"This is one of the ones with a kid and sending her home is out of the question, right?"

"We are not enforcing any rules by stealing peoples' children except, like, the rule against abusing one's children."

"Okay. But having her in Godspring seems like a bad idea. How old a kid did she get, will they have trouble adjusting if you make her move?"

"Three months, so no. How do I make her move."

"You dismiss her temporarily and resummon her somewhere else and give back the kid there."

"Is she holding the kid at this moment."

"I mean, I was thinking you would want someone there to collect the kid immediately upon dismissal, which implies enough travel time for the answer to be out of date."

Sigh. "All right. I will head out and do that. Where are the rescued slaves, is she continuously supplying them or anything -"

"They are," conjure conjure, "in a cave in Thrazen with a lot of nonperishables so probably not frequently."

"I will talk with Thrazen's consul about how to not have this be a diplomatic incident and whether they want them and if not maybe they can go immigrate somewhere that doesn't have slavery anymore. Where're we putting the demon?"

"Somewhere with humans and no tempting crusades, I guess. Or not necessarily humans, she might get along fine with Sanity orcs or something. You can offer her a range."

And off to Thrazen he goes.

Thrazen and Birand have an agreement to return escapees. The consul is pretty sure that as long as that happens it won't blow out of proportion.

And if that's not possible? Could they pay compensation instead?

If the slaves are dead they're supposed to return the bodies and pay double market rate, triple for any slave that's had a household job for more than five years.

Great. How much does that come to?

The consul tots it up and names the figure. Uh, the bodies part is actually important, Birandi and their funereal customs, heh heh.

They can have bodies.

He heads over to Alatess and her three-month-old's.

She has the windows open. "Whooooo's the cutest! It's you! It's you!"

Knock knock.

"Let's go see who's at the door, cutie-pie!" Door opens. "Hullo!"

"Hi. I was just speaking to the consul of Thrazen. He thinks we can avoid a stupid pointless war if the slaves are returned. I'm - not going to do that. But you have to stop."

She bounces her baby in her arms. The baby shrieks and grins toothlessly and grabs her hair.

"If you don't want to return them why didn't you want them let go?" she says with an obstinate set to her jaw.

"Didn't want them let go because it would cause the war that it is now threatening to cause, or cause Birand to refuse summoning and then their whole population dies forever. Don't want them to go back because I bet a place that nasty punishes escapees. I have no idea what I'd do if I actually had to choose between letting everyone in Birand die and returning them their slaves, but I don't, so I'll cheat. One of the terms of this summons was that you'd abide by local laws as best you could. You're not doing that, so you can't stay here."

She wraps her wings around herself, engulfing the baby. The baby bats at them and her hand can be seen stretching the membrane of batwing.