"- Can gods pay each other to do things or not do things? I wouldnt've thought gods would care about money." 

"They don't pay each other in money, but yes, gods at least where I'm from can pay each other to do or not do things, not with money but the way people bargain at market when they each have something the other wants, or with an abstraction of that which I suppose is sort of similar to money but doesn't involve minting any physical coin."

That sounds like it should make sense and is probably really important but also it's so confusing.

"...Um. I don't know whether or not that means I should work on plans to fight Vkandis? Someday when I'm more powerful, I mean, it'd be dumb to do that now." 

(And there are other things she wants to do, of course, but she doesn't particularly expect Iomedae to care about the River Kingdoms, and it does seem like Iomedae is a good source of advice and she'll get more of that advice if she figures out how to help Iomedae with her plans.) 

"I don't think you need to work on plans to fight Vkandis. If He needs fighting, and I can't handle it, I'll build a church that can carry on the work for me. It sounded like you were quite busy already."

"...Yeah." 

She will try very hard not to be insulted about the fact that Iomedae doesn't need or want her help. It's just true that Shayeen isn't powerful or clever or experienced enough to be useful – and also she has a lot of problems she feels personally responsible for that she has to deal with before she can reasonably go fight any gods, however much those gods deserve to be fought.

"Thank you." She can't quite bring herself to bow but she'll nod with more respect than she usually does. 

"Thank you. Did you find what you were looking for, in Urtho's Tower?"

"I didn't know I was going to be in Urtho's Tower! I'd heard of it in ballads but I didn't even know it was a real place until - this happened. Um. I - the thing I wanted was to learn how to fight battles but it seems like it's important to know how to read, and I didn't before, and they've been teaching me here. So I think that's– I wasn't looking for that but I think it's good. I guess." 

"Knowing how to read is very helpful for winning battles! There should be accounts in books of lots of battles that have happened, and who won and lost and why, and you can learn a lot that way that you'd otherwise have to learn on the field with a lot of people dead. Now, not everyone who tells how a battle went is telling the truth, either to their audience or to themselves, but there are some bare facts of the matter - like who won - that you can fill in missing pieces of the picture from."

"...Oh. I - think I understand. I - don't want to make stupid mistakes if I - could've learned from books how to do better than that."

She is maybe slightly clinging to Need. Insofar as one can cling to a sword. 

"We all make mistakes. It's impossible not to. But the more you know, the faster you can fix your mistakes, and the more you can learn from them."

"- Yeah. ...The hertasi I talked to said people made a lot of mistakes, in the war that happened here. That Ma'ar did and Urtho did too." 

"Yes. I think knowing more history would have helped both of them to better guess where their choices were taking them and decide more carefully if it was where they wanted to go."

She nods, very seriously. 

"...There's gonna be a war. Where I'm from. But there are lots of wars, it just - keeps happening - I think maybe going back and winning the war wouldn't stop there from being wars again later? Is making there be fewer wars that start at all the sort of thing you can learn how to do from history?" 

It is! It's in fact something she's thinking about a lot right now, because she's working to make the peace between Tantara and Predain a lasting one instead of just a 'until the next provocation' one. Marriages across the border help, trade relationships help, border lords who won't gain in status and power by war, and who have a lot to lose by it, help. Religious orders dedicated to the cause of peace help, as do religious orders with churches in both countries but a common administration, ideally outside either of them, which has an interest in its people not killing each other. The commitments of specific powerful people to the peace - which is to say mostly not to lend themselves to a war that their side started - helps. Larger, more consolidated countries can help, if they have good lines of communication internally and a good administration and aren't thrown together sloppily. They can also make things much worse if they make lots of borders disputed that didn't need to get into that state. She's not considering merging Tantara and Predain, because Tantara is big already and they do loathe each other, but she'd be contemplating it, in a place with a lot of scattered small kingdoms whose borders had moved a lot in living memory anyway.

She has a lot of examples, some of them examples of the thing she just said and some of them counterexamples. 

She thinks that wiser leaders go to war less often even accounting for everything else, and has occasionally contemplating arranging Wisdom for rulers as a matter of course. Some magic favors defense over offense -- protective spells that make fortresses much easier to hold than to take, that sort of thing -- which is good for creating conditions where wars rarely are to anyone's advantage. And then there are things that keep wars small, skill at peace negotiations and agreed-upon laws of war and trusted third parties and so on.

Shayeen listens to this very intently. 

"I think maybe the River Kingdoms have the problem where there are a lot of small kingdoms and the borders change a lot? ...Um. I don't actually have any idea what you mean by arranging wisdom for rulers? I though being wise was the sort of thing where you just had to - be old and have seen lots of things - and I don't know if it's good for all the rulers to be old since then they'll die soon?" 

"In my world there's magic for wisdom, which is what I was contemplating giving rulers. I think it is actually often worth rulers being old, even if it means more frequent transitions of power, because young people are very much more reckless, and have worse judgment in their advisors and less time to have formed justified confidence in anyone." 

She has examples of this, too.

Shayeen listens and looks thoughtful, and maybe also kind of frustrated.

(She wants to be Queen! And she doesn't want to wait until she's old, even if several people now have given her convincing pitches that she should wait until she's older than she is now.) 

She will continue to have lots of questions and want to poke more at all the examples Iomedae is bringing up; if Iomedae wants to do anything else today, she's going to have to extract herself at some point. 

She will regretfully eventually extract herself to check if the prisoner exchange proposals have been reviewed and if everyone is comfortable with them.

They've been reviewed! By a lot of different people, including Urtho and all of Urtho's generals and some of Urtho's other trusted advisors and several hundred of his hertasi (who have surprisingly helpful and well-informed comments) and Skandranon of the gryphons (who has mostly very unhelpful comments) and High Priestess Thaliss, who has been working with Urtho on plans to have the temple of the Nameless God provide and transport food and supplies as war reparations. 

Urtho would be comfortable moving ahead now and sending the proposal to Predain. 

Iomedae loves it when other people are useful. It's not at all the kind of thing you can rely on. She is very grateful for the suggestions and they can send the proposal off at once.

Urtho's people are so happy to have been useful! Especially the hertasi.

They will get the proposal sent off to Predain. 

And they will quickly and efficiently - within the candlemark - have confirmation that Predain accepts the agreement. Ma'ar only requests one modification to the recommendations, which is that he would like Tantara to either provide mages for security when they're picking up the gryphons, or else agree that Predain can leave their compulsions in place and have Urtho's mages remove them once they're back on Tantaran soil. He would prefer the latter but somewhat doubts that Urtho will agree to it or that Urtho's mages are actually very familiar with removing compulsions. 

They're not but it's not like compulsions have very much power or explode if taken apart clumsily.

Urtho would like Iomedae's advice on this question, just in case she thinks it's obvious in one direction or another. 

She'd honestly prefer that Urtho's people remove the compulsions. They will need to be checking all of the released prisoners for compulsions anyway, right, and - she does get the sense that some gryphons might engage in an incredibly ill-advised attack on their former captors while being released.

Urtho had not actually thought about this but they would. 

...Ma'ar didn't express the same concern about the mages that Predain is holding, and probably none of his people are very likely to try to Final Strike - and anything short of a Final Strike is probably not that much of a problem when all of Ma'ar's people have protective talismans and presumably the Tantaran mages don't - but on reflection Ma'ar may have just not felt like he had the leverage to ask for it?