"So it can be tempting to barter directly, because of the overhead of involving bank transactions, but actually having an established currency is good for several reasons."

Hragash can launch into an impassioned speech about the benefits of currency, from the perspective of a retired merchant-captain who had to explain things like this to the uncivilized peoples living on dangerous far-off islands. The core of her argument boils down to the fact that knowing the prices of things is a useful decision-making strategy, and that barter makes it difficult to have efficient spot-auctions for things.

"Now who's being a disagreeable absolutist!" Sortinel heckles from the ledge. "If they want to barter stories for healing, they're eating the cost of the market inefficiency in exchange for a streamlined process. Not everything has to be mercantile; I bet your ship had high insurance premiums*! Time is money, in this fallen world where people wither and die, separate from the all-Mother."

*Translator's note: a mild insult.

"Oi! Business is happening, you no-good storyteller! Although I suppose that is evidence that they're fair ones, given your predilections."

At this point a young child steps toward the group of Envoys and clicks for attention, which makes Hragash and Sortinel pause their exchange.

"The non-arguing plaza is that way," they explain, pointing down one of the streets. "This is the arguing plaza, since it's in front of the house of judgement. In case you want to go be somewhere that arguments aren't. But it's okay — you shouldn't be scared, because they're not being impolite, since they're in the right place."

"I don't actually need an introduction to economics," Nelen attempts, when the introduction to economics is happening. "...I'm not sure if we want to be in the non-arguing plaza or not. What things count as arguing?"

The child thinks about this seriously for a minute.

"I think it's mostly about whether it's impolite to sound angry at people. It's always okay to sound angry as long as you're not angry at them."

"That's a good attempt at a definition, but it's not a hard-and-fast-rule," Hragash adds. "It's about self-sorting people who want vigorous public debate from those who just want to enjoy a sedate time in the city. If what you're doing is more arguing-ish than not, then you should generally do it over here and vice versa. I wouldn't have called Sortinel a no-good storyteller if we were in the non-arguing plaza. I probably would have just informed you that not everyone agrees with him and then left, because priests are dead weight!"

The last part of that is aimed back at Sortinel, who wiggles his fingers at her.

"Hm. I think we have low enough context that we might want to be here so nobody has to hold back from saying things that might be relevant, even though we're not really here to argue in particular."

Hragash nods. "That's why I'm here. I like a bit of vigorous public debate. That's my southern heritage — it's how the warm sea does things."

At this point the news of mysterious appearing visitors has had time to spread at the speed of feet, and a runner in a short brown kilt comes jogging up to them.

"The city face would like to convey an invitation to come talk with him at the library," they inform the envoys. "In case you want to talk to a specific, designated person."

Someone in the crowd boos the concept of a designated point of contact, on general principles, but everyone else seems ambivalent to the message.

"Maybe you'd like to leave someone here to do a healing spot-auction, and send someone else to talk to the city face?" Sortinel suggests. "Being healed was pleasant and I expect other people to benefit from it, so I'd like to see it happen, even if it happens in a suboptimal fashion."

Hragash grumbles about wishy-washy northern compromises, but doesn't actually speak out against the idea.

"I have the best healing of the bunch - Tarwë, Natsuko, how about you two go meet the city face?"

They nod and will follow the runner if that's available by way of direction.

It certainly is. The runner leads them to a large building decorated with carvings of sand dunes. The inside features carefully stacked shelves of clay tablets, paper books, and woven nets that Allspeak turns into jumbles of words hanging from the ceiling.

There are also small reading rooms, where Tarwë and Natsuko are greeted by an enthusiastic man with flyaway hair.

"It's so good to meet you! I am Ganim, and I speak for the city in matters of diplomacy. I would apologize for the manner in which you were received, but we had no notice of your arrival. Please, sit. I'm told that you yourselves speak for a much larger organization?"

"Yes, we're an envoy team from Vanda Nossëo, a federation of many peoples and cultures from many worlds."

"Wonderful. It's not often that we establish contact with a new settlement; all the good spots for villages nearby are taken up. Where is Vanda Nossëo, in relation to The City at the Meeting of the Rivers and the Minds?"

"So, there are many worlds - not just different planets around different stars, but entire worlds that you can't get to by just going between places normally. Vanda Nossëo is distributed across many of those. Some of them are next to each other, I can show you a map." He pulls out his computer to display an adjacency map. "Your world is here. I'm from this one, and my colleague here is from this one."

Ganim leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

"I see. And 'next to' each other — is this a simplification? Can you tell how many worlds are next to ours?"

"They aren't next to each other in space, but ways to travel between worlds will fail if you try to go from here to here," he uses the same two worlds as an example, "but succeed if you take all these intermediate steps. We don't have a way to tell how many worlds are next to yours besides trying methods that will get a random adjacent world, enough times to expect we've found them all, and most worlds have many neighbors."

"Hmm. And how do you navigate these worlds once you've discovered them? I ask, because there are ... stories, of people from another world watching over this one, and occasionally making the dangerous journey here to help people in their time of need. They can only send their spirits, and they come to live on in the bodies of those they make the crossing to help. I imagine that many of them would welcome the chance to visit home, if such were possible."

"We're not aware of any worlds that have prior contact with this one, though that could easily be just because we haven't searched for them, but we travel by teleporting, which doesn't work very well on immaterial spirits but could probably bring along any that are attached to bodies."

Ganim nods thoughtfully.

"Well, it's something to think about. 'Teleporting' ... Can that take you anywhere? How hard is it to do?"

"There are several kinds learned in different ways, but in general yes, if you can teleport it can get you anywhere, maybe with several steps if you're going between worlds."

"Our insurance rates are going to be terrible," he murmurs to himself.

"Is there any way to prevent people from teleporting into an area?"

"...there are ways to do most things. There is not a cheap commonplace way to do that which works more emphatically than asking and preventing pictures of the area from being widely available. To be clear, doing that would work pretty well, teleportation is an ability most people have to be thoroughly vetted to receive. Why do you ask?"