"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."

"The Goddess wrote that it had been an error, not to eat food once magic sustained her -"

"Because when men share bread they share hospitality, and companionship, and a reminder that the same forces move all of us; and mortal magic can suspend each of these needs but not suspend the role that their fulfillment has in the heart, and in the bonds among men." They read Acts on the radio and Valia has most of it memorized by now. "But that is a practical argument from necessity; one imagines that if the nature of men were otherwise we would not be entreated to eat anyway for the joys of the taste of food. 

...and anyway Her takeaway was that She tried to eat at least once a month."

"I would have it on very thin authority, to claim the Goddess disagrees with you, but I think I might disagree with Her. Or if I am attempting to reconcile them, I would observe that 'in the current balance of concerns, this one is not neglected' is a very different claim from 'in a full articulation of the Good, this one is absent'."

"I have conceded already that you can have spices once you've emptied Hell! From a full conception of the Good, nothing is absent; but it is an insult to trillions enduring in torment, to choose it above them."

"Now, 'an insult' is a stronger claim than 'an error'."

"I think to ignore a man bleeding out in front of you in order to go water the flower gardens of another is an insult, not just an error, at least assuming you do it knowingly. You are not just mistakenly calculating in a situation of great triage; you are not confused about whether a man's life is worth more than a rosebush. You are choosing to value the man at very nearly nothing."

"Hmmm. I think - most people, if you watch only their behavior, are at all times conducting themselves like they care very nearly not at all, for those in desperate need. Most people, if you gave them a hundred of the old dollars, wouldn't turn them in for a soul; this is of course the mechanism by which the old dollars damned them." Luckily the Church of Abadar owes the Church of Iomedae an astonishing amount of money; there is still a fairly serious currency crisis but it could be a much worse one. "And if you'd like, you can draw the boundary around - what people want, what they care about - narrowly around how they act in this world, and declare that they value almost everything at almost nothing. 

But I think that's - not correct, not really. I think that the impulses to Good in a person are confused and contradictory. Really quite strong, in their own way, but pushing in a dozen different directions and half the time cancelling each other out. I expect that if a man walks past someone bleeding out on the street - part of him thinks 'a crime was just committed, and I don't want to involve myself, and perhaps be accused, or perhaps have the killers return to finish the job', and part of him thinks 'what could I really do anyway', and part of him has just developed the habit of not being steered around by human suffering as he witnesses too much of it, and I worry that it is actually a kind of injustice to him, to circle any particular part of him and declare it who he really is. 

But with all of that said I would indeed be judgmental, if someone told me that they could save a person from damnation by going without cinnamon for a year and chose the cinnamon. And I agree that many people make this choice without contemplating it."

"Not most people! Nobles do that. Kings do that. Normal people know the value of money, and they know the value of life, and - I'm not going to say they always do the right thing but this vice cannot be rightly attributed to them."

"I have nothing at all to say in defense of the continued existence of the nobility, much less kings, but if I were trying to attribute vices to them uniquely I wouldn't arrive at 'a taste for luxury'. I think that in fact most people who can afford for their food to be flavorful will want that very badly. Most people who can sleep on soft sheets will want that. And what of leisure, is that a matter of luxury or plenty?"

"Plenty, I think. If people are always tired and busy and scared they cannot seek out the Good. Anyone who calls the radio a luxury misunderstands it very badly."

"Mmmhmm. And of course we went for the radio first, rather than for cinnamon first, out of an assessment that the radio was essential for our purposes and the cinnamon much less so. But I think I reject the division entire; most things that people want because they make their lives easier and lighter and more pleasant, it's good for them to have, and reasonably often it is foundational for them to have, the way that leisure is foundational; it creates the space in which they can seek out the Good."

"If that were true, I guess I'd agree with you."

It is a rather confrontational thing to say to the most famous paladin on the planet. Iomedae likes Valia. "But you think it's false?"

"People don't seek out luxury because it makes space in their minds and their lives to be Good. They seek out luxury to fill the space that exists in their minds and lives, to let them avoid filling it with anything meaningful. They do not want silks because the experience of wearing silks strengthens them; they want silks because then others will be impressed they have them. They do not drink expensive wine because it tastes better, they drink it because it is expensive. They do not use their sobbing servants for archery practice because it is relaxing, they do it to show off how rich they are and how evil they are - if America does not have nobles you may be underestimating how terrible nobles are -"

"Oh, I probably am. I have read books but it's not the same thing, and also Asmodean nobles were presumably even worse than all of the nobles in other places. ...and my family was among the Chelish nobility, a very long time ago. I do not know precisely how that prejudices me, but I am sure it does."

"I do promise no one was using their servants for archery practice. I would remember that. We also had no cinnamon, and not much of what I think you'd call plenty let alone what you'd call luxury. Instead I would say that the injustices were mostly the injustices of - an excessively narrow conception of what it is to do right by someone, and no - routes of escape for those who were in fact being wronged."

"I do find it slightly surprising that the Goddess does not renounce someone for being the wealthiest person in Avistan."

"Hmmm. The argument being - that it cannot possibly be good prioritization of my funds, for me to sit on them in the fashion of an avaricious dragon, and that the Goddess ought to be as unlikely to pick rich men as She is to pick dragons? Or that it is an active Evil, to be rich, in a world like this one, and paladins are supposed to be incapable of persisting knowingly in Evil?"

"Both of those things, I guess. And just that - if I had a lot of money, I would spend it on the most important things I knew of. It is hard to imagine any reason not to do that, when we're talking about so much money that you wouldn't even notice it was missing."

"What should I spend it on?"

"The...Church? Their job is to figure that out!"

"Ah, but what if I think I am cleverer than the Church, and will do a better job?"

"I don't think that's a sin."

"A lot of people would absolutely say that that is a sin, though mostly not to me in particular, but if you have mostly gotten your theology education from the radio I suppose you wouldn't have heard from those people, because I don't agree with them, and because they tend to believe it for reasons that also inspire them not to argue with me on the radio."

"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' -"

"I wouldn't want to, without being sure that'd be enough of a sign to convince whole groups and not just halves of them, and without having a fairly specific sense of what they were ready to do. ....there are injustices afoot everywhere, but most places are much much less bad than Asmodean Cheliax, except Nidal where we don't have radio penetration. In Asmodean Cheliax it was hard to make things worse except by making it less likely we'd win the war. In Taldor I expect it'd be easy to make things worse. And in general - having an audience of millions is very fundamentally different from every other human activity. None of our instincts - yours or mine - are suited to talking to a million people at once. The results will not be what you expect, if you're new at it.

There's - a book published in America that I enjoyed greatly when I lived there. It is a book about an American travelling back in time to industrialize a kingdom of the distant past, and I was planning on doing that so I was very fond of it. It has nothing but contempt for the nobility, and a proper American pride in being free of them, but it has the good habit of - having things be horribly complicated even in the places where they look most blazingly simple. I have thought about adapting it for the radio. I wonder if you'd like to help with that. But - have some patience. We will build Axis in this world, in our lives, if we figure out how to build peacefully; and we will instead spiderweb our lands with trenches and send all our sons and brothers by the millions to the slaughter, if we can't figure peace out."

"Sorry, what?"

"The weapons of the modern world solve old ills and usher in new ones."

"I am against killing millions of people."

"As were most of the people who have done it. ....many of the people who have done it."