"You are not immortal now," says Lazarus, peering at the vampire. "You... I think that's about eleven hundred years? One thousand one hundred and... fifty or sixty? I could probably find out more precisely if I spent a lot of time looking at vampires but I don't especially want to spend a lot of time on that. That is a very arbitrary number. I mean, it's calculated in an extremely orderly fashion, but the only reason it's your lifespan is because the magic says so and it could easily say something else instead, such as for example infinity. I'm very tempted to make all vampires immortal. Is there a good reason why I shouldn't make all vampires immortal?"

"I - I think that would need to be cleared with the pontiff!" squeaks the vampire.

"Okay," says Lazarus. "So do that, please. And, um. Probably you should have some way to contact me when you have an answer. Mial, help."

"You can send me a letter," says Mial. He provides his address.

"Well. I can see magic and I'd like to look at a vampire biting someone at some point, perhaps a few times with different species, so I can see the magic recalculating lifespan and figure things out about how and why it does it," he says. "But that might not be the sort of thing one bothers the vampire pontiff about, I don't know. If it isn't I'm sure I can find that some other way. If they want to know what I have found out after I find it out, though, they are welcome to ask. Going through Mial is a very good way to get in touch with me."

"...so," says Mial, "it's looking like I probably won't actually be able to design and implement third-siahrs by the end of this meeting. But I think I still want to figure out at least what fraction of them should randomly turn out to be uniques - does one-fifth sound reasonable to everybody as a totally arbitrarily chosen number? And the egg size thing, I want to figure that out too, I don't think we had figured that out nearly well enough before the relevant expert vanished although I suppose the only thing she actually had to contribute was 'make the blasted eggs smaller' and I have certainly taken that advice to heart."

"One-fifth sounds okay, but will this just apply to everyone except greens?" says the copper miracle. "Short shrift to greens."

"Yes, short shrift to greens, but green-group uniques do happen to be bloody terrifying in a way the rest of them aren't," he says. "I don't have a good answer. Someone could ask the current green-group unique for an opinion, I suppose."

"I could go ask her and come back," says Korulen. "What exactly am I asking her?"

"Does it seem more fair to have third-siahrs hatch uniques at the same rate as other colour groups, or less frequently because they need so much more careful handling? Is she willing to install safety measures in new green-group uniques as they come up? Does she have any other commentary on the subject of uniqueness in green-group third-siahrs? Mention that third-siahr uniques will get their unique powers at age ninety-five, that's relevant."

"Actually I guess I don't have to leave to do any of that," Korulen remarks, and she tilts her head, and then reports: "She definitely thinks you shouldn't make a whole ton of people with the same powers as her. If you do it anyway she'll install safeties and if you do it carelessly she, uh, might want to install safeties on you. She says if you're concerned about fairness you could give some green-groups partial sets of her powers which aren't strictly so dangerous, especially if they don't come in until ninety-five, or if you're particularly miraculous you could just make them all require cooperation on the part of whoever they're being done to."

"I intend to be extremely responsible with my miraculous powers and should give your mom no reason whatsoever to interfere with me. Having green-group unique third-siahrs come in at the same rate as everyone else but require target cooperation for their mind magic sounds like an excellent plan." He alters the list item about uniques appropriately. "I am very miraculous."

"Consensual green-group-unique-style mind magic across the board is much, much easier to specify than consensual mind magic except for some particular set of things that might work in funny ways and have unclear boundaries," says Mial. "And I don't see an especially good reason to spend time on the fiddly details to make green-group unique third-siahrs slightly less constrained in using their magic to do things they could also do just fine using different magic."

Nobody has any great objection to that.

"I can't get ahold of one of all of the magic in the world in a week! That's tight even for getting one of all the magic in the world practiced or possessed by sapients!" objects Kaylo.

"You can get ahold of a substantial amount of magic in a week, I'd hope," says Mial. "And I definitely expect that in a week you can nail down a good estimate of how long the project will actually take you. I don't intend the next meeting to be the last meeting. If I'm not going to get this project done within a day, I might as well take plenty of time on it and hold more meetings to give more people a chance to contribute."

Kaylo grumbles under his breath. There are no further objections.

"All right then. Meeting over. Hands up everyone who wants a copy of the list, if you don't want one and don't have any post-meeting business you can go," he says.

Most people put up their hands.

Everyone with a hand up gets a miraculously conjured paper copy of the list on the chalkboard.

And then most of them leave. Sashpark (still a large snake), Finnah (still a bird, still sitting on Mial), the nameless spelter, and Aurin stay. So does the green man. He's looking at Finnah, who is not looking at him.