The particular teenage girl who has finagled the position of their guide is dressed better than a servant, but much less well than some of the other women, if they're paying attention to that. Her name is Queralt, and she would love to show them around the rest of the estate. It's more a castle than a villa, really; Kantaria itself is actually in more danger from the Barrowwood than from mountain orcs, but it still pays to have strong walls. They've seen the courtyard; there's also a chapel (which is beautiful, if perhaps a bit low on decorations of obvious religious significance), a small library (with a somewhat suspicious number of empty shelves, right now), and the training grounds out back, where a half-orc in light armor is instructing a handful of boys and a couple of girls in archery. This is in contrast to every other part of the house, where there have so far been notably more women than men.

"Only lightly exciting, really. Menador wasn't touched by the war, so we have all of the improvements and none of the grief that came with them in other places. Of course we've all been very busy redecorating, but the house looks much nicer for it, I think. And a handful of people divorced, and Genoveva lost her husband, but that's really quite painless as wars go."

"...divorced? Why? Were they in disagreement about whether to stop being Asmodean?" You could divorce your spouse for being an Asmodean in Lastwall but that is because in Lastwall this would be shocking and unexpected.

"Well, you know, they were alliance marriages, and House Narikopolus isn't allied with any of the old southern nobility anymore."

"Ah." That is terrible but makes a great deal of sense. "Are all of the children still being taken care of?"

"Most of them." This is sort of a complicated question.

"Most of them?" he asks. He is going for 'neutral and not judgmental' but Chelish people are much better at social games than Lastwall theology students.

Well, one of the women in question killed her children, but it occurs to her now that that might be a crime, actually, and not something that you want to say to Lastwall theology students.

"Ferran's wife took her daughter back south, so I'm not sure what happened to her. I don't think the Henderthanes are doing very well, these days."

"I imagine it's been very frightening for the political situation to change this abruptly." 

"A bit, I suppose, but all of the really dramatic things happened farther away. It's really just been strange not having anyone watching. The crown hardly sends anyone, and you're the first people we've seen from the church."

There's something off about -

"Just to be clear, the Church doesn't have any authority to make arrests in Cheliax, or to - supervise - anyone except so that we can later explain the situation here to people. We are not here to get people in trouble for doing Iomedaenism wrong."

Well, it would be a bit unfair to get people in trouble for doing Iomedanism wrong before they've explained absolutely anything about how to do Iomedanism correctly, even when they've been trying very hard with no guidance at all, and she understands that Iomedae is the sort of goddess who prefers that things be fair. It's really sort of unfair anyway, because they are going to be removed just like the Henderthanes if they persist in doing things wrong, and if it's the crown and not the Church doing it it makes very little difference to Queralt, who is a terribly marginal house member and unlikely to keep being part of it if everyone has to flee to wherever the Henderthanes went.

All of that seems very impolite to say. 

"Oh no, of course not. I understand you're not Chelish at all. You're from Lastwall, right?"

"Yes. A long time ago a great many of the people who attended Iomedae's divinity school in Lastwall were from Cheliax, but not lately, of course."

"Could we send people?" Is that how you're meant to learn anything about Her?

"If they wanted to join Her priesthood, yes. Though right now she's not empowering many priests and I don't think we're expecting that to change in the next few years."

"I see. Well, I suppose they'd want to know the penalties for failing beforehand, but I'm sure some people would go anyway."

" - ah. It's not - so, the Goddess has limited resources with which to act in the world, and we don't know much of what constraints She is under. For a long time we knew about how many priests She wanted us to train each year, and we did that. Right now, She's not picking nearly as many priests, but that's not any kind of failing on the part of the people who were studying to be priests, and there is no punishment for anyone for the Goddess not choosing them. That would be - well, it would be pointlessly harming people, mostly, and also it would be ...wronging the Goddess? It would make Her have fewer options like 'pick up lots of people in five years when She has the budget', and as you observed fewer people would go to divinity school if they were punished for failing out of it, so it would limit the set of people she could choose as priests."

"Not being chosen by the Goddess isn't a failing even in normal times when She's choosing the usual numbers. The Lord-Watcher of Lastwall isn't a paladin or a cleric, but he made the same oaths and lived by them and eventually ended up in charge of Lastwall because he was the best person for it. Some people are more useful to the Goddess doing something other than being a priest."

"...and of course not everyone is useful to the Goddess and that is also not them doing anything wrong or for which they should be punished."

...it's chilling, somehow, that Iomedae doesn't have a use for everyone, even though it's really quite obvious that some people are simply useless, and there's no reason the goddess of war would be confused about it. It really should have been obvious before that she wouldn't have a use for Queralt, and maybe it was, but she didn't feel sick about it then.

It's also occurring to her that she's been - really very wrong about how much direction an organized lawful church like Iomedae's would be willing to give them. She doesn't know what she'll do if it turns out Asmodeus is the only god who's willing to tell people what He wants. Die, she supposes, for not already knowing.

"Well, then perhaps even more people would like to join, if you have space for them and there isn't even any cost for not being chosen. And perhaps if they're not they can be something else."

"I think we should start with - the things about Iomedae that the Church wants everybody to know, not just her faithful, and then the things that the Church wants her faithful to know, and then if there are people who at that point want to go learn the things her priests should know they can." `

"That seems reasonable. I'm sure we'll all be very excited to hear them. We know a little about other faiths, but Iomedae in particular has been banned more than others, so I suppose it'll all be new."

"I think we will probably also lecture a bit on other faiths, because it sounds like you have a serious shortage of Good and Neutral priests in general, and if we can get anyone selected by Sarenrae or something that'd be good too. But certainly we know the most about Iomedae. 

Is there anything you have been curious about?"

"I'm not sure I know enough to be curious, yet. I'm sure I'll have all sorts of questions once you've started giving sermons."

The chapel and the library aren't empty - they have to pray to Iomedae and study her teachings, after all - but the training grounds are lively. There is a sense that was absent, in the other places, that people actually want to be there. A couple of young men spar with swords, but most of the space and most of the effort is devoted to archery. There are five boys, some of them quite small, and two older girls, trying to hit a series of targets that are eventually quite far away. Two of the boys are obviously orc-blooded, and the instructor is a half-orc, currently sitting down to eat an apple and lazily correcting forms. 

"Training grounds. It's not always just children back here, of course, it's just Carles is giving a lesson. Let's see... Ignasi and Helena are Valeria's, Josep is Estel's, and Ariadna is Maleït's, all the Archduke's. And then Armand is the Archduke's grandson, through Maleït's eldest son, and then Hector and the little Ignasi are Carles's. It's too many to remember all at once, I know."

"Who is the Archduke's wife?"

"Valeria. Well, Maleït, too, but she died - ten years ago, I think?"