The sabotage itself goes just fine. Liberty water walks her way over invisibly, brings the whole thing crashing down with just a couple of well placed spells, and even manages to avoid drowning in the suddenly turbulent waters. The bit that goes less well is the getting away part - it turned out there are a lot more scary people in the immediate vicinity than they were counting on, and pretty much none of them missed the extremely loud sabotage they just got through with. They had to take off in a hurry, and ditching the falcon familiar one of the wizards sent to tail them required a lot of circuitous riding. Seriously, how can one bird be so hard to hit?

As a result, instead of spending the night halfway back towards the coast, they have to put up their rope trick in some out of the way demesne only a few dozen miles from the river. But hey, it's not like they can get much more heat on their trail, so as long as they're in the area...

If you're a bunch of skilled adventurers, it's not actually very hard to topple a minor noble and his pet Asmodean cleric. Just slip in a bit before dawn, get the drop on a middle aged man while he's without armor or weapons, and then work your way through his guards with superior skill and a few strategic sleeps. They don't get the priest before he wakes up, but that's okay; he doesn't any spells prepped this early in the day and they can drop him in six seconds flat. And then Joy, Treason, and Eric can set about letting the slaves and indentures know they're free while Liberty asks Milani to refresh her spells. All in a good day's work!

For whatever reason, the slaves seem even more terrified than Chelish slaves normally are! 

Asmodia wakes up exactly at dawn, just like she has every day for the past few weeks, not that she lets herself show it.

Most days, she takes her best guess at when her mother's spell preparation would have made enough noise to wake her. Today, there's a lot more noise than that. She can hear voices, unfamiliar ones, too muffled for her to make out what they're saying. She hadn't known her lord was expecting visitors. Most of the explanations she can think of are really bad signs for her — she hadn't thought her lord suspected anything, Tea confessed, but maybe he'd realized some reason why it couldn't possibly have killed Guifré — and she's pretty sure it wouldn't be hard to catch her, they wouldn't even need a truth spell—

There's not actually a way to sneak outside from this room without going through the rest of the manor. If they've got magic that'll catch her out it'll catch her either way.

She pretends to wake up and slips out of the tiny room, technically separate from the servant's quarters, that she shares with her mother.

It's not actually surprising that all of the slaves are scared of them. They know a bunch of the bellflower signs, of course, but Cheliax does its best to make sure most slaves don't, and it's not like nobody else can say the words as a trick. If they'd been planning this they would have brought a freed halfling with them, they usually respond better that way and there are plenty chomping at the bit for the chance, but this was more of a target of opportunity than anything. Instead they've got Eric, who's plenty scary with his rapier but a lot less viscerally terrifying than Joy's wizardry or Treason's everything, calmly talking with them about what's going to happen and what their options are. The fear on their face hurts, but it's the Asmodeans who are at fault, not their victims.

Treason absolutely is going to keep an eye on the servant girl, though! They haven't heard anything particularly bad about her, but the slaves haven't exactly been opening up all their deepest fears and there's a lot of ways a free person can try to make their lives miserable. She's not going to be hostile unless it gets violent or Asmodia tries to make a run for the horses, but a woman with enough muscles to use a longbow and the concentration to hit a moving target at a thousand feet keeping an eye on you can be pretty intimidating.

He can certainly talk to them about their options! If he wants to talk with them about their options that's going to be trickier. They seem to be doing their very best to avoid talking unless they think they're being ordered to.

She can stay still and quiet, if that's what the strangers seem to want. She's trying to come across as obedient, rather than as terrified of being caught, but it's fine if they think she's the normal kind of terrified.

They don't look like they're with the army, at least, but she's never met adventurers out of stories before, for all she knows they're as bad as soldiers. Her eyes are still moving, trying to make sense of the situation, trying to — is that a holy symbol of Cayden— 

No matter what this is, whether it's a trap or — something else, she doesn't dare hope — it would be safer if she hadn't noticed. But she doesn't think she can pretend she didn't see it, if they were watching they must have seen the way her eyes caught on it, she needs to figure out what to say only the right thing to say if it's a trap and the right thing to say if it isn't are pretty much exact opposites. What does she even know about Cayden — he likes alcohol, even the kinds that aren't legal, he thinks people should sleep around like they do in the cities and not get all fussed about getting married, he wants people to bravely fight the demons at the Worldwound, she's not sure what else—

Subtle, thy name is not Asmodia Ferrer. You don't exactly need eagle eyes to spot where her vision is going, but they're useful enough to tolerate the pun so Treason has a pair anyway.

"Never seen a Caydenite before? You've been missing out, let me tell you."

(Eric can work with that. He thinks the ones he's talking to will probably want to do a runner without them, so he's going to spend a bit more time on the logistics of that one even though he really doesn't recommend it, but he'll make sure to go over the pros and cons of all their different options and avoid anything that even sounds like an order.)

Apple thinks this would be easier if they still had Tea, but he's not about to say that 

"No, ma'am, I haven't." She doesn't actually have any idea what you're supposed to call Caydenites if you don't want them to torture you for not respecting them enough. ...Probably it doesn't matter, they're Chaotic Good, they're probably a lot more likely to torture her because she used to worship Asmodeus than because she messed up a title.

Titles are for losers who can't let their actions speak for themselves. Besides, she wouldn't have picked her name if she didn't want people using it.

"Don't get all stuffy on me. There's gonna be a lot of changes around here, at least until they find some inbred cousin of his to stick with the position, but I don't plan to stick around for long and we're probably not going to kill you unless you're really awful."

Oh. 

Her lord is — dead, then?

There's some incredibly pathetic part of her twisting up with disappointment, hearing that. She had wanted to kill him, she'd thought that was what she'd been chosen to achieve, she'd stuck around even knowing it was only a matter of time before Chosen Dalmau asked for the right spell because she wanted to make him pay, him and his family and Chosen Dalmau, and if she ran and might never get the chance.

But the important thing is that he's dead.

She hopes it hurt.

Unless it's a trick. But probably if it were a trick they'd've bothered to look her over with magic, and they'd be cutting into her right about now. 

She's never met anyone else who was trying to actually listen to the little voice inside them telling them to make people like that suffer the way they deserved. And she looks a lot better at fighting than Asmodia, Asmodia still hasn't figured out how to get close enough to Chosen Dalmau to kill him without him just using his magic to kill her first. It'd be upsetting not to get to do it herself, but as long as he's burning in Hell with his god she thinks she can manage.

"Did you — Chosen Dalmau, he sleeps by the chapel — did you get him—"

"Of course, we're not amateurs. Him, the wife, most of the guards... the kids are still around, but honestly I don't fancy all their chances of lasting the year."

The same goes for the surviving guards, honestly. Cheliax is a shit work environment even if you didn't just surrender to their enemies.

She's not really sure what the point of leaving the kids alive is, they're still nobleborn Asmodeans, she's technically a child and she doesn't worship Asmodeus. Maybe the littlest ones, maybe, but it's not like any of them are decent people. But that's not really the point, the point is that her lord is dead, and Chosen Dalmau is dead. And she wishes it had been her hand on the knife, but even so, with any luck they're trapped in the fires of Avernus, desperately begging for it to stop, knowing that it never will.

...And if this is some kind of trick, she's already asked them to kill the priest, there's not much that's more obviously disloyal than that, there's really no reason to pretend.

"Good," she says fiercely.

Now, see, that's an appropriate reaction to Asmodean clerics being dead. She's pretty sure it's genuine, too - some people like to talk about how good Chelish people are at lying, but in her experience it's mostly that they don't know what telling the truth looks like for comparison. 

