Once they've been shown inside and announced and Elu has left, Feris asks the Star-of-Stars, "What fruits has Your Grace's command regarding slavery sentences borne so far?"

"No relevant cases have come up yet. Have you figured out the licensing for the truth spell, then?"

"No, but in discussing existing slaves I've talked the envoys into offering a price high enough I thought it might actually be worth it, though Your Wisdom would know far better than I. Might their owners be satisfied instead with the power to bring the dead to life?"

"And does that power not come with conditions?"

"Yes, Your Glory, they must swear that if they have cause to torture a person or slave to death they will not use the power of resurrection to help them drag it out but only their other skills that they have from study and practice."

"Really. I would sooner accept a power we can pass on."

"Your Majesty is right, of course, but I thought this would suffice for some worthless slaves, especially as, with this power, there would be no need to worry about the generation it was given to growing old and dying and leaving their grandchildren helpless."

"Without death, Sesat will grow."

"Of course, with free movement between Sesat and Vanda Nossëo it will grow even faster than it would by the bearing of children alone."

The Star-of-Stars gives him a skeptical look and Feris meets his gaze with calm confidence. The Star-of-Stars raises an eyebrow.

"I have also spoken with Ambassador Utopia about the future of the relationship between Sesat and those polities that make up Vanda Nossëo," Feris continues, "and I have no concerns about that matter and will brief Your Splendor on it after I am done with this, if that pleases Your Honor. I only thought that, as that relationship may endure forever but the power to raise the dead may be granted to as many as three hundred people as soon as tomorrow, it might be more pressing."

"Three hundred, hm? That is few, compared to all of the people in Sesat; it is also few compared to all the slaves in Sesat. And there are those with but one slave each, and those with many; would they have us compensate the former the same as the latter?"

"Perhaps those with many slaves should spread them around to the other members of their households, and to those they seek to reward."

"Perhaps." The Star-of-Stars turns to Nelen. "It is my recollection that Vanda Nossëo's envoys would prefer to buy all our slaves at once."

"Yes, that is correct, your beneficence. It's not limited to three hundred, that's just usually how many can be wished into the ability at once - multiple batches are certainly possible."

"And yet, I expect there are diminishing returns from the next three hundred with the same power. Well, you may begin with the three hundred for this batch, and then we will speak further."

"Your perspicacity, in proposing this measure to my superiors I will need to know if it will in fact constitute a step of buying all of the slaves at once."

"I have ordered that no cases for which slavery might be a sentence be tried while you and Feris are yet discussing the licensing of the truth spell." (Feris has in fact been making no effort at all to follow up on discussing that with the envoys.) "Now seems like a remarkably and almost uniquely bad time to try to conquer Iral. I do not expect us to still be in this situation nine months hence, and further I do not expect the slaves to try to increase their number. Tell your superiors that whatever incentives you may create, we cannot respond."

"Yes your brilliance." Nelen bows.

" - Do I need to wait for you to talk to them before we continue?"

"It depends on what the next steps are."

"...Trying to find people who'll accept your deal? What other next steps are you imagining?"

"We can do that before I write up a full report, though I should work on it in increments while we're bopping around. Where next?"

"I can talk to people in the capital and meet you outside the north gate. It'll take me a while, maybe you'll be done by then."

"Shouldn't take me too long. I'll meet you there."

Feris is mostly quick about it. He doesn't know as many people in the capital as he does at home, anyway. He's carefully ambiguous in his phrasings - "they'll get you into a batch tomorrow," he says, trying not to clarify if that means as opposed to next week or as opposed to never. Someone turns out to have already known resurrection was available and asks and he ducks inside to explain that he's come to a deal with Nelen to let them cut in line because it's faster that way - reluctantly confides that he can't explain to just anyone, but if someone definitely won't tell Vanda Nossëo or write it down anywhere ever and can hide their thoughts, well, okay, the truth is Sesat is the stubbornest country on the planet and all of Vanda Nossëo's leadership has staked their honor on never needing to use force to get concessions but this has already gone on a long time and Ambassador Utopia is really struggling and will look so much worse than all his colleagues who had the good fortune not to be assigned to the most stubborn people on the entire planet and anyway it's complicated but Feris can get concessions for Sesat out of this and Ambassador Utopia can report to his superiors that things are moving more quickly than they actually have been.

