“Well, I grew up in the drowther world. More specifically, I grew up on Mittlegard, where they have amazing technologies that would really help people here. So many things haven’t been invented, because all the power in the world was in the hands of mages, so nobody cared about the needs of the people. The things you haven’t invented here. Paper! Without paper there’s no point in inventing a printing press because with parchment, a whole sheep has to die for every sheet.”

“Paper? Papyrus?”

“Are you even literate?” asked Ced.

“Writing is language. I can write in any system I’ve read.”

“Mittlegard made all its scientific progress because writing allowed scientists to share what they’d learned. And when books could be printed cheaply on paper, using movable type, the sharing and therefore the progress exploded.”

“So you, a windmage, care about paper?”

“I can’t do anything about paper. I don’t know enough. But my mother made soap. Handmade artisanal soaps. A lot of the chemicals she used, I don’t know how to get. But I read about soapmaking, I watched her, she talked about how it was done anciently, and I can make better soap than the vile stuff that they use here to strip the skin off children. No wonder nobody wants to bathe!”

“Personal hygiene, then? That’s the magery you want to work with?”

“If midwives could approach every mother with clean hands, do you know how many lives that would save?”

“Then we’d soon have the same population problems as Mittlegard.”

“Earth doesn’t have a population problem,” sighed Ced. “It has a distribution problem. And ultimately that’s a political problem.”

“So I’m offering you a chance to work with politics,” said Wad.

“So that you can wage a war that you don’t even know will happen!”

“Only the aggressor knows that a war will happen. But if his targets don’t prepare in case there’s a war, then the aggressor wins every time.”

“How do I know you’re not the aggressor, Wad? I don’t think you are, don’t bother defending yourself. All I know is that soap is a war on bacteria and other filth, and it makes the world a better place.”

“So you’ve been up here working with a great treemage and what you come back with is soap?”