"No. I wanted you to know what upset me, now you do. I understand why you feel the way you do about it."

"You do?"

"Yes, obviously. The whole point of rights is that you can't get them revoked by being sufficiently horrible; summoning people to a random uninhabited corner of the galaxy is a shitty form of problem solving that we have the resources to improve on, even if I'm more reliable at determining guilt than a jury trial - and we both know I am - systems matter and ad-hoc handling of peoples' lives creates problems and is a bad precedent to set if we're going to try to fix the whole multiverse and you're not wrong but I wish I hadn't told you."

"Okay.

Sorry."

"It's okay." He turns back to his computer.

Cam starts to unfold a wing, stops, folds it back up, gets up to go.

These sure are some interesting magical supply charts.

Cam leaves him be.

From Timothy's perspective it's twenty minutes later when Mirelótë knocks.

"Come in!"

She comes in. "Hello - Cam's in a mood and won't tell us why, do you know what it is? I don't need to know, I just want to be sure whatever it is is under control."

" - it's under control, yeah."

"That's good. - Are you all right, do you need anything?"

"If you have suggestions on cheering up Cam I didn't in fact intend him to be upset."

"Without knowing what's going on I can't tailor suggestions very well."

"Somebody wrote Minor about a vigilante summons, Minor and I looked into it, it was a - messy situation and one we decided was not a priority - she'd summoned him because he'd raped a seven-year-old, he was annoyed that people were still making a big deal out of that - anyway Cam reported it to the police and to Ganymede and was disappointed in me for not doing so and it transpires that we have a disagreement on reporting rape cases to the police without the consent of the victim. - I don't think you should do that, not if other people aren't in danger -"

"That... doesn't explain the mood he's in."

"I said I wished I hadn't told him about something that happened to me a while ago."

"- that would do it, he seems to feel - mistrusted."

"I was kind of expecting him to say he wouldn't do that to me but instead he said they endeavor to anonymize the trials, which was not especially reassuring. But it's not - I don't distrust him, I just wish I'd never mentioned it."

"I'm sure there exist reasons to wish that which aren't related to mistrust but they're not obvious to him."

" - it would help if he actually reassured me that he wouldn't do that, so I guess you could say that to that extent it's related to mistrust? But it's mostly - I haven't told my brothers and the reason is that they'd be tempted to do something about it, and even though I could talk them out of that it would be - exhausting -

- as long as it's just people who agree it's obviously my right to decide how to handle it - then I don't have to be constantly thinking about how to perform being-sufficiently-competent-to-handle-this so they aren't tempted to override me - once my privacy here is a special license being extended to me then I have to think about it all the time and I really hate thinking about it."

"- I'm not sure I follow; if he says he wouldn't do that to you does that not just constitute a special license?"

"Yes, which is why it's not as good as never having told him in the first place but still better than being uncertain about whether he'd do that."

"Ah. I don't expect it of him and can suggest he tell you so."