"If they'd gone and dealt with all the village priests first before they did anything about the Worldwound priests that wouldn't be confusing, as far as I know there's not archmage magic that would let them just get rid of all of them at once. ...or, uh, sent them to the Worldwound, I guess?"

Victòria would rather they have just executed all the Asmodean priests but if they'd sent them to go fight demons instead they'd've at least not been hurting innocent people, and probably a lot of them would still have been killed by demons. She thinks. She doesn't actually know how strong demons are, maybe they'd've been fine.

"If the logistics of the Worldwound actually interest you I can talk about them but they're complicated and most people find them boring."

"I don't actually care about Worldwound logistics." If the logistics would have meant the archmages had to just kill the village priests Victòria has no problem with that.

"I don't think it's impossible that the archmages guessed in advance that Asmodeus would pull his clerics' spells. Which would have affected how they handled nonthreatening low-circle ones."

If the archmages were hoping that people would take care of the Asmodean priests themselves as soon as they lost their spells, you'd think they could've done a second amnesty for people who killed their Asmodean priest as soon as they had the chance.

Victòria is not stupid enough to say that to a former Asmodean priest.

It feels like it's missing the point, to act like just because the Asmodean priests were dealt with eventually the six months in between don't matter. Six months is a long time for someone to go around getting to stay powerful and safe and alive, getting to avoid justice for everything they'd done previously, when every day they go on like that is a wrong that can't be put right. And — and it's not just that—

—the day the news came, the priest ordered everyone to come to that day's sermon, and then he picked out a man who was looking a little shiftier than the rest of them and cast a spell that opened up wounds on his body, and told them that Asmodeus still reigned there no matter what had happened anywhere else in the country—

—two months in Victòria found one of the chambermaid's daughters with welts all down her back and she wouldn't say why, usually you at least knew why he was punishing someone, she was years younger than Victòria—

—one of the serfs had heard a rumor that the barons in the next county over had been replaced, when they'd dragged him back home neither the priest nor the lord had him killed over it but he might've been better off if they had—

—dozens of injustices, each one of them kindling for the flame burning inside her, but more than that each one of them avoidable, if the archmages had just — if she had just — she burned every one of them into her memory so she'd never lose sight of what the priest deserved, but maybe she could have stopped them, maybe she'd have died but maybe not — is that why she's Chaotic Neutral—

The Queen is Good, and Feliu says she's very busy, but it really seems like she could've asked the teleporting enchanter who went after Raimon to hunt down all of Asmodeus's priests. Maybe she didn't realize how bad they were, the way a lot of the nobles from other places don't realize the sorts of things Asmodean nobles do.

"Even if a priest isn't strong enough to threaten an archmage that doesn't mean they're not strong enough to threaten the people who live under them. Six months is — there's a lot that can happen in six months."

"Yes. But - that's not unique to priests. Unruly soldiers can hurt people. Monsters can. Lords. Bandits. Teachers. Completely ordinary commoners in a barfight. If you're an archmage - or a god, or anyone, and you're trying to save as many people as you can, and as many as you can is not everybody, someone's going to be hurt somewhere."

"Do you know what they were doing instead?"

"Only what one can hear by listening to rumors and reading pamphlets. Archmages aren't exactly the same thing as gods but sometimes it seems like it's equally expensive for them to communicate, or at least to do it effectively. They did close the Worldwound at some point."

Closing the Worldwound sounds good but if you have to do one or the other Victòria would rather not have Asmodean priests even if it means a tiny chance of getting eaten by demons. ...Maybe not if you knew that in six months everyone would be able to give the Asmodean priests what they deserved.

"What do you mean about, uh — I didn't think gods used money, until you mentioned the thing about buying souls...? What do you mean about communicating being expensive?"

"All the gods have a treaty or detente or something of that ilk amongst themselves limiting what miracles and powers and information they can give mortals. I don't think it's denominated in money but you could imagine it that way. That's why resurrections and some other spells need diamonds - the gods don't want the diamonds for themselves or want the diamonds to be destroyed, but it's a limiting factor on how much of themselves they extend. This means that they rarely spend energy on directly cancelling each other out; the treaty pre-cancels them out where their interests are simply opposed and they work as much as possible on everything else. With exceptions."

That sounds kind of confusing and kind of wrong. She's pretty sure that Calistria making her a priestess partly cancelled out Asmodeus making Chosen Dalmau a priest, and yet here she is. And she's heard that Archmage Naima can bring people back to life without a diamond, and turn people into kobolds even though that's usually a diamond-spell too, and that the archmage who is a cat can teleport to the Moon but maybe that's not the sort of thing that needs a diamond. Probably she should find someone actually trustworthy and get them to explain how it works to her, only the people she trusts to answer questions about magic keep turning out to have secretly been murdering innocent children or being Asmodean priests.

"Oh, I guess that makes sense."

"It's the only way anything about how gods act makes sense to me. Pharasma remains incredibly confusing because She's in charge and could presumably do whatever She wants and yet evinces disliking a lot of commonplace things like zombies and infant mortality."

Victòria had always just assumed that Asmodeus didn't want to help them because he thought they were all useless worms, and the other gods were weaker than him. Except it turns out that actually Asmodeus wasn't even strong enough to stop a group of humans (and a cat, for some reason) from kicking him out of the country, so probably that doesn't apply.

"I don't really see how she could stop infant mortality without a lot of mind control. ...Probably it would be easier to stop there from being zombies, she could just kill all the zombies."

"I could imagine her deciding not to stop people from killing babies on purpose but a lot of them die of disease."

Victòria's not really sure how many babies die of disease and how many die of being murdered. She's heard that sometimes people whose babies are really sick decide to just kill them sooner rather than waste their effort, maybe if they hadn't done that Pharasma would've sent a miracle and cured them. (Should she be avenging all the murdered babies? That sounds — for some reason when she thinks about it it mostly just makes her feel sick, not at all the way it feels to take vengeance on Asmodean priests and Evil nobles — probably this is not very relevant right now.)

"Well, I don't understand Pharasma any better than you."

"Did you have anything else you wanted to say to me?"

She hates him and wishes he were dead. But there's a place in her chest that would normally have a festering flame, burning with rage and urgency and the desire to personally kill him herself if that's what it takes to see justice done, and instead it just has a dull, throbbing ache. It's kind of a bizarre sensation, looking at a man who tortured four innocent people to death — oh, now the fire in her chest is back—

She doesn't really want to say any of that.

She's not sure what to say instead.

"I hope you regret it every single day for the rest of your life, and all the days after too," she says, after entirely too long of a pause. It feels entirely inadequate but she doesn't know what wouldn't be.

That doesn't seem like it would help anything at all. You can't make regret into diamonds.

"If I could bring them back by regretting it they'd be alive today," he says instead.

Killing her priest didn't undo any of his pointless stupid petty Asmodean cruelty but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing.

"Then I don't think I have anything else to say to you. ...If you do anything to hurt Valia you'll regret it."

"I'm not going to do anything to hurt Valia." I'm going to fix her eyes next time I see her - no, that's extraneous, what if this girl doesn't even know about Valia's eyes.

"Good." She glares at him.

Glare. She's not going anywhere but she's not making any attempt to stop him from leaving.

Okay, he's going to take a couple steps orthogonally and if she doesn't react to that he will go on with his day.

Last time she told him Gods go with you but this time she'd really rather they didn't.

She doesn't stop him from leaving.