the other.

And people'll pay me to sing healing and then I give you the same amount of money? Okay.

Yep! I guess we'll need to figure out how much you should charge for healing.

Normally there'd be interest, and something for the time she's going to have to spend traveling to the capital to explain this to the king and arranging for someone to tell Valan and his crew where to find Beka. But she's not going to ask for that, for a number of reasons, like the fact that Beka came to them in need and the fact that having someone like Beka around is tremendously useful for Sesat.

How much do you think I should charge?

Not her field but she has the advantage of having ever interacted with Sesat's economy before. She still hasn't seen the healing in action but she can come up with some suggestions for prices for different ways it could work.

Also, we should figure out what to tell people in general and what I should tell the king.

How do you tell people in general a thing?

I could mention it along the way, or I could pay someone to stop by every town and read a message from me, or both. Or you could do it but you'd be alarming.

Oh. I probably should avoid alarming people.

People will be alarmed to know you can read minds. If we hide it now but it comes out later that'll be even more alarming, but there's a possibility no one overheard us and Valan and Mora won't tell. She thinks they will tell their chariot crew but maybe not and maybe it won't go farther than that, and she thinks they were probably overheard by the kids if no one else, but she's not sure of any of that.

Won't it be obvious when I talk to anybody?

Wouldn't be surprising if people guessed from that. I think it's not like it'd sound any weirder to say you can talk like that but only understand people when they talk out loud, but yeah, you probably couldn't fool everyone and it really only takes one...

Still leaves details like her range and how to hide from her and that it's possible to hide from her, not to mention her other magic songs.

Well, I guess I'll hope no one is alarmed enough to make a lot of trouble.

Something's odd about how conflict-averse Beka is but Teru can't articulate even to herself what's so odd about it.

I can tell the king everything if you want. No secrets, then?

Nothing I've told you is secret, I think.