She looks thoughtful. 

"That - makes sense with a human commander who might be mistaken. I am not sure it follows with a god, but." Shrug. "What kinds of things would count?"

Does he think that Vkandis Sunlord has sent His followers to do something his world would consider an illegal order, is the question she doesn't quite voice. She's genuinely unsure what his answer would be. 

:I haven't taken an entire class on illegal orders yet but based on the material I have available - it's illegal to order someone to break an oath, violate a treaty, disobey a lawful order, commit a crime, conceal information from superiors - there's a whole procedure for handling potentially compromised superiors, in most cases it reduces to "go over their heads"...:

...Nod. 

It still doesn't feel like it's really - answering the question. But maybe that's because she doesn't really know what her question is. 

"Vkandis has not asked anything of me in this," she says finally. "The King is afraid that He will. And that it would prevent Valdemar from keeping commitments they wish to make, if I were allowed to act." 

She shakes her head. "I suppose there are things He might ask of me that I would find unconscionable. I - I would not kill my child," that's the most horrifying example she can think of, "even on His orders. But if I do not know what might be asked of me, only that - that my Sunlord thinks that Leareth must be stopped, and Vanyel thinks that He must be wrong..." 

She's still not sure she's managed to say what her question is, or pinned down in her own mind what the question is.

Sometimes countries that were once at peace go to war, and it can't - she doesn't think it can - always be the case that someone somewhere had to give an illegal order. 

...And maybe that's the question Randi has for her, fundamentally: is she committed to the peace, to the treaty they fought so hard for, even if it means going against her god, who was behind her through all of that? 

Seldan is pretty sure there are a lot of things she's not saying. (He can't read her mind to check; she seems to be one of the few non-Gifted people who has learned to hold something like Mindspeech shields, and also it would be super illegal and deeply inappropriate to read the Queen of an allied kingdom without her permission.) 

:I'm not sure I understand - does Valdemar have a treaty with you stating that they're allowed to make commitments on your behalf without your agreement, was that in the terms of the alliance?:

That helps bring some of it clearer in her head, actually. 

"Not exactly? I think that what Iftel already did, in the north, was - not breaking a formal agreement so much as an implicit expectation." And she wasn't involved and had no idea about it until well after the Heralds found out. She doesn't know how to feel about that either. "And - it is not as though the King had promised Leareth safe passage in a region Valdemar controlled and then failed to keep to that. But - I think they fear they could not promise that even if they wished, if I am here, even though Karse has been Valdemar's closest ally for almost a decade. Because now they do not trust my god. And..." 

They want her to pick a side, is the implicit choice that no one has actually put into words, and - it doesn't feel fair, it feels like a choice she can't possibly be expected to make - almost a nonsensical choice, those loyalties shouldn't come into conflict, couldn't come into conflict if the world still made sense - and yet.

:I'm... new to this planet and do not know the geopolitical situation beyond what I've picked up in the last several days. Are you personally powerful enough that you'd be able to go to a Valdemar-controlled area and assail an archmage there? If you are what would stop you from attacking him at home? If you aren't then how would your presence in Haven prevent them from following through on a commitment of that nature regardless of your god's instructions?:

...Huh, what a good question, what are they specifically worried that she could do? Not her country's army (which in any case isn't in Haven and has very little way to get to Haven without the infrastructure capacity Valdemar theoretically controls, and also doesn't have nearly enough mages to take on Leareth). But her...

"- I carried a miracle for Vkandis once. At the end of the war. It was a miracle of healing, not violence, but - it could have been otherwise. I think they are worried for the same reasons they worry about the Heartstone."

:If I were Valdemar I would just write into any treaty of safe passage I made with Leareth that it does not and cannot bind the behavior of Vkandis or any other deity, and maybe separately if I were being much friendlier with Leareth have another treaty that spelled out penalties for persons in a position to be affected by Valdemaran reprisal who aid deities, something like 'should any person offered hospitality in Valdemar commit acts of violence directly or by proxy against the counterparty of this treaty then they will be summarily ejected from the country' - I'm assuming they don't have the authority to make you stand trial but I don't actually know - and of course the effectiveness of doing that would depend a lot on how much Vkandis cares about whether you get to continue to be in Valdemar going forward, which could be a lot or not at all. On Golarion a practice of executing clerics of any unapproved deity keeps a lot of would-be clerics from being picked up by the unapproved deities in the first place and others it doesn't discourage a bit.:

That sounds very complicated and, fine, like it's probably a sensible sort of thing for a clever person who wants to be very prepared for all eventualities to set up if they're very worried about their country's interests being caught in the middle of a conflict between various gods and an immortal archmage who hates all of them. 

