"...fair. But he likes you. It's very obvious."

"Oh, I know."

"It's funny to watch."

"Is it?"

"I don't get to watch myself much. He seems - bewildered by how much he likes you. It's cute on him."

"What does it mean to be bewildered by how much he likes me?"

"Like, he didn't have a model of himself that would produce being this fond of you until he met you and he's sort of puzzled how it came about and also what it is he's feeling since it can't be 'in love'."

Giggle.

"Amentans have more companionate marriages."

"That being like - this?"

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't actually expect it to be overwhelmingly popular. I suppose if you have to settle quick before you can't have kids and you absolutely must have kids."

"That's a big part of it, and marrying for income or political reasons rather than romance - if you're going to be together thirty-something years compatibility is arguably a better priority than true love - real estate blues often marry people with nearby holdings so they can be more straightforwardly divided among the children..."

"Do they ever sell their properties to people who want to marry nearby persons for the same reason?"

"Sometimes, but not often - it's a good thing to have, a big chunk of urban property, it's rare someone's rich enough to tempt you out of it."

"Do they trade?"

"That they'll do, yes."

"It's interesting how it all interlocks."

"You mean how thoroughly we managed to end up holding everything? It's illegal for other castes to own much property."

"That's not what I mean - although that's weird, do they just have to sell it if they somehow come by it? What if no one buys it? - I mean you've had this system for so long and everything interacts with it in this circular way, almost."

"They can't make much money off it, technically they could own it as long as they could afford the property taxes while not making much money off it. Everything is kind of self-reinforcing, yeah."

"Did it use to be looser a long time ago, when you were closer to our tech level?"

"In some places. Anitam ran kind of feudal for a very long time - the blues were even more powerful within their territory, under that kind of setup. Weak central government."

"How'd you centralize?"

"We got conquered, rebuilt from scratch after that. - it was getting better even before that, modern communications enable a stronger state -'