"Is this what you do any time someone's livestock wanders over a border?"

"I don't think we've encountered any situations where one country keeps livestock and an adjacent country awards escaped livestock citizenship. If we did, yeah, that's probably what we'd do," says Nelen. "We weren't preventing slave escapes before we showed up and we aren't going to do it now. If Azan's more attractive now because they let slaves access their bus stops, that inconveniences you, of course, but it would inconvenience you similarly if Azan became more attractive for some other reason, like inventing new technology, or having a good harvest year. Maybe less in magnitude but that's still what's fundamentally happening here, Azan is becoming more attractive and we aren't helping you mitigate the consequences of that."

And the Sesati, who was retired before this crisis and was the ambassador to Niazon before that, leans in and says, quiet and earnest, "That's not it at all - I understand where you're coming from here, I think. You're worried people are treated badly, and you want that to end, justice be damned, and it's an easy sell to tell your people 'we don't do that here and we don't send people back where they do do that' and ignore the specifics of each case because you see too many cases like that. Do I have that right?"

"...well, we've found weird corner cases before, but I really doubt the specifics of any cases here are going to move anyone to make an exception."

"The case that brings me here to talk to you involves a slave who, before being a slave, committed several acts against an innocent person," which he describes explicitly and which are mostly the sorts of things that would grievously offend the sensibilities of lots of Vanda Nossëo's member states, "and praise the gods, its victim is recovering, and in a few more years she may be able to lead a normal life again - if there's anything like normal life to be lived in a few more years, I suppose. Or rather, was recovering, and would have been - I don't know that that's still possible, if the one that did that is still around, still loose, wandering the stars, lying in wait should she ever go traveling..."

"Ambassador," says Nelen, "the person who mutilated and eventually beat to death my great-grandfather for refusing her sexual advances served no prison time and now runs a sweetshop in a bus station."

"I can imagine, I suppose, that given the ability to resurrect the dead it might be kinder to bring them back and arm them and allow them the dignity of their own vengeance but my first response to this is still just horror."

"I understand that it's hard to swallow. But it's not a public relations ploy, it's an actual principle that we actually have. Slavery is not a punishment for literally any crime or rap sheet full of them in Vanda Nossëo. That person can continue to run her sweetshop indefinitely. My great-grandfather never has to see her again, and is not going to go stab her."

"If he's not going to stab her, why can he expect not to see her again?"

"She isn't allowed on the planet where he lives, and he knows where she lives and works. If they by chance wind up in the same vacation resort, she has to leave."

"How can we make that happen, then?"

"You are welcome to exile the escaped slave from Sesat, although we aren't going to help with border control while you're not a member state, that requires too much outlay of personnel. We can stop them from bussing in directly though."

"And forcing it to leave resorts, how would that come about?"

"The victim would file for a restraining order. Shouldn't be hard to get with a list of crimes like that, would you like me to ask over someone who can put that in?"

"That might be a good idea - can you explain 'file a restraining order' to me in more detail first?"

"A restraining order is sort of like a one-person law applied to whoever it's filed against, which means they can't come or stay near the filing party. Outside of where they live and work, and other designated areas if they have a predictable reason to be somewhere else, they bear the responsibility to leave if they and the filing party are in the same place - usually within a mile. And the designated areas are described to the filing party so they know where not to go. Keeping someone off an entire planet is rarer but my great-grandfather lives on a colony planet populated by people of our particular background, which has unusually thorough banning procedures for anyone who's understood to have aggressed against people of that background in particular. Having a restraining order against you prevents you from getting a license to teleport."

...and if they do this to every slave, then none of them will have a license to teleport...

"I think I understand. What kind of evidence are they going to want to examine?"

"For a restraining order you don't have to present much physical evidence, the victim and ideally at least one supplemental witness testifying under truth spell about the nature of the problem will do."

"Then it sounds like I should ask her if she's interested and arrange a time for a meeting. Thank you."

"You're welcome!" says Nelen.

And he talks to people and schedules a meeting. The list of crimes shrinks slightly in the face of a truth spell, but remains impressively horrible.

They do not comment on the shrinkage! That impressively horrible list is sufficient to get a restraining order.

Great! Next they're going to organizedly round up everyone who is willing to testify under truth spell to having been victimized by a slave or having witnessed a slave doing something fucked up and try to bar Sesati slaves as a class from ever getting teleportation licenses!

That will basically just work except that you can only get a restraining order against someone you are already trying to avoid and not, say, keeping as a slave, and also it won't work at all against anyone whose enslavement was hereditary or whose victim is currently dead or whose crime was in the estimate of Vanda Nossëo self-defense or otherwise not something you should be able to get a restraining order about.

How does it work for...

...someone about whom a judge will testify to having reviewed the facts of the case and found them guilty partly on the basis of testimony from witnesses who aren't available now?

...the slave of a cousin of the person they wronged, because the victim gave the slave to their cousin specifically for this purpose?

...someone whose victim's spouse feels personally wronged albeit indirectly?

...a slave that is currently dead but maybe Vanda Nossëo will want to change that someday?

...someone born a slave who committed vandalism?

...someone born a slave who killed another slave in some kind of fight the details of which are unclear?

...someone born a slave who committed some unspecified act of theft?