Karis is maybe just wishing that there was no conflict there to worry about, or at least that she didn't have to be caught in the middle of it. 

...And keeps, despite herself, imagining some sort of awful situation where she feels the Sunlord's presence all around her, and lets that light into herself fully again because she trusts her god, and this ends with Vkandis trying to set Leareth on fire and Vanyel trying to step in the way and dying horribly and it being her fault. 

She has no idea how to say any of that in a way that makes sense. 

Blai cannot read her mind. Even the mindreaders present cannot read her mind. However, by sheer coincidence, in the awkward silence that this creates, he has realized something closely related: he doesn't know if she's able to explode or not! Some people can do that here! What is the casting time on suddenly exploding, it didn't look very telegraphed in the prophecies!

Karis is not a mage - or Gifted in any way - and can't Final Strike.

(All right, it's...not impossible...that 'cause an un-Gifted person to Final Strike' is a miracle a god could do? But the current pause is definitely not because she's about to be possessed by her god. - yep, he's briefly checked with some other Companions in the city who were around for the battle of Sunhame, and it was apparently very obvious, with more than enough lead time for an alert mage to Gate Blai out of there.) 

Seldan's read is that Karis is very upset about something and - he doesn't think it's something that lives in the exact details of treaty obligations, even if this situation would almost certainly be less confusing for everyone involved if those...existed...in a clear form. He does thing part of what's going wrong is that Valdemar's treaty with Karse is probably very underspecified on a lot of question relevant to this situation which no one expected to come up, and a lot of the alliance is built on, like, friendship and respect and things like that which can't be written down. Which is absolutely making things awkward now. 

His read is that Karis is conflicted because...having absolute trust in her god is something she's taken for granted? And all the concepts about illegal orders and treaty obligations and such are almost certainly helpful, but - he doesn't think are really addressing the core of why she's upset about finding out that she lives in a world where her god might ask her to do something she believes is wrong.

Also he suspects a lot of what the Heralds are worried about isn't that Karis could directly channel a miracle to try to murder Leareth, and more that she's a source of visibility for Vkandis in Haven and they are abruptly realizing this might be a problem. And he doesn't think they've communicated much to Karis what their threat model is, even insofar as they've figured it out themselves, so - it's probably just been a confusing and upsetting few candlemarks, with people she likes and respects abruptly treating her like a liability. 

Oh.

He doesn't really know what to say about that. He has memorized the situations in which his obligation would be to tell Iomedae "that is an illegal order sir" but he doesn't have any other things he wouldn't do if She told him to, he thinks? He's like, aware that this is a problem he has, probably, Iomedae herself did a lot of vetting of Aroden and this isn't framed as the folly of youth in the book, this defect of Blai's probably related to how he was an Asmodean until Asmodeus dropped him of His own accord, but he doesn't know what you're supposed to do if unlike Blai you have an entire conscience and are just now noticing that your god might not prioritize managing your conscience for you in giving commands.

...What if Iomedae told him to do something that wasn't specifically on the list of illegal orders - for a stronger point, something he somehow knew wasn't on anyone's list of illegal orders - but that ran up against his personal sense of Law? Seldan can try to think of an example if examples would help, and - well, this would probably be a weird implausible thing to happen because Iomedae is Herself Lawful and that's meaningful in Blai's world - but Seldan has noticed that Blai has a Lawnscience a strongly-felt personal sense of what it means for him to be Lawful, which Seldan suspects predates working for Iomedae and probably predates being a cleric of Asmodeus as well. And he suspects that the way Karis feels about personal loyalty to people who helped her in costly ways and have been close friends for years is most analogous to how Blai feels about Law as a concept. 

Breaking an oath or a treaty are both on the list of illegal orders! So is committing a crime! It would be genuinely pretty hard to come up with something Iomedae could command of him which would be unLawful and not any of those things! Though if he does think of one he should simply swear an oath not to do it and then it's covered.

Fair enough. Seldan is mostly trying to find a point of comparison for the experience he thinks Karis is having now, because he’s pretty sure Blai is capable of feeling that way under the right (wrong?) circumstances, even if he’s not calling the part of him that would object “his conscience.” 

