...well now Blai is trying to figure out whether slavery is okay or not based on unreliable secondhand reports about Lastwall and a handful of rather coy references to it in the Acts and not getting much of anywhere with that and really hoping he can make it to Westcrown to meet that catechism tutor he asked for.

They should debate it, Seldan can argue the position that slavery is fine and Blai that it's not and then once they've made all their arguments they can swap and at the end they figure out what they actually think they should not get into that right now. Seldan will get carried away and they'll be up all night, and also Savil will be getting here any minute. 

(The consensus in Valdemar is that slavery is not fine and to Seldan it feels internally obvious that this falls out of Valdemar being a more Lawful-and-Good place than average, and he's not hiding that thought from Blai, but it's not front and center.) 

The vanguard of anti-slavery thought on Golarion or at least the Inner Sea region is Andoran, and they throw so many pirates, and Blai can imagine a world where there are Lawful Good pirates singlehandedly announcing and enforcing an international ban on slavery while letting legitimate slave-free ships proceed freely, if they had the power to do that effectively enough and the legitimacy to make a rule like that, but that's not as far as he knows what the Andoren pirates are doing. Probably there is a way to do both of ethical objections to slavery and also not piracy, or possibly Blai's information is filtered and distorted and actually the Andorens are doing the thing he just made up and it's fine, or possibly they're just Chaotic Good instead of Lawful Good and all his piracy objections are Lawful ones rather than Good ones since he barely has a conscience, or possibly the right thing to do is to not personally have any slaves but be chill about the neighbors doing it, or... something? What if the entire constitutional convention is like this, augh.

Pirates are also not great! Whether it's worse to be a pirate who frees slaves or a slaver depends on what ethical principles you're working from and also a lot on the implementation of each thing, since both piracy and slavery can be practiced in more or less horrible ways. Seldan did once win an argument that it was closer to morally obligatory than morally prohibited to, given a set of assumptions that absolutely do not hold about actual Valdemar, conquer a neighboring country that was practicing slavery. 

(Seldan does not particularly consider "winning an argument for something" to be the same as being right. It's just that the process of figuring it out benefits from arguing all the pieces of it, and also Seldan really really enjoys arguments about moral philosophy.) 

- anyway, in practice Valdemar tries very hard to prevent any slavery or slave-trading from happening internally and glares disapprovingly at neighbors who permit it but otherwise leaves them alone. It's entirely possible for something to be very bad and also for all of the options to act about it being worse than the original problem. Most of the world is like that, really. 

Well, it was probably morally obligatory to conquer Cheliax - though Andoran did not so far as he knows actually help, it was an archmage party and Galt and Rahadoum - and maybe the new queen abolished slavery and he just didn't get the update because mail service at the Wound is iffy. Valdemar's practice sounds like a Lawful Good thing to do even if it is not maximally effective at slavery-minimizing even within the constraints of Law and Good, and Blai certainly doesn't know what thing would be that.

Yeah. Seldan is certainly glad that someone conquered the horrifying thought experiment country. Valdemar has a policy dating back to the founding King of never invading other kingdoms - a reaction against the Eastern Empire, which was in a constant state of trying to conquer all of its neighbors - and so obviously the Lawful thing to do is to keep to that even if Seldan can think of persuasive arguments for why setting that hard-and-fast rule in the first place was stupid. If anything could have persuaded the Heralds to break with that policy, it would have been Cheliax. 

- anyway they will have to put this conversation on hold because Savil is about to arrive. 

Savil arrives, walking beside her Companion. She still looks exhausted. Blai's things are either piled over Kellan's saddle or, in the case of the mace, carefully stuffed into one of the saddlebags spiky-end-up. She manages a weary smile at Blai. 

Vanyel is with her, looking cold and remote and honestly slightly terrifying. He doesn't say anything. 

(Cheliax is actually right next to the arguably worse country Nidal, operated by a god who is, directly, of pain, instead of just using it instrumentally, but Nidal's been that way for thousands of years so presumably it is harder to dislodge than the seventy years of Infernal rule of Cheliax was.)

Did Vanyel get worse since Blai last talked to him? He looks a little worse. Blai puts his armor and mace on.

(Well, it's now been even longer since he last had any sleep, and also his son probably has no idea he's alive and is most likely setting up to try to revenge-murder Leareth about it, and Leareth is the only one who can even conceivably find Blai's world, and maybe all of their heroic efforts won't even mean anything after all and he won't ever get Yfandes back. So, yes, Vanyel is worse than when Blai last talked to him.) 

:Right. So you have a spell that makes someone better at thinking? Van thinks I should take it, and think about places to look or precautions we should be taking, and who to cast the prophecy spell on if we want to learn something related to Brightstar - though I realize that's not really how the spell works and we might learn about some completely different disaster instead.: 

:I can't reach Leareth. Or Jisa.: Vanyel's mindvoice is very flat. :I'm hoping that just means they went north of the mountains to somewhere with better shields.: 

Wow it is so inconvenient that everybody's "shields" in this magic system are spell resistance style instead of save-improvement style. :When you're ready,: he tells Savil, touching his holy symbol.

:Ready.: 

"Owl's Wisdom."

Wow that's so weird. 

Savil closes her eyes and tries to think. 

