Unfortunately we do not have any Dretches available for that "cloud-oriented" pun.

That's OK, it stinks anyway.

The signal given, Horgus will reveal the secret door, and some other secrets.

In particular:

1. Camellia is his daughter, out of wedlock.

2. He's been impersonating Horgus Gwerm since he was ten.

Look Horgus Gwerm wasn't Abramo's favorite person anyway; these new facts are... not really all that damning? Abramo's not going to relitigate inheritance disputes from fifty years earlier, and as for bastardy it's not exactly unheard-of for noble families. The actual priority here is funding the war.

Horgus Gwerm is rich but not, like, fund two legions for a year out of his own pocket rich -

Then he's not in fact rich at all. That's what "being rich" means.

(Abramo, as the heir to seven hundred years of compounding 8-10% growth and also for much of his adult life head-of-state of a major regional power, may be just a tiny bit oblivious to his privilege here.)

Here's the thousand we agreed on, no further comment.

Hmm. Well, every startup must expect some setbacks. Pivot time!

The wheels of justice, on the other hand, may grind slow but they grind exceeding thorough. Hulrun has finally caught up with Ramien.

Right so usually we have a trial before we get to the bit where the executive gets to do what they're named for.

I am the Law. I would be judge, jury, and executioner if not for the fact that Mendev, not descended from the common-law tradition of Northern Europe, doesn't in fact have juries even in peacetime. 

You're a lawless thug, is what you are. But - just at the moment Abramo does not have the strength required to enforce justice on this city. He will reluctantly recruit Hulrun for the attack on the Gray Garrison, instead; conscription into the army is, after all, one traditional punishment for murder.

All right, Abramo sees his mistake: He tried to find twentieth-century venture capital in an economy that, although it has magic these Extremely Advanced Technological Constructs, is clearly very unproductive by his standards and not immensely financially sophisticated (*) either. He will turn, instead, to - ahem - adventure capital. It appears that the Extremely Advanced Technology can also be used to create objects which show permanent effects, as opposed to being one-use; and such objects are both commonly wielded by cultists as weapons, and saleable for prices that are high relative even to large amounts of military equipment. If every cultist leader killed can fund say half a dozen well-equipped mercenaries, then - well, this is a war of skirmishes and scuffles, by the standards he's used to. At that rate he can soon put together a vast host - say a hundred men or so.

Abramo's not going to worry about the effects of all this liquidity entering the disaster-struck local economy which, so far as he can tell, is currently not producing anything except perhaps fighting men, nor about how it is doing so. There seem almost to be two separate economic tiers here, one that deals in onions and fish and chickens, and one that deals in weapons of war, and their prices are almost entirely decoupled. As though producing more breastplates and pikes and boots and winter clothes somehow did not funge against grain and potatoes and turnips... or as though Kenabres is connected by this Extremely Advanced Technology to some humongous reservoir of both, too large for its prices or its productive capacity to be much affected by what Kenabres chooses to import in exchange for exporting the Extremely Advanced Technological Objects ok fine he'll just call them "magic weapons" like everyone else. As he was saying: Kenabres is apparently connected to some huge outside economy which can absorb its (presumably) finite stock of magic weapons without making much of a dent in its prices, and if he controls that export then he can choose what gets imported in exchange - and perhaps even avoid the immense inflation that so much money chasing a finite and diminishing stock of goods must inevitably cause. He'll just avoid having the money enter the economy in the first place, the so-called "gold pieces" will in effect be an accounting device between him and the Outside Economy, an intermediate step that makes it easy for him to figure the exchange rate between, say, pike-and-breastplate to equip a fresh recruit, or wagons of flour to feed existing ones.

And in any case - needs must when the demons drive. If he doesn't win this war fast, there won't be time for inflation to cause widespread starvation. Instead there will be widespread starvation among the demons when they're done eating the humans.

(*) Abramo is, actually, a country bumpkin on this point; the financial industry he's thinking of doesn't even have derivatives trading for retail customers, or indeed standardised options contracts. But yes, routinised joint-stock companies and stock exchanges operated by radio and telephone does in fact put it ahead of Golarion, or at least Mendev, in spite of the best efforts of Abadar's churches.

In which case: Tower of Estrod! Silken Threads Atelier! Blackwing Library!

...yep that's ten thousand gold pieces right there. In terms of spending power it would make a reasonable coming-of-age have-some-fun-with-it gift for an Aiello scion; but Abramo doesn't think he's seen this much literal physical gold all in one place before. The Aiello wealth is not kept in metal, except for the Three and some last-ditch bugout bags, and the sophisticatedly financialised economy of his twentieth century does not run much to such gaudy baubles; bearer bonds and claims on the taxing powers of major governments are the order of the day.

Nonetheless he sternly resists the temptation to throw it up in the air and let it rain down on his head. There's a war on.

