"It's my first time outside of Pezzack. I had intended originally to stop in Westcrown, along the way, but there was a sick man on the ship so they had us not disembark. - do you know what causes cholera? I vaguely imagined it'd been on the radio at some point but I couldn't remember what the answer actually was."

"Unsafe drinking water. Possibly I should repeat that kind of thing once a month until everyone knows it. If you're making it for them fresh it's safe, and if it's boiled it's safe, but if you're making it into containers that have been contaminated, especially with human waste, that won't work, and if there's a well too near an outhouse, or people using water closely downriver of other people, you'll get a problem. This was actually determined by - I should save it until we're on air."

"You should, sorry, and I should save all of my other questions. Almas is lovely."

"Five percent lovelier than last year so by the time the century's out we'll really be running away with it. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Afternoon, listeners! This is Freedom Radio, reporting live from Almas, with a special guest who I've been hoping to meet for six months - Valia Wain, a cleric of Iomedae and one of the people who led the successful rebellion in Pezzack when the war broke out. Valia, thank you for joining us. I hope it is not too rude to say you are younger than I imagined you."

"Perhaps that is because you have been crediting too much of the victory in Pezzack to me; but it was a victory of all of the people of Pezzack. The only thing we needed of Iomedae was some channels to keep us on our feet until we were done. ...and I suppose also the entire rest of the Chelish army and navy being distracted. Thank you, for that."

"Any time, really. Tell us what happened in Pezzack. I have been so delighted about it."

"Well, they banned the radios, and no one listened. We used them out at sea, to know if storms were coming, and to listen to the chariot races, and - of course - to listen to you. And we kept listening, and we talked. Because - we had to do it at some point, right, it was just a matter of picking the best moment for it. And then the Asmodeans picked it for us. There was a play. Abrogail, it was called, and it was a history of the regime of the first Thrune queen. They got it approved by the censors. But then they got cold feet, and decided to arrest everyone who had performed in it and put them all to death. And they fled, and the city hid them, and the Asmodeans turned to butchery, and - 

- we'd been talking for a while about who we'd go after, if it came to it. Once it came to it. I had gone to work for one of their appointed nobles, as a laundress, because I'd know my way around the manor, and half a dozen other girls had done the same thing, for different manors. We never talked about why we'd all had that idea. But we knew where they lived and we let the free people of Cheliax in and half of the Asmodean leaders were dead in the first night. There was fighting in the streets, in the morning, and for the next four days, and the ships fired on the city from far enough out we couldn't go get to them until the strix started helping. It was going - better than we had imagined, in all our imaginings - but a lot of people were badly wounded, and we had only a few wizards who were all out of devil's blood. So I figured we should tear down all the symbols of Asmodeus in the Church and then pray to every Good god the radio had mentioned, until one of them chose one of us. And Iomedae chose me."

"Which is not really very surprising. And then -"

"And then they sent teleporters and burned the city down, which we'd been expecting. That was all.  We were expecting more retaliation, in truth, but I think the broader war was threatening, and they couldn't afford to send half the navy to reestablish the blockade, just - one squad of invisible wizards wreaking pointless destruction to make us regret it. Which we didn't. The city had burned, and there was no point in rebuilding while they could just burn it again, but if we were out of sea then they couldn't kill very many of us at a time, when they tried to, and we wouldn't go hungry. And we had the radio, and we knew we weren't alone. Picked up two more clerics, too, by the end of the war. One of Sarenrae and one of - I'm going to speak the word wrongly - Kofusachi, after that priest of his spoke."

"If I'd known that I'd have asked you to bring that priest too!!! Kofusachi is my ...third favorite god. And my wife's favorite, I think. There are some bits of Aroden's portfolio that Iomedae can't pick up - or at least hasn't picked up - She can see airplanes, She can see skyscrapers, but I'm not sure that She can see Costco, not really, not the way I see it, and Kofusachi can."

"What's Costco?"

"It is a grocery store in America. There are hundreds of them across hundreds of cities, and each with the footprint of a palace, and stacked to the rafters with food, so inexpensive a fifteen year old girl working as a day laborer without speaking the language can live off it comfortably, and save half her money. The first time I saw it I thought it was more like a temple than most temples are. You can measure a lot about a society by asking - how many hours' labor to buy a week's food? It gets better with domestication, pesticides, tractors, genetic engineering, until all men eat like kings."

