"Got a problem.  My last mission.  Some spells were failing, and I don't know why."

Her frown straightens out as she stares at Gene like a book.

"Oh, hmm... where were you?"

"Pennsylvania coal country."

"Well, that's far enough from Philadelphia you wouldn't be feeling the Dome, and far enough from New York you probably wouldn't be feeling the Torch..."

"The what?"

She looks taken back for a moment, and then giggles.  "Oh - I didn't tell anyone about those names for the statistical anomalies?  Long story; haven't figured out yet whether the Philadelphia one dates back to Penn's first settlement or to the Revolution.  Anyway.  Coal country, you say.  What happened?"

"Well, I was attacking some rogue mages, and I tried to make them surrender with the Regal Awe spell -"

"And what'd you do when it failed?" Aeslin smoothly interjects.

Gene boggles for half a moment.

"Uh, long story short, they let out the winged serpent they'd enslaved, but their enslavement spell must've failed -"

"Well of course!"  She shakes her head at the stupidity of mages.

"Because you were in the United States, of course!"

"It's a republic.  No kings.  No regal awe.  No slaves, either.  They fought wars about both of those.  The whole country remembers it, just like the land remembers -" She waved her hands.  "- all sorts of things, like coal mines back in that coal country, right?"

...

"Oh."

...

"So that other time when Clara cast Royal Awe and it worked -"

"She was in Canada, right?  They've still got a queen.  Or is it a king now?"  She waves her hand.  "Of course it'd work there."

Gene wrinkles his forehead.

"But then how'd the rogue mages enslave the winged serpent in the first place?  Before they brought it to the United States?  I'm sure the muggles made slavery illegal there too."

Aeslin shrugs.  "Hey, the muggles make jaywalking illegal too.  And selling medical treatments without a muggle license.  And we do them both all the time.  Magic doesn't twist itself around every muggle law, just like it doesn't twist itself around our laws - just the ones that're so embedded in people's identity that the country and the land remember them."

"So... a slavery spell would work here in Canada?"

Aeslin taps her fingers on her leg.  "Didn't a lot of free slaves come to Canada early on?  But - hey, I don't remember it for sure; it's probably not embedded strong enough to affect magic... but I'm not sure!"

She raises her wand.  "Want to test it?"

"No, no!  I'll take your 'probably not'!"

Gene holds up his hands.

"So - what other sorts of things would this do?"

"Oh; what other things would the land's memory do?"  She waves her hands again.  "It's how magic works.  Get used to it.  Last time I was testing some things about spells on guns, I made sure to do it both sides of the river.  Things like that."

"And..."  Gene purses his lips.  "If muggles can affect things like that, why does magic work at all?  Given so many of them don't believe in it?"

"Well, they used to --"

Aeslin stops dead-still.  It's several seconds before she even blinks her eyes.