And did Waltana damage any part of the room?

Marra's Inquisition.

Kireh reads the papers. "Good. How did it feel to write out your thoughts?" Was it distracting? Helpful for focusing? She didn't actually intend for Waltana to write it all out, but she'll learn what she can from the accidental experiment.

Glass is already made from rocks, huh. If Waltana wants a tail and wings, Kireh will be delighted to feed her vanity!

"Do you know how long the cold will last? Will the deep earth stay warm that long? Can you make coal? Can you make a chemical device like the reversible chemical lightbulb, but optimized for heat, to be worn under clothing? How do you store heat, from a flame or otherwise? How is 'carbon dioxide' usually destroyed and 'oxygen' created? Can you grow plants in high pressure so ice doesn't form inside of their cells?" Darwin's a spark, she recalls, but unusually religious. Maybe actually more like a druid?

Kireh is supremely satisfied with her physical form - all marrenai are. But could she be even more awesome? Sure! It would be fun to fly again, although if she ends up with an underground shelter with humans bred to be small, wings might get in the way of slinking through tunnels. She'll start with some extra ears, maybe.

Outsiders have discrete varieties for some god-reason, with a gain in soul-strength typically used to transform into a different variety. Marra has only a few varieties and encourages more individual growth and variation - Kireh knows a cantor with a giant snake tail instead of legs. (Presumably this policy comes at a cost to Her, but She is the Awesome Diverse god of vanity, after all.) If Kireh gets wings, will she turn into a sietaziz? If she doesn't strengthen her soul, she's not strong enough to be a sietaziz... or if she keeps removing parts of her flesh, which is literally a mixture of her soul and Lawful Evil essence, and reattaching the parts after she heals, will she keep getting more soul infinitely? That can't be right. Probably pieces of her that are removed stop being part of her soul - her blood is useful for Infernal Healing but that's just the Lawful Evil component of it, right - and rearranging pieces of her while keeping them attached doesn't create more soul. Maybe someone will attack her shelter and she can fight them off!

She has not damaged the room, just rummaged through the piles of parts for the best bits, like the glass jars. "Hmm! Writing them out instead of just thinking was a little strange, like..." She had to make sure only DECENT ideas actually got written down, so it got rid of all the chaff and nonsense? That's not quite right... "I turned ideas over in my head until one seemed good. Just actually thinking about things for a set amount of time was new, too."

"I have no idea really, I don't understand climatology and all I can do to guess is listen to what the papers say. There weren't any good books on it. The deep earth will stay warm for, practically, forever. Earth is fucking huge, there's mountains of coal's worth of heat down there. That's what volcanoes are, do volcanoes run out? Charcoal is the state of the art for making coal... Plants consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen but it takes a lot of them, it's complicated and you want one sentence answers right now probably, uh."

Could she grow plants in high pressure? That might mess with the other mechanical systems, the xylem and phloem and transpiration... There's research on stimulating plants with electricity to induce high-speed growth, that might help with the oxygen too, or just some chemical process that does it. Might end up just being easier to draw in new air and use a regenerative heat exchanger to limit the damage...

"Hmm... Oh, this is for chemical work." She indicates the jars with wires and stuff. "Separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen, I wanted the hydrogen, you can burn it or use it in chemistry. I can take a shortcut in the rubber with it, maybe. I wasn't really planning when I built it." (Chemical bonds shifting and breaking apart, balances of materials...)

"Thinking about things for a set amount of time, meaning sixty breaths? How did that feel?" Was she really constantly paying attention to her breathing, or just counting at least sixty breaths?

It's not great that Waltana started a whole new project without 'really planning', but it's not the right time to comment on that: far too late to be a effective punishment and they'll have a discussion of strategy for using sparkiness later.

"I know a pilot for a flying machine. If my shelter is to be underground, I'll buy the IEC plans for the mining drill. I have almost made an agreement to get funds for my shelter, so for now, I want you to focus on things that would be useful for your engineering personally rather than products to sell.

I'll make some noise and ask you to move around and maybe I'll do other surprising things. I want you to keep concentrating, ignoring the irrelevant and moving when I tell you."

Is the stuff under the pillow still hidden?

The pillow and stuff under it is undisturbed.

"I kept wanting to move on but reminding myself not to. And trying to think of other things based on the same question It was infuriating, but strangely relaxing?" She was probably not constantly paying attention, at least at first, but counted the breaths later on as she got used to the exercise

"-Stuff for my own use? Makes sense. Maybe even skip selling the pressure cooker, I'm coming more and more over to the idea of using it as the centerpiece for chemistry. Focus on the work despite the distractions, you mean?"

