"Ma'am?"

"I'm Lieutenant Sauer. I'm a lay priest of Iomedae and I'm assigned to return with you this morning to Westcrown and advise you during the convention, along with anyone else who seems to need advice, though my understanding is that the intent is to fill the rest of the Church's seats with Reclamation men who'll know what they're doing. Have you had a chance to look at the incident report for the events of 3 Sarenith?"

"Not yet, I've been filling my time as much as possible with catechism, though I was interviewed for the report."

"I recommend taking a look when you have a chance. It contains a lot of - our philosophy, and how we operate - as well as a great deal of information more directly applicable to your situation than catechism classes generally are. The recommendations for you, though, are very short. Take three hundred Absalom pounds, hire a staff, if they're being wildly useful to you write requesting more money to hire more of them. - it is not that money is not very badly needed for many things. It's that this convention is important to our allies and mistakes are much costlier than secretaries."

"- I expect hiring to be complicated for reasons other than budget but with a budget I can at least begin contemplating how to address those reasons. Thank you."

"The situation in Westcrown sounds very volatile. If you find no good uses of the money, so be it; but if there is something, you should have the resources to get it done. The only other recommendation from the Church was that, Worldwound mail being unreliable, important letters should be sent twice by different routes."

"Yes, that occurred to me during my interview, that I should have dropped off another copy at Taggun Hold. Though it's not actually obvious to me if anyone would have met me there had the letter arrived - it seems like the volatility was not obvious in advance, I didn't want personnel for avoiding riots because I didn't know they were in the offing, I just wanted to represent Iomedae's interests competently."

"It says, this recommendation likely would not have prevented the incident because a response with more reading material, advice, and additional people to correspond with was more likely than a response with additional personnel. And the reading material and advice would probably have been helpful to you but not to Person G, who can't read and seems not to have particularly sought advice."

"- she asked me to read her several things, and if the advice were sufficiently thorough I could probably have steered that, but it's a stretch."

"If you think the report's wrong in any particular, and it presumably is, you can write a supplemental that goes out with it, that says 'according to Blai Artigas if he'd been well-catechized he had decent odds of preventing this', or whatever else. I think the plan is for us to Teleport in the next half-hour, is there anything I should bring?"

"You're coming along? - I think there are still individual rooms open in the rectory but they have next to nothing in them, so if you prefer to avoid the women's barrack-style setup you will need your own sheets and suchlike and might rather bring them than shop in Westcrown. In addition to personal effects you'd bring on any trip. Other than sheets I haven't needed to make any unexpected purchases there, though."

"Yes, I am assigned to assist you and any other delegates who want advice from a lay priest. Hopefully with the new Reclamation delegates there will be many such sources of advice but they will have their own responsibilities as delegates. My understanding is that if I am on the staff of some delegate I can enter the hall, sit in on committees, and so on."

"That appears to be how it works for noble delegates; I don't think I've seen any religious delegates try it but it would be strikingly unRepublican of the archmage to have different rules de jure. ...I am planning to, as soon as I can find the fellow, buttonhole a particular pamphleteer and publish some personal disclosures that may attract volatility, though you're welcome to try to talk me out of it if you have reasons other than general concern that the pamphlet scene of Westcrown is cursed."

"I know almost nothing specific about the pamphlet scene in Westcrown other than that it will go down in all history as a spectacular example of why never to permit a free press."

"It has many drawbacks. I find it - encouraging, in some ways, though. Someone told them they had freedom of the pen and they believed it was so. The trust could have been spent on something better, probably, but to learn that the trust was there to find even by accident is in some ways better than if everyone were being cautious with it."

"Haven't dozens of them been put to death for it?"

"I don't mean to say that anything about its implementation is optimal."

It sounds like barbaric savagery from start to finish but all other countries are always barbaric savagery from start to finish. "Well, apparently among my duties is to write corrections to pamphlets, so I suppose I will learn more about it in the observation."

"Yes, people do keep volunteering their heresies. I think no one has been put to death for that so far."

"In Lastwall it is not illegal to write something probably heretical and definitely very stupid, presuming you aren't claiming to speak for the Church and it isn't - lies, or advocacy for some Evil power, or the sharing of military secrets. But you cannot make hundreds of copies of it and plaster it all over the city, you are expected to just...send it as a letter to someone. Who will politely set you straight, probably. Or to the Church, which definitely will."

"If you want to advertise that you are willing to receive and respond to drafts of writings like that I'm sure you'll have takers but Select Iustin hasn't remotely had the time to offer, let alone follow through. He can't show his face without ten people converging on him demanding his attention on their conversion or their confession or their incipient life plans. If it is possible to reach any meaningful number of people with accurate guidance that fits into a couple of pages and is as entertaining as epic poems of battles with manticores presumably were some centuries ago, it seems worth figuring out how."

"I guess I'll attempt to get a read on the situation when I get there. What are your objectives for the convention?"

"That's a good question. I have noticed many people have been able to identify objectives for themselves at it but they have the advantage of me in operating politically. For the time being my convention ambitions are restrained in scope to something like 'be oriented enough to the various proceedings that if there is a clear victory to be had I notice in time to develop an operational plan around it'. But I can't be on every committee so I don't know if, say, Judiciary is trying to reinstate Malediction or something obvious like that, and similarly don't know if there's anything with more moving parts to take steps about. For all the kerfuffle the convention itself has only spent two days in session."

And it's taken casualties in those two days like a fort under an extended and brutal siege. Well. "I hope it improves from here. I will go gather my belongings, then, and meet you back here for the Teleport."

Nod.