And eventually, Daernir has finished collecting useful notes from the book. He waits until Lintalai notices that he's waiting, rather than interrupting.

"- hey, all done?"

"Yeah! So the Harmonium seems kind of scary and maybe not very good at being good, want to hear about it?"

"Yes."

"Okay, so this is a book that explains what the Harmonium believes and what their rules for their members are. The beginning is all about how- people should live in harmony with each other, how people should agree with each other, how they should have peace. It's a lot of pages about how to agree with people, and how not to argue about dumb things. And then it explains what to do when people won't agree. They have special training camps where they teach people how to think the right way- the book doesn't say anything bad happens there but I don't think making people agree with you is good, it's just lawful. And that's bad, in the Peacable Kingdoms, because then evil people can come in and corrupt it. They also talk a lot about how all discord is war...people can disagree without it being war! Uh, and they have lots of rules about how to arrest people- that's not evil, but I wrote down most of them so you can check if they're not stupid."

"Let me see?"

The rules about how to arrest people are:

Arresting someone is a necessary part of keeping peace, which the author thinks the reader may doubt, so spends several rules justifying that arrests as a concept are necessary in the first place.

In order to minimize conflict and promote peace, suspected criminals must be removed from the general population as soon as possible, and brought to the Harmonium training camps.

In order to ensure consistent enforcement of the law, judges should never be petitioners but should instead be native-residents-of-the-plane (rendered in Celestial as a single word).

In order to protect other citizens from criminals, criminals should be forced to publicly display in some fashion their past crimes at all times.

In order prevent escape, suspects should have enchantments cast on them ('enchantment' does not translate particularly helpfully, beyond that it is some category of spells).

"How do the Arcadian natives do judging, does it say? And what's an enchantment?"

"It doesn't explain. Enchantments are like, spells that make you do or feel things? Make you fall asleep, or like the person casting it, or stop moving, or afraid, or thirsty."

"Does the Harmonium have jurisdiction over all of Arcadia?"

"I think they have...jurisdiction," he says slowly, feeling out the word, "over everyone who breaks the law, yeah."

"No governments do their own law enforcement?"

"I think- gods' realms have their own, they don't ask the Harmonium for help with that. Almost everyone else does. That's bad?"

"I don't like how the Harmonium does it. Amenta has law enforcement that works pretty well. So if you don't ask the Harmonium to help with enforcing law in your area they don't?"

"I don't think so? But gods are powerful, maybe they think they would stop them if they tried. Maybe they want to do it in realms, too. If they're like that, then they would try to do it in your kingdom, too, because you're not a god."

"Sounds like maybe the sort of thing a priest would know."

Daernir looks particularly unhappy to have to admit that she has a point, here!

"Yeah...okay. Did you like any of the ones we met, or do you want to find a new one?"

"I didn't really like them. I did like Marduk's book!

"Maybe Marduk has good priests. What did you like about it?"

"I didn't read it especially closely but I like that he tried letting mortals in his realm do their own justice system, which it didn't sound like he was doing via the Harmonium."

Nod.

"That sounds better, yeah. Do you think the Harmonium is bad because it's not good enough, or because it's not lawful enough?"

"Not good enough. Maybe not too far off depending on how good the natives are at judging? But it doesn't specify."

Nod.

"Okay. So we want to find a priest to tell us if the Harmonium tries to bother their gods' realms? Maybe a priest of Marduk?"

"Yeah, and if there's other ways to keep them out."

"Okay. We can take some books with us, if you want, as long as we bring them back. Oh, and we should check the front of the library for what laws apply here, I forgot to check."

Daernir rushes back to the entrance.