And he finishes talking with those people, leaves a couple of them planning to talk to a few others, finds Nelen, and says, "I want to see Leopard Hill next but how'd your report go?"

"It went fine; the Wish Triage office in Mîr has a slot held for us tomorrow. Also I have been firmly instructed to take a vacation once I can hand things off here."

"Went fine on my end too, I didn't have to talk to many different people and they'll divide up a couple dozen slaves between them. Can you take us a bit south of Leopard Hill, actually, maybe a mile south?"

"Yes." Pop.

He starts walking toward a small cluster of buildings some ways in the distance and gestures for Nelen to follow. "I'm going to just walk the rest of the way like a normal person, be less alarming that way. Have you got your list?"

"Yes. People can learn to make magic items of the kind they have in Ardas; this is slow but almost totally unscreened, the Dwarf way, Natsuko summarized it as 'they make sure you aren't a Sauron'. The Elf way humans normally can't do but the ability to do it - extra quickly compared to an unaided Elf, even - can be wished on; that's screened but it's a six-question quiz about what you plan to make. A lot of really expensive magic items are made this way. Not technically magic but as good as, in the Cube neighborhood people can use a technology called morph that lets you turn into any animal you've been able to lay hands on; that's completely ungated as long as you physically travel to Cube in the first place. If you want powers you can pass on to your children you can move to Revelation - or Space Arda - and have the children there, and they'll be daeva like Cassiel when they die. Also completely ungated. Similar deal for moving to Hex so your children can be spellbinders, or Dreamward so they can troport. It's possible to get gamete donations from Hazel wizards but there's not so much a formal process for that as an application you can fill out, I mention that for completeness. Back on the topic of things you could have for yourself: Lightly but not onerously gated is the opportunity to try to become an eclipsed - those powers only work in the Eclipse neighborhood and most people who try don't get them, it's random, but you can try if you don't have torture or mind-control on your post-joinup record. You do have to be joined up though. Anyone can learn to sing magic songs; composing them is also ungated; you have to be an exceptionally good musician, for a human, but it's not too terribly rare for a well trained human to be able to sing the songs usably and not unheard of for them to be able to successfully compose. That only works in Flat Ardas. For historical reasons turning into a vampire is only lightly gated, by a vampire precog, and that sometimes, though not consistently, comes with an idiosyncratic magical power of its own. There are a bunch of little things - there's a place you can freeze raindrops when they fall, that sort of thing - but none of those are sought-after on the market."

"If you can then teach other people to make magic items the Dwarf way, once you've learned it yourself, I think that will do nicely and we'll need to figure out how best to get people taught. I am somewhat concerned about the logistics of having children in Revelation or Hex or Dreamward or Space Arda, do the polities there accept non-citizen residents for the duration of a pregnancy?"

"Yes, there are specialty extended stay hotels for it."

"...How expensive is it to stay there without drawing the basic income? At the hotels or anywhere else if there's a cheaper way to visit."

"...it would be very expensive to stay there without drawing basic income or having a job in the broader economy. You can get financing help for powers you yourself are going to use to make money that will let you pay back a loan but you can't do that for getting powers for your children since they may not want to. You could probably find a campground for much less."

"So that's something that might be hard to do at scale until we have income from the resurrection powers - I was hoping for an excuse to send some people away now, but that's a different problem. Anyway, how would you go about efficiently teaching people to make magic items? Should we bring in a teacher, send people away...?"

"It may depend on how many students you want picking it up; bringing in a teacher would be more cost-effective if there were a lot of them who were comfortable mostly studying independently and only consulting him for some course-correction, and folding just a few into existing classes would increase linearly in cost but be cheaper if you're only sending, oh, twenty, that's just a guess but should be the right order of magnitude."

"Can we get you to pay for spots in classes for turning over slaves? Is that something I can reasonably start offering next?"