Valia is not actually sure why that's important. She spends a moment thinking how to ask the question in a way that is engaging on the radio. "You speak of that as if its importance is very evident, but I am missing it. Of course people should not go hungry. But - once they're enough food - the Asmodeans liked to have feasts to excess, and waste, and profligacy and strange imports from distant lands, and - I wouldn't say it seems to me that there is anything of civilization in it."

"And what does your friend the priest of Kofusachi say?"

"We haven't argued over food, in particular, but mostly I imagine him saying - that the difference between Good and Evil cannot be just the difference between Heaven and Hell, that Cheliax is liberated and if that means nothing to the average person then it is a victory only in some heavenly ledger, not really in ours - I disagree with that, obviously, there's nothing more important than not being damned and it's not for some cause other than us, primarily, that Heaven desires our salvation -"

"- I am tempted to claim you're both right? It is more important not to be damned than to have nice things in this life, if somehow you find yourself in a position of having to choose. It's also more important not to be damned than to have - functioning eyes, or the ability to walk. But ideally one has all of those things, and it'd be a poor defense of being crippled that it isn't being damned. 

And - 

- most people cannot check for themselves about the Outer Planes. I can do it, but only because I am outlandishly wealthy and have purchased a crystal ball. Until I'd done that I was just trusting people, about what Heaven is and what Hell is, and - Hell is fond of lying. So most people cannot, really, just check which is better, Heaven or Hell, and choose that one. But they can look out at the world, and see whether it's a good and worthy world to exist in, or a miserable one, and if the misery is a temporary sacrifice towards some purpose or a permanent state of affairs. And I do think we owe them something better than misery, and if we can't do better than misery we owe them that the misery be temporary, and if we're not achieving any of that then why should they trust us about Good, truly?"

"That seems to me like a good argument for Good meaning - treating people kindly, and curing diseases, and protecting the innocent, and a hundred other things. It doesn't seem even remotely like an argument for spices."

"No? I don't think the argument for spices is terribly different in the end from the argument for curing diseases even if the diseases merely cause great agony and do not restrain one from one's work. It is good, when people have good things; their suffering is an Evil and their joy a Good. It is not a good that ought to be purchased at arbitrary expense, but - that's why you make spices cheap. The ultimate aim is not a society where we all live together in humble poverty but where we are all richer than kings."

"It seems in error, to me, to call wealth joy, or poverty suffering. I do not think there should be any kings, and this is - in a small part - for the kings' sake."

"Under Asmodeus I do not think there was much wealth that wasn't - stolen. If a man had spices, it was not because he had worked hard, and by his labor purchased them; it was because he had the power to take from others, at enough scale to become rich. He had slaves, and he had serfs, and he had people who had to bribe him to do anything. And when all wealth is stolen - I imagine that one is not much inspired by wealth.

It's not so in America, though. There are no slaves and no serfs. For the most part the way to become very wealthy is by starting a company, and then having the company be very profitable. I think all of the richest people in America were rich that way. I am, I suppose I should disclose, right now rich in that way. My wife and I own a steel company, and a gun company, and a chemicals company, and a railroads company, and a shipping company. But I do not believe my view of the world to be wholly self-interested; I have supported myself on my own labor picking crops, travelling to where the harvest is, and it is then that I found myself first witnessing a wealthy world. And I thought that it was good. It is good for the poor, to live in a wealthy world; a society where goods are plentiful everywhere is one where no-one is destitute unless everyone else despairs of helping them in any way. There are a great many men who wouldn't give half their pay to keep their fellow man from starving, but would give a hundredth, and so if a hundredth is enough to keep everyone alive then no one starves."

"That is plenty, not luxury. There should be plenty; I am unpersuaded that there should be luxury. If there are better nets, by which we haul in twice the catch, then everyone will eat better, and as you have instructed us we will make our children eat well every day, that their minds and strength develop." This was actually one of Freedom's less popular teachings in Pezzack, where the custom is that the people who did all the work for the food eat first, and that children in the ungrateful stage where they pick at their food be ignored in this. "But we are not speaking of better nets, but of spices."

"Oh. Yes, I see the argument; that all of the efforts of men should be put towards ensuring that there is enough of everything, maybe even too much of everything, that people need; but none in particular towards things that people don't need at all, at least not until we have solved every problem more urgent than food being flavorless without spices. Do I state the case correctly?" She disagrees with the argument, but she should probably not use the radio to browbeat people out of every single flavor of political disagreement with her.

"It seems to me quite apparently the teachings of the Goddess. First, do the most important thing. Then, do the next most important thing. Then someday Hell will be empty and I guess we'll have spices but I cannot claim the spices are the part of that which move me."