Nicole catches his meaning immediately. "Helping with a charity bake sale is the sort of thing foster parents approve of." 

Raoulin claps twice. "Yes! And we can sweeten the deal by saying she can have free stuff that doesn't get sold in exchange for volunteering. I very much doubt Robert can hover over the table for the entire day so we'll get some time to talk to her. Worst case scenario I get rid of a bunch of stuff I don't need." 

"...look, I love you both but this is the second convoluted plan you two have wanted to do and we still have no idea what went wrong with the first one. For all we know she's doing faith healing in school every day and it's a matter of time until someone films it."

It has also occurred to Reynhard that he could ask Nicole to just break Iomedae's arm and see if she does any magic in response. He does not say this out loud because that would be morally wrong and he did swear an oath regarding that sort of thing.

"We could write to Lady Ester and ask if she can spare us a scrying?" 

"She definitely can't. Sorry. I phoned and asked her for three when I was handling the whole Gorgon thing. Sometimes a mirror is not enough." 

(Reynhard is trying to imagine how that phone call went. Like hello, sorry to interrupt dinner, I'm calling because I'm currently in a dungeon just round the corner from a loud hissing sound and I'm trying to not be turned to stone, any chance of texting me a nice sketch map of the cave? Great, thanks, have a nice dinner!) 

"The person to ask would be Sumnyr, not Ester. - don't all look like that." 

"Sumnyr Swann?" 

"You're serious?" 

"Jesus, Nicole-" 

Nicole sits back in her chair, her back perfectly straight, and gives the table an icy look. "She's the most honourable person I know, and you are all better people than to react like that." 

Raoulin sighs softly. "She does give people the creeps, Nicky - it's not her fault at all, nobody's saying it's her fault, but..." 

"...but you're saying introducing her to Jenny could go very badly?" 

"The mind reader gives me the creeps. I agree it's not her fault but - that is also not my fault." 

"Sumnyr's power hurting you usually says worse things about you than about her. It's no different from standing around in my aura." 

"You know what, it probably does say bad things about me. But so long as I'm not doing bad things, I think I get to have my privacy. Shield of the weak, obedient to my liege, reverent, honest, foremost in battle, the oath says, and there's nothing in there about letting anyone poke around inside my squeaky clean brain." 

Raoulin hates to contradict his squire twice in quick succession when she's really saying things he's glad someone brought up. He pinches the bridge of his nose for a long few seconds.

"I agree with you that we call Sumnyr and at least ask before we resort to memory magic, but..."

Raoulin shakes his head apologetically. "I don't think she's going to agree as long as Iomedae being.... possessed, fey, demon, angel, half-demon, half-angel, mind-edited by any of the above, any of those possibilities are on the table... Y'all remember the last time she tried an angel?" 

"Yeah. - it was bad. She, ah, had a reaction that would be bad for her to have in front of Jenny and Robert." 

None of the others were there, but they are very much willing to believe this. 

"...to be fair, in the hypothetical where Iomedae's mind is burning her, that's also probably the world where we actually have to go nuclear and memory edit people anyway, right? We cannot leave a demon in the foster care system and we also don't want the foster care system looking for someone to blame for a missing kid... but no, if she's only a small part non-human we don't want to go nuclear but there's still ways for her to mess with Sumnyr."

"Fastest way to clear those possibilities, then?" 

"Nope, I've changed my mind. I love your first plan. Let's do your first plan. I'm on board with the bake sale. I love bake sales. I make truly excellent blueberry muffins." 

"....can't actually say no to Reynhard blueberry muffins, I guess." 

Iomedae is forbidden to speak at practice about religion. She is - still not really clear on what religion is. Discussion of the gods, definitely. Discussion of the afterlives, apparently, or of any kind of outsiders. She suspects it's somehow even more general than that? Discussion of paladins and priests? Discussion of Good and Evil, of honor and anarchy? Discussion of ...all obligations and commitments? This is a baffling thing for an order to prohibit the discussion of, but - Robert is right, that she was treating the rule with less seriousness because of how it strikes her as a stupid rule, and that isn't acceptable. You cannot treat rules carelessly because you don't like them; she can refuse to join the order, if its rules seem foolish to her, but she cannot go to the order for training and ignore its rules. 

She will just have to not talk about anything that matters. This is a painful constraint, but she is a slave, and should not expect anyone to care which constraints are painful to her, and should not expect that her objections carry any weight with them.

She asks Robert to help her apologize for disobeying the rules in a way that is not bringing up religion, since ordinarily when apologizing one would make reference to commitments, moral motivations, or the state of the world in some way.