"If I back off it will never work, ever again, every future attempt to get reds better integrated is going to be compared to Allocator Savo's Complete Disaster, if it can just be salvaged somehow there's chances at more progress someday -"

"Do you have a plan for how to salvage it?"

"Some people - not enough but some - they get hungry enough or they just really want some specific food - it's the purples resisting the most, almost all the greens are eating it -"

"And now we're importing food."

"It's going to collapse, I'm probably going to have to turn up at the Tower of Rainbows in the end -"

"Tower of Rainbows?"

"- it's where we do executions. I was getting enough death threats I had to put my husband and my niece up in the mountains but I can't just run off to the mountains with them if Governor Riado decides the populace needs to see me dead to calm down."

He seems to be on several different levels unable to think of anything to say to that.

"If you'd like to be introduced to some other people here while I'm still around to make introductions I can at least do that."

"I - 

- WHY IS THIS PLANET SO APPALLINGLY RUN?"

Savo winces when he yells. "I'm - sorry?"

"It's not - your fault - look, Elves had failed to communicate that we are sure as fuck not working with anyone who executes their citizens only because it had not occurred to us that anybody might."

Blink. "There's a couple of smaller countries that don't have the death penalty except for reds and greys."

"Then maybe they will cut it out for reds and grays and get all of the next thousand years of technology because no one else can behave themselves or maybe everyone else will figure out how to behave themselves, once Yavanna's here it at least should not be hard to establish we're worth getting along with. What a horrifying - what a wasteful - the kid who explained your side of the war to my father, is he all right -"

"- the - oh - I'm sorry, no, he was caught with a dejammer he wasn't supposed to have, we didn't want to make it more difficult to extend the ceasefire by circumventing their communications jam and there was a very clear instruction - we think they didn't notice but the kid knew he wasn't supposed to have the dejammer and he didn't have an excuse -"

"So you're going to murder him?"

"- I didn't personally -"

"I am going to take a break," he says, "and talk with you in an hour. Are any murders scheduled before then."

"I... can look up the Tower schedule for you..."

"Why don't you."

"- nothing till tomorrow afternoon unless there's some kind of emergency."

"Under what sort of circumstances does the state carry out emergency murders."

"Uh, riots, mostly."

"Okay. I - probably don't need an hour, just - ten minutes -"

He leaves.

Allocator Savo goes back to being stressed out in privacy.

The grey escort does not want to leave Caranthir by himself.