"Okay." More writing exercises, then. "Yes, focus on your work despite the distractions."

For the next half hour or so, Kireh bustles around, gradually increasing the intensity of the distractions: humming to herself, "step to the left", tapping on Waltana's shoulder in time with the humming, "come over by the window", drawing the curtain, removing the curtain, rolling it up so it brushes against Waltana randomly...

When it's after 1:30 by Kireh's estimation, she packs up the curtain and sewing equipment. "Keep working. I'm talking, but keep doing what you're doing. When you can't get any further here, read the note on the bed. Keep working for now." Can Waltana take that in without falling out of her spark concentration?

She leaves the shilling coin from Mr. Cromwell at the foot of the bed, not touching the pillow, and the writes the note:

Buy a book about plant or human internal workings; a specialized engineering book, ideally one I can sell later. Study it until I return and write down any thoughts it inspires.

The question here is whether learning more trained-engineer knowledge helps or hurts. If Waltana gets better at intuitive engineering overall, applying the concepts she learned from the book in original ways, studying it is good. If her spark doesn't benefit at all, studying it is probably bad, especially if her trained engineering does benefit overall. If she gets better at using her spark but only for living things, Kireh will have to come up with another experiment to decide whether the trade-off is worthwhile.

Waltana makes some more changes, then starts testing the tiny set of stabilized arms, moving one and watching the small motions of another. Then she takes part of it apart, changes something, and puts it back together.

Following the directions is a lot harder than tuning out distractions. Either she's distractible and working more uncertainly, or she's extremely focused but doesn't seem to register the instructions to move, and grumpy if actually interrupted.

She closes her eyes for a moment, then reports, "I thought about the cool things I could do with such a book and now the spark wants it, so I'll remember. One you can sell later, though."

"I think practicing more would be good for you, later."

And now to the police station.

Carrying a rolled-up curtain.

"Ah, the mind reader. Why do you have a curtain?" The same front desk person who was here yesterday asks her, tiredly and making a face.

"I was hoping to mend it while I'm waiting before and between" interrogations "interviews, if that's allowed?

Also, while I imagine that Chief McAllen might already be planning to speak with me today briefly, I have several topics to discuss with him, some regarding our business together; and some unrelated, for which I will compensate him for his time."

"...It's a bit odd, but I suppose between interviews it's fine. Chief also wants to talk to you after, about continuing your services past the initial two days. It's doing wonders for our backlog already."

"Okay." Hopefully if it's 'doing wonders' they'll be willing to keep her on when she asks for substantially higher pay and shorter hours. "Do I need an escort to the interview room?"

"Yes, let's get to business."

The rules are the same as before, but there's specific lists of questions the interviewee agreed to ahead of time this time. They have fewer people for her to interview this time, a lot of them for minor disputes or incidents like accidentally killing a chicken or breaking a window. The officers want more time to focus on real troublemakers rather than minor ambiguous stuff. The most exciting moment is a man who swears his twin brother is the one responsible for a robbery- and isn't lying.

Chief McAllen will talk to her after.

"When you said you wanted to give me a list of questions to ask, I didn't realize the interviewees would know the questions ahead of time. I'm still pretty sure my perceptions today were accurate, and even if there was a single fixed publicized list of questions, it would still be hard to fool me, but I want to be clear that you're making a trade-off.

I assume that you want the suspects to be relaxed, and to feel the emotion of trusting you, me, and the police as a whole. Understandable as a way to make them more pliant, although distasteful to me. You're already in a bad situation if people are committing so many crimes with the expectation of getting away with them. There should be no hope of escaping punishment. If you can't enforce the laws with your resources, either the police should be expanded or the laws should be trimmed.

The instructions to the interviewees already say that I will not reveal off-topic information and that they will not get in trouble for thinking of unrelated crimes. Why is that not enough? Why do suspects fear that you might be lying about that assurance, such that restricting the questions and allowing them to prepare relieves that fear? Have the police of some other city broken their word, or made people regret contacting them? If I were her Majesty, I would consider such looting of the reputation of my government to be treason.

Anyway. Business.

I am willing to work another day for you on similar terms, but it is likely that my circumstances will change dramatically soon, making my time more valuable.

If you want to focus on speed at the cost of accuracy, I'm willing to sell my other mind-reading spells, the ones I can only do a few times per day. Today, I don't have any use for them, but in the future, I expect to value each spell as equal to an hour of my time. To effectively use them, the targets must not know the exact time I read them, and they must have been kept waiting long enough for their deceptions to falter. With a single use, I can scan a roomful of several dozen people - I'm not saying my true limit - over the course of a few minutes. Assuming that they are startled and don't deliberately let me read them, at least half a dozen will resist me. Trying to read them again will probably work, though.

