"A lot of people felt that way on my home planet too," says Nelen evenly.

"Huh. What changed your mind?'

"Mine? Nothing. They thought they were better than people with red hair."

"I see why you'd be soured on the idea, if they were that silly about it."

Nelen smiles a little. "It's more complicated than I'm making it sound. They had a lot of reasons. Vanda Nossëo worked really hard to accommodate them and get them a setup they could live with when I'm sure it was enormously tempting to everyone involved to just throw up their hands and say they'd enforce laws against violence and to hell with their stupid taboos. But to everybody else, I'm told it really does look like - they think they're better than people with red hair. Anyway. I think we might differ in - how important a priority it seems to us to avoid insulting people just by being generous to other people around them. Not even more generous."

"I think if you want me to have an opinion about it that I bother to put weight on I should also talk to someone with a different hair color and if you don't - well, I've told you where you can put a new business, the only war-related decisionmaking I've been doing is making sure we can shelter enough people within the walls, and I'll be around if you think of anything else..."

"There's a purple on the shipboard team," says Nelen agreeably, "if you'd like to arrange a meeting. Can you give us advice on how to buy the land for our shop booths and prospective bus stations?"

"Oh, I was just going to lend you space for a shop, rent-free for the time being because you don't even have any local currency and any rent I might want I can also collect by coming by to reminisce about my childhood. But normally when you need more land..." Zatar can explain how that works.

Okay! Natsuko will go put up a shop in the lent space and Zanro will peel off to see about buying Charpitorium land and bus stop land.

Meanwhile, Feris the philosopher travels faster than he ever has before, at a gallop the whole way and changing horses several times on the road. He comes running into the library in the palace and stops and says, "Uh, excuse me, I was told it's extremely urgent and a matter of national security for me to speak to a tall foreigner with braids..."

"Hello," says the tall foreigner with braids. "I'm not sure it was quite that urgent. My party and I have come from Vanda Nossëo -" Standard "what the fuck is Vanda Nossëo" spiel.

"Well, that does sound... very important. It's delightful to meet you. I am Feris, one of Sesat's soldiers and in better times one of its philosophers."

"My name is Tarwë. Thank you for coming to meet me. It was suggested that some of the potential rough spots between Sesat and Vanda Nossëo come down to philosophical differences of opinion."

"I can help with that. What've you already identified as possible differences of opinion?"

"Vanda Nossëo operates in significant part on a principle similar to the one outlined here," Tarwë says, holding up the book on kindness's role in retaining a population, "but our particular implementation forbids slavery, and in general issues much gentler sentences for crimes."

"That... is an odd claim to make, I think - if what you want to do is steal our slaves, why did you come here and speak to our government?"

"We're happy to buy them," says Tarwë, "as a one-time deal, assuming we can find a way to prevent more from being enslaved."

" - Sir, I think you should back up and explain your goals here without reference to local schools of thought you've only just learned exist, and go as deep as you can, not goals at the level of 'I want to buy a sword' or even at the level of 'I don't want to be attacked' but at the level of 'I don't want to be injured'."

"We want everyone to be free and safe and rich and happy," says Tarwë. "That extends to everyone, including slaves. We don't want to achieve this through conquest or theft. That would work in the short term, but it gets worse long-term results than coming to an agreement with the people who live in a state and own slaves. We're effectively hoping to bribe you."

"And if everyone else here is free and safe and rich, they'll try to keep the slaves from also being those things, and they won't be happy if the slaves are happy, so you have a conundrum, and you're hoping for a stabler resolution than that some people greet you as saviors from the stars while everyone else plots revenge - would you say that's true?"

"That's ideal, yes."

"Can you tell me some stories about times you've done diplomacy this difficult before?" The thing he mostly wants to figure out from this is whether they want people safe and free and rich and happy, or want to go home with a few new happy citizens and say they tried. He can work with either, or at least he hopes he can, or at least he knows if he can't he'll disappoint the Star-of-Stars... but anyway he has to know which it is.

"Sure - do you want things I was there for, or stuff they cover in our training?"

"Either."

So Tarwë can tell him the story of Amenta, which he wasn't there for but Nelen was, as one of the natives being contacted, if he wants more details; they wound up putting some sixty-five million reds through a process that replaced all the matter of their body completely new, just so they wouldn't have to tell the other thirteen billion Amentans that their pollution taboo was too stupid to accommodate. It was very time-consuming and expensive and probably cost them some goodwill with some of the reds but it got them the Amentans on board, and now they form a big chunk of Vanda Nossëo personnel in various capacities, and they're happily raising more who'll grow up free and safe with all the opportunities of the multiverse at their feet.