"If I think of something I want her to do besides that and need an extra voice I will think of you. Or if I come up with a particularly expensive idea."

"Okay. And let me know if she gets worse in any way, I don't know exactly what I'd do about that but more warning would be better."

"Are there ways you would expect -"

"I expected her to free everyone once we had the chance. But, uh, not specifically. Do you know anything about Malare's, uh - the woman he bought -"

"Rabka. She refers to herself as part of his embroidered musical instrument collection. He manumitted her daughter and tried to manumit her too but there was a block on it. I'm not sure if he is aware that he's eventually going to get her knocked up the way they're carrying on but she's happy enough."

Sigh. "Thank you. Anything else I should know -"

"...in what capacity might it be important that you know things...?"

"I could maybe do something about them, I could maybe guess at whether Amait should know about them, they're suggestive of problems here beyond the obvious one -"

"Atyel was here recently. No one cared to chance it, for whatever that tells you about conditions here."

Nod. "She's gonna die, they're looking really hard lately. Raised up a big army and sent it out there."

"Well. I wish her luck, but..." Sigh.

Nod.

"I'm not sure if Amait told you that I got a list of relatives the current slaves wanted bought and she got most of those."

"She didn't mention. That was also a really good idea, nice."

"Even if she's actually making up her entire project or it just fails, if they want them..." Shrug. "And if she's not making it up the extra will help."

"She's not making it up - she might be wrong about whether she can pull it off, and she might if she actually had to choose between owning slaves and not having power choose having power regardless of what she can get done with it, but she's serious about the project."

"The power to twirl the moon in the sky would be incredible and worthless."

"That wouldn't do it, it's power over people." Sigh.

"It's an Esevi saying."

"Ah." 

"The only thing that matters about having power is what you can do with it."

"I don't think she'd disagree with that, exactly, just - get accustomed to not being able to do certain things with it, and be perfectly happy to devote it all to other things. Public health, trade, infrastructure - things that matter, it's just that right now they're built around this rotten core..."

"The slaves-are-votes thing is incredibly stupid, yes."

"And I think she's not being misleading about any of the work she's doing to end it, even though she's more all right with it than I am and might choose to work with it if she couldn't change it."

"That's good to know."