I am likely to find lodging of my own soon. Are you interested in paying me directly to keep the same curfew?" Kireh doesn't mention running through the streets. She hasn't had to yet, and if she was ever in such a desperate hurry, her price to hold back would be steep.

"I'm likely to succeed at building my own shelter. You have a better grasp of Lawfulness than most, and I would like to hire you or otherwise recruit you. Are there others you would recommend for their Lawfulness? They don't have to be police." The official story is that there will be space for everyone, implying that Police Chief McAllen of Bristol will be, after the evacuation, Police Chief of some shelter holding refugees from Bristol. But if the sheltered population is much smaller, especially the criminal types, his new position might be inconsequential.

"It's actually to remove the chance for mistakes and bad incentives from my own officers. I expected your price to go up. You do have a point about enforcing a limited set of laws, though I consider myself an enforcer more than a sound designer of laws. Do you have experience with that sort of thing? I'll consider the shelter. I think the purpose of giving you a curfew has expired since people aren't bothering you or panicking nearly as much as I expected."

"You're worried your officers will take bribes to adjust the questioning? That's easy to fix, just have lots of people pretend to offer them bribes and punish the ones who accept, or have the people who do the questioning be separate from the rest of the police, maybe an order of secluded monks - well that might be hard to arrange during the ending of an Age - or at least have a large set of questions to draw from randomly. Whatever, none of my business. I don't want people damaging their minds trying to hide from me, but now that I'm on the road to getting my own shelter, it's an even lower priority than it was before, and I'm not offering you money to change your policy.

I have studied laws for Lawful people in general. I used to be a barrister in a specialized area of law that was not particularly Lawful. I frequently advise on ruling cults of Marra, containing people who are already Lawful or desperately want to be Lawful because they're already stuck as Evil.

I expect that my shelter will have some people who are pledged to me, and more people who aren't. I will recruit carefully, but expect some Chaotic and criminal members. I am confidant I can enforce my laws with random mind-reading, bounty-hunting, and police.

I intend to allow businesses to provide most things people want, with mind-reading to force fair prices despite monopolies. This keeps the laws simple. Instead of forbidding wasteful personal fires, we will charge for air and fuel, which you must not steal. Instead of punishing risky excursions, we will offer insurance, which you must not obtain by fraud."

The Lawful and useful will thrive. Those who are useless but pleasing in their vanity and obedience may seek refuge by pledging themselves to Kireh. The useless boring Chaotic people will die, but since they won't belong to her, they're not her responsibility.

"...Hmm. Thank you for your cooperation thus far. I will think on what actions of yours I would consider violations of the laws of England worth pursuing, if any. I don't think we urgently need your services in the near future, we've cleared out the backlog and established you as a known element."

"My new address will be on my advertisements, if you want to hire me again."

How's Waltana doing with the book? "At some point, I would like to try threatening you. In my world, people with unusual abilities - arcane engineers, prophets, disciples, warriors, artisans - get stronger when working desperately under pressure. I'm not sure yet if that applies to you, or if you grow through study or great projects or naturally with age or something else. Think about a punishment that would motivate you without risking serious damage." Because she doesn't have healing magic and doesn't know if Waltana's current afterlife is acceptable.

Kireh pulls three plain-looking bearings from under the pillow, revealing the other weird objects she got to inspire Waltana. "One of these bearings is ordinary. The other two I did special things to. What could you do with them?" One of them she prayed to Marra about. The other one she prayed about to Valmallos and Brigh, chanting the one formula she could remember from The Logic of Design (F=ma).

"How would you rule a shelter of your own?"

How's Mr. Cromwell's house? She repeats what she said to Police Chief McAllen. "I'm okay with the laws changing with changing circumstances, but the changes need to be announced in advance, and the standard contracts we encourage should have options to renegotiate when changes are announced, and have options for sudden deliberate breach with monetary penalties, which allows the parties flexibility if, say, we urgently need to hire a force to put down a rebellion. I don't really like this - I prefer deals to be permanent and inviolable - but I dislike tyranny far more. I will also promote hierarchical arrangements that I like better, but they need mind-reading to work, and so won't be available to everyone."

And finally she goes to the fighting ring, and stays late! She wants to get attention for her shelter from people who would want her protection, and to attract martial students who might pledge themselves to her. She moves quickly, making quick shallow slashes with her claws, twisting and bending to keep attacking while restrained, and once uses a gentle bite in a submission hold. She does not use any magic, not even Haste, and does not use her paralyzing venom. When she's down to about half of her health, she retires without showing the pain she's in, and mingles with the crowd, showing off her body and describing her plans.

