Blai's kind of floundering. He has been assuming that he is in all the important senses responsible for his actions when he was Asmodeus's and accepts this fact about the world but he doesn't know how it... works. He is not sure when exactly he was supposed to do what precise other thing than what he in fact did with any of the tools he had at his disposal. It's not like he didn't know Asmodeus was evil. It's not like he didn't know that sometimes people determined using abstruse principles he did not understand that they should defy Asmodeus. It's not like he didn't realize that if he himself had been a defection risk, which he wasn't, he would have been wildly undersecured. He sort of assumes that if you took some person who was as constitutionally Good as he himself is Lawful and sent them to seminary they'd get themselves killed, one way or another, and maybe there are complicated edge cases but he was at the time pretty sure that suicide, too, was evil (it isn't always, according to the Eighth Act, but that's one of the ones he wants to talk to a catechism instructor about), so even if he had been trying to assess possible courses of action for whether or not they were the right thing to do, which he instead wasn't tracking at all, that wouldn't have been an obvious way to do the right thing...

Anyway, Vkandis is probably not as bad as Asmodeus. He ran a couple of apparently mostly inoffensive countries for a long time and then they did some war. Countries do wars. Aroden was Iomedae's god and Imperial Taldor did so much war. The Kelesh Empire is Sarenrae's and they do war all the time. Vkandis could be completely fine and simply not be great at tracking the consciences of and costs to His people.

(Seldan is going to harass some other Companions for more context on Karis in hopes that he'll have anything useful to say.) 

...He agrees that Karis was not in a position where she should have been defying Vkandis before this. And it's not obvious that she should be now according to her values, he's not sure to what extent she endorsedly believes that she owes Vkandis favors that would be costly to her personally because He helped her end the war in Karse, which - it's sort of debatable how much He helped, it was at that point already determined that Valdemar was going to win, but it certainly made the aftermath cleaner and there's Good in that. 

He expects she's torn because...well, Vkandis' actions would make a lot of sense if Leareth were like Tar-Baphon, right? A lot of people, including some of the Heralds, kind of believed he was like that! Blai himself thought that it could conceivably be worth taking much more destructive actions than Vkandis has so far if the alternative were Leareth making an evil god. 

Leareth does not seem to be very much like Tar-Baphon, though. Seldan's read on him is that he seems to have genuinely wanted to make a Good god, or - maybe not exactly that, by Blai's world's standards, but the closest thing he could conceive of given the Velgarth baseline for what one can expect of gods. Even over a few brief conversations, he...reminds Seldan of someone, someone he's fairly sure he respected, though Seldan is completely failing to remember who because being reincarnated as a magic horse has some serious downsides. He seems pretty genuinely committed to avoiding war with Valdemar; if he weren't, he would surely have gotten out of the kyree caves and not ended up almost dying permanently in order to get Jisa out safely, which has to be a big deal, you don't get to be two thousand years old by taking risks like that casually. 

Anyway. Karis knows that, and - she has a lot of trust in Vanyel, who's thought for a long time that Leareth might be someone they could find a way to work with rather than fight, and - she also knows that Vkandis, or at least His agents on Iftel, were willing to do all this and apparently willing to invade Valdemar over it. 

So the question, maybe, is: how do you weigh it up, when your conscience says one thing, and your god, who presumably knows a lot more about the bigger picture, says another? And how to take into account that Vkandis is really not the same as Iomedae, and may not be as straightforwardly Evil as Asmodeus but does not, for example, seem to have considered trying to talk Leareth down from his course of action? 

...He could probably come up with actual advice given long enough to mull on it, but he doesn't have any pre-prepared. He can recall maybe having written about similar dilemmas in one's service to a human king, but it's not actually the same. 

Maybe after they finish the Acts Blai can dig up what Seldan wrote in his past life and read that.

(You can get to two thousand years old taking risks like that casually if you are sufficiently immortal for most of those two thousand years!)

Blai doesn't have a conscience or if he has one he can't find it so he's not going to generate a lot of conscience-based advice. (Sometimes he tries on the model that Iomedae sometimes talks about in the Acts where the Good is written on every heart but it takes strange and organic forms, and tries to hold it up against himself, but mostly he thinks he simply doesn't like torturing people the same way he doesn't like watching chariot races. If Asmodeus had commanded him to watch chariot races he would have done that, too, the exact requisite amount, and then not done more of it when he had discretion. Maybe more like the way he wouldn't like chariot races if the charioteers were conceivably, while racing, paying a lot of attention to how good a job Blai was doing as an audience member, so the analogy breaks down, but still.)

Talking is expensive for gods! Maybe not as expensive for these ones? Blai isn't sure. Also it's harder for gods to reach people who are more distant from them and Leareth with his nigh-Rahadoumi antitheistic attitude and setup would be very hard indeed for any god to grant a vision, and also he seems like he might be the kind of guy who then wants to go through lots of costly verification procedures, which is worth it if you are Aroden cultivating an Iomedae but it is not obviously worth it if you are very nearly as happy to have the guy dead.

(Seldan is nnnoooot getting into an argument with Blai today about whether Blai has a conscience, it's really not the time for it and they should have that conversation in - several years, possibly - but it's hard.) 

