"And reading and writing and math and a new language and how to use currency and how to interact with a centrally administered country is a lot to learn!!"

"I guess. I can't remember before I could read. In two languages. But I wasn't doing it age two."

"I was born around when Elves invented writing, I didn't learn until I was fifteen or so. It goes faster when you're older."

"Makes sense. Attention span, motor control."

"Yep. We did try an even faster human program, just in case we were still underestimating them, but people found it awfully stressful and lots dropped out."

"That's how you know you adjusted right."

"That's the idea! Lately I've been working on reconstruction and disaster relief."

"Lot of disasters to relieve?"

"Kingdom's big enough there's usually a drought or famine or flood or blizzard somewhere."

"You got anything applicable to evacuating a punctured planet?"

"Maybe. How many can a mage move at a time, how's information primarily disseminated -'

"Fastest painters can only get ten done before the blood's too dry, most people more like five or six. Couriers; used to have a good mail system but no more."

"Elves can do broadcast with ten miles of range among strangers, if that'd help with coordination. Does the humidity and so forth affect how fast blood dries or is it a magical phenomenon independent of the physical one -"

"How much that would help depends a lot on how it reacts to gates, Gatesnest is scattered all over the planet. Humidity does affect it, do you have a humidity song? Normally for complicated spells we just, like, boil some water in the same room, but fuel's a little harder to come by lately. I'm not actually sure there's much time to be saved by increasing batch size, though, you still have to paint everybody even if you only chant half as much."

"Weather songs would do humidity. I can't think how to make the painting faster, one assumes it's cheating to have - rivulets in the floor you can pour the blood into, or something -"

"It's not cheating, but the spell doesn't get rid of the blood so you have to clean it up every time unless you do more magic to disappear it."

"Doesn't get rid of it but keeps track and disapproves of reuse?"

"I guess if it didn't dry you could reuse it. You can reuse ash parts. But you still have to paint everyone who's being transported."

He nods thoughtfully. "How are you checking if they're mages?"

"- oh, mages can identify each other by looking."

"- huh. What does it look like, that's interesting..."

"It's... looking is the thing we have to do to tell, it is not visually sensed. It's a weird thing."

"If I think of anything that might help I'll let you know about it. People can't bring any stuff? Or has a version been developed that allows for that?"

"People can bring stuff! I arrived less than stark naked, the orcs had letters. It's more complicated to bring cargo that isn't on somebody's person but they figured it out."

"Oh good, that'll help. We could send care packages but risks drawing Enemy attention."