"...no, I don't care about the stuff, I want... Are you willing to come back? Because if I'm being really honest, and I understand if you don't believe me and I'm sorry this is harsh but I think, if I'm reading you right, you want me to be honest with you - I don't think you know what your goals are but I don't think you're likely to achieve them by doing what you're currently doing. I think it's mostly a question of how many people you'll hurt before you realise. I'm sorry, Iomedae, and there's - ways to help you change your situation if you want them - but this is the worst way to do it because now the cops are involved. I want to help you but if the cops find you in that vehicle I can't." 

Yes, obviously even if they don't kill you for being a runaway slave in America they kill you for horse theft. "We could...give the car back?" she says, though she isn't sure that is the kind of thing that actually helps, with the law. "I - if I had knowed for sure you not kill me, and knowed for you that foster childs in America are freed when they are eighteen, I no have runned away. But - Haley knows you all better than me. If Haley think you are lying, it seems a very big chance to say you are not lying, go back.

And even being a foster child for three year is very terrible. I only stayed because I think maybe God command it and because the cops drag me back. I angry that America made me a foster child. I angry America take my money. I angry - Haley says that it is also not allowed to work on the farms. I angry nothing is allowed. I do not want to be here any more. Maybe I commanded to suffer, like God suffer when they put him to death for saying the truth. I don't know."

"I want to clear things up with Haley as soon as she will let me. She's very, very upset right now and I don't know if she'll forgive me but I want to explain things to her."

Raoulin sighs deeply and thinks for a good long time about what he would do if he was actually trying to achieve Iomedae's goals and not his own. Unfortunately, he's stuck. 

"I really do want to help you, but... I'm sorry, Iomedae, I really am, but I'm just not... enough to fix this on my own. They called in the big guns. If you make it to Aethelmearc there's people waiting for you there, if you sleep eventually they're going to tag you in your dreams, we are trying to hold off on telling the cops everything but if they realise your car is stolen then I can't stop them arresting you... there's going to come a point where it changes from, well, bring you back and lie to a few cops and smooth over the whole incident, to where it's less harmful to let the two of you go down. If you steal enough cars, we aren't going to memory edit the entire police force to cover it up, they'll just let you go to jail... how can I help you? Tell me how to help you."

"If we leave the car, and the magic, and I no tell anybody you are an evil magic conspiracy, and I go some place where I a free person, and work for money and buy food? You use magic come find me? Why?"

"If you don't come back then Jenny and Robert will be in huge trouble, the cops will investigate, they'll poke around a bunch at the event, maybe some of them will stumble upon magic, and people might get hurt, and also - I don't necessarily agree with making these decisions, but people want to help you, and you can't go to a place where you won't be a foster kid. Canada and Mexico are going to be the same as here. I'm only trying to find you because I don't want the cops to find you first."

"People want to help me and are very stupid?"

She is almost never that uncharitable, but it comes out before she can think about whether it is wise to say it.

"I am pretty stupid," Raoulin agrees with a casual ease. "It's all the being hit over the head, probably." 

"Making me a slave did not help me. It was the worst thing any person ever did to me. Much worse than what Martin try, worse even than if Martin had not just tried. Today was hard because I scared I wrong other people but if not wronging other people, starving in the woods so much better than being a slave. You no help me, make me a slave again. You do it to serve your evil magic  conspiracy, no me. Maybe I choose to be a slave, if when I think about this I think God ask it of me, but it not helping me."

What?

"If someone has made you a slave, I want to know about that so I can stop them. I will not let anyone enslave children. What's going on?" 

"Oh sorry. Learned a new word. Before I learned new word I thinked that just what people mean by 'foster child'. Because of how foster childs work and no pay, and because if we run away, you call the big guns and the cops drag me back. Now I know better English."

"We are not calling in the big guns because you're a foster child! That's because you're from another universe and a holy warrior and nobody has any idea what you can do or whether you're dangerous or - well, okay, look, there's two very different teams here. The government wants to drag you back with cops and probably send Haley to jail. We really want to avoid that, if possible, but we're not going to fight the entire government to save you. And we don't want you to be a slave, I - if you really hate being a foster child so much then I will try to help you not be one, we can call a lawyer to talk about what your emancipation or adoption options are, we can come up with a clever way to fake your death, we can try and send you back to your world if we can figure out how, I just need you to let me solve this in a way that avoids the cops. Please." 

"What are ways solve this avoid cops?"

"I - if you come back, Katherine will say that you didn't steal her car. You just borrowed it. She won't tell anyone that Haley hurt her. We will come up with something we can tell Jenny that explains why you were gone, something innocent that won't get anyone in trouble. Then later once there aren't cops everywhere we can find time to talk, and we'll figure out how to fix your situation, and maybe you can run away again in some way that isn't traced straight back to us, or maybe we'll find you an option you like better." 

" - if I believe that I do it. Can you think of - ways to show I should believe that?"

"I don't suppose it's fair to ask if you'd take my sworn word as a knight, is it?" 

Raoulin sighs and wracks his brain for ideas. If she was going to be persuaded by them teaching her to swordfight, or the food Katherine brought her, or the fact that Raoulin is visibly not trying to kill her, she would've been persuaded already. 

"If you call Cináed I think he can explain a lot of things to you. He knows about the world you're from, and I don't really know anything. Is there anyone you do trust?" 

"...is Lucia kind of holy warrior who is not allowed to lie?"

"She's not the same thing that you are, that... doesn't exist in our world. For her magic to work she can't be complicit in things she believes are evil. She has to try to be honest, but she can lie to keep her oaths or protect someone, things like that. There's other restrictions. She wouldn't lie to you about whether it's safe to come home."

That is not a maximally reassuring answer but it's more reassuring than a 'yes' would have been, given that Lucia isn't properly a paladin. "I no want Katherine to lie for me but I was trying to trade her car for Haley car since we wanted to drive in Haley car and did no have the keys."

"...oh that's why you stole the car. Okay. Um, if you bring the car back really soon then Katherine won't have to tell any lies, because she can just not say anything at all, and it can be like the car was never gone. Does that work?" 

"Have to talk to Haley. Maybe. I - 

- the man who gived me his bow to shoot with, is he in the evil magic conspiracy?"

Haley emerges from the gas station with two bags of white Monster Energy, Diet Pepsi, the concha breads she likes, chocolate bars, teriyaki beef jerky, and water to mix with the sekanjabin. She makes a shrugging questioning gesture at Iomedae which she hopes communicates 'how's it going?' and deposits the bags on the driver's seat so that she can refuel the car. 

"Uh.... you mean Rembrandt?"

This is not the kind of thing he's supposed to reveal, his instincts scream, but there's no point trying to hide the existence of magic from a Pathfinder paladin. "Yes." 

"Can I talk to him?"