There's some sort of feeling bubbling up in her chest that she can't quite recognize and definitely can't put a name to. It's a little like the moment she was picked as a priestess, she thinks, only without the twisty knotted terror that someone would catch her. A little like the moment she found out what they'd done to her lord, only without the gnawing disappointment that she hadn't managed to pull it off herself. A little like the moment she found out what an 'Eagle Knight' even was.

Something like — not being alone. There being other people out there, fighting the Asmodeans, not just because of what the Asmodeans did to them but because of what they did to other people, which is sort of incredible to think about, and Good gods that care about anything that matters. And of course in theory she already knew that, she knew it as soon as a group of strangers showed up in the manor to say that they'd killed her lord, but — that's the part she can explain to herself, at least.

She wants very badly to meet the other priestess.

...Probably she can just say that. It's not like the Eagle Knights don't already have a dozen ways to hurt her if they decide they want to, all of which are much worse than just not letting her talk to someone. 

"Can I talk to her when she's done asking for spells?"

"We're planning to hit the road pretty soon after that, but a few minutes shouldn't hurt anything."

They've got a decent amount of buffer on anyone catching them between the Pass without a Trace and the scroll Joy bought off a Norgorberite, but someone's probably going to find where they put their Rope Trick eventually and it's better for both them and everyone here if they're long gone by then.

She makes a face that, by the standards of Cheliax, is probably an incredibly happy smile. 

At this point, the door Asmodia came out of opens again, and a laundry wizard who looks all of about thirty years old walks in.

Then she can find herself in a room with her daughter, a number of the servants and slaves, and three very dangerous people. None of them are currently doing anything particularly threatening, but she's got a good chunk of Treason's attention on her and that's an inherently alarming state of affairs. They weren't worried enough about Montserrat to kill her in her sleep, and none of the people they talked to said anything about her they'd have to kill her over, but still. Diabolist wizards, gross.

Montserrat is pretty sure the appropriate response here is terrified obeisance, at least until she figures out what the soldiers dressed like foreigners want of her. She prostrates herself on the floor. "What do you command, my lady?"

(Her best guess is that it's disrespectful to address the soldiers directly without being spoken to, but that they won't actually kill her for it. Given that, it's safer to know what they want.)

Why do diabolists have to be like this. 

"I'm not anyone's lady. You can get up as long as you don't do anything that'll make me kill you, like running away or threatening the halflings."

So, 'we'll kill you if we feel like it but we might not feel like it,' or at least that's what they want her to believe.

"As you command." She scrambles to her feet again, keeping her eyes trained on the floor.

Treason isn't dumb enough to dismiss a wizard as a threat just because they performed some submission, but unless she's secretly a second circle there's not really all that much to be concerned of and Nethys only knows why a wizard with actual skills would be slumming it in poverty here of all places. If she wants to stay silent and out of the way that's fine by Treason. She needs to kill some more time, sure, but having a conversation with someone while they cringe the whole time sounds incredibly exhausting. What would they even talk about, the merits of willingly getting tortured forever?

"Uh, hi Mom." How does she actually explain any of this. "Uh, so, Chosen Dalmau and Lord Pallares and some of his family are dead. And these people" (she gestures around at the Eagle Knights) "said we should probably leave, since otherwise the Crown'll want to kill us over it."

Montserrat does actually have some experience with traveling at Asmodia's age. Unlike Asmodia she was a wizard, and that still didn't stop her from almost dying repeatedly.

"I see. Do they have orders about where to go?"

If they won't kill her for it she's inclined to see about signing on with some other minor noble family that needs a laundry wizard. The contract will be awful under these circumstances, obviously, but it's better than most alternatives, and she doesn't need to limit herself to people who'll let her keep a baby.

"I'm not your boss. We're going to help the halflings make an escape, but you can stay here and get yourself killed for all I care."

She's not entirely sure what Asmodia is planning, but she's pretty sure it's something and very sure it's a bad idea.

