"Great. I can also just... look at them... if everyone's doing things more important than playing tour guide?"

"Trusting you enough to hire you as a clerk does not mean trusting you enough to hand you the keys to sixteen houses and say 'come back when you've picked one'," Vosce explains. "And we're assuming, maybe incorrectly, that you don't know the city very well and so might get lost trying to find Hyacinth Lane."

"Oh! No, that all makes sense. I didn't realize the houses would be locked, and you're right that I don't know anything about the city... and that could go badly, because I have none of my Arcana to guide me, and if someone tried to hurt me I couldn't cut them... it's going to take me a while to remember how to be a human child. Arguably I did very badly at it the first time."

"Sure." He's leading Ed down a series of labyrinthine hallways that probably make lots of sense if you have time to stop and look at a map. "I didn't understand most of that but just so you know, there are laws against hurting people and they're generally followed, at least around here. That's not to say that no one ever does anything stupid, just that, well, if I had a kid brother your age I wouldn't worry about him getting mugged in the street."

Neither did Peter, he does not say.

"Thanks," he says instead. "I'll try to be less paranoid."

"Oh, you know, it's not that you shouldn't think about how to handle yourself in bad situations at all, just that the kind of bad situation you're in for if you wander around Skygarden by yourself is more likely 'drunk guy needs me to know all about his rock collection and won't go away' than anything where a sharp object figures into your answer. I mean, I suppose I could've stabbed him if I'd had a knife, but then I'd be the one doing a crime and I don't have time for that."

"...huh. I don't know that I'd consider that a bad situation anyway, unless I wouldn't know if he'd try to hurt me. I like rocks too."

"Well, then maybe you'll be fine. Or maybe you'll be afraid that drunk people talking about rocks will get violent unexpectedly. I guess I can't rule out that he might have, but he didn't, in the end."

"Yeah. You never do really know. ...it'll probably be easier to relax around unpredictable drunks than. People who are too nice. But I think if they're really nice they can deal."

Is that the sound of administrative actions he hears, so that he doesn't corner himself into explaining how he died twice today? It should really be that.