Élie is, at that moment, trying to teach Ines that her toes don't go in her mouth when she's just been in the mud. 

Oh, we're probably supposed to get him some musty old tutors who make him memorize things until he can't fit anything else in his head, but I wouldn't like that, would you? I was just thinking we'd give him as many books as he likes and see what he's interested in. 

Well I don't know, I never had any musty old tutors who made me memorize anything. Except for the woman who taught me remedies, arguably. I also didn't learn to read until after you met me, although that seems to have worked out pretty well, too.

Rahim likes it when I read aloud to him, and he can already recognize almost all of his letters. I think he'll have it down soon. 

Oh, I'm sure! - well actually I'm not, I have no idea what to expect there, but I do expect that you know what you're doing much better than I do. I'm awful at teaching, apparently, the apprentices complain about it.

I guess I was just idly wondering whether we had any particular ideas about what he ought to learn, before he grows up. I always figured I'd let my children wander around until they were any use at farming or chores, and then see that they understood both how to grow crops and how to be decent at their father's trade. But you're a wizard, and I'm a - whatever exactly I am, professionally - and neither of us grows any crops, so I'm not entirely sure that this plan has any remaining connection with reality.

Why not let him learn whatever he likes? It's only languages we'd want to be sure to start early. I do try to speak with them both in Azlanti, but we should probably find a real dragon for Draconic since we just can't make some of the sounds and it's probably easier when you're not just learning it out of a book. I don't think there's any need to worry about mathematics until he's a few years older unless he's very advanced with his cantrips, I've always believed the practice and theory should go together. Oh – do you think we should teach him to write, or just let him pick it up on his own once he's a stronger reader?

I genuinely have no idea which of these things people do pick up at their own pace, without being taught. I learned to read and write when Wishbone taught me, when we were living in Alexandria. 

...I suppose I did, in practice, pick up almost everything that I learned as a child fairly independently, and before it would have occurred to my parents to make a fuss about me making myself useful. But - I did it by copying what my parents did, and he can't copy most of what we do. I'm not sure what it does to a child, when all the labor their parents engage in is this - impenetrable.

Well, my parents are accountants, and I think I turned out alright. But – what did you learn as a child? 

Everything that anyone around was doing, more or less. Spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidery, dyeing fabric, cooking, laundry, caring for animals, piloting riverboats - not far, I'd just tag along when people went to the next couple towns sometimes. What Saira knew of the gods, I used to fight my siblings to carry the water because I wanted to ask her questions. Planting and harvesting, I'm no good with a plow but I do know what you're supposed to do with one. How to find useful debris that the river washed up. Taldane, but not until I was a teenager, we had no use for it before the first Galtan refugees showed up. Just enough math to buy and sell things, when I was old enough to make anything worth selling. And eventually I learned to make paper, but not until after I married Tariq, and I didn't have time to get very good at it. I guess there are a couple other crafts I tried a few times and knew I could get better at with practice, and half a dozen I never tried, but where I spied on the people who did them, and thought I could probably figure the rest out if I had to. But I ended up going for spending all of my time making clothes, since it paid best.

It felt like everything that ever came up in the world, back then, but very little of it ever comes up now.

It might be good for him to know how to do something ordinary, at that. Carpentry or blacksmithing or – probably not paper-making, since if I get Fabricate down to fifth circle there might not be very much of it – or dyeing or the like. I suppose I've been assuming he'll be a wizard, but a child ought to know he has options. Of course we can't send him for an apprenticeship, but I'm sure a tutor might be found. 

Can we not let him apprentice anywhere? I suppose he's an obvious way of targeting us, but we can't just keep him under guard his whole life about it.

And send him to live with some master who expects him to jump when he calls, and beats him if his work is bad and takes the credit for it if it's good, and give him half a day off every fortnight and probably make him sleep in some damp unhealthy workshop? I know we can't protect him from everything, but I'd hope we can protect him from that. 

Oh, if that's all you mean. Obviously you'd exercise some judgement in who you leave him with, and there's nothing to stop you from checking in on him while he's there.