Waltana has acquired a book on crop science, discussing the nutrition, structure, and lifecycle of various plants. This has apparently inspired three full pages of speculation about pure chemical synthesis of starch and sugar and drugs, no plants required. She is pretty skeptical about the idea of submitting to punishment- Though if she actually does get sparkier from it, it will have been worth it...... She can't tell the bearings apart at all in five minutes of investigating them, but will keep trying. She's not sure how she'd rule a shelter, it seems difficult since people like to argue and misbehave so much, maybe just make it convenient and laudable to help each other and inconvenient and punishment-worthy to be greedy or disruptive.

Marcus Cromwell has bought the house for 875 pounds and started moving into it. He is leery of a wholly market-based shelter and thinks running some things by fiat, or at least interfering in the prices and supply in some cases, would be better. He's unclear what exactly being pledged to her looks like. He wants a clause for 'emergency powers' in the charter to flexibly respond to crises, but it would need some pretty sharp limitations and consequences to prevent it from being abused. Announcing significant changes to the law on a delay and letting people out of contracts or other arrangements upon such if they wish seems reasonable.

The fighting ring is a raucous and messy and Chaotic place, dozens of men and women watching and betting on the fights. The announcers dramatically lie about her history and capabilities and cannot be convinced to stop doing this. She's a huge spectacle and the center of attention all night as a Real Fantasy Creature. Many of the fighters are intimidated, jealous, or off-put by her, but a few seem to revel in the challenge or the attention of the crowd. A major sentiment in the fighting rink crowd is distrust of the I.E.C, and people are interested in the idea of her shelter, if anxious and uncertain.

The next morning, eleven people show up at Cromwell's new house, wanting to get paying work and/or buy places in her shelter just in case. And one man loudly rants at the door of the house, complaining about how she must have cheated in the fight pits and that's why he lost his bets and now she owes him money.

The point is that if Waltana performs well, she won't be punished. Too bad that she's so Neutral Good, but if Marcus wants to put someone Chaotic on the council, and Kireh isn't allowed to appoint whoever she likes, Waltana might still be suitable.

Kireh is fine with making government-sponsored monopolies into official parts of the government.

At the fighting ring, she loudly corrects the announcer as much as she can without delaying the fights. ("I have never killed anyone. I've never even met the fae. I am actually somewhat resistant to a single one of 'poison, fire, falling, bad luck, lye, curses, and exsanguination' but I'm not saying which one.")

She screens the applicants for Law, Evil, and awesomeness. The ones who pass and want work now can talk to Marcus about shelter construction, except for one who she hires to move her stuff from the inn.

She can unilaterally accept a number of people into the shelter equal to the number that Marcus is bringing, right? "I'll sell you a spot for 500 pounds, lower if I like what I see when I read you. You can also pledge yourself to me, conditional on actually joining my shelter and this contract being legal under the relevant jurisdiction, which might or might not end up being British. I'll accept your pledge for free, if I really like what I see." She explains that she would have a duty to protect them, make them awesome and vain and epitomize their unique Lawful Evil selves, be clear about what she requires from them as their duties and what she does as a whim, and train them to shape others.

"I did not cheat, and I would imagine that if I did, you would not be owed money, and certainly not from me. What authorities would you recognize to resolve our dispute? ...how do you even think I cheated?" Perhaps he thinks she used mind-reading to pick opponents who appeared tough but actually were weak and afraid of her? Which she obviously didn't do, not that that would even be breaking the rules as she understands them. She doesn't say this, to avoid giving him ideas.

She visits Debra and Daniel. The plan was to get them used to accepting a paternalistic authority, but she's in a rush and will speak plainly: Would Debra be satisfied being the hero of a single shelter, piloting the airborne generator that sustains it all? Would Daniel be interested in having a genuine Spark-of-Genius create a way to store energy in his body, like fat but better, implanting a reservoir that could last him years? She would want him to work in her shelter in exchange, or pledge himself to her.

The glassblower can get training in exchange for glassware! The prospective engineer can talk to Waltana. One time, within this week, but maybe more afterward, or more this week if it's useful for Waltana's training.

How does Waltana like the new workshop? Here's all the plans Kireh could buy from the IEC. "Change of priorities again. Can you dig a shelter here? Anything that increases your effectiveness is still worth considering, and we'll sell plans for everything, but don't pick any projects to sell finished items unless the opportunity is incredible."

Does the library have any records of people talking to angels, or any other outsiders, or getting divine visions?