Of course, having that reaction also puts her in even more danger than just being a witness to them pulling this off does.

"On a related note, though, you're probably going to need to get out of here yourself. If there's anything the Asmodeans hate more than feeling disrespected, it's people knowing you can just kill them like anyone else - doesn't matter that you didn't do anything, you still know too much. Maybe if you were good enough at grovelling, but, well, I imagine you hate that as much as everyone else. We're advising the same thing for all the other servants and guards who are still alive."

(She totally thinks Asmodia is lying. The little bitch goes to services every night, and now that someone stronger shows up all of the sudden she's pretending like she never cared about any of that? But it'd be pathetic to start whining just because Asmodia is better at pretending to be a traitor than she is.)

She's spent the past few weeks pretending like she's shocked and horrified about Guifré, she's pretty sure she can manage to grovel convincingly. It's just that that won't be enough to help, even if the Crown doesn't just decide to torture everyone here to death, not if they start asking questions under truthspell and definitely not if they bother to check for secret priests.

"Do you, uh, know how to get to the border from here?"

Asmodia has never seen a map. She thinks probably Andoran is to the east but she's not even sure of that, and she could steal one of the lord's travel passes if no one else gets to them first but that won't get her all the way to Andoran province.

—Actually, now that she thinks about it, she's not sure she even wants to go to Andoran? If there's people going around making people like Chosen Dalmau or her lord or Guifré pay for what they did — they might be dead, but it's not hard to remember the smoldering feeling that used to burn inside her, or the sheer rightness of killing Guifré, and it's not hard to imagine pointing them at someone else. Is there a way to say she wants to do that instead that doesn't make her sound like a pathetic child with no idea what she's doing — probably, but she hasn't thought of it yet.

"Andoran's about 400 miles east, Molthune a little over 300 northeast from here. Gotta be careful with Molthune though, if you don't go east enough you'll end up in Nidal and that's not any better. Plus Molthune can eat a bag of dicks. Once we're done here we're gonna-"

"Treason." There's a sharp reproach in Joy's voice.

"What, I'm not gonna give her any details."

"Don't tell people things that you don't want the Asmodeans to torture out of them."

They're going to commit treason next? Aren't they already — wait, is he calling the woman "Treason," is that her name — that's not the most important thing. Maybe she's worried her name will get stolen by faeries or something.

"All I really know about other provinces is what they told us, and sometimes it, uh, changed."

She's mostly guessing Andoran is a good place to go because Chosen Dalmau used to say it was full of anarchists. Also, wow, that really isn't helping with the thing where she probably sounds like a pathetic child. (She totally thinks she could just not give in under torture if it were really important, the problem is that they can just solve that with magic.)

"Oh, yeah. Asmodeans hate accurate maps because then they'd have to admit we've already taken half the country from them, and then people might get ideas about the other half."

That didn't really answer her question. ...Probably this is her fault for not actually saying the question part. Only now she has other questions — how do you ask about that without sounding like a stupid child—

"I think it's harder than they thought to stop people from, uh, 'getting ideas.'" 

That... was also not a question.

Right, sure, Asmodia, we totally buy that you've secretly wanted to rebel against Asmodeus the whole time. It'd be less pathetic if she was just groveling at their feet.

"Nobody ever said Asmodean clerics were smart."

"Nah, I'm sure Cheliax lies about that one."

"Nobody ever said it with a straight face."

"Usually they said Asmodean priests were wise, if you were smart you were supposed to go be a wizard. ...Was that not actually true, that you've got to be wise to be a priest?"

...That was also probably a stupid question. She should really figure out how to say her questions in a way that sounds less pathetic.

"Eh. More than most people, sure, but that's a wide range and Asmodeus' are less wise than you'd think. I always figure anyone actually wise would be able to realize getting paid in eternal torture is kind of a shit wage. I think he has fewer of the total washes, though - I know a Caydenite who isn't even wise enough to conjure beer, but he gets 7 channels a day to make up for it and evil channels aren't very useful."

She nods.

It's sort of weird that she's calling harmful channels "evil channels." The Evil gods won't give people the other kind, sure, but Asmodia's not Evil, not since she risked her life giving Guifré what he deserved and maybe longer than that. Maybe people from other countries are just... saying something that's not quite right, but that's close enough for most people, and don't have a lot of clerics of Neutral gods or something?

...This seems like the sort of thing where it'd be really easy to say the wrong thing and accidentally convince the Caydenite that she secretly supports Asmodeus and needs to be tortured to death, or something.

Probably she should come up with some other question instead. Ideally a question that doesn't make her sound like a stupid pathetic child, but she'll take anything that doesn't get her tortured to death for no good reason.

"...Are there a lot of people like, uh—" She gestures vaguely at the adventurers. 

"Depends on what you mean. A lot of eagle knights? Sure. A lot of people as annoying as Joy? No, it's a talent of his."

Joy rolls his eyes.

If Asmodia said that about someone here they would... well, it would depend on who it was. But they wouldn't just treat it like some kind of joke.

"And Eagle Knights are... people who kill people who're working for Asmodeus?"

"Them and slavers. Or - not everyone who fights Asmodeans is an eagle knight, but all of us fight Cheliax."

Which isn't technically true, she knows a couple of guys who are up at the wound waiting for the heat to die down a bit, but they're there because they were fighting Cheliax so that's just nitpicking.

Probably it's very stupid to decide she likes a group she's never even heard of before today just because some strangers claiming to be part of it showed up and killed her priest and lord. 

On the other hand, she's never met anyone else who was actually trying to give the priests and lords (and slavers, apparently?) what they deserved. 

"How do people, uh—"

"They're not going to take an Asmodean, Asmodia."

She feels her chest flare up with hot anger for a moment before she presses it down again. "I'm not an Asmodean."

She raises her eyebrows pointedly.

Well, she's not wrong. It's not that Treason doesn't approve of the fundamental human proclivity to renounce Asmodeus the moment someone shows you a better way, she does tend to want a more than that from prospective comrades. Also, wow, Asmodia. Her parents must be such bootlickers. 

"Most people aren't Asmodeans. It takes a little more than that to be an eagle knight."

"What does it, uh, take?"

"Well, you've got to be able to fight. I shoot people, Liberty hits them with a morningstar, Eric stabs people, Joy's got his wizard shit. And people have got to trust you to have their back."

Eric does his best to keep his wince invisible. It's not that he's not completely aware that the halflings already know they're good at killing, but that doesn't mean reminding them of that is going to be helpful.

Look, the most important thing is whether they're going to start trying to torture him to death. If no one is torturing him to death he's not about to complain. He doesn't think they're going to, but he wasn't expecting what happened with Tea either.

I can learn is the sort of thing you say if you're a pathetic child who can't take no for an answer unless someone's standing over you with a whip. I can fight has the problem that she isn't, really, much good at fighting. I'm secretly a priestess would probably be a lot more convincing, except she doesn't actually have any idea how Caydenites feel about Calistria. They're both Chaotic, and Calistria is basically Chaotic Good, but it'd still be a risk.

"How good at magic do you need to be, if you're fighting with magic?" That still gives a lot away, but there's lies that sort of explain it if she has to, she's not committing yet.

...Who does she think she's fooling here. If she were smart enough to be a wizard she'd be in wizard school. Is she, what, going to try to get her mother to play along with this stupid act?

"You were second circle when you started, right Joy?"

"Yes, same as Liberty. But we take paladins at first."

"We take Paladins before they get spells, they get in by being good at fighting. Hardly counts."

"Don't forget Sam."