I mean – I don't want him to learn he should have any kind of master at all. 

Well, I suppose we can leave it up to him. But - do you really think that working under someone is always awful, something people shouldn't tolerate? Quite a lot of people work for me, you know.

Well, one can be an employer without dictating where your workers go and with whom they speak and when they eat and sleep and practically when they breathe – and then make them pay for the privilege! Apprentices aren't like ordinary workers. They can't leave when they like. In fact in Absalom I think they can't leave their apprenticeship at all without paying some abominable fine – which we could, it's just the principle of thing. They're not free. Besides, at the end of it, what have they learned? How to carve a perfectly exquisite cabinet just exactly the way their master did it, and not a plane or a joint different. I think – 

– I won't be too awfully disappointed if Rahim never learns a trade, or can't speak any language except his own, or even if he never picks up magic. But I'd feel I'd failed him as a father if he ever starts to believe he's not his own master.

And I'll feel that I've failed him, if -

Hm.

I can't think how to say this without sounding like I'm taking issue with your entire philosophy of parenting, or in any kind of organized way at all, but it isn't meant that way. My thought is that - the world is not made of people who are perfectly free. We, perhaps, are as close now as any mortal comes, but ordinary people don't live like us, and we accomplished it by being capable of providing for ourselves. I value being someone who can provide for myself very, very much. And I value knowing how ordinary people live, even if I don't want to live the way they do. I think that one of the worst things I could do to Rahim - at least of the things that are likely to happen, if I don't pay attention - would be to raise him in such a way that he is not capable of providing for himself, and does not know how ordinary people live, and does not feel that he could bear to leave us or our protection, if ever he had a reason to. I do not want to raise a prince who thinks himself too good to earn his bread, or who one who thinks he can't, and is afraid to try. The thing that I most want him to learn is how to take care of himself, no matter what happens to either of us, and no matter what we one day think of him. 

I don't know exactly what the law is in Absalom. I guess I probably ought to. But not everyone does apprenticeships the same way - not that I'm going to claim that you can leave them whenever you want in Mut, since, you know, the whole point of an apprenticeship is that you're not yet capable of earning your bread. But - I don't want to tell him - I am not at all convinced that tutors are an adequate substitute for seeking out a master craftsman who is actually practicing their trade. The best people in any field aren't going to work as private tutors, they're going to work at what produces the most value for society! I certainly don't privately tutor anyone, I'm busy! And anyone who wants to learn what I do is going to have to learn it by working alongside me, because I'm not going to stop working.

...also I do in fact have apprentices, and I'm kind of confused about how that fact fits into your opinions, but - firstly if you think I'm doing something wrong I want to know, and secondly if you don't think I'm doing something wrong then there must be a version of the system you approve of, but thirdly this is all sort of a tangential point from - I actually do feel quite strongly that I want Rahim to be able to take care of himself and not rely on me forever, and that requires being capable of earning money somehow. And I don't want to tell him that he shouldn't pursue mastery of some skill in the way that he judges best, and I think it's quite likely that for many skills, the best path to mastery is some kind of apprenticeship.

If they really want Rahim to learn how ordinary children live, they could kill him and send him to the boneyard for a few days.

He's not going to say that, obviously. It is a cruel, ungenerous though. He'll spend an uncomfortably long moment trying and not quite succeeding reformulate it into something he isn't ashamed of. 

I know perfectly well that most people in the world aren't free, and if I didn't think I couldn't do better than that for my children then I'd never have had any. Maybe the only way to earn an honest living is to submit to years of – of spiritual subjugation. Certainly my own life has given me no evidence to the contrary. But I do hope that in between all the other impossible things we do every day, we can devote some time and effort to determining if our son might become a productive member of society – if that's what he wants, of course – without crushing his spirit just the same as everyone else's.  