Woljif has another connection to the hypothesized Outside Market, if Abramo can take care of this little trouble among the Family?

Ok, so... the thiefling infighting that they have to investigate isn't, strictly speaking, illegal; on the other hand, all involved have confessed, just in casual conversation with Abramo, to enough looting-in-the-face-of-the-enemy to hang them all. (And Woljif's alleged hereditary claim to the Moon of the Abyss is a) highly suspect coming from a known liar and b) unclear anyway since Fyllemen clearly bought the thing in good faith; he may have a claim against his grandmother for being a terrible trustee of his inheritance but that doesn't extend to any third parties.) But Abramo has already mentally extended Woljif amnesty for acts committed prior to his arrival, in exchange for joining Abramo's little army; and he's very handy with those blades. And as for the other thieflings, one is quite enough thank you! Just let them get out of Kenabres!

The zombie horses really bother Seelah.

They shouldn't, probably. There's plenty of human undead about to be bothered by, if she needs something more immediately visible than the existence of Hell. Iomedae would - not ignore them, exactly; but She would - She presumably did - slot them into a place on the Great Triage List somewhere, plausibly well above "spices for everyone" but below, say, "children going hungry in Kenabres", and then She would go on with the Work. She would not be bothered by them. 

They bother Seelah, though.

The horses didn't choose to be here; they are conscripts... in a much more profound sense than the Mendevian and Lastwaller soldiers, who have much more Cunning and knowledge-of-the-world to escape with if they really cannot abide being forced to fight. The horses, by and large, would not even exist if not for humans wanting to conscript them to their wars. And Seelah can't object to that, they need the horses, the wrong done to the horses is smaller than the gains in the Work, she's never going to be doing Commune Math but she can count past ten without taking her boots off. But... 

There's a special responsibility you take on, when you create a sentient being to serve you in war. And to have such beings die on your watch is one thing, it's a war, deaths are inevitable. But to die, and become a zombie, and not even get to leave the fighting that you never understood and never cared about and suffered in anyway, for the suffering to go on and on without end or reason or rest... it feels like a particularly bad outcome, for an Iomedan. As though she were creating her own little Hell, for her own purposes, and making the horses vastly worse off for their good-faith alliance with her. 

It bothers her.

She doesn't use Smite Evil on the zombie horses; that's severely unoptimal. But she puts a little extra force into the killing blows.

"And do you pay your horses," he quotes, when she mentions in passing how she feels, "when you want a gun drawn to a new position?" He smiles, not humorously. "Someone said that to me, once, when I accused her of treating humans as her cattle, and thinking only of rule by force and fear, and not of trade. I made her a snappy reply, but... she had a point, perhaps." 

Seelah nods, but it's not quite the thing... Abadarans think in terms of trade. But you could write a contract in which the risk of becoming a zombie was just one more line item in the consideration-of-the-party-of-the-second-part, to be carefully enumerated and weighed against the consideration of getting to exist at all, and then you do the trade if both you and the horses are better off in expectation... and she supposes Iomedae does that too, you can't well guarantee a good actual outcome for everyone who might be your ally, only the expected value. Paladins go to Hell sometimes, if things go very badly, and Iomedae hates that but She cannot well let it stop Her from doing the Work. But Seelah cannot feel the rightness of the numbers as an Abadaran can; cannot quite multiply the probability and the disutility of crawling utter horror without end and arrive at a reluctantly-endorsed decision.

So, even though they're dragging themselves back to the Defender's Heart after nearly being killed by a brimorak; even though her armour is scorched and sooty from the fireballs, and her face still aching as with sunburn where the channel restored the melted skin, even though she's exhausted and out of magic and needs a bath... when she hears, faintly, the whinnying cry of terror and fighting rage, her head snaps up.

"It came from over there," she says, and changes direction without checking whether the others are going to follow.

"What did?"

Woljif follows Seelah anyway, because he predicts that Abramo will do so, and where Abramo goes Lann will follow, and that's a majority of their remaining fighting power right there and he likes having a gang around him. There isn't exactly safety in numbers, on the streets of Kenabres - not even before the invasion - but there's no need to beg for trouble by being visibly alone. He doesn't have to be happy about it, though.

"It sounded like a horse," Camellia informs him. She would raise one elegantly-arched eyebrow in ironic inquiry at Seelah, but having expressions makes her face hurt. And anyway Seelah is not looking behind her, she's intently marching to the sound of the horses.

"We're a horse-rescue society now?" Woljif mutters, but he does so under his breath, which he needs to keep up with Seelah. "Paladins." Though, come to think of it, horses are edible and it's been a while since he's had a big chunk of meat in his diet. He brightens and quickens his step to catch up.

Abramo is thirty years older than any of the others, and feeling every day of it; but he lets Seelah take the lead. Sometimes you have to support an ally in a priority that is definitely not one of your own. He hopes he won't be called on for any effective contribution to a fight, though.