"You want to check that now or come up with a plan first?"

"I want to know what to tell them."

"Okay. So one option is to go to the court and say 'look, your issue is with the person who gave this stupid dangerous order, how about we settle this with my client agreeing to an illegal orders class' or, if you like, 'agreeing not to work for a Calador blue with these, uh, expansive privileges', or something in that vein - I'm not really sure what would impose a significant cost on you and what would be pretty acceptable -"

"...employment options get pretty limited if you don't want to answer to blues. I don't have enough rhythm to dance."

Nod. "So we don't propose that, we propose something you're all right with. Or, if you'd rather, we instead go to trial and you can testify - under the truth effect if you're comfortable with that - that this is how a legitimate action for public safety reasons would have been carried out and we collect evidence to that effect and you hopefully get acquitted."

"I'm getting the sense that 'this is how things are in Calado' is not actually a defense?"

"...not really. It's a character defense - it means you're probably not going to go around towing ships out of the sky and holding their crews prisoner under other circumstances - but the point of section 43 is that everyone know that if they run across one of our people, and they hurt them, there'll be a prosecution. If some tourist accidentally wanders across a border and gets tortured to death the court doesn't want to let the perp off because that country doesn't have a law against torturing aliens, and that's the principle the law is written around. It would matter if they'd been acting threatening, of course, but by the transcripts they were just requesting permission to leave."

"They seemed sort of implicitly threatening."

"Oh?"

"...powerful aliens show up and want to do stuff but won't be specific even after there's only one faction talking to 'em?"

"In Calado would it be, like, helpful to kidnap someone, so that then they're spared deciding which, uh, faction to speak to?"

"We didn't hurt 'em. One time my grandpa yanked a new ambassador from someplace into a senator's office when they were confused and the ambassador thanked him later."

"Was he subsequently prevented from leaving?"

"I wasn't there."

"To the Elves it looks like - they've got no evidence this person is even a Senator, they've got no assurances on how any explanation they give will be disseminated or that it'll be represented reasonably accurately, as long as they're being held their captor is actually in a position to claim any number of things about what they've told her... 'I'll consult my superiors about that and get back to you' is a reasonable answer and 'no you won't' is very scary."

"I don't really care what they do to her, or anything."

"Could offer to testify that the problems all arose from her non-communication about the nature of the situation and her persistence in not releasing them once it became apparent they were not willing to offer comment, in exchange for charges against her subordinates being dropped?"

"- huh?"

"We could offer to have you testify in her trial, in exchange for the court dropping their complaint with you."

"If that would help, okay."

"It's an option. If I knew what you consider the best possible outcome here, and what you consider a bad outcome, I could strategize better."

"It's kind of hard to take everything in, I'm - scattered."

Nod. "We can talk again tomorrow if that's easier."

"I'm not sure that'll help. Before his grace showed up to rescue the other Elves I just wanted my paycheck and my permissions and to go home, right, but..."

"But now there are lots of places you could emigrate to if you'd rather, and this big confusing system that doesn't run at all like Calado..."