"There might be a lot of students."

"I will make the fast ones tutor the slow ones. But there's still only one of me."

He can hardly contest that. "How long before they start being able to do impressive stuff?"

"What counts as impressive?"

"Things we can't do at all without magic and would want to do - things people'd pay a lot for - things that might be dangerous -"

"If you specialize in healing and have a good healing affinity you can get to the point where it's safe to work on people in a - season, more if you work in Earth. The senses don't take long to learn to use at all but they can take longer to use efficiently and accurately, especially shadow scrying."

"Can people without a Shadow supplementing them do Shadow transit?"

"Nope, not even if Shadow's their good one."

"What specialties might let reds run around unnoticed -"

"With elemental help they wouldn't have to be mages, even, just go with Shadows places. Without - Shine if they were really good, Earth if that turns out to do hair color, maybe Lightning if by 'unnoticed' you mean 'so they couldn't be caught', you'll notice somebody speeding along like that but won't know who it is."

"Maybe we could make them wear ankle bracelets."

"Magic would make it pretty trivial to get out of one, but I guess then you'd know who it was? I don't know very much about how Lightning could be used to fool electronics, for obvious reasons."

"I think the ankle bracelets they use for green and blue prison sentences notify them if it's taken off, rather than being impossible to take off, but I'd have to ask."

"And Lightning might fool it if they were good with it and it has the applications I'm vaguely speculating about because my world doesn't have electronics."

"Yeah." Frown. "There'll probably only be the one crop of red mages - once they figure out where it's coming from it's all right -"

"Unless they decide to risk it and get seaweed or whatever it is for you somehow."

"If people think reds are sneaking mage nutrients because it'll mean you'll steal off their kids -"

"I would steal more reds if I could but that might not even be the only reason to do it, it wouldn't be that hard to hide one and they seem to kind of get murdered a lot anyway and a mage has some chance of protecting themselves and others. I wouldn't gamble on it if I were red unless I was already very wedged but it would have made sense in Biyan on a long enough time horizon, say, if I'd been red in Orvara after they did their test city I'd do it -"

"I'd do it. I'd also dye my hair and lie - it's not even that uncommon, I suspect -"

"Then why are people like they are, shouldn't they all have keeled over from horror by now?"

"They don't know it."

"But probabilistically -"

"People aren't great at following thoughts to their logical conclusion and also they think - and the reds help them think - the reds are cowed and not very smart. And there are a lot of safeguards, a red couldn't do it without outside help, and they can't imagine why anyone would help. It's like - sure, anyone could take a gun and go shoot up an elementary school, but no one ever does, even though there are so many of us, and helping a red disguise themself is - on that scale of horrible - to most people."

"...even if it happened you can just take a long shower, that won't fix shooting up a school."

" - if there were a red going around in disguise you would have to throw out most of your possessions, demolish some buildings - showers would get you clean but everything they had touched -"