I don't object to Rahim knowing how to support himself, though I can't say it's as important to me as it is to you. I did just say I'd like him to learn some useful trade – and if he happens to develop a passion for cabinetry then I'm sure the most talented cabinet-maker in the world earns less in ten years than either of us does in an hour and we can just pay him to move to Diobel and take up education full-time. It can't possibly matter in any practical sense, because I'd be shocked if any of our children aren't capable of earning his living as a laundry wizard by the time they're twelve. None of them will ever be without money, or the means to earn it. The thing a master can never give them – the thing I think we both want them to have is – 

– let's not say freedom, we clearly mean different things by it. Independence of mind, perhaps. We both want to raise a son who doesn't need us. I think it matters infinitely less by what means he might hypothetically one day make a living if by some wild fluke he ever had to, then that he grows into the sort of person who might look at his parents, who are arguably the two most powerful living people in the world, and even if he's weak and unskilled and helpless – because compared to us, he will be – and decide to break from us if his conscience tells him that he must. 

Sure. But - those are very much related things, aren't they? A person who is materially dependent on their parents can't safely leave them. It takes much more courage to leave a situation when the alternative is - not just starvation, but a vast unknown space, a world where he would have no idea how to take care of himself or whether he could - than when you know precisely what your alternative is, and know that you could handle it if you had to.

I don't understand why the only means of teaching him to earn a living is to send him off to some stranger to raise when he's barely old enough to form his own opinions. If you like, we can set him up copying books and cleaning clothes for his board as soon as he hangs his first cantrips. It's not glamorous work, but you might remember that it was enough for me when we first met. 

I don't think it's the only means. I didn't apprentice anywhere, and you didn't apprentice anywhere, and we're both doing just fine. I just don't want to discourage him from it if he decides that he wants to learn from someone who's the best at something we don't know anything about. If he wants to learn medicine or wizardry, fine. But if he wants to learn - I don't know, painting, or weapon smithing, or cooking, or alchemy, or law, or architecture, or anything else he wants, then I don't see that we ought to forbid him from learning from the best, and in many professions the best are working alongside apprentices.

It's fine if he doesn't want to do that, too, as long as he's aiming himself towards something. But I don't see why we have to tell him he can't.

I don't think we have to tell him he can't either! You seemed very concerned he'd never be able to fend for himself if he didn't. If he's thirteen and has his heart absolutely set on it, I wouldn't want to absolutely forbid him – but it's so young to sign the next six or seven years of your life away. 

I was arguing against you saying we couldn't! I'm not going to make him apprentice somewhere, as long as he's learning some useful skills. - I'm not going to make him apprentice anywhere even if he isn't learning any useful skills, I'm just going to separately be concerned about that and want to place him some circumstance where he'll see why he would want to. 

Thirteen's a little young to live with a stranger anyway, I think, and also pretty young to enter into any kind of formal agreement that someone is going to enforce on you for six years. It's fine if it's someone we know, I think, although really I wouldn't want to leave him with someone we didn't know at all anyway, I don't see why we can't get to know someone before we leave a child with them.

Is there anyone we do know you'd want to raise our children? 

If they were old enough and really wanted to, I think there are lots of people I'd let them live with. I don't know why we'd send them to live with Ishani or Saira or Shawil on professional development grounds, but I wouldn't worry terribly about them as long as we could check in with them once a week and see how they were doing. There are lots of people who work for the hospital who I'd probably let them live with, except that that's medicine, and not very relevant to learning things that I don't know.

I was actually thinking of leaving them with Fatima for some length of time when they were older - not years, of course, just a summer or something - if I didn't have any better ideas of how to expose them to something closer to ordinary existence by then. I'd check up on them while they were there, of course, and I wouldn't do it if you weren't all right with it. But - it's not good for children to only spend time with one household, or to only ever have a couple of adults to look up to. And I don't think it's good for them to only see the world from one vantage point, especially if the vantage point is as odd as the one that we have.

I'm not - incredibly attached to it, if you don't think it's a good idea. It was just something I'd thought about. 

Oh. 

I don't have any strong objections to letting them live with Fatima for a few months, when they're older. You're right that it's probably good for them to see how most people live. 

