Nelen looks something up real quick. "- yes, we can do that if you prefer it to cash."

"I am sure it would take me no more than an entire several days I could otherwise spend on anything else to figure out how to turn cash into spots in classes. Hm. Is there anything - reasonably useful defensively in case Iral gets a lot of magic and then breaks things off with you and attacks?"

"We're not giving them things of massive offensive potential - except, I guess, vampires, which vampires of your own would manage handily."

"I wonder if the Star-of-Stars will want to become a vampire. I was thinking more along the lines of things that would let us keep people out in the first place rather than winning against individuals in single combat, maybe... I don't know if a fairy could do what I'm thinking of here... Shame we don't own the entire planet or we could just move it to Revelation, it's possible that would solve basically all of our problems."

"A fairy could do it but fairy powers wished on are not among the low-screening options. I can... ask my counterparts if they would like to pitch moving the entire planet to Revelation? It's possible no one would mind. Maybe astronomers would mind."

"I'm not sure how well that will go, the stars are of religious importance and Sesat has been getting less religious but I don't think that's true of Nosa... I'm not sure they wouldn't respond to being asked with 'oh, how about Hex instead' and I don't think that would be nearly as good an idea, in fact I think being in Hex would mostly serve to make our problems worse. And I'm inclined to think any stars suffice but I think there'll be disagreement even in Sesat and I don't know what view will be most popular further away. Hm. Why is it that you'd screen someone wanting to wish on fairy powers but not forbid people having children with basically unpredictable traits in Revelation?"

"The enforcement prospects are very different - we try pretty hard not to be in a situation where we're dictating who can and can't have children, and people already lived there - and also, being a real daeva has some important other features on top of just having daeva powers; in particular they can be summoned under a binding, instantly dismissed back to their corresponding world by killing their summoner if the summoner won't dismiss them or that's too slow, and will have plenty of time growing up to acculturate to the multiverse."

"Is it illegal to run buses to the daeva realms?"

"No, some daeva do leave the usual way, but it's possible to summon specific ones under a binding if there's any reason to be concerned."

"I see. But whatever you do at the bus stops is adequate to keep dangerous fairies from using them if you feel the need, and yet you can't simply teleport any problematic people with wished-on fairy powers to Fairyland, for some reason?"

"If a fairy is problematic, we summon them, under a binding, even if they then go home to Fairyland."

"Is taking a summons involuntary?"

"Not usually. If you put out several hundred of them it becomes difficult to refuse them."

"And does it still work that way if a fairy you didn't previously know to be dangerous leaves Fairyland on a bus and then commits crimes?"

"No, that sort of thing would have to be caught by a precog or we'd need to get help from a Vala or something."

"And just how much more docile do you expect our children to be, that you would be unconcerned about them and yet worry so much about us?"

"I... think that's the wrong way to think about it? Docility, I mean. Most people don't commit crimes because they have better things to do, not because they're - domesticated, or something."

"And yet you have no confidence in your ability to give those of us who already exist better things to do."

"I wish I were but the cultural stuff seems very entrenched."

"I see."

They get close enough that it makes sense for him to call out to the girl brushing a horse near the buildings, asking where her father is.

They succeed, in the end. Feris rounds up nearly three hundred people who want to cut in line to be able to raise the dead, getting them a substantial fraction of the slaves in Sesat, and gets them most of the rest for Dwarven artificing lessons. Some people want cash instead, or other magic, or weirder things than that. The people who want to torture their slaves on principle more than they want anything Vanda Nossëo has to offer are mostly doing that already and the slaves are mostly too far gone by now to be economically useful again without magic healing that they probably won't get. There's a lot of last-minute gifting of slaves to people with more aptitude for or interest in the magics they're getting.

They have dozens of people who want to learn to make artifacts. Feris suggests privately to Nelen that they really ought to be split up as much as possible, force everyone to get used to being surrounded by some different culture.

Nelen agrees completely. It's a popular trade - some people just really like working with their hands and making physical objects as methods of becoming unfathomably rich, and some people take the intro course and then don't go any farther but are still useful cultural ballast making it the case that there are more than 300 total classes available now. This class has a couple actual Dwarves, a purple, a human, and a fairy.

Eli of Tana's Spire, one of Azan's spies, is thoroughly relieved to be done with the part of her life that involved owning other people. She leaves the estate in the care of her steward, who will only be gone a little while to gain the power to resurrect the dead, and goes to learn to make artifacts. All her classmates are so cool, that one has purple hair, she wonders what flowers would pair best with that shade...

The instructor, a Dwarf, comes in. "Hi, folks," he says. "We'll get started in a bit but for the time being I want you all to make yourselves nametags, I want to be able to identify you if you fuck up later on in the course." He passes out blank stickers and pens.

The purple haired one writes Sivni.

She watches how everyone else uses the pens first and then writes Eli and then starts doodling chives in the space remaining.