He's complaining about straw?? He wouldn't last a week underground.

"No doubt."

...Upon reflection, he's going to seek out company more interested in celebrating, at least until he has to speak with his cousin.

Understandable.

"How strange. He did not strike me as having any special interest in the spell Nap Stack, and silk pillows have few other magical uses."

"...I really don't think that's what he was going for, Nenio."

"They don't actually have to be silk, for Nap Stack."

"However, a straw pillow would be highly unlikely to be suitable."

"In any case, people like him should have to follow the law no matter what kind of pillow they can afford."

"Quite. - I do think you could make straw work, it'd just require some kind of advanced straw-related craft to condense down enough precision of manufacture into the object," he adds to Nenio. "So in practice they all come from Vudra and are made of silk because they have silk there, so far as I've ever heard."

She nods. "One hypothesis among wizards in Absalom is that it is possible to compensate for slightly inferior workmanship by increasing the size of the pillow, although generally the cost of materials is such that this is of primarily theoretical interest. Perhaps a sufficiently large straw pillow would be suitable even without developing additional techniques for working straw?" She notes down some calculations. "A straw pillow the size of the Gray Garrison would almost certainly suffice, if it is possible in principle for it to be a suitable component."

"Does that even count as a pillow?"

"I doubt that would actually work, otherwise you could make a valid pillow just by sewing together fabric scraps from clothing that was too badly worn-through to even be worth the Mending."

(In the background, Horgus Gwerm, who apparently had been called upstairs sometime in the past several minutes, descends the stairs, looking rather chastened; one of the Queen's guards escorts the Count up the stairs.)

There is no real possibility that Horgus Gwerm wants to field questions about what that was about and it's not Blai's business anyway.

"So, what's the queen like, anyway?"

"I'm not sure what sort of detail you are hoping for."

"You know, her personality, that sort of thing. Is it true she's got an angel familiar that follows her around to give her advice?"

"Paladins don't have familiars."

"You've got the horse, don't you? There's got to be a horse-type angel somewhere in Heaven."

"If she has one it did not attend our meeting. Perhaps especially understandable if it's the size and shape of a horse, as we were indoors and upstairs."

"Do you think she would be willing to let me interview her? She is allegedly more than one hundred years old, making her a valuable source of historical information."

She tilts her head to the side. "Maybe you should talk to more elves, then. I'm a hundred and seven, and my father was even older than that. ...I don't remember everything that happened when I was really little, though."

"I think she is very busy and do not anticipate circumstances under which she would consider a historical interview the best use of her time. ...the Queen, not Ember."

"Very well. Bird girl, are you willing to answer my historical questions?"