"Show me a devil and I will sword it in a heartbeat. But every single time anyone has ever said that you should sword someone because they are secretly a devil, they've turned out to be a completely innocent person who just believed the wrong things, or an old woman who was convenient to blame for a plague, or literally just a foreigner. If you're going to have the responsibility and the duty of a sword, you cannot just go around killing people because someone said they were a devil!" 

" - I no doing that," says Iomedae, horrified. "God tells me who is Hellgoing but still I not kill them! I no even kill Martin! I no saying kill Hellgoing people!"

"...so who exactly do you want to sword? Because literally everyone else who has ever called themselves a holy warrior has just, like, murdered a bunch of Muslims." 

"I do not know what a Muslim is. Is different than a devil?"

Oh for the love of -

"Iomedae. We're leaving."

" - sir?"

" - they told you to stop bringing up religion at their thing. You have to respect that, or you can't come. We're leaving. We can try again on Tuesday."

"I'm sorry, sir. You did tell me this."

Aaaand now she looks like a kicked puppy. But the kid does in fact need to learn how to respect peoples' very reasonable preference not to be preached at.

Oh no, what has she done. Her first commitment might be to the truth, but looking after newcomers is pretty high on the list too, and if she's getting Iomedae kicked out.... people are going to be so disappointed in her. Gabriel will be mad. 

"She's not offending me," she says, much more calmly. "Sorry. It's my fault." 

"She needs to follow the rules while she's here. Come on, Iomedae."

Yep, she's coming. At a jog so she doesn't seem to be being defiant. She still doesn't understand what 'religion' even means but she could, in fact, if she'd stopped and thought, have guessed that the conversation with Lucy counted, and she didn't stop, because the rule didn't seem important to her, which is perfectly good reason for Robert to be angry; who is she, to decide which of the rules are important?

Robert opens the trunk for her to put her armor in it. 

Iomedae would rather peel off her own skin. But that would not help. The law says she has to obey Robert, and she would only disobey the law for Aroden, and Aroden - also thinks she should follow his rules, while she is here, though she is not sure if he thinks it was legitimate to enslave her or not. 

She will take off her armor and get in the car and pray all the way home. 

"The thing I do not like at all is that this failed silently. We have no idea why she ignored the note, or if she decided to listen about Taldor but not about being a holy warrior. We still have no idea if she's literally being possessed by a demon or if she really is just from a completely mundane cult that happened to teach her swordfighting."

Nicole is sitting at a table outdoors, right at the back of the garden well away from other tables, at the restaurant where they sometimes go for tacos after practice. She is incandescently angry but not showing even the tiniest bit of it to anyone except perhaps Raoulin, who knows her too well for her to hide much. 

"I think that is all the more reason to memory edit both parents, because we don't have any idea what she's told them. For all we know she's told them to bring a camera to the fey realm so she can prove to them that devils and heaven and hell exist. This is the most serious kind of breach we could possibly be looking at -"

"If she has told them that, and we wipe their memories, she will just tell them again. I hope you are not suggesting kidnapping a child from her foster parents." 

"Of course not."

"....is that the worst idea in the world? It's not like we don't have a safecamp. Cináed could -" 

"That sounds an awful lot like your suggestion is that I dump this problem on Landrada. And I need you to understand that I would rather die horribly several times over than tell Landrada I kidnapped a foster child." 

"I'm just saying I don't think a lot of kidnapping would be required. You could just be like, come with me to a place you can practise with swords all day, and she would be like, great, let's leave right now." 

"We are just not going to have that conversation without the baronage being looped in." Nicole is laying down the law now, so her tone brooks no argument, and there is none - though Gabriel looks a little sulky about it.

"Sorry if I messed up the previous plan."

"I am taking full responsibility for whatever failed with the previous plan, sir." 

Reynhard does not get at all why Nicole calls her knight sir; she might have a red belt from him but she formally outranks him quite a bit, and when they aren't being formal people use each other's names. She's normally so thoroughly correct about everyone's ranks and titles and strange name pronunciations. 

"I think we need to get Nicole a way to actually talk to this kid."