...They should probably at this point wait and see what Karis seems to actually be conflicted about at the moment, rather than trying to speculate in advance, but he imagines that right now she feels like she has to either break with Vkandis or break with Valdemar and King Randale and Vanyel, who she also owes an enormous amount. And she's probably struggling to figure out how one even orients to that sort of decision, but - well, another mental habit Seldan has is, when noticing something is being treated as a binary dilemma, to wonder if it's actually not and there's a third way. 

Anyway, they're still a few minutes away from their destination, which might be enough time for a very quick game of chess? Seldan feels like he's starting to be all right at the game now. 

Blai's book of a hundred chess variants had Tiny Chess where you have your king and one each knight bishop and rook and four pawns to match and you play on a smaller board, they could fit in one of that real fast!

Ooooooooh fun! 

(It's just different enough from the standard chess he's been gaining familiarity with that Seldan would need a lot more of his attention to keep up with Blai, and isn't actually willing to drop any threads he's using for situational awareness. Someday there will NOT be the pressing thread of Haven being invaded by gryphons or some other ridiculous godplot and he will be able to dedicate his FULL attentional capacity to beating Blai at weird chess, it's going to be glorious.) 

They are not attacked by gryphons or hidden assassins or implausible lightning. They reach a different guest wing – actually somewhat more ornate a building than the core Palace wings, it was (according to Seldan's hasty intelligence from the Companion gossip ring) built a lot more recently and has been mainly used in the past for visiting foreign dignitaries who the Heralds want to make a good showing to but also don't necessarily trust as much. Karis hasn't usually stayed there in the past. The kid is probably thrilled about it but he wonders how Karis herself feels. 

He feels antsier about having to stay outside this time, even though Blai will have some of Leareth's intensely competent mage-guards going in with him and also he really doesn't expect anything that goes wrong here to look like Karis trying to harm Blai. 

A servant will open the main door for them and escort them to Queen Karis' suite. 

Karis comes to the door.

She's not a Mindspeaker; one of the entourage will have to translate for Blai. 

She doesn't quite manage a real smile, but she bows her head briefly. "Thank you. For - everything you have done." No tears, and she isn't even particularly screaming with her face, either with gratitude or distress. "I suppose you should come in." 

Whyyyy didn't he prepare a Share Language. Oh right it's because of his limited spell slots. :You're welcome. I'm glad that your daughter is all right.:

Nod. 

Karis will usher him over to a table, offer him a chair, sit herself, and then - she doesn't know what to say. Savil thought she ought to talk to Blai, and - she can guess on what topic - but she doesn't know how to start. It feels too big to even look at in her own mind. 

She clears her throat. "Is Vanyel - all right -" What an incredibly stupid question. Of course Vanyel isn't all right. 

...He's a lot more all right than he might otherwise be, honestly? Vanyel succeeded at the thing that's mattered most to him for the last twenty years: he was able to confirm that Leareth, whether or not he's a terrible person, wasn't lying about the person he is, and Valdemar is not at war. 

Seldan is here to help Blai formulate an answer in more detail if he wants. 

:I am optimistic that he will make a full recovery should it prove possible to resurrect his Companion.: SELDAN YOU'RE STILL ALIVE, RIGHT, BLAI CAN'T SEE YOU RIGHT NOW.

Seldan is here!!! He can be even more obtrusively in rapport with Blai if that helps, and make most of his surface thoughts visible; the bond is established enough now to do that even from a distance. 

That does help thank you.

Karis nods. Looks down at the table. 

"...I know what he would do, in my place," she says very quietly. "...He would have turned his back on Valdemar, and no matter his oath to the King, if he thought the Heralds were making a mistake." 

But in her place it would be Karse that - oh, no, he sees how she's constructing the analogy. :On my planet we have a concept of Law, independent of morality. It can be very powerful, but it is possible to wind up in situations where it is impossible to maintain if one's commitments come into conflict, and it requires some luck or skill for that to never come up.:

Karis blinks at him. Whatever she expected him to say, it wasn't that. 

"...I already know I cannot do right by everyone I owe," she says softly. "I owe Vanyel - and Randi, and all of Valdemar - my country, and the peace, and more than words can convey. But I owe my Sunlord everything. If - it were only that, it - would hurt, but it would not be hard." 

:Are the terms of your arrangement with Him laid out explicitly?:

She blinks at him like someone who has no idea what that could possibly mean. 

"He has been my country's god as long as Karse has existed. He protected our people when all would have been lost. There - is not a limit to what I owe Him for that." 

:Are you sure?:

She gives him an exhausted, helpless look. 

It's a long time before she answers. 

"It - was always the one thing I could be sure of, that I belong to Vkandis. Even when I was sure of nothing else. But - I think I am not sure of anything at all, anymore." 

:There is a country bordering mine called Nidal. It is controlled by an Evil god. It has been ever since that god offered its people a way to survive there during the Age of Darkness, a winter that went on for a thousand years.

I do not think your god has begun to approach that extreme but that is what I think of when you say there is no limit.:

Some things about Golarion are very disturbing. 

Karis doesn't seem to know what to say to that. 

"...Vanyel would walk away," she says. "Or die trying, I suppose. I - am not sure what I would do."

Probably not have a child. 

:Some people do.

I find this a very useful concept and hope it is of some value to you.: