do you recall when the war was just a game?

"So Tarwë wouldn't even have to report on that and I can assume he won't betray me unless he actually wants to?"

"I don't know that he has a specific obligation to you that he'd be betraying. But that's otherwise right."

Nod. "In that case I think I can take it from here. Thank you."

"You're welcome. If you need to talk to me again, I'm Failon."

"I'm Feris of Leopard Hill."

"I'm glad I was able to help you, Feris." She bows slightly and departs.

He goes looking for Tarwë. He's noticeably more relaxed and confident now.

Tarwë's right out in the hall. "Hello! I hope that helped."

"Yes. Come back and let's talk, I'm sorry, I think I was more cryptic than I needed to be and I guess you probably inferred I must mean something else that I couldn't just have told you outright."

"It happens," says Tarwë. In he comes and sits.

"It still has to be secret and there's not that much you can do to help me but... did you know it's not just the chattel slaves who can't leave?"

"There's presumably also unreleased serfs, if nothing else."

Feris laughs. "The king's got people keeping an eye on my family. To make sure they're safe as long as I'm busy trying to make contact with the multiverse come out in Sesat's favor. Precisely as long as I'm doing that and no longer. I'm unusual in that it's my whole family under threat, because it would be terrible for him and his designs if he picked just one person that I happened to be willing to abandon, though honestly at some point don't you have to wonder why it would give someone pause the sixth time you torture one of their family members to death? Apparently there is actually nothing compelling anyone to wonder that. Anyway. My point is, I'm trying to disentangle that and maybe rescue all of the chattel slaves while I'm at it, depending on what exactly I end up being able to tell people I'm up to, though if it looks too hard I'll just get my own family out and run. I want teleporters, and yours aren't allowed to help, besides which they're foreigners interfering in our business. Now that Failon has helped me plot a bit, I have a backup plan for how I might try to use foreigners, and I also think I want a lot of defensive items like personal space rings for my other backup plan, but... I still really think this will go better if I can work with one or more Sesati teleporters - and I also think if there are any Sesati teleporters who don't know me and come up with the same ideas on their own are more likely to help than to get in my way - and I am deeply concerned about the fact that if everyone who's eligible for a restraining order got one there might be literally no one in Sesat still eligible to get a teleport. Also I'm only mostly sure my family won't be tortured to death if I can't placate every idiot who killed their slaves to avoid freeing them and everyone who ever happened to be casually cruel to someone else's slave, right now, but, you know, I am mostly sure of that."

"I can buy you personal space rings. Six, or seven?"

He snorts. "I do intend to try to get everyone, but yes, that'd be a start. They'd need to be the sort that can turn invisible."

"I can ask Nelen to turn them invisible, if that will do."

"It might. I'm still... I don't want to give the impression that I have one specific concrete plan all worked out, I'm contemplating several and accruing resources in general and some of those resources might be redundant in the end, if that informs what you want to do here. I do have one thing it'd be cheap for you to give me, though, I want to know if any of the escaped chattel slaves are trustworthy and potentially useful and I don't want it known that I want to know that."

"I believe an attempt to find a cultural consultant turned up someone successfully and I believe that most of the citizens who used to live in Sesat were slaves at that time, but I don't know if that specific individual was a slave."

"Can you get me more information on the cultural consultant? I will need specifically a former slave - or I could maybe make it work with a current slave but that would be harder - for this one specific thing that will be a lot harder and less pleasant otherwise. Also, do you think Nelen would make a funny face if I gave him a slave as a present?"

"I can't contact them directly but if they're interested in more work of the same kind they'll get a bulletin, which I can put up or you can. He would certainly make some kind of face."

"I don't want to be widely known to be interested so you should be the one to put up the bulletin. I also don't want Nelen forewarned but that's absolutely not for strategic or tactical reasons at all and if it seems strategically useful you should ignore what would be fun for me."

"Well, I don't have to ask him to turn the rings invisible immediately if you want to wait and do it yourself. Can I honestly describe this as 'consulting'?"

"You can, though it might be one of the more stressful examples of it. And I only meant I don't want him forewarned about the fact that I might find it expedient to get someone free by passing them off to Nelen and would find it gratifying to see what kind of face I could get him to make about it, but I suppose I might as well keep everyone I can in the dark about everything I can for as long as possible on principle."

Tarwë puts "consulting-adjacent" on the bulletin. "Noted."