It's only that I think most people are quite thoughtlessly cruel to children. Not that I think poorly of your sister. It's very hard to improve upon the manner in which we ourselves were raised – if I've been able to, it's only because the standard was exceptionally low – and I've yet to encounter the society whose method of raising children is satisfactory to me. I don't want them to grow up being always punished, threatened, put to work when they're useful, kept out of sight when they're not, told that the highest virtue is obedience – treated as the raw material for their future selves.

– So, yes, I do want our children to grow up differently from everyone else. I've seen what happens when parents bring children into the world just because other people are, and raise them the way other people do. When I was a little boy I promised I'd be better than that.

That makes sense.

I guess I think that - obviously we are going to try not to make the mistakes of our parents. And I appreciate that you think about this, and are watching out for it, and take that so seriously. But - we are also going to make different mistakes than our parents. Our circumstances are different, and we can't see every mistake coming before we've made it. But we can - think about the ways in which our lives are different, and try to avoid the worst potential pitfalls of the way in which we're raising these children, without actually having to make all of the mistakes we might have made.

The new mistake that I am most worried about making is - raising children who don't understand how to work, how to reach, how to accomplish what they set their minds to, either because they think they're too good for it or because they don't believe they can, and I want to go out of my way to try not to raise children who are helpless. And I also think that there are lots of mistakes I'm making that I can't see, and - if I'm not equipped to teach them something, or you're not equipped to teach them something, then I figure that having other adults in their lives gives them more people who they can look up to and learn from. They'll have to exercise judgement about which things they keep, of course, but it's easier to do that than to go around inventing everything from whole cloth, I think. So - that's why I want them to experience some of how other people live, and have mentors that aren't just us.

But I'm not overly attached to any specific way that might look, or any specific age we have to let them leave, if they want to. I suppose by sixteen or so I'd think it wouldn't be fair to force a child to stay, if they wanted to leave and had a reasonable plan to study under someone else. Waiting much longer than that seems like an unfairly late start, if it means they'll hit the point where they're ready to be adults, and then need to study for two more years. But - sorry. We don't need to figure this out now.

He's quiet for a while. 

I – 

– I suppose I am being very unfair to you. 

Well, she'll have long enough to start silently kicking herself.

Well, I probably am, too. I'm - sorry.

We really don't need to talk about it now, if you don't want to.

Let's talk about it tonight, when we're both in the same place? I love you.

Sure, that's fine. I love you too.

She'll make it alllmost an hour before checking whether that's a suggestion not to talk at all until tonight, or whether talking about unrelated stuff is fine...?

What's on her mind?

Oh, honestly nothing, it's just mildly uncomfortable not knowing whether it would be a bad idea to say so if there were.

He likes to hear what she's thinking about.

He's going to be sort of quiet, though.

Well, she'll probably end up being sort of quiet too, then, and only occasionally comment on things.

She's back late; the children are probably already in bed. She'll let the apprentices run off to their rooms, telepathically let Elie know she's home, and - not bring anything up until he does, this time.

He's in his room if she wants to come up. 

She does.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm sorry I spoke harshly with you earlier."

Shrug. "It's okay. I was sort of barreling ahead. I think this is obviously really important to you, and - well, I want to try doing a better job listening this time."

"I know, and I do to. It's just – 

– it's hard when I'm this scared."

" - yeah," she says, as if she's also scared, which she's not, really. "Uh, do you - want a hug?"

He would like that very much yes. 

"I think we're just borrowing trouble, trying to decide what Rahim ought to be doing in ten years. We'll know so much more about raising children then. And he'll be able to tell us himself."

"That seems true."

"And at the same time I think writing it off risks masking some real fundamental disagreement between us about – what children need, perhaps, or how it's acceptable to treat them."

He is going to try putting his head in her lap at this point. 

"That also seems true." She pets his hair.

"And I don't think I can possibly be an authoritative source on either."

"I am not sure there are any authoritative sources on that. Erastil, maybe, but I imagine you disagree with Him. I'd like to hear what you think anyway."

"Thinking might be too dignified a word for what I'm doing just now. When I imagine exposing our children to hardships we could spare them from because it might help them when they're grown, though, I feel despair. They can learn to obey and sacrifice and suffer when they're old enough to understand what suffering is. There will never be a shortage of petty tyranny. What's the use of all the power and all the riches in all the world, if we can't spare them that?" 