"I'm still not sure Sam could even cast real spells, he was a tricky bastard. Whatever. The groups I run with usually don't bring people out on missions until they hit second, but there are plenty of baby wizards in Almas who do training on the side, some of them join one of the ships or impress someone enough to take a chance on them."

"...Where's Almas?"

"It's the capital of Andoran. Morgethai runs the university there, greatest in the whole inner sea."

But, like, where in Andoran. It's not like she's seen a map in the last five minutes. Maybe in Andoran you can just ask people for directions and they'll tell you and definitely not try to turn you into the Asmodeans for being a runaway? ...Or, uh, whatever people do instead of that in places that don't have Asmodeans. It makes sense that they wouldn't go out of their way to turn people into the Asmodeans they don't have, she's just confused about why they'd give people directions, if they even do that.

What else does she need to know?

Andoran is four hundred miles east. It would probably be a good idea to make sure Andoran doesn't, like, only let people worship Good gods, or something, before she just assumes that running off to Andoran would work. Also a good idea to get more specific directions, but that hasn't been working so far, and 'find out which gods Andoran allows' might be easier. What's a way to say it that isn't just a confession, it's okay if it sounds really suspicious as long as it doesn't give things away for sure—

"Are there, uh, other things I should know about Andoran, or Almas, that the Asmodeans wouldn't've told us? Like —  gods that you really hate even though they aren't Evil, or anything like that."

"I mean, probably a lot of things? I dunno, I never lived in Cheliax. Abortion's evil, Asmodeus is a loser, most people don't go to Hell? Slavery's bad, obviously, it's completely illegal in Andoran? I'm not thinking of any neutral gods that are banned, Abadar sucks but plenty of people like him."

"Erecura is neutral, technically."

"I guess. She's banned, because we don't give a shit about Hell's technicalities in Andoran."

A bunch of parts of that don't totally make sense, but it sounds like they're fine with Calistrians, which is really the important part.

Probably she should tell them. It might matter, for getting to Andoran, that she can make water that won't get her sick and do a little bit of healing. Given everything else they've said it'd be pretty surprising if they freaked out about it, unless they've been lying all along in which case she'll die slowly no matter what she says.

It's just—

It's just that she's been assuming that if anyone finds out she'll be lucky if she's dead by the next morning. Which is incredibly pathetic, now that she thinks about it, it's bad enough to be a bit of a coward but there's no reason at all to be scared for reasons that don't even matter here.

...and also she can change her mind about not telling them but not about telling them. That's not pathetic, that's true pretty much no matter what.

She runs her fingers deliberately over what is to all appearances a completely ordinary (if slightly scratched) button.

"But — Calistria's alright?"

"Oh, are you running off to join the whores? You do know whores have to fuck people, right?"

She is managing to hold back the impulse pressing against her skin, telling her to do something about Llora, but it's taking active effort. (She isn't letting it show.)

If they killed people for being Calistrian clerics that would be laughably insufficient misdirection but in fact they do not do that.

"I mean, people will make assumptions about you. But she's not terrible or anything, I've just always liked Milani more myself."

Joy doesn't think quite as highly of Calistria as Treason does but there are some Calistrians in the Eagle Knights he respects fine, he's not going to contradict her.

Asmodia has never actually heard of Milani. (As gods go, she's one of the hardest for the Asmodeans to spin in a way that's remotely compatible with the regime, and before Aroden died she wasn't important enough to have a big presence. At least in her area, no one thought it was worth telling people Milani was banned, not when it meant telling people that Milani existed at all.)

"What do people say about Milani, in places that aren't, uh, ruled by Asmodeus?"

"She's the chaotic good goddess of rebellion and freedom, fights tyranny and slavery and hell. You haven't met Liberty yet, she's prepping spells right now, but Liberty's one of her clerics - we've got a bunch of them in the Eagle Knights, more than there are anywhere else on Golarion, because fighting the Asmodeans is her top priority. Ragathiel does too, but his guys are usually a little too dour and serious for me."

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?"

...For some reason she feels nervous about answering that — oh, probably because she'd be admitting to the sort of crime you get tortured to death for. Well, she just did that, it's not like she's really making things worse.

"One of the old lord's sons," she says, letting her satisfaction slip into her voice. "Guifré. He was — he used to—" why is her voice not working right "—he didn't like to be refused."

Wow, that was a terrible explanation. Can she make her mouth cooperate here, this shouldn't be hard— "He — I was thirteen—"

That was... an even worse explanation. She did not actually think it was possible to do this badly at not sounding like a pathetic child. For all she knows the Eagle Knights are going to decide she killed him because she got mad at him for ordering her to, like, clean the floors.

Maybe she's just making up lies to impress the soldiers, or something. If she repeats it to herself enough times maybe she can believe it.

She got Tea killed over that? What an asshole.

Treason grins approvingly. "Say, Joy-"

"We're not taking her with us. Leaving aside the fact that I prepped spells without expecting a fifth rider, the Asmodeans would learn we had her with us as soon as they showed up here, and then we'd have to fight off one of the teleport hit squads." Or use his emergency teleport scroll, which would be almost as bad and which he is absolutely not going to mention where someone can overhear. "And before you bring up that she's a cleric, the girl has lived here for years. We'd have to burn this place to the ground to stop them from having a focus, and it probably wouldn't even work."

"Oh, come on, we both know you leave spells open every day for emergencies. Just prep another Phantom Steed now! She wouldn't even have to ride with us if you're so worried."

"I'm serious about this."

"So am I!"

"I could — cast spells for you? If it would help? I doubt I could get new ones today but I think I've still got the ones she gave me the first time I prayed for spells, I didn't use them up—" 

That's not going to work at all, is it, they already have a priestess, they don't need a second one. She wants this very badly and she probably can't get it but that doesn't, actually, make her not want it.

"Exactly! Weren't you just saying we could use more spellcasters and fewer meatheads? We could put her in your bag of holding, you can't teleport there, problem solved."

"I don't have a bottle of air on me, she'd asphyxiate - die from not being able to breathe. Air goes bad in closed up spaces. Besides, I've got valuable stuff in there."

"Then just open it up every so often, and close it before they can see enough to teleport off of. Easy. Even I could do it."

"Could you? Or would you get distracted by something, lose track of time, and then turn your new friend into a corpse? I know you, Treason, which is why I don't make plans that require you to stay focused for eight hours straight. I'm putting my foot down here."


Treason turns back to Asmodia, and murmurs sotte voce. "He says that, but he's already thinking of ways to try and make it work. We've just got to talk Liberty into it so he's outvoted."

Montserrat has some ideas (or rather, some half-remembered rumors from wizard prep school), but there's treason and then there's treason, and helping a Calistrian cleric flee the country would definitely be the latter. ...If she believed Asmodia really were a Calistrian cleric, of course, which would be quite implausible for her to be.

It's not like dying from not getting enough air is worse than being tortured to death by the Asmodeans, even if they don't Maledict her. Well, unless she managed to take some of the Asmodeans down with her when they tried to capture her, that'd be worth it, but she's not strong enough to fight a team of teleporters.

She nods back to Treason. And — smiles? It seems like they do a lot more emotions with their faces than basically anyone she knows, and it's not like she ever liked having to pretend she wasn't burning with anger at Guifré, or wasn't delighted when he died.

Treason will smile back, and then - after the silence stretches a bit - take a bit of a more active role in securing the room so Joy can focus on leafing through his spellbook.

It's about another twenty minutes before Liberty finally finishes preparing spells. She's not quite as tall as Treason, and a bit less muscled, but clearly still fit enough to casually tote around a metal breastplate and a heavy Morningstar at her hip. She's got a necklace with the same rose design on it that Treason has.

