"Well, marriage is - transferring someone between households, under normal circumstances that's going to require both households to agree. The royal family can get away with some things but it's better not to be getting away with things."

"Are you saying you bought her?"

"No, not like that," says Ismat. "...well, he did foot the bill for my wedding jewelry but I'm a jeweler so he footed it in my direction."

"We have slavery but marriage is different, it's a lifelong obligation on both sides."

"Do your slaves also earnestly explain how they really prefer it this way and would be absolutely miserable if freed?" wonders Hala.

"No. That's - really unusual, almost all slaves really dislike it at least if their answers credibly won't get back to anyone angry about them."

"I've mostly been studying the wizards, but they have transcribed interviews with the house elves about how much they want to stay, I've read those," says Hala.

"It's really less defensible if your slaves acknowledge they dislike it! Amenta hasn't had slavery since before my great-grandparents were born anywhere on the entire planet," says Ana.

"Good for you! What do you do about people who commit serious crimes?"

"They can fund a prison sentence or get sterilized or executed depending," she says.

"Huh. Can many people afford to fund a prison sentence?"

"Rich people can," says Ana.

Snort. "Okay. I don't think we have slaves who prefer death since if they did they could just... stop eating. I am not sure that sterilizing people would be an effective punishment."

"I dunno about humans but it's really hard for Amentans to voluntarily starve ourselves to death," says Ana.

"I've told Aitim that I think population control is likely to accidentally drive humans extinct," Hala says. "Since you barely like kids at all."

"We like kids a lot compared to, say, elves. But I'd expect a majority of people with at least five kids would actively pay to be safely sterilized, if there's a way to do that, which makes it ineffective as a punishment."

"Five is the average result when Amentans are asked how many kids they'd have without controls and there are a lot of reasons to think that's an underestimate," says Hala. "We do have natural spacing, under normal conditions, which I think might help - Catherine and Joanna and Jeremy and Deborah are all very close in age and get to be a bit much sometimes."

"I want twelve," says Ana. "In spring I want fourteen sets of twins but I spring awfully, when I'm sane it's twelve. And a hundred grandchildren."

"Wow. Hopefully if we have one of you he's a man."

"Do you have one of my mom? Good at singing, used to do sex work?"

"Pairs with which of my brothers? - probably not, we can't have women who've been with a man before, but maybe that varies."

"Secondborn. You're limited to virgins? Why?"

"Correlated with various undesirable traits."

"Wow. Then I guess no me for you, got an older half-sister. I'll have to settle for Joanna."

" - might be one of Masaharta's girls he isn't married to? Isn't there one with a kid," he says to Ismat.

"There are several with kids, there's one with a kid who isn't his, I think. Rabiah. She's musical but they all are, that's how he picks them as I understand it."

Ana giggles. "Oh, there you go, then. The one here's called Rebecca, my mom is Peka. Sure, we can hope your me is a boy, will that help if he wants some high-end-of-human number of kids - it's not like a human woman can't have twelve if she hurries about it -"

"If he's a royal boy everyone'll see it as a very prosocial aspiration, see, we're supposed to give the god that selects our rulers lots of candidates to select among. If she's a girl then it'll depend more on the husband, though I would expect that the pharaoh will arrange all his girl cousins and nieces marriages they like."