"Well, I suppose exactly how I feel about this might depend on what counts as a hardship."

"That's an area where I'd like to be very conservative."

"...well, uh, at the risk of arguing again, I think that not having any hardship in one's life until the age of twenty is probably bad for you. Although it also sounds fairly impossible, at any level of resource expenditure, so maybe I shouldn't be as worried about that as I apparently am."

"I'm not trying to dodge the question, Naima, I swear, but when I ask myself how much hardship's involved in an ordinary childhood I only have my own to go by." 

She frowns. "Well, that does admittedly seem like a poor benchmark."

"Gods. I don't think you'd ask me to beat them for not obeying us quickly enough or forbid them from talking or send them off to some horrible school when they're seven, but – 

– Ordinary parents strike their children and tell them not to speak unless spoken to, and they give them masters. Maybe if I knew more ordinary children I'd be able to accept those things. As it is, despotism doesn't look more appealing to me for being watered down. I don't want any part in it. I don't care if they fall out of trees or find themselves crossed in love – the world can be the architect of their misfortunes – but I just can't be. I couldn't bear it if in twenty years he thinks of me the way I think of my own father."

She pets his hair for a while and sighs.

"I am not actually sure that we disagree on anything? I mean - I'm sure that we disagree on some particulars, but I'm not sure that our core concerns here are fundamentally at odds with one another. I don't think it's very important to strike children or tell them not to speak unless spoken to. I don't think I fully understand how you're using the word 'master', and will set that aside for the moment. Of course there are things that I'll want to forbid them from doing or require them to do, for the sake of safety or their future well-being or occasionally even politeness, but I don't think the things I'm picturing are - very similar to the things that you're picturing. Or maybe they are, I don't know, but - since I think you agree that it is sometimes necessary to overrule toddlers, I think we can discuss individual cases as they come up."

"The important thing to me is that they know how to take care of themselves. That they feel equipped to solve their own problems, and have the skills that they need to do so successfully. And - I think that requires leaving them with problems to solve, and not swooping in and giving them everything they want, even when we can. Which isn't really at all rooted in trying to fix the deficiencies of my childhood, it's - sort of the opposite? There were a lot of things I really didn't like about my childhood, and that I don't want to make my children deal with. But it certainly left me equipped to solve my own problems - with a shove in the right direction, anyway - and I don't want to change things in such a direction that my children aren't. I don't want to rob them of the chance to grapple with things that are real and useful and in only their hands, or to develop the skills and the strength of character that can only be developed that way, and I'm worried that being an eighth circle caster and richer than kings might make that a very easy trap to fall into."

"I'm worried we're going in circles. I – 

I suppose it's far too late in this conversation to try not to sound pitiful. Will you forgive me if dig myself in a little further?"

"Of course."

"In that case, I think there's a great deal of disagreement on what sorts of problems a child ought to be equipped to solve. I don't want to be purely reactive about this – I agree that our children should be able to support themselves. I want them to be the kinds of people who believe that no secret of the universe is too difficult for them, and that no kind of useful work is beyond them, or below them. All that matters a great deal to me. 

And there's this word in Chelish. Babyish. It means just what you'd think, and it's used for everything. Crying out. Complaining. Objecting when someone cheats you. Asking a question about something you didn't understand. Asking for help – anything, really. Schoolwork, a broken arm, your sick baby, it doesn't matter. Self-sufficiency is an unspoken tenet of Asmodeanism: needing other people is shameful, showing that you need them is absolutely beneath contempt. I don't want to say I'm concerned we'll raise them to believe this, so much as explain why it's painful for me to make their lives more difficult when I could make them easier." 

" - oh."

"I was wrong before, I am also reacting to how I was raised. My parents wanted me to be able to solve problems and do useful work, but they did not imagine getting along without other people as something that it might be necessary or desirable - for girls, especially, but maybe to some extent for everyone."

Slight smile. 

"I think it would be very strange if either of us weren't. 

...Have I mentioned, recently, that I'm glad I married you? I do trust your instincts here more than I trust my own."