...She doesn't have any idea how people in places that aren't ruled by Asmodeus introduce themselves to new people. She's pretty sure all her instincts for how to do it are wrong, but that doesn't tell her how to do it right. 

She hesitates for a moment, then says, "You're — Liberty? A priestess of Milani?"

"Yes, that's me. And you are?"

She glances at her party members. Treason... seems to like the girl? Which is probably a good sign.

...Asmodia, but she doesn't really want to say that. But she needs to say something, she can't just not have a name, and she hasn't decided on anything better yet.

Maybe she can just say that, maybe that's the sort of thing that works when you're talking with foreigners. 

"Uh, Asmodia, but I'm going to pick something else, I just haven't decided on what. ...I'm a priestess of Calistria."

Ah, that explains why Treason was enthusiastic. She'll flash detect fiendish presence anyway out of principle, but she's unsurprising when it comes up negative; Joy would have caught a lie that obvious, and she doesn't actually have any reason to doubt the story

"It's nice to meet you. I assume you're going to be evacuating, then?"

Huh, do people in other places just say that sort of thing? It's... kind of nice, actually.

"Nice to meet you too."

She's not actually sure what she's supposed to say here. Maybe she can keep just... saying things she thinks, rather than trying to find the exact right way to say them? Maybe that actually works when you're talking to people from other countries? "Treason was, uh, trying to figure out if there was a way to put me in Joy's bag without me dying from not having enough air."

"Or another way of bringing her with us. I mean, we can't just leave her here. They'd maledict her if they catch her."

"It's not worth the risk."

"If we're not going to take a risk to do the right thing, then what's even the point of being here?"

Joy falls silent at that, and instead gives Liberty a look pleading with her to be reasonable about this.

Liberty closes her eyes and frowns intently, lost in her thoughts for almost a full minute. "I think Treason is right, at least if we have a way to mitigate the dangers."

Joy shoots Eric a look, but sighs when he predictably doesn't want to get involved.

"I suppose I'm outvoted, then. I've got a few ideas, none of them are great. We could give her a status and have her riding separately from us, and only meet up again at a time of our choosing when we're ready to go in a rope trick immediately after. They'd have to have a scry up on her all day or get lucky to catch us at it, but if they did we'd be boned, and they might just jump her anyway. Or I could draw a bunch of shadow energy to imitate Sepia Snake Sigil, and hope it works properly to keep her alive in a bag of holding as long as she doesn't resist."

He also thought about prepping water breathing and then giving her a bucket of water, but the spell is all wrong for it to work that way; he's pretty sure the bucket would also run out of breathable air and then she'd still be dead. And Air Bubble is even less helpful, it would give out in a matter of minutes even if he knew how to extend it.

She'd thought about how she'd be in danger, before, but she hadn't really been thinking about how they'd be in danger. 

It feels kind of absurd that they'd be willing to risk their lives just because of her. They'd never even met her before a few hours ago. It feels like the sort of thing you'd have to be a stupid child to believe, only she does believe it.

......She's been trying out saying things she thinks but she doesn't think she wants to say that.

"I don't, uh, know all that much about magic, I'm willing to go with whatever you think is best."

"If your shadow magic fails, what goes wrong and how likely is it we'd notice?"

"Easiest way for it to go wrong, the spell doesn't work if you make it out of shadows and we can tell instantly. I think it should, but I'd need a few hours to work the math out properly and we don't have that. Second way it works, but it doesn't work well enough and she needs air even after I cast it. Call it... seven to three I would be able to tell?"

"Seven to three?"

"Shadow magic is finicky. I wouldn't want to count on it always working even if I tested it first, but even if it fails I should be able to dismiss it after."

"That's a lot more qualifiers than I'd like, but it's still better odds than the other way. Let's hope we have fifteen minutes for you to prep it."

"I already did, I was pretty sure I knew what you were going to say."

The other three eagle knights help get the halflings situated for their own escape. It's inherently inadequate, even after they looted the entire manor for its stocks of food and handed out all the weapons suitable for people of their size, but it's probably better than staying here. They don't have anyone that can read a scroll, so that's out, but Treason comes up with a couple of potions from somewhere for emergencies.

Joy spends his time writing something down on a piece of paper. "You're going to need to read this, and try not to resist the spell. There's a decent chance you can throw it off if you try, and I can't prepare a second one if it doesn't work."

She knows how to let a spell affect her on purpose. She nods, takes the paper, and lets the spell slip over her.

The halflings are still not talking but they will take food and weapons if they're on offer. They might be slightly less terrified after Treason gives them the potions, it's hard to tell for sure.

A black serpent leaps off the words of the page, and crashes into Asmodia.

...The dark field around her looks right. And she doesn't seem to be breathing; he can't hear the sound of inhalation and exhalation, or spot the rise and fall of her chest. It's more likely than not that he's not about to have the blood of a teenage girl on his hands, but somehow that doesn't feel all that reassuring. They put her into the bag of holding anyway, set the halflings on their way, and ride off into the metaphorical sunset on their Phantom Steeds.

When Asmodia comes to, the first thing she notices is the smell of salt, and the sound of the waves lapping against wood. She's on a small sailboat, out of sight from land. 

That was incredibly disconcerting!!!

She looks around the boat for the Eagle Knights.

Joy's the only one visible; the sails move without any apparent hand acting on them.

"Treason's out right now; we're sleeping in shifts in a rope trick so there's always someone awake to respond to an attack. We're not definitely safe from retaliation just yet, but I think we've probably exhausted their willingness to throw good scries after bad and I figured you might want a few minutes to orient before you have to go sit in a confined space. It shouldn't be too much longer at this point, we're only about a day out of Augustana."

Nod nod. "How long has it been?"

"Five days. We had to take a bit of a detour near Halmyris, because they found someone good enough to give chase and we didn't want to lead them right to where we'd stashed the boat."

Nod. She hesitates for a moment. "...But you all made it away alright?"

"Yes, we're all fine. I'm not even sure it's possible to track someone flying unless they figure out where you landed, so all we had to do was break contact and fly far enough to make that impractical. And obviously none of the checkpoints or patrols were a problem, we didn't have the time to go take down the soldiers we ran into but if your horse is fast enough they can't do much to stop you."

Oh good. She's not really sure why that feels like such a relief, but it does.

...Right, she was trying to say things she thinks. "That's good, I'm glad."

"Me too. I think I could probably avoid a malediction, since it's hard to hold a 4th circle wizard, but just because I like where I'm going doesn't mean I'm in a hurry to go there."

He hesitates for a moment.

"I'm glad you're alive as well. There wasn't any way to check without dismissing the spell, so I'd been fretting about it a bit."

Getting a teenager sent to the Abyss because he wasn't willing to spend a teleport scroll on it might be tactically sound, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't feel like shit about it.

It's still really weird that he cares about what happens to her when he met her today. Or, well, technically five days ago, but still. Not bad, it's actually kind of nice, but weird.

She still doesn't want to say that. ...Probably she should handle this by saying something else, rather than just not saying anything. 

"You're hoping for... Elysium?" she guesses.

"Yeah. Sometimes I read neutral instead, and it's not that I'd mind ending up in Nirvana, but it doesn't really speak to me the same way."

"What are they... like? According to, uh, people who aren't working for Asmodeus?"

