"What's the relevance of seasons, here? If it's length of growing season and your crops need a longer summer, you probably want to talk to places south of Valdemar." 

"Oh, it's not that, we can grow plants there, but Amentans have a seasonal cycle and if we aren't in a place that signals clearly to our bodies what season it is, we feel like it's spring, all the time. It's not popular." She's so glad she's 32 and doesn't have the awful keening springs of her youth. She isn't even clinically hypervernal, blues seldom are.

"Huh. What does...feeling like it's spring all the time...actually feel like? It's possible there's some application of our magic that could help?" 

"Maybe! That would be a huge help to people with bad springs. It's related to our sex drive and desire to have children."

"...That does sound complicated." 

"Our Healers might be able to do something to help? ...Or it might need a Mindhealer, in which case that's - harder - they're extremely rare." 

"Does magic run in families?" MAGIC GREAT GRANDBABIES

"It's not inherited all that predictably, but - yes, we do have the impression it runs in families. The potential for it, at least." 

"Do you have any systems in place to make sure there's more of it each generation?"

"- Huh? How would that even work?" 

Gosh she gets to explain eugenics to primitive natives! "When something runs in families, and it's a good thing you want more of, you can try to make sure that people who have that thing - or even who are just related to people who have it, sometimes - have more children! They don't have to parent the children, necessarily - we have ways of taking some of the tiny pieces of bodies that become babies out of people, women as well as men, and allowing other people to use them to make sure the kids they raise will have the best chances of that good thing. It's one of the most important public health interventions of the last fifty years!"

"- Whoa! That's - you can have a woman get pregnant with...a different woman's baby? Shavri - er, sorry, my partner, she's a Healer - she would be so amazed!" 

"I'm honestly a little worried that the Council wouldn't sign off on any plans to do that? They already complain about the stipend to the parents of children who get Chosen, that it's - preferential to Heralds, though really it's also covering losing that child's help at home - but also, not all of the nobles are pleased with how much of a say the Gifted Collegium deans have, on the Council, relative to the major landholders and their representatives." 

"We don't normally do this with stipends," says Kesha Nat. "When there's money involved it's just defraying the costs of having a child at all, and people's own desire that their children be healthy and talented does much of the rest. Wouldn't any of those landholders like to have grandchildren with Gifts?"

"It depends. I think Healers in the family are often considered a plus, but they're also - especially if they're nobleborn - not unlikely to decide to stay in Haven, if they train at the House of Healing and like it there. Bards are glamorous, but the, er, more conservative lords sometimes consider them disreputable. And of course if a Gifted child is Chosen - which they very often are - then they can't inherit the holding. That leads to some friction." 

"Can you say more about Choosing?"

"Companions are - well, you've met Taver. He's my Companion. All Heralds - which includes everyone in this room - were Chosen, generally in their youth, by a Companion. Companions...can see someone's fundamental self. What they're like as a person - whether they'll work hard and care about the future of Valdemar... And then of course we're all trained for the job, too." 

So the Companions conscript people and this disinherits them. "What does that have to do with Gifts?"

"Most - though not all - Heralds are Gifted. Gifts are very useful to the Kingdom, and - also can be very dangerous if they're untrained, or...used in situations that benefit the individual or their family rather than the Kingdom as a whole." 

Is that a euphemism for something? "Situations like -?"

"To give an example - a number of years back, there was a feud between two families near the border. And - it's a long story, but one of the sons of one family was a mage. Things - escalated - and he ended up taking out most of both landholdings with a giant explosion." 

Savil's facial expression is so blank right now. 

"...It's worth noting that he was a Herald-trainee, in that particular case. And so it's partly on us, for - letting him end up backed into a corner, like he did. And there were a lot of complications involved. But - having Companions who Choose most Gifted youngsters does at least reduce how often things like that happen." 

"That sounds a little similar to some of how we use our caste system to limit the escalatory potential of war on Amenta! I'm glad it's working for you." Maybe they'll have to get magic grandbabies from Rethwellan or somebody, they're prepping a delegation for Rethwellan now since Karse bombed. So to speak.

Some slightly uneasy looks are exchanged. 

"Interesting - what's your caste system, exactly?"