"So, five minutes go, you wrote a letter to someone who replied, and you invisibly conjured their reply, and it was 'Bachuan', which is Tian Xia, so you have a contact in Tian Xia? Or Nefreti Clepati?"

"I'm taking that as a 'you wanna figure it out yourself'?"

"I want to know, because it's another avenue for word to have gotten around that we're valuable to kidnap! But if guessing myself is how Chaotic Good people make friends, then I'll try!"

"No, no, I'm willing to tell you, I just didn't know if it'd, like, land well?"

"- I am not angry with you for conducting your own secret negotiations that observably haven't actually gotten us killed yet."

"Cool. Way back in your classroom I surreptitiously composed a letter to all the other apsels back home. They are delighted and performing research for me in the background."

" - but how do you know who to ask - and how do they know about a famine in Bachuan -"

"There are billions of them and I addressed the most central library curation projects. They have already built a scale model of the entire planet and they're working on a full size duplicate. They can conjure absolutely anything they want, since they're at home and unbound, which lets them find lots of things - think how I found Felandriel only cleverer."

" - but how is any of it - in a form you can access, you don't have time to read letters from billions of them - you said it's an anarchy -"

"Yeah, some of them are helping sort it and condense it for me. For fun. Or because they want this world to be better."

For billions of people? How would you even structure a system that accomplished that -

She decides not to push it farther. "I see. If you want to in the next few minutes make a lot of grain to drop on Bachuan you can."

"Woot." Can he see Bachuan from here. He will whip up a bit of a communism denouncement so this miracle is not co-opted too easily by the government, machine-translate it into their language, "Can I make, like, sacks? Burlap or something is fine." He also wants to give them more stuff than grain but he can already make food so he doesn't need to ask her for specific soybean permission.

"No."

"Harsh." The people of Bachuan will receive their care packages in that edible seaweed paper stuff. Little fist-sized packages of, yes, grain, but also pulses and nuts, rain gently over Bachuan, each with the machine translation of "communism was a worthy experiment. it has failed, but its people should not go hungry" rain over Bachuan for the next few minutes.

"I mean, I tried the 'I'll be friendly and approve requests that don't seem obviously terrible' thing, and that was clearly a mistake, so now we're not doing that anymore."

"I guess I can't really blame you."

At this point Sevandivasen Plane Shifts in. 

" - hey. I want - well, first off I want to know if the negotiation terms were actually adequate, if I'm going to be talking to Cheliax or Lastwall."

" - probably not," he says, "that's a specialty. Let me take a closer look..."

"G'day," says Cam.

"Hello." He glances at Carissa, then back at Cam. "As written, he's not covered - did you mean him to be - "

"Yes!"

"Well, if you're dealing with Cheliax, you need specific language for bound outsiders, I'll find you an example. - I will protect the confidentiality of anything you tell me, and not attack your person," he adds to Cam, "because I am not an Asmodean."

"I appreciate that although if you want to attack my person for any important indestructibility tests I do have the ability to replace a wing lost in an experiment. Just give me fair warning so I can take painkillers."

"I don't really prepare spells for combat with powerful outsiders," he says. "Morgethai vouched for you."