"Well, I'm glad to have your trust."

"I'm happy that I married you, too. Happier than I thought possible, sometimes, tiredness with work notwithstanding. And I guess I'm thinking now, about - how terrifying it was, when I was doing everything wrong, ignoring my parents and not having a husband, in order to end up here. I'm so lucky, you know, that it worked out? And so - bull-headed, and risk-taking, and arguably insane, and probably wouldn't be here, being happy, if not for those things. And I guess I'd like for our children not to have to be so terrified, or quite so bull-headed, when they decide to chase their own priorities in some way that looks obviously stupid to us. And I know you do, too, but -  it's obvious, really, when you look at it like that, why I'd think about material self-sufficiency, and you'd think about conscience."

"We really do want the same things for them."

"Yeah. I think we do. I'm not entirely sure whether we disagree on how to get there or on - emphasis, mostly, but I think we're targeting very close to the same thing, here."

"Emphasis, I think. Maybe before we fight about apprenticeships we should think about what we want Rahim to learn while he's still five years old."

"That does seem a better place to start."

"Thinking about what you said, though, before I lose the thought - I obviously want our children to feel that they can come to us for help. When they're five, and when they're fifteen, and when they're grown. But I also don't want them to feel like they have to, if they don't want to, and I think that goes even in situations where they do need help from someone. It's - less likely that they'll end up feeling that they have nobody who can help them if they've spent some time with several adults, and I think that's another reason why I don't want to adamantly keep other people from helping raise him. ...maybe that is part of what I want him to learn when he's five. That there are lots of people who can help him if he needs it."

"I want him to learn that to the extent that it's true. I trust our household and your sisters and Catherine – mostly, maybe more with our children than with her own – and the Inquistor, of course. Certainly there are many other people in the world who would be good to him, but not so many as the ones who'd want to use him to influence us. I'm not sure he can reliably tell the difference at five."

"Oh, sure. I'm not imagining we stop using discernment in who we leave him with."

"I wish there was anyone on that list who really wasn't our client or our friend first – well, there's Nefreti."

"I think that's fine, at this age. Eventually we might want to go out of our way to give him the chance to meet people we don't know, but he's five."

"It might be good for him to know Tariq's parents better, at that. But you know them more than I do."

"Oh, I probably should take him there sometime. I suppose they're fine."

"We don't have to if you don't like."

"No, they really are fine. It's just awkward. And time-consuming, I guess, if I'm the one taking him. But I agree that he should get to know his grandparents."

"I suppose I could take him. I'm more flexible with my time, and anyway my work can travel." 

"That would be temporally if not socially convenient. Maybe we can visit them together, the next time we head down to Mut, so it's less out of the blue."

"I'm not really sure what else someone learns at five."

"I could read and figure and write rather badly, and understand Infernal reasonably well. And then there was a great deal of memorizing."

"I think I was starting to spin thread that no one else wanted to use, and would tag along to carry water without actually doing very much carrying, and helped with laundry sometimes, and occasionally fished things out of the river that nobody else found half as interesting as I did."

"You still take him river-combing, don't you?"

"Sure. Every Sunday."

"Does he find much? If he's anything like you, it might be good for him to find some way he can really be useful."

"Not much that's really valuable. Shells, rocks, glass, bones, pretty pieces of trash. But that's how it is at first. He finds plenty of things he likes."

"I wonder if he'd like to have something just the two of us did together, though I'm not sure what. Maybe I will try to teach him to read." 

"I'm sure he would like that. It's less urgently necessary, perhaps, since you're here more than I am, but you know he adores you."

"He doesn't get as much of my undivided attention, since the baby." 

"Well, he doesn't need as much undivided attention as he did, now that he's five. But he'd probably still appreciate it sometimes."

"I don't really think there's much else one really needs to know at five, unless you feel strongly about the spinning."  

"For a boy? Not unless he wants to."

"And what are boys supposed to learn?"

