"You could make a good deal of money with some families, you know," he shrugs as if he isn't very aware of how all this sort of thing works especially back at home when it can be a bit delicate because there's the whole tentative throne business going on as it has been for some time now. "Families like to know what they're marrying into, it takes so long to go back through the history of it all. I couldn't abide it, give me the wilds and my living subjects and their behaviours and their spaces but the coin that changes hands when alliances are being made." That's before you get the Crows involved too.

"If there is a thing to be said for Empress Celene it's that she's done great work for the university. Her patronage allowed it to flourish from what it had been to what it is now, which is why so many things are so expensive to procure. Glass from Serault, for instance, for some equipment is the finest you can own and lasts a long time but I doubt the Inquisition is ever going to be able to afford it. All of you crammed in here? How do people even sleep like this?" Okay he can sleep in a tent, in all weathers, but this is basically a hovel compared to the sort of place he expected to find people going by the title of the Inquisition.