"Elysium is all about freedom. You can do pretty much anything you want, as long as you’re not hurting anyone, and nobody’s in charge. There are gods, but they just live there, if you don't want to listen to them you can just go somewhere else at anytime and nobody will stop you. There's not a lot of cities, but nobody needs them, you can get everything you need without needing to. You know everyone there is good, so you can just - it's not that I'd get along with everyone, I've talked to Azata before and I couldn't stand some of them, but when the chips are down I could always count on them to do the right thing. And it's absolutely beautiful. I didn't think that was all that important when I was younger, but if I'm thinking about where I'd spend the rest of forever it feels like it would add up. And then once I've had time to get used to being an outsider, Elysium does raids on Hell and the Abyss to save people, and maybe I'd die for good doing that but it'd be because I was doing something that mattered.

"Nirvana focuses a lot more on healing people. All the agathions I've talked to have a boundless capacity for caring about people, of not getting tired or worn down by things being difficult or awful or scary. If someone’s being a dick because their best friend just died and they’re hurting, obviously the last thing anyone needs is for me to go be a jerk right back, but I’m not always very good at avoiding it, and they are. And they try to see the good in everyone, so they can show up to trial and snatch away souls from the demons and devils.”

Some of that feels — confusing? Why does Nirvana even want random strangers' souls if they're just going to have to take care of them? You'd really think there'd be less annoying ways to hurt devils and demons — maybe it's like how the Eagle Knights were willing to put themselves in danger to get her out of Cheliax, even though they'd just met her? Only that doesn't really make sense either, no one would want to keep someone like Guifré out of Hell. Maybe when he says they try to see the Good in everyone, he means something more like... they see if everyone who goes up for trial is secretly Good, even if they... used to worship Asmodeus, for instance... and if they find Good in someone then they'll go try to argue for them even if they've done some things like that? And then people like Guifré or Chosen Dalmau, who don't have any Good in them at all, just go to Hell like they deserve.

She's not sure that's totally right but she's not sure how to ask about the parts she's confused about, she can line it up in her head and feel what doesn't make sense but she doesn't really know what to ask. She hadn't even known souls got trials, she'd assumed you just ended up wherever.

...Elysium sounds really nice. Or, well, really nice as long as Asmodeus hadn't managed to take it over, but even if you only get a few centuries there before you die fighting Asmodeus it'd still be — a place that was actually good to live? She's not actually sure if she's Chaotic Good or just Chaotic Neutral, she killed Guifré but maybe a Good person would've figured out how to kill Chosen Dalmau and her lord right away rather than waiting for someone else to show up and do it for her, but — it sounds nice. 

She's been trying to say things she thinks but she's not really sure she wants to say all that.

"I — am not sure I understood all that," she says, which is absolutely not the sort of thing she could've said in school without being punished for it, but so far they haven't hurt her at all for saying stupid things, "but I see why you'd want Elysium." Little smile.

If he was reading her mind he could absolutely be much more helpful here but he's not, it would be a horrific invasion of privacy and an inexcusable waste of spell slots.

"If you come up with any questions I'd be happy to answer them, but I don't have a second, better explanation hiding somewhere."

He's willing to risk a bit of time getting her the chance to stretch her legs and show off the unseen servants, but after a bit he'll take her into the cabin so she can climb the rope trick. As promised Treason is asleep, but Liberty and Eric have a divider up and are quietly playing cards by the light of a smokeless torch.

It has not even slightly occurred to her that it might be reasonable to object to people reading her mind! She'd rather they didn't, obviously, if anyone back home had read her mind she'd have died for it, but it feels kind of pathetic to complain about it, it's not like reading her mind would hurt her by itself.

She waves tentatively at Liberty and Eric and sits down next to Liberty.

Eric will wave back while Liberty shifts to make some room.

"Are you hungry? We've got food, but I'm not sure if people get hungry while they're under the effects of weird shadow magic or not."

"I don't think I'm more hungry than I was before the spell, but I was pretty hungry then." 

In hindsight she probably should have eaten something. They could've decided on the plan where she also rode a magic horse, it'd really suck to be trying to do that on an empty stomach. She just... didn't think to ask for permission, even though it probably would've been completely fine.

They can pass around some jerky, bread, and butter; it's dry, but they've got water and she's a cleric besides.

"Did Joy explain things or did he just send you in here?"

"He said, uh, it's been five days, we're about a day from Augustana — I'm assuming that's, uh, in Andoran — and the government probably gave up on looking for us but it's hard to say for sure. And they chased you for a bit but you all got away."

"That's the important stuff, then. Have you thought about what you want to do once we make it there?"

She is still not at all sure how to say this without sounding like a ridiculous child but maybe she can just keep saying things, like she's been doing, and it'll work?

"I — want very badly to help people like you against the Asmodeans. Before you came I had never — never even met anyone else who was trying to avenge what they'd done, everyone was just treating it like it's okay, like they were right to do the things they did — and it isn't, and you're fighting them, and I want to help—"

And there's probably thousands of people like Chosen Dalmau, or like Guifré, or even worse, just getting away with all the awful things they've done, and most of them are going to keep getting away with them, and she can track them down and make them pay, until every last one of their wrongs has been avenged and every last one of them is in Hell where they belong.

"—and I know Treason said I've probably got to be second circle, and someone people can trust," which is still a very weird and confusing concept, "and I think I probably need to, uh, know more things about the world. But — I want to... do things where if I do them then eventually I'll be able to help? But I don't, uh, know what those things are. Or... what sorts of things there are to do, at all, if you're a priestess who's not an Asmodean priestess."

"Hmm. As someone who used to be a first circle cleric, my advice would be to learn how to use a weapon. Cleric spells are very useful, but outside of summoning monsters all the best options for combat involve making you or someone else better at fighting, and making yourself stronger matters more if you know what to do with that strength. I use a morningstar, but it's also hard to go wrong with a mace or a spear. They're pretty simple to pick up the basics, and then it's just a matter of practice until making it do what you need it to is second nature. There's a world of difference between a cleric who everyone has to protect when the fighting gets tough, and a cleric who can help out in the thick of it. I didn't start training seriously until I was a bit younger than you are, and, well."

She gestures to Eric.

"He can still kick my ass, but if we spar with spells I usually win two or three fights in ten, and it takes a lot of practice to get as good with a rapier as he is. Against Chelish soldiers it's usually more than enough. The other big thing is probably working towards getting good channels. They're more useful, in most fights, and it means you don't have to spend spell slots preparing cures."

"Don't forget the armor," Eric adds. "Getting some as good as mine is going to be out of your price range for a while, but don't try to cheap out on it either. Trust me, if someone's going to try and stab you then you absolutely would rather have a layer of steel between it and your internal organs. And since you can't just become an expert at it in a day, you'll want to get started training in it early."

"Mine has certainly saved my life a few times over the years. Your other question is a lot harder to answer, since there are lots of things clerics can do. Plenty of clerics go adventuring, since it's the best way to get stronger and it can pay really well if you get good enough at it, but I wouldn't say it's most of them. There's also a lot of clerics who do preaching, spreading the message of their god or goddess to more people. We had a cleric of Milani who gave sermons in my home city, that's how I realized I wanted to be her cleric. After that, it varies more by the god. Many Abadarans run banks, Nethysians do a lot of research and writing and teaching, Pharasmins help make sure mothers survive giving birth and the child survives being born, I met a few Desnans who spend their time traveling the world and helping people they come across. With Calistrians I think it's usually stuff like working in brothels or theater or assassinations - don't be an assassin, murdering people is almost always evil."

She nods. "Okay, uh, I have a few questions. First of all, are there weapons that are better or worse for, uh, small people?" Or, like, people who aren't that strong, but it'd be kind of ridiculous to insist on weapons that work for weak people, whereas it's not like she can do anything about how tall she is. (She's a little below average for a woman.)

