"Why would he get to decide whether you could enlist?" he says, sounding surprised and maybe slightly judgmental but like he's trying to hide it. 

"- Well, I mean, I'm a girl? And I wasn't eighteen yet, at this point. And...it would've been his right, to find me a husband before that. But, well -"

Vague gesture at her own face (thought without the faintest hint of shame or embarrassment - Lissa knows what she looks like, and she also knows that plenty of men - and women - are interested in that.) 

"He didn't find anyone who wanted me. And I knew what I wanted. So he agreed. Eventually." 

" - he would have had the right to force you to marry?" He sounds horrified! 

"- I mean, I'd have run away first. But...legally, yes? Is that different here?" 

"...yes. No one can force another person to marry, and any Chelish person who wishes to enlist and is not on the run from the law or something can. A married woman wouldn't need her husband's permission, either."

"- Huh!" She beams at him. "I like that." 

"I do too! I am proud that Cheliax is a place where people make their own decisions. If we were in Valdemar, we might want to take people as priests, who were - fleeing forced marriages - would that cause trouble with your government?"

"...I mean, I'm hardly the government. But I don't think King Randale thinks much of forced...or, er, just pressured, marriages, either." 

Pause. 

"- You all seem to, er - to care a lot about making the best use of all your people?" 

"Yes. That's a big part of our philosophy, that no one should - have their potential wasted."

"...Right. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. But, I'm still curious to hear in your words. Why? Why does it matter, that no one's potential is wasted?" 

" - well, it matters to me, that mine isn't, and I suppose everyone else feels the same way about it. And it's not any skin off my back for my neighbor to live up to his potential - it makes it likelier we can fight off an invasion like Iftel, it means he's likelier to have more food he can sell if he's a farmer, or better wine, if he's a vintner, or better shoes if he's a cobbler..."

Nod. “Makes sense.” 

(Wow he’s good with words. Lissa doesn’t particularly expect them to be true, or represent what he really thinks, but it’s still very attractive.)

She rubs her chin, thoughtful. “I reckon the Heralds would frame it in a more altruistic way, but - a lot of what matters is that it makes your whole country stronger, right? I know that’s a lot of what our King was thinking with the new education policy - it’d come up during the war, that a lot of the new recruits were illiterate and this made training them up fast much harder.”

"Cheliax doesn't tend to frame things in what you're calling an - altruistic way? All kinds of people have all kinds of motivations, of course, but we're more interested in buidling societies that produce right action when people are selfish, instead of trying to get people to care about others more than they'd be inclined by default. And yes, even from that perspective, it's in the interest of Kings to have their population living up to their potential."

“Mmm. How much do you think people are inclined to care about others by default?”

"I think it depends a lot on the person. And it's great to have options for people who want to spend their life in public service, but it's not our way, to try to build all our government out of those people."

"Heh. Fair enough, I guess! Though that is basically the exact opposite of what Valdemar decided to go for, with the Heralds, so - I guess I wouldn't be surprised if that caused some, er, weirdness, when your people talk to them."

She frowns, thoughtful. "...I think Cheliax has a much bigger population than us? Which would make it hard for a system like the Heralds to work as well, maybe." 

"Yes, I think they were very concerned about how we're not trying to run the country on Good. Which is a reasonable thing to be concerned about, if I'd only tried running it Good I'd assume that if you tried running it without that it'd be, well, horrible. But actually, even self-interested people are decent if you set up their incentives right. Cheliax has ten million people, I don't know about Valdemar?'

"Wow! Valdemar is around half a million. I'm not sure there's any one country in our entire world that has ten million people just by itself! Is that common here?" 

"Cheliax is bigger than most places but half a million is small for a country here. There are cities with that many people."

"That's amazing. I hope I get to see one, someday, when - all of this is more settled. That's - wow - you must have really good transport for food and goods. And really good...sewage? I apologize for asking a crude question but what do you even do with that many people's shit all in one city?" 

"Absalom's got aqueducts. They import practically all their food, though the last time someone blockaded the city trying to conquer it it turned out half the city's wizards also have backup plans - one guy had a whole field of miniature stone cows that he turned back and then sold for slaughter, one at a time, made a fortune -"

Lissa bursts out laughing. "- He - sorry - he had what? Were you aware that the way magic works in your world is insane?" 

"I don't know how you think it ought to work! But that's some high level spells he'd spent on an enormous miniature cow collection, that's not at all a normal sort of thing to do."

"Well, sounds like it was a smart thing to do! Who was trying to conquer the city?" 

"Oh, this was ages ago, and some Qadiran sultan had gotten too big for his britches, and demanded Absalom stop taking tariffs off his ships - thinking, you know, it's one city entirely reliant on shipping for food, and not thinking that it's a city full of wizards. Or I suppose he thought they'd teleport out. They didn't."