"Asmodia, you can sign on with one of the other households in this barony. Just because you're too stupid to be a wizard doesn't mean they can't find some use for you, and no matter what the Crown decides to do it's safer than trying to go any farther."

"—I can't, actually." Wow, that came out completely wrong, she can see her mother starting to assume that she's just a stupid child who's scared of things no one thinks she has any right to object to. "Like, actually can't — do you actually want me to explain—"

(She is pretty confident she can take her mother in a fight if it comes to it. Her mother isn't even first circle, and she only ever prepares Acid Splash if she's been given special orders to.)

It has not remotely occurred to Montserrat that her daughter might secretly be a cleric. It has occurred to her that her daughter might be a murderer, and right now she's trying to come up with any other remotely plausible explanation so that if someone questions her under truthspell she can say that she didn't know.

Because once a human soul has had a taste of freedom, there's no thought more abominable than willingly putting yourself back in chains. 

Or at least, that's how Treason feels about it, but maybe that's not the whole story? You'd think you could just explain that, and probably a diabolist wouldn't get it but you wouldn't act like the world was ending if you had to try.

It's not that the world is ending. It's not even that Asmodia is worried what'll happen to her, as weird as that sounds, she'll be on the run from the Crown no matter what she says here. It's just — actually, now that she thinks about it, that's kind of weird. It's just that what the wizard said earlier about not telling people things you don't want to be tortured out of them made her think a little. And she doesn't think they'd do exactly that, it's not like the Crown knows there's a secret priestess running around, but either way her mother might be in danger if she knows Asmodia is a Calistrian priestess, definitely if she gets caught trying to keep it secret from the Crown and maybe even if she just turns her in.

Now that she's actually thought about it all the way through, that's a really stupid thing to care about. Probably she should just tell her.

'Asmodia is just being a dramatic child and there's no actual reason she couldn't' is plausible enough that she can believe it, at least. Normally she'd knock some sense into her, but the foreign soldiers seem really worried someone will damage their slaves, and she's not giving them any excuse to decide she was being too 'threatening.' (They'll kill her either way, if they decide they want to, but she does actually think they're less likely to want to if she's careful to play by their rules.) 

She doesn't actually have any idea how to get Asmodia to stop being a dramatic child without saying anything that could possibly be taken as a threat.

"If you try to go any father than that you are going to get yourself killed. Is that what you want?"

"No!" If she wanted to be dead it wouldn't actually be hard. Obviously her mother doesn't mean it literally, but still.

"Then grow up."

Right. Okay. Her mother... is not actually going to stop, not without a reason, and she could make a reason up but any fake reason that'd be good enough for her mother wouldn't actually leave anyone safer. Or she could refuse, and the moment the Eagle Knights are gone her mother will try to stop her, and that would also not be safer. And it's stupid to care about what it'll mean for her mother, anyways.

She puts two fingers on her second-top button, just in case. 

"I am a priestess of Calistria. If I sign on somewhere else and the priest happens to check, I will die. And maybe that's what you want, but if I die I want it to be for a reason, not because I decided to sign on with another lord and didn't think for two moments about what that would mean."

She can't seriously expect anyone to believe that.

Montserrat is trying very hard not to believe that, actually, and it's not working. She would very much like to disbelieve it. She doesn't think she's got any chance of talking Asmodia out of it, and even if she could it wouldn't matter, they'll torture her to death just the same if she's renounced her goddess as if she hadn't. (Which of course serves the greater glory of Asmodeus, Lord of Darkness and Law, First among Archdevils, Whose will she would never circumvent. She's not really managing to believe that either.)

She's seen priests be executed. It was the sort of execution that was often mandatory, at wizard prep school. They've got to be careful with them, because if you kill them faster than you're trying to you can't get a Malediction off. 

Maybe she's... just pretending she's committed a serious crime, for no reason at all. (Montserrat does not even slightly believe that.)

That makes way more sense of some of those questions earlier, huh. The girl's probably still evil, obviously, but it's not like Treason isn't Chaotic Neutral half the time herself. And considering none of the people here are acting like she's a whore...

"Congrats, girl. Who did you get got?"