"Uh, second, why do Calistrians do theater, I don't really get how that's connected?" Not being an assassin makes sense, it sounds really hard to make sure you're only killing people who deserve it. Especially if you're only killing the people that rich people want dead, that seems like it'd make it more likely you're killing innocent people.

She hesitates. Probably they aren't going to decide that actually they want to torture her to death after they already brought her all this way, but from how they've been talking about channels it seems more likely they'd do it over this than just about anything else. "And, uh, for what you were saying about channels — I didn't know they could... change? I was sort of assuming Calistrians always got harmful channels."

"That's a complicated question," Eric hedges. "There aren't really any weapons that are stronger if the person using them is smaller or weaker, but there are some that it hurts less. Generally speaking, you want something with a pointy end, since it takes less force to injure someone with a really sharp point than it does to bash their head in, and more of fighting comes down to sticking it somewhere the armor doesn't cover. Rapiers can be like that if you're really good, which is why I use them, but if you don't want to spend years at it you use a spear. There's also crossbows, which pretty mostly depend on your ability to aim, but they take a while to reload and even if you get as good as Treason you'd want something to use if they get too close."

"As for the theater, I think they might just enjoy it? There's presumably a theological connection there too but I only know about if because there are a couple of famous Calistrian actresses."

"The good gods all give their clerics positive channels, which heal people and hurt the undead. Evil gods all give negative channels, which hurt people and heal the undead. It's just neutral gods like Calistria and Abadar that can give either, and for them it depends on if their clerics are good or evil."

"I've heard stories about an occasional neutral cleric who can do both, but I think those might have been made up."

"Maybe. It's not most of them, at any rate, usually neutral clerics just have one or the other consistently. But positive channels are much more useful unless you're a necromancer or a solo adventurer, and even then you'd probably still want to heal yourself. The channels go with cures and inflicts, so I can turn all my first circle spells into Cure Light Wounds instead of Inflict Light Wounds."

So she's... Chaotic Neutral, then? That's — a little upsetting, actually, which is sort of bizarre. Most people are Lawful Evil — well, no, actually, maybe that's not true, they did say earlier that most people don't actually go to Hell. Still, though, there's nothing wrong with being Chaotic Neutral. It's just—

It's just that she wants to be Good. Wants to be the sort of person who'd show up at a manor full of strangers and give every servant of Hell what they deserve. And she's working on it, she killed Guifré, but — well, it's not like there weren't plenty of other servants of Hell around. 

...Doing Good things on purpose to channel positive feels like it's kind of missing the point, though. She's not really sure how to explain it, even to herself, but it feels like... the wrong reason? But — well, if she had a group, she can see how healing channels might be more helpful, and it's not like she wants to be worse at killing Asmodeans. If she's doing Good things for the right reasons probably she'll end up channeling positive anyways.

...She doesn't actually have any idea how to do that if you only just got to Augustana and don't know who there deserves to die yet. Probably there's a lot fewer of those in Andoran anyways. If she looks inside her soul for the answer it mostly just wants to skip to the part where she's ready to go back and make the servants of Hell pay for what they've done, which is not really very helpful.

"That all makes sense. Are there, uh — I don't — I've never been to Augustana, obviously, what sorts of things can you do there that help with channeling positive?"

Wow, that was a terrible way to ask that question, it sounds pathetic and it probably made it seem like she was secretly Evil or something and it's not even exactly her real question.

It's not just about the healing channels, it's what comes with them too. People will trust her more and be more willing to take her to do something risky if they don't think it might send her to the Abyss afterwards.

"Same things as most anywhere else, I think? Helping people, giving to the poor, volunteering at an orphanage, healing people, keeping them safe, dealing with the Undead but someone else will probably get to them first, stuff like that. It won't be as fast as rescuing slaves or getting rid of Asmodean priests is, but you can probably hit neutral before you finish getting good at fighting if you work at it."

They — think she's Evil? But they believed her about wanting to help, and they put themselves in danger to save her, and they haven't hurt her at all — probably she's confused about something, but whatever it is feels very very dangerous to be confused about.

Saying things she thinks rather than being careful to figure out exactly what she's supposed to say has been working out really well so far but if it were going to stop working anywhere it'd be here, only she doesn't know how else to figure out what she's supposed to say when she's talking with people who aren't Asmodeans.

"My best guess is that I'm Chaotic Neutral already," she says, which is probably incredibly pathetic but hopefully not actually dangerous.

"I guess that's possible? We didn't check, and it seems like kind of a pain to have you try and trip me until I can tell if a Protection from Evil is helping me avoid it or not. Especially when we're stuck in the rope trick."

"It's much easier for clerics, you'd just have to try to fail a save against command and see if it went through. Lots of people in Cheliax are evil, though, if I was betting that's what I would guess."

They're talking about it so casually. Like they're saying that lots of people in Cheliax have brown hair, not like they're saying that she might be the same sort of person as Guifré or Chosen Dalmau or her lord, the sort of person who'd force themself on a girl or flog people for disobeying the will of Asmodeus, or even just the sort of person who'd bring up their daughter to serve and obey Asmodeus until she can go to Hell and be molded into a a perfect obedient devil.

Probably she's still confused. Her heart is racing and she feels a little like she can't breathe, which is stupid, it's not like that's going to help, and the safe thing to do here is to nod and agree even if she doesn't understand, only it seems like this is probably a really important thing to not be confused about.

Also she really doesn't want to just nod and agree. She was perfectly fine at nodding and agreeing and pretending like she was an Asmodean for two years and she hated every second of it and she does not want to keep it up, and probably this is a pathetic and reckless thing to not want but she can't change that she doesn't want it.

That... still does not actually help with figuring out what to ask if she wants to stop being confused.

"And you're not... upset, even though I might be Evil?"

...Wow, of all the questions she could possibly have asked there that's got to be one of the most pathetic ones she could possibly have picked.

"...Well, it's not nothing? Like I'm not going to try and say that, if we had checked and you were somehow Chaotic Good, I wouldn't have trusted you more for it? But even though Asmodeus tries to crush the goodness out of everyone in Cheliax, he's not very good at making it stick. Lots of people from Cheliax stop being evil once you tell them what good is and they realize it's not - pathetic to care about other people, or whatever other lies they got told."

...It's not?

She turns that around in her head for a moment. She was glad that the Eagle Knights had made it away safely, and that's... she has a lot of pathetic feelings, but maybe that's not one of them? And it'd be awfully presumptive to say the Eagle Knights care about her, but they put themselves in danger to help her leave and they gave her food and they're putting up with all her questions, and they're definitely not pathetic. And when she's an Eagle Knight someday, if she meets a secret Calistrian who just killed their equivalent of Guifré, she thinks she'd care about them, and want to help them too, and maybe that's not pathetic either.

She's still pretty confused about everything else, though. She wants to be less confused but she doesn't even know what to ask — maybe she can just say that, if she's saying things she thinks.

"I think — I understood part of that but not the whole thing, and probably some of the parts I'm missing are really obvious, but there are... lots of things that are obvious everywhere else that I don't know, because I'm from Cheliax. And I don't, uh, know the right questions to ask to understand, if that makes sense."

Probably she should try to be at least a little more specific than that, Joy wanted her to try to have questions and that's not even a little bit a question. And maybe it's a bad idea to try to explain it, but it would also be a bad idea to just keep not understanding.

