"- so, are you ready to teach them how to make guns? It's all right if you're not. We didn't promise we would even if all this was convincing."

"I think I'm not ready but mostly because - if we teach them today and then realize tomorrow why that was a mistake it's hard to fix. And that's just going to keep being true every day - maybe we should still wait a day or two, though, because one day really isn't that much time and we could have missed something obvious to check -"

"And if we tell them we're not ready and they take it badly that's - also good to know. All right. Not yet." Probably tomorrow but they won't say it.  

"While we're in Absalom I want to try to find a spellbook for sale though. I know it's not - the most useful thing I could be doing, it's not - special - anymore, but I want it anyways. And they say they're paying us."

"I think it's a good thing if you can do your own magic. It makes you harder to trick. And - you like it and you're good at it. Of course you should get a spellbook. If they sell them."

They find one, eventually, from a scrollmaker. Alfirin requests it and an empty spellbook and some inks. (She tested the ink in her old spellbook, back on earth; it had enough unexpected metals and compounds in it that she's pretty sure spellbooks need a special ink and don't just use whatever's available.)

Cansellarion pays. "So you want to be a wizard?" he asks.

Alfirin resists the impulse - it's quite a strong one, really - to tell him that she already is one and see if paladins get the same look on their face that high school chemistry teachers do. He's prooobably not secretly an evil paladin but if he is it would be better if he didn't know. "Yes," she not-technically-lies instead, "When I'm older, but I should probably start learning soon, right? Maybe when I'm done with the other things we're doing and I have time for it I'll try to learn to cast some of the spells in this book."

"I think it's very hard to teach yourself. Maybe we can find a proper wizard for you to apprentice to, when you have the time."

"We're not ready to teach you the weapons yet," Iomedae tells the President. She is trying to conceal that she's terrified a little bit, because it's embarrassing, but she's not trying as hard as possible because firstly at some point that feels like Lying and secondly because this is in fact a sort of test and it is relevant if the President wants them to be afraid. "We do have more things to teach for the rest of today and the next several days."

A few days is unlikely to matter, for the strategic picture, as long as they can keep this secret - and they probably won't start the big obvious things like trying to build blast furnaces in the next few days anyways. "Okay," says Jan, "Let's get started on whatever's next for today then."

Well, that's not more irritation than the President seems to feel at everything. She nods. They get back to work. 

Regroup, that night, to see if either of them thought of anything else. "...I was planning to give this to Taldor, to beat Tar-Baphon with, and we knew what they'd do after that would probably be horrible and horribly stupid."

"I don't think Lastwall will do worse than Taldor, probably. I don't know if military dictatorships fight more stupid wars than monarchies."

"I don't know either. I think we probably shouldn't do it if we are expecting zero stupid wars but - rich modern worlds do have fewer wars, on the whole. And Lastwall's small, I don't think they could conquer the continent and hold it just as a matter of the industrial base they'd be starting from - I'm rationalizing that it won't be so bad because I want to do it, aren't I."

"Yes, you are. It's okay, though, I think it's the right call, I haven't thought of anything else to check."

"Right. Well, in the morning, then, unless some god warns us otherwise or we think of something before then. What's in your spellbook?"

"All the cantrips the old one had, and a couple more. Mage armor, disguise, comprehend languages, charm person, some combat spells, and… detect doors."

"...under what circumstances would anyone possibly need a door-detecting spell."

"I cannot imagine any - maybe it also does secret passages, like in movies, where the hero touches the right book on a bookshelf and it swings open - maybe people on Golarion build a lot of those for real."

Iomedae feels uneasy whenever she notices how successfully America acculturated her. This is her world and she would like not to feel like a foreign explorer doing anthropology in it. Well, not exactly. Maybe it wouldn't feel like this if they'd succeeded at really going home.

"...I would have a lot of fun exploring this place for secret passages and also they absolutely have guards at our door."

"Yeah. At least - I don't know how much to change what I expect based on today, but I think they'd probably let us leave if we wanted. If there was anywhere better we wanted to go." She hugs Iomedae, a little clingily. "Did you get a good look at any of the maps?"

"I'm out of practice at reading Taldane," Iomedae confesses. "Oppara's still there, approximately where I'd have expected it to be, and it's an option but - probably a worse option than this place. …I couldn't find Sarkoris on the map at all, not that we'd want to go there anyway."

She looked, though. That's sweet. "It's not there. I think. I didn't exactly know a ton of geography before I left, but - the countries that I think should have been close by are there, but then, if you look north of Ustalav and west of Mendev there's just - I think something horrible happened -"

"I'm so sorry. I - wish we could've come back at the right time."