What if Iomedae had ordered him to be helpful and cooperative with Leareth after being kidnapped evcn though this incentivized kidnapping Seldan should probably stop trying so hard to come up with an exact analogy that could happen to Blai, since - he thinks part of the problem is that Karis specifically and maybe Velgarth in general are lacking a lot of the concepts for relating to gods that would let Blai say "that is an illegal order sir", rather than - just feeling like this was a baffling impossible situation that he had no good way to orient to. 

Blai would certainly have felt some kind of way if Asmodeus had ordered him to violate the Worldwound treaty but he would probably have come to the conclusion that he'd been enchanted. It's way more likely than Asmodeus talking to some random third-circle direct anyway.

Well. It doesn't seem nearly as implausible as Seldan would like that Vkandis might try to do something quite unpleasant from Valdemar's perspective by working through Karis, because it seems like Vkandis could want Leareth dead a lot more than He wants Karse and Valdemar to maintain their hard-won peace. And that does sound like a pretty unpleasant situation for Karis to find herself in! That she could pretty reasonably never have anticipated or thought to emotionally prepare herself for! 

She...should probably prepare herself for it now, though, even if it's got to be awfully tempting to try to continue believing she can somehow thread the needle of both sets of loyalties. 

Blai has no idea how people whose gods aren't Lawful cope, but he suspects that this is probably him being weird. He extra has no idea how people cope when they don't even know that being Lawful is a thing such that they can either choose to require it or not to.

Wow Karis is sure... thoughtful. Does she maybe want him to leave or what.

Herald-Companion Mindspeech while in rapport is very fast; it's been less than thirty seconds, which is still a long enough time that Karis is realizing she must be making this incredibly awkward by...still not being able to figure out what to say. To this man from another world who heroically saved her daughter and who keeps saying things that she finds bafflingly upsetting given how eminently reasonable they are. It does at least feel like part of what's upsetting with Randi is the...lack of clarity on whether they even agree on the things they owe one another...and Blai was able to point that out. 

...She is abjectly terrified of - what - of living in a world where she doesn't belong to Vkandis anymore? Where she doesn't have a god on her people's side? Even though that must be the situation Vanyel has been in for his entire life, and - she thought she had understood but clearly she hadn't. 

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

"- You have given me a great deal to think about," she says, because that at least is true. "I appreciate your taking the time to come." 

She definitely seems more upset than before they started talking, according to Seldan, but - that doesn't actually seem like a bad thing? It's an upsetting situation. Better to think about all the horrible ways it could go in advance, and - maybe think twice if Vkandis shows up to work a miracle through her, his vague recollection is that gods do need at least some degree of a person's assent to do that. 

:It's no trouble,: he tells Karis, and since he's not positive if that was a dismissal or not, :Is there anything I can do for you?:

She considers this.

"...If you see Jisa again, please tell her that - I did not know. That Iftel was planning an attack on Leareth at all, or that she would be in danger. I - I might have obeyed Vkandis if He had asked me to act, but - not without telling King Randale, and obviously not if I had known she would be involved." 

She kind of wants to ask him if he can pass it along to Vanyel as well, but that's much weirder when he's also in Haven and it's just that she doesn't feel like she can look him in the eye.

"Thank you, that is all." 

:Your majesty,: he says, and he bows his way out of the room. They throw very informal monarchs around here.

Seldan's impression is that Valdemar is the outlier on formality of monarchs, and King Randale in particular, and his wild guess is that Karis finds it soothing to "go native" on that front while here. He has vague memories (vague enough that he's not sure if he was ever there or just read about it) of the actual Karsite court being a lot more formal than this. 

He's waiting outside for Blai and delighted to no longer be separated by walls.

...Also he's now wondering if Karis has really and truly thought about the fact that, one, Vkandis and the Star-Eyed Goddess seem to have almost certainly been working together in trying to assassinate Leareth and, two, that the Star-Eyed killed several hundred of Her own people. He doesn't think it would have helped to bring it up but he hopes she does think it through, at some point.

(Seldan isn't actually sure what the Tayledras consider to be the exact terms of their pact with the Star-Eyed Goddess - or if it's ever occurred to them to enumerate them formally. They're on board with giving up their lives in Her service, Kellan says that their scouts and mages face about the same risks as Heralds in the field of duty - at least in his era, most Heralds didn't live to die in their beds - but what happened to k'Treva seems...different. In their place he would certainly see it as a betrayal.) 

Anyway, they're not obviously required for anything right now? The Nap Stack arrangement is going fine and no one has been woken. Are there other conversations Blai wants to follow up on, or does he just want to go read more of the Acts somewhere?