"I think right now part of it is — you think I'm probably Evil, but you're not treating me like someone who might have done awful things? And I don't think I've done anything really awful, but if you think I'm wrong about that—"

"I guess you could say I'm taking a chance on it. Do I know for sure it's the right decision? No. Treason likes you, and I do usually trust her judgment, but I wouldn't stake my comrades' lives on her getting it right every time. But do I think she got it right? Yes. I'm a pretty decent judge of character, and the impression I get from you is someone who wants really badly to be good and just doesn't know how - and you definitely aren't faking the fact that you hate Asmodeus. So - I choose to help you, and trust that good will come of it. And it might blow up in my face some day, but I don’t think that day is today.”

"Besides, it's not that we didn't check at all. I spent some time talking with the slaves and servants and guards about who all their worst tormentors were while you were chatting with Treason and Liberty was preparing spells. If you'd made a habit of torturing slaves for fun or turning people in to the priests or such, I think I would have learned, and then we probably would have killed you before we left to keep them safe. Even if they were too afraid to talk about it, I think I'd have noticed the flinches get worse when you walked into the room." 

So they're... guessing that she hasn't done anything really awful, the sort of thing she'd deserve to die for, but they think she's probably done enough littler Evil things that she still counts as Evil? And they're not trying to give her what she deserves for those because... it'd be really hard to guess what the right amount was to hurt her, and they think that once she's Good she'll be able to figure out whether she deserves to be punished more? And — it feels sort of awful to think that she could be Evil, could deserve to go to the Abyss. Her chest is feeling all twisted up and tight just thinking about it, which is stupid and pathetic but knowing that isn't actually enough to make it stop. 

But she doesn't actually know. 

She did worship Asmodeus for thirteen years. Maybe that's Evil enough to balance out killing Guifré. It doesn't feel like it, it feels in her soul like killing him was more important than everything else she's done in her life put together, but — she doesn't know.

She nods. "I... think that makes sense."

She still feels kind of confused but everything she can think of to say is pathetic. ...But she keeps thinking that, and saying the pathetic thing, and it keeps being fine, so probably she can say it and it will be fine. "And — yes, I really do want that, and — you're probably right that I don't totally know how, I was trying in Cheliax but there's a lot I didn't figure out, but I want to learn, and I promise I'll keep doing my best—"

...It keeps being fine but also she keeps saying things that are really pathetic. No one cares if you're 'doing your best' if your best sucks.

In a different culture this might be where someone pulls in Asmodia for a hug, but that's not exactly in Liberty's wheelhouse. Instead she just smiles at her. "That's the spirit. And I'll do my best to help you where I can."

Eric's not quite as enthused at that response but the advantage of being good at talking to people is that you can avoid putting your foot in your mouth.

Smile!! She appreciates the Eagle Knights so so much and has no idea how to communicate this without entirely the wrong implications.

If there's nothing else urgent to talk about, Eric will offer to deal her in to the next game of cards; if she's not interested, though, she can probably talk them into sharing stories about Andoran or other missions they want on to pass the time.

About an hour after she arrives in the rope trick, the muffled sounds of Treason waking up become audible through the divider.

She is solidly mediocre at cards. 

When Treason wakes up, she glances towards the divider, but doesn't say anything.

Then it'll be a minute as Treason lazily gets herself dressed and does something about her bedhead before they come face to face again. "What time is it?"

"It's a mid afternoon. I'm going to go spell Joy in a bit, but everything's going smoothly so far."

"Great." Her bleary eyes register Asmodia, and then sharpen a bit. "Oh, you're up. Have you picked out a new name yet?"

She smiles tentatively at Treason and gives her a little wave.

"Uh, not yet. ...How did you pick yours?"

"My parents tried to name me Iris, if you can believe it. I knew I wasn't going to stick with it once I had the chance, but it took me a bit to settle; first I went by Courage, but that didn't really work, and then I tried Ragathiel but everyone kept assuming I was a guy before they met me, and then I was toying with a couple of names like Anarchy and Freedom and such before I finally tried Treason and never looked back. Lets people know who they're dealing with."

"How about the two of you?" she asks Liberty and Eric. "Or, uh, I guess maybe you've always been Eric."

"I decided to go by Liberty when Milani picked me as a cleric. It gets a bit confusing sometimes, since I wasn't the only one who had the same idea, but I like it enough I haven't changed it again. Plus it would kind of be a pain at this point."

"And yeah, my parents named me Eric. I think it's the same with Joy?"

"Pretty sure yeah, I ran into some of his buddies from wizard school a few months back and he was going by it then too."

The idea of people naming their children Joy is so weird. Do people in countries that aren't ruled by Hell — well, actually, now that she thinks about it, the answer to 'do people in countries that aren't ruled by Hell want their children to be happy' is obviously 'yes,' that shouldn't be surprising and definitely shouldn't be making her chest feel tight again.

...She's just not going to think about that right now.

She kind of likes the idea of naming herself after something good. The problem is that most of the options don't really sound very much like names, except 'bravery' and maybe 'victory,' only she doesn't really think of herself as brave and they haven't won yet. She could go with something based off 'Calistria,' like the opposite of Asmodia, but all the ideas she can think of sound kind of stupid. If she branches out into things that aren't names at all... 'revenge' is good but it sounds kind of stupid as a name, 'freedom' feels a little pathetic when she's only free because of other people, 'justice'... kind of has a nice ring to it? It still doesn't sound like a name, but if she ends up hating it she can change it later, Treason changed hers a bunch of times.

"I think... Justice seems like it might be nice? As a name, I mean, not just in general."

"Justice... yeah, I like it. Way better than Asmodia, that's for sure."

"What matters is that she likes it, not that you do."

"Sure, but she's the one that picked it! I'm just showing my approval, some positive reinforcement."

"So, what have you been up to while I was napping?"

"We talked about what sort of things I'd need to do to join the Eagle Knights someday, and about, uh, what sort of Good things there are to do in Augustana." And about the fact that they think she's Evil, but she doesn't really want to say that, even though presumably Treason also thinks she's Evil. "And then we played cards." Justice is losing the current hand.

It's not surprising that she's not winning against Eric; they never play for money with him because he's a total card direshark. As for the other question... she assesses Justice' build.

"Crossbow?"

"Spear."

"Yeah, I see it. If you ever decide you want to give a real bow a try though you should come talk to me about it, you'll have to put on a lot of muscle for it but I think you might be able to pull it off. Always good to have options, especially when you're starting out and squishy."

Nod nod. "That makes sense."

When the game finishes up, Liberty climbs out of the rope trick, and Joy climbs up it shortly after to crash for a few hours. When he wakes up, they all have to climb out for a bit while he makes another one, and then repeat the cycle again right before liberty goes to sleep so it doesn't wake her up before dawn.

It's about an hour after she finished preparing her spells the next morning that Eric calls up the rope trick that they're in sight of Augustana.

Justice wakes up exactly at dawn, and — catches herself, halfway through trying to pretend that she's still asleep. She doesn't have to pretend, not anymore.

Holy Calistria, uh, I'm not sure if there's some other title I'm supposed to put here, your, uh, priestess offers up this prayer to you this morning... I really need to figure out some way to say that that's not just copying off the prayers I know. Anyways. This is, uh, Justice now. Kind of a lot of things have happened.

She stumbles through a mental explanation of the events of the last subjective day.

