Diego follows him in, closes the door behind them. 

"You wanted to know why I got along well with priests. Well, I'd like to think that I was better at making myself an instrument of their will than most. Was - better disciplined, myself, when they were in charge. Didn't drink on duty, wasn't late, followed orders well. Was reliable. Took initiative. 

Helped ensure that others followed orders also. Sometimes I'd turn up infractions that the Detect Thoughts wizard hadn't caught. Once I caught a Detect Thoughts wizard falsifying records, that was well rewarded.

I was one of the lay people most chosen for administering punishments, was better than most at remembering to not get carried away and didn't forget about infection risk and keeping people useful if they were supposed to be kept useful. Had a knack for drawing things out in entertaining ways if they weren't needed anymore. The Chosen thought I was creative at it and came at it with the right spirit." 

He'd have to cut back on his drinking, if he got the job. Which he was fine with, really. He was waking up too often with a bad hangover and less coin in his pocket than he'd hoped. He was better at being his best self when he knew there would be consequences for it. More immediate consequences. His doubts about Asmodeus after the deaths of most of his priests had been bad for his self-discipline. 

"Many of those qualities are good in other contexts as well provided you can be motivated by things other than fear. Definitely not the one about drawing things out."

“What ought one be motivated by?” 

"A lot of people are just motivated by money, which is fine as far as it goes, works well for mercenaries. Law itself but I'm not sure if the temperament can be easily taught. The cause, when there is one."

“ - the cause, sir?” 

"Holding the Wound, at the Wound. The good of Cheliax, at the convention. Writ smaller - if you were to guard a specific trading caravan or protect a particular village from monsters, that would be a fine cause."

“And what would you recommend if it turns out that that some only find fear motivating?”

"They could then stand to fear Judgment instead of a fellow mortal."

Diego contemplated whether he was afraid of Judgement. He hadn't spent much time thinking on Hell, and when he had, he'd vaguely understood that he would have his spot on the hierarchy, and he'd had some hopes that this would be a spot with a favorable balance of torturing to being tortured given that in his experience he usually had such a favorable balance. Was it unwise to say as much? 

It could be that this was a test of his loyalty to Asmodeus, it could be that this priest had truly repented and now feared Hell himself, it could be that they were being watched. Asking probably wasn't a capital crime, and it seemed like there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in administering other kinds of punishments. 

"What is there to fear in Judgement?" 

"So, there were many means employed by the Church to cause its adherents to - tolerate the prospect of Hell - and I don't know which ones you've settled on, but in fact Hell is bad and no one should go there both because they will suffer and because they will be transformed into the instruments of others' suffering."

Being an instrument of suffering seemed as much of a benefit as a downside. Some amount of suffering seemed tolerable. Caring about such things was contemptible, and Diego wasn't contemptible. 

It seemed like either Artigas had truly recanted, or he was playing at a game that was too complicated for Diego to understand and play himself. 

Recanting seemed contemptible, but... so was losing. And this man hadn't lost, while his own fort's priests had. How could this relatively soft-spoken man have kept his men so afraid of him that they were too afraid to overthrow him even after he had no spells left? 

He tries to come up with what to say next for awkwardly long time, eventually settling on something he was actually thinking. 

"Distant suffering is much less motivating than nearby suffering." 

"That's true. But - there are ways to live your life now that are not full of nearby suffering, even if there weren't when the forces of Hell controlled Cheliax. So you might have a care for the distant suffering as well, or the nearby suffering of others that you might alleviate."

He's not sure, actually, why he can't stop drinking. The suffering that it causes him isn't very distant, and yet it's much harder to be motivated to avoid it than the clear crisp motivation of avoiding a beating. To ask about that seems... contemptible, and he might have already been contemptible enough this conversation. 

He's also not sure why he would be motivated by alleviating the nearby suffering of others, but he maybe is at his limit of unwise questions for the day.

"Thank you for your time, Select. I'll keep your words of wisdom in mind."

"- I am a man motivated well enough by money, if you know of any work that you think I would be well suited for."  

"I do not know how long my current bodyguard will remain available to me nor whether he comes with a relief shift when he requires one, but - people who work for me directly, as opposed to being on the archmage's payroll, must be exquisitely clear that I work for Iomedae. In the same way that, if your commanding officer at the Wound were in bed with a succubus, your responsibility would be to report that over his head, you must be equally confident that if I am operating outside Iomedae's graces I am not to be obeyed in this error. You must also confident that no violation of Her commands while I'm not watching serves me, and you must have some general notion of what those commands are. I can have absolutely no confusion on this matter, absolutely no winking and looking the other way, absolutely no careless guesswork when a simple question would suffice. And this is an awkward thing to require of a man who came off well in the previous regime."

That convinces him well enough. But the steel in the Select's voice as he says that is in some ways exactly what Diego has been looking for. 

It seems like this job offer might still be on the table - he'd written it off a few questions ago, and was mostly hoping for an off chance of a recommendation somewhere else. But he's unsure if he actually still wants the job, now that he's under fewer misapprehensions about it. 

He does, in fact, generally do a good job in the roles that he's had, at least in whatever cases he can manage to respect his commanding officer enough to be bothered. It seems like he might just be able to respect this man enough. 

But it is a very different job than the one he thought he was trying to apply for, when he got here. And it does seem to be pretty incompatible with how he's been spending his time lately. And it's not just a matter of being fired for drunkenness, if it turns out that the doesn't respect the man enough after all - if nothing else, he has been doing the occasional capital crime with his time lately, and he'd rather do those further from the eyes of people who care that he, specifically, doesn't do those. 

He nods. "Understood. And that is crystal clear, Select." Ignoring the part where it wasn't a few minutes ago. 

"- I am skilled at doing what is required of me, but I usually have had some more of a notion of what that is." 

"Have you met paladins before, who came through your postings or while you were on patrol through theirs?"

"Only very briefly."

"Your impressions of them, from those brief meetings?"

Boring, he doesn't say. 

"Resolute. Difficult to intimidate. Contemptuous." 

Blai nods. "I had somewhat more exposure than you, but until I had received correspondence from Lastwall's forces that was the kind of thing I had to go on. If you are trying, sincerely, to be an Iomedaean, you can pick up a lot from orbiting them even when they aren't trying to teach you. Select Iustin delivers a sermon here most mornings - it's possible some of the paladins will start rotating in, now that they're pulled off justiciary work toward convention business and have differently allocated downtime. You can attend those. Do you read fluently?"

"Yes, Select."

"At what wage would you find it worthwhile to attend me as a bodyguard on the expectation that you spend low-risk downtime studying the Acts and its commentaries such that if you are confused you can bring questions to me in the evenings when I am also in study?"

Diego names his best guess at the current going rate for bodyguards. He doesn't remember to factor in that Select Artigas had been murdered the other week into the rate, since he's overall pretty distracted. 

He's pretty surprised, the whole conversation he'd felt like he was failing a test? And he hadn't really finished thinking through this being a different job than he'd thought he was signing up for, he's a bit nervous about coming to the attention of paladins. Maybe this will go terribly. 

Ah well, there's nothing in particular keeping him in Westcrown. If the Iomedaeism turns out to be intolerable, he can always hand in his resignation, skip town and find somewhere else to be. 

"I will need to speak to my current bodyguard about what arrangements would work best." And see if there's going to be lots of this guy, he can't hire them all if there's ten. "If you come back tomorrow at the same time I should have an offer, or not."

"Understood, Select." 

He stands to exit.