"An excellent question. Farming, I think. Animal husbandry. Boat care, if you've got a boat. Tool maintenance. None of this is very relevant to him, I guess. It'd be good for him to know how to take care of animals, but he already has the turtle. And of course at five - I really don't think most five-year-olds are very much use at all, I was just in a hurry to be older."

"Weren't we all.

....I could get him a boat. I think he'd like it."

"Probably. Do you know anything about boats?"

"I've been on a riverboat plenty of times, haven't I? It doesn't seem complicated."

"Well, I support you in trying to figure it out. I don't know what level of success to expect, but I trust you will not let the child drown."

"I do such a good job of that, don't I?"

"You do. I'm not worried. I am curious how it'd go for you in terms of other success metrics."

"I do genuinely think I could learn. And figuring it out together might not be the worst thing, at that – I don't want the children to grow up thinking I know everything."

"That's fair. All right. I'm sure he'd enjoy it."

"...do we think there's anything else in this space that we ought to discuss that isn't getting ahead of ourselves? Or - does any of this really matter, at this point."

"I think – well, I'm back to where I was at the beginning. Once he can read, we'll see what he's interested in and take it from there. Of course I think a child ought to know something of history and mathematics and natural philosophy and poetry and music and – oh, economics, probably – but all of that can wait. I can't think of anything less likely to instill a love of scholarship than forcing it on him against his will." 

"All right. I'm fine with that, then."

"We can revisit the apprenticeship question when he's much, much older. And maybe after we've agreed on which institution we're actually talking about."

"All right. I am not particularly worried about it."

" - hey, wait, I did have something else to say about that! You can't just say that being an apprentice is awful and nobody should do it and not address the fact that I have apprentices who live in our house! You have to tell me whether you think I'm doing something wrong!"

He looks utterly baffled.

"....But that's not the same thing at all!"

She looks very unimpressed.

"Elie. Telepathic though I might be, I do not automatically know what the bounds of your objections to apprenticeships are. As a person with apprentices, there is a certain central instance that I think of when discussing it. Now, thinking on it, I suppose you would probably not fail to inform me if you thought that I was doing something horrible, but I would still sort of like to make sure."

"...but we were talking about masons and joiners and things! You don't have apprentices the way anyone else does. You don't do anything the way anyone else does. It's not as if there's a guild of" – helpless gesturing –

"Anyway, it isn't the same."

" - I wasn't just talking about masons and joiners, but I admit that I'm not sure whether that was in any way made obvious."

"Well. I don't think you're doing anything horrible. If I had my own apprentices I might not place so many demands on their time, but it's nothing you don't ask of yourself, I don't object to it. You don't treat them like servants, you don't set them to all the most menial work, you wouldn't punish them if they fail to treat you with deference – and if they wanted to leave, you'd let them. 

I suppose most master craftsmen aren't worse than most parents – but I wouldn't leave Rahim with most parents, either." 

"Well, I wouldn't leave him with most master craftsmen. - anyway, thank you."

"And I certainly shouldn't like him to be involved with any guilds."

"Sure. I am at least Abadaran enough to feel that nobody should be prevented from doing honest labor that people will pay them to do."

"Or restricted to methods that were outdated three hundred years ago."

"That seems like a very silly thing to enforce even if you're going to have guilds, I thought they were supposed to enrich their members at the expense of other people. - anyway, I expect that most people will be no good for our son and that we therefore should not entrust him to most people. But I don't think I am, actually, the only person who uses apprentices the way I use them, and now that I say this it's very obvious that I was talking partly about myself and you were talking partly about members of the Galtan masons' guild, but - well, sorry for that."

"Anyway, I think we'll be fine." 

"We don't have a Galtan mason's guild. We abolished them. Even Cyprian wouldn't bring them back.

...but, yes, I'm not worried about Rahim."

" - well, I suppose if you were partly talking about the Chelish mason's guild, that's really even less mysterious. - which is not to say that I don't think the issues you raised apply to apprenticeships in lots of countries and lots of contexts, or that I think you're wrong to be worry about it, because I don't, I'm just feeling mildly silly now."

"Is that so? Well, I think we are both very silly and shall probably raise a large number of very silly children, however we do choose to educate them."