:...Vanyel thinks the Star-Eyed Goddess and the others can't see clearly in Foresight. Maybe She can see Brightstar well enough to steer for him not to find out that Van is alive, but -whatever his actual plan is, it can't be - directly divinely guided - it's going to be something Brightstar could come up with on his own, with the resources we have. So in theory we should be able to think of it too. He can locate Leareth, to within twenty miles without warning him or precisely but Leareth would notice it. He can't expect to kill Leareth in single combat, so he'll have recruited people to help. Unfortunately we collected a lot of those in one place and - failed to communicate some of the nuances of the situation - and some of them are dubiously in our chain of command to begin with. He could get help from White Winds, he trained there - so did Jisa but she hasn't been around to argue her corner - the Ifteli forces could be convinced - I think not the Karsite forces, they're loyal to Karis, and not the mercenaries. We should focus on that, find out who's missing and how long, see if that leads us anywhere...: 

:...seriously considering if we should have the Companions mindread anyone they can, someone might have seen something and we can't formally question the entire population of Haven...: 

:...The thing is that Leareth could just leave, right - Van, how would you stop Leareth from just Gating out, don't answer you'll distract me but think about it...: 

:...Jisa knows more of what the White Winds Adepts in concert can pull off, I know they're really good at shields but not all the details but she could help us guess what he might be planning - we really need to be in contact with her - do we actually know if Enara reached her, could have a Companion in Waymeet try for her...: 

:- ARGH this is completely unrelated but I just remembered we have three of Leareth's people in the House of Healing and Blai has channels again -: 

The spell runs out. 

:...if you don't need me to cast a prophecy right now I can run over to Healer's and channel.:

:Probably you should do that.: In case, you know, something else is about to happen. :Just trying to finish my thought about the prophecy - um, the most useful person to cast it on would be Leareth, we assume a Brightstar plot is targeting him and seeing how it ends could help us trace back where he is now. My second thought was Jisa, because - if I had to task anyone with finding him using magic, it would be her. Neither of them is here and I think getting back in contact is our top priority.: 

Frown. :I was - I had just started thinking about whether we can get anywhere with the pastwatching spell, but it's not the standard usage of it, you need a person or object or location in the present to anchor it - if we had Brightstar here we could cast it on him to find out where he's been but we don't - my best thought was casting it on his quarters here, just keep going back until we see him there, and then run forward again and follow him, but I've never used the spell that way and it could take candlemarks, if we have any other ideas we should start with those.:

She closes her eyes. :Van, can you take Blai to the House of Healing? I'll go follow up with people who might have seen him in the last day. And get a ruling from the Senior Circle on mindreading everyone in Haven, assuming the Companions would even help, they might say no for mysterious Companion reasons.: Kellan said he wouldn't consider it without the King's permission, but that's not actually a "yes" to whether he would do it with an order from Randi. 

:I'll absolutely skim all the minds I can reach in Haven, but it's not an ideal way to find out if someone saw him at noon today, they'd have to be thinking about it. Maybe if you also make an announcement that there's a reward if anyone comes forward with information? Someone might, and at the very least a lot of people would have it on their mind.: 

Why is Vanyel necessary to take him to the House of Healing, surely Seldan knows where it is and he described his range like it can't possibly make any difference to that rather clever detect-thoughts-prompt idea if he's here or there or really in any particular location on the palace campus. Maybe Savil wants Vanyel there because they can give him opium or something and he can spend the next while waiting for a Raise Dead scroll high instead of - that. He doesn't speculate out loud but none of the people he's not saying it out loud to are Seldan. (Actually, he's not sure if he can in fact get privacy from Seldan in any meaningful sense which is usually not going to be an issue but, like, occasionally he wants five minutes with a handkerchief.) He climbs aboard to be brought where he's going. Should he make room for Vanyel.

Sure, Vanyel will climb up behind him. He's moving like someone half in a dream. 

Seldan is faintly amused. :It's very normal for Heralds to want privacy occasionally and I am capable of not reading your mind.: 

And, more seriously, :She wants him around people, mainly, and not walking around the grounds by himself late at night. And maybe hoping he'll happen to run into Melody and she can talk to him without it being a big deal – apparently it'll make it worse if anyone visibly acts like his Companion dying might be a big deal.: 

Well, Blai has no idea how to act like someone's Companion dying is a big deal (he understands that it is but keeps autocompleting to the time he ordered some wizard to get an owl next time for night recon, he doesn't have any experience with people having big emotional deals that anyone else is supposed to act in some way about besides taking advantage of a vulnerability which he's figured out he should not do) so hopefully the thing he's doing is acting like it's not a big deal instead rather than a secret third thing.

Nah, Blai is doing a perfect job of not showing any sign that it's salient to him. It's less natural for people who didn't grow up in an evil thought experiment and are generally inclined to demonstrate that they care about their friends' feelings, even when in a given instance it wouldn't actually help. 

(This is one of the things downstream of Blai being traumatized by Cheliax, so it's not great in general, but it's not false that it's better for Vanyel right now. ...This is one of the thoughts that Seldan keeps tucked away.) 

They ride for the House of Healing. 

At the House of Healing Blai slides off his shiny new Companion and enters a building and is alarmed to discover that entering buildings is now, uh, alarming, but maybe that wears off after he is more used to having a Companion, and anyway it doesn't matter, he can ask the Healers to assemble the injured in whatever room will hold them all and channel at them.