"You might be wrong to think you are cleverer than the Church. I guess you probably are wrong, because they have lots more practice and lots more people and are very wise. But - I don't think it can be a sin to just take your best guess and act on it until someone else convinces you that their best guess is better. We would never have had any success, in Pezzack, if we felt like we'd had to wait for the Church's approval of all the particulars. I - noticed wanting it, sometimes, wishing someone would tell me 'oh yes, just do this and you'll have done the right thing' - but Iomedae is too busy to do that, and it is in any event Asmodeanism that wants everyone kneeling in place waiting for orders."

"Indeed....the Church has a lot of people but I can also hire a lot of people myself, with my enormous pot of money, and I can even hire the Church's people, if I want to, and not end up at a disadvantage for expertise....to be clear right now I am mostly spending my wealth on more factories and more researchers and more things that will make even more wealth, not on any kind of charitable endeavors. But I am doing what I think will make us strong enough to fight Hell the fastest."

"I apologize, then. That's a pretty good reason to be the wealthiest person in Avistan."

"Don't apologize! You are making me feel very at home. In America people are not as hesitant to criticize each other. And when I was young I ran up to everyone who passed through town and demanded to know why they hadn't personally done anything about Hell yet and this is really wildly more unfair to people than posing the question to the richest person in Avistan. Though I do think that if you were surprised I had a good answer then you have turned yourself around a little oddly."

She mostly hadn't been thinking that far ahead! It seemed both true and important so she said it. It is not, as she observes, really surprising that she has a good answer, since Iomedae in fact hasn't renounced her. "What...answers do people give, in not-Asmodean Cheliax, if you run up to them and ask why they haven't done anything about Hell?"

"Only bad people go to Hell, dear, you don't need to worry about that so long as you're well-behaved."

" - but that's obviously not -"

"Yes, I found it very unsatisfying. But really I was the one being rude. It is not fair to people to ask them complicated questions without having established some grounds for them to believe all possible answers are safe and that they are also allowed to not indulge the question."

"It seems kind of unfair to people not to expect them to do the right thing even when it's dangerous! Was it unfair to give radios to Pezzack, having as you did no grounds at all to think you could protect us from the Asmodeans yet? People were caught with secret radios, and died horribly and were condemned by the Evil priests to Hell, for those radios, and still those radios were the best thing you could have done for us."

"You know my answer, I guess, because I made the radios. And I would have done it even if I had no army, even if I could never offer anyone any safety, even if the Chelish army and navy would not have been distracted when Pezzack rebelled. But still I think that my behavior as a child was - an impulse I have in no sense grown out of, but foolishly shaped, and wronging people where it could only ever achieve anything if it strengthened them. I chose my words carefully on the radio. I think there are many possible things I could have said that would have been enormous wrongs to the people risking their lives to hear me."

"And many things you didn't say soon enough. You didn't tell people how to kill priests of Asmodeus until the war started, and we didn't know the range on their channels."

"Yes. Some decisions like that I made on purpose for reasons that I know now were wrong, and some I made on purpose for reasons I still believe, and honestly a great many that I didn't think about, because too much was happening at once, and I was scared and busy and had no habit to draw the thought to my attention nonetheless. I did think about under what circumstances to direct people in direct rebellion against Asmodeus. We wanted that to mostly be timed for once the war started, because any rebellion crushed before the war even began was no toll on Hell's resources and many dead innocents. ...I know that in Pezzack you did not exactly get a choice of when to fight."

"We were planning to fight, but - we were planning to wait a little longer. We figured you'd say on the radio, or someone would come from Kintargo and say they'd rebelled. But then when they started it - everyone knew already what we'd meant to do when the moment came.

You could've said, here's a priest's channel radius but I don't think it's the best moment yet, if you've got the option of waiting."

"I worried people wouldn't believe me. It is....in most places illegal....to say "here is how to murder your priests and your lords". Even in America, which has very good free speech laws, it is illegal. I thought that if I said something like that people would think I was - trying to tell them without telling them, to stay out of trouble. I don't do that, I say what I mean and if it's illegal to say what I mean I either get the law changed or go somewhere else or don't say it. But I didn't expect people to trust that."

"I guess we might not have. Though I assumed you were - somewhere where no law could touch you. That being the whole point of not saying where you were."

"I would have been very reluctant to be broadcasting from somewhere where it was illegal to say the things I was saying. If I were in no sense actually reliant on that country's resources, just out in wilderness they claimed, maybe. But - even without doing any such thing I frequently found it painful and distressing, to be imposing on others sacrifices that for military secrecy reasons I couldn't properly evaluate."

"I just don't see why any just government would take issue with telling people how to kill Asmodean priests."

"They might disagree about whether any good will possibly come of it. Though I admit that's a bit generous and more often it's that - governments end up very concerned with their own continuation, and very nervous about the observation that their monopoly on violence is incomplete."

"The people can overthrow any government. Nobles only rule because it's hard for everyone to know the right moment to overthrow them."

"I think that first half is more true than false and the second half....probably more false than true? Nobles substantially rule because it is hard for everyone to know the right moment to overthrow them, and partially because a lot of people will die overthrowing them, and partially because social organizations are hard to replace wholesale even when they assuredly need to go in the long run. I wish I'd done more research on democratic transitions. I - genuinely don't know the best way to make them happen. It would be really surprising to me if saying on the radio 'go kill your nobility' were the best way to do it, especially since - most places, people will just lose, until they have guns. I do not think that the institution of the nobility in its present form will survive guns for very long. But it would be better if that happens via - people seeing the writing on the wall and proposing reforms. I think that's the path we're headed down. Cyprian is interested in a strong state and a professional army. Cheliax has removed the nobility. Andoran has no place in its laws for titles. Lastwall of course never did."

"You think a lot about - timing."

"It is one of the most important possible questions! Of the many, many things that need doing, when should they happen? When will they happen, if we don't do anything? How will they happen, if they don't do anything! If you don't have a plan for how the things you say cause a free rich better world to come around you're just - providing sports commentary, really, on peoples' lives that, if they listen to you, they are trusting you with."

" - of course you should try to do things that will make a free rich better world come about! And of course you should be strategic about timing. We didn't rebel in Pezzack, the first minute we realized we all wanted to. We prepared."

"I trust your instincts in Pezzack. You all did very well, and under very difficult conditions. But this is heard throughout the Inner Sea, and - neither of us know anything specific about the conditions anywhere. A people who know they mean to rebel and are waiting for a sign are in a very different situation from a people who don't think rebelling is worth the costs, or don't know."

"Can't you just say 'if you were ready but for a sign, this is your sign' -"