"I'm not sure. You don't sound sure either."

"I'm not, I just think that's the direction the presumption should be."

"I'll think about it."

"In Eseo free people can be enslaved for crime or debt."

"Most slaves here are descended from people conquered in the Straits wars. Used to do criminals but they got worried about slave revolts."

Nod.

"I supported that change. I - now we kill some people we'd have enslaved, and that's worse, but it's also less - self-perpetuating -"

"How did the slaves equal votes start?"

"Also around the time of the wars. They were divvying up power among victorious generals and there was lots of instability and intrigue and people raising private armies and this was a satisfactory compromise - some people like it because it means any free person can sort of buy their way into the nobility, other people like it because in practice very few of them do and the ones who do have necessarily gotten as wedded to the system as the rest of us -"

"Besides the piercings and the torturing escapees to death what are the actual legal limits on how you have to handle slaves?"

"You're liable for things they get up to, you need to keep their paperwork and be able to produce it in a reasonable amount of time if there's a dispute, if there are more than ten in one place they need a supervisor, there are provinces where it's illegal to teach them to read or write but this isn't one..."

"What are supervisor requirements?"

"Free, an adult, findable within an hour if someone comes by and demands to know where they are."

"Hm."

"Eseo doesn't kill escapees, right -"

"Not generally."

"Why?"

"...it's particularly horrible and I wish it weren't the law?"

Nod.

"What do you think about letting people buy themselves out and buying more?"

"Expensive, time consuming. I was thinking something along the lines of manumitting a fraction and giving twenty to each of those - probably manumit the women who are still having children preferentially - and then if you have a case to make on the politics end, well, the votes still exist, at least for the time being..."

"- ooooooh. If they don't immediately free them or let them leave the country, that being what I think most people'd be tempted to do."

"They won't have the money to free them or immediately leave the country. You will have time to make your case. Lay the groundwork first if you like."

"If I gave you twenty people would you keep them so you could vote?"