I want to join them. I had no idea there was anyone like them, and now I know, and I want to be part of that so so badly. It feels like — I guess you can probably just, uh, see how I'm feeling, and I don't need to try to explain it. They're so good, I killed Guifré but it was only him, I didn't — they didn't even know any of us, and they still wanted to avenge what the old lord did. And I want to do that too, I know I'm not ready yet but someday I will be, and I'll go back, and I won't stop until I've made every lord and every priest of Asmodeus pay for what they've done. And I couldn't do that on my own, but it's not just me, there's a whole group all trying to do the same thing, and maybe if it's all of us together we really can give all of them what they deserve.

...I'm not sure if you can switch what kind of channels you give me but if you can it'd be nice if you could start giving me healing channels instead.

She's pretty sure she still has most of the hour left but she can keep going in this general vein for a while. Every so often she thinks about Guifré again and gets distracted with satisfaction about what's happening to him in Hell.

When Eric calls up the rope trick, she glances between the other people still inside to confirm it's okay to get out, and then climbs down to get a good look at Augustana.

The first thing that strikes her when she lays eyes upon it is the sheer size. Augustana is home to over a hundred thousand souls, and thousands more fill the countryside around; an enormous fortress sits on an island just off shore, around which a dozen great warships lay at anchor. The civilian port to to which they're headed is no less impressive. For all that the ships are not weapons of war, their grand sails reach for the sky, and they are joined by lesser vessels beyond counting that slide into the various docks or make their way under the bridges to head up the river into interior docks. Many of them fly Andoran's flag, a golden eagle on blue and black, but there are vessels hailing from nearly every nation on the inner sea save Cheliax. Their crusade against slavery may not have made them friends, but Augustana is still one of the largest ports around, and it is through it that merchants gain access to the heart of Andoran's commerce.

It's beautiful. Not just because of how it looks, but because it's — somewhere people want to be, rather than somewhere people desperately wish they could leave.

She's not saying anything yet, but even given that she's Chelish her expression is very clear.

"Talk about a sight for sore eyes."

When they arrive at the dock, they're greeted by a customs agent, who asks them to declare their business. He warms considerably when they identify themselves ("Joy, Treason, Liberty, Eric, from the Eagle Knights. We're back from a raid in Cheliax, with a guest.") but still asks Joy to declare he's not bringing any objects past import duties via his bag of holding and very seriously tells Justice that "there's nothing wrong with sticking with them, but if you don't want to, you can leave at any time. Andoran is a free country for everyone."

Cheliax would not have allowed that.

She doesn't actually want to randomly abandon the Eagle Knights, let alone run off to a third country for no reason, but apparently she... could? And not only would that be allowed, the fact that it's allowed is important enough that a total stranger is making a point of telling her.

 "I'm here with them because I want to be," she tells the guard. It still feels sort of incredible that what she wants could possibly matter to anyone but her.

Oh good. In that case welcome to Andoran, they're free to go.

Once off the pier, there are a lot of halflings around; not as many as there are humans, but one for every four doesn't seem very far off? Aside from those two , there are also dwarves, elves, half orcs, and a keep eye might spot an occasional gnome. There are also probably-guards that they occasionally pass by, but they're in light armor and seem quite relaxed.

"So, where do you want to go first?" 

"To grab something to eat, obviously. It's been almost two weeks since I've had something that wasn't dried, salted, or soup."

"I was talking to Justice, and I meant more general than that, like finding a Calistrian temple or going shopping or getting her a place to stay. Though I guess I wouldn't mind getting something to eat either."

Justice is craning her neck as they walk, trying to see as much of Augustana as she can. There are so many people here. And they don't all look happy, plenty of them look tired or stressed or annoyed (and those ones are showing it a lot more than anyone would show it back home), but lots of them do look happy, lots of them are bunched up in groups talking to each other like they actually like the other people they're talking to, and it's not that no one back home was ever happy but something about it feels very different.

They have — it really shouldn't be surprising that they have Calistrian temples. Calistrians are allowed here, there's no reason they wouldn't have temples, it just hadn't specifically occurred to her.

"Visiting a Calistrian temple would be really great. ...It, uh, might make sense to get some food and figure out where I'm staying before we do that, just, I'd really like to visit one as soon as we can, if that's, uh, an option."

Then after a pit at a seafood restaurant that Eric insists on (and lives up to his recommendation, though Justice might get a bit of sticker shock at the prices), Joy finds himself roped into trying to find a place to rent. None of his party members are any help. Liberty always just stays at the local temple or eagle knights chapter house, Eric lacks a real sense of frugality, and then Treason got about halfway through describing a place she knew down in East Copperdown before he had to put his foot down. He comes up with a building near the edge of Oldtown and Arsenal district; the rooms aren't incredibly large, but the roofs don't leak and she won't have to share it with half a dozen people or be too worried about walking home at night. There's a pretty good chance she'll want to find a roomate or something eventually, but better to search for that when the alternative isn't having to sleep on the street.

He begs off the visit to the temple, though, and since Eric dipped back when they started looking into housing that just leaves Treason and Liberty with her.

The temple of Calistria is not the grandest in Augustana. It lacks the historical grandeur of Gozreh or Abadar's temples in Augustana's historic quarter, the central placement of the old Asmodean (and once Arodenite) temples now reclaimed by Iomedae and Milani, or even the fine modern construction common in Torag, Erastil, and Sarenrae's venues in the arsenal district. It's certainly in better shape than any most of the neighboring buildings, and has the size to fit in a number of people, but it's fairly obvious that it got its start maintaining plausible deniability about its status as a venue for worship and has only moderately changed its stance since. The main concession to its status as a place of worship is a highly detailed wasp carved onto the front door.

Well, it's not really the building that's important to her, it's the people.

In goes Justice.

The main foyer plays its own part in this presentation. It's well appointed, but far from posh, and not especially suggestive - they work quite hard to help maintain ambiguity as to which of the temple's services someone is here for. There's a well groomed young man is waiting for them with a smile. "Ladies. What can we help you with today?"

In hindsight she should probably have thought about what she wanted to tell them before she came here.

"Uh, hi. I'm Justice, I'm a priestess of Calistria. And I just got out of Cheliax, and I've never met another priest of Calistria before, and I was wondering if I could, uh, do that?"

He's not a priest of Calistria himself. The main temple of Calistria has only a half dozen empowered clerics, and one of them only part time; she's not the most popular god in Augustana, and many of the clerics she does have either have other things to do with their lives than join an organization. They've still got ties to a fair number of them, but even those who follow her as the lady of lust are hardly limited to doing it from her temple. He is, however, a sincere devotee, and if his eyes widen in surprise it doesn't seem like a bad one.

"Of course, Avenger. I'll go let them know."

He's pretty sure Maya is in not currently entertaining any guests, but possible fellow priestess or no that's really something he needs to check ahead of time; he returns a few minutes later with an affirmative answer.

"Right this way, if you please."

Treason is pretty good at talking under her breath.

"Would you like Liberty or I to go with you, or stay out here? I'm guessing you want some privacy, but you're the one in an entirely new country for the first time, it's your call."

...She feels kind of nervous. Probably this is very silly, it's not like the foreign Calistrian priestess is going to... decide to have her killed for being a Calistrian... but that doesn't actually make her not nervous. And probably Treason wouldn't be offering if she were going to get mad at Justice for asking. 

"I — think I'd rather you come with. ...If I change my mind I'll let you know, if that's alright?"

As expected, Treason is indeed not mad at Justice! She hadn't been expecting her to accept, but it's not as though she didn't mean it.

Since this isn't a business call, they can meet in one of the temple's conference rooms. It's well appointed, with a thick rug covering the floor between a ring of furniture and lit by smokeless torches on the walls. Maya herself is sprawled across a chair facing the door, in a set of loose robes that both leave everything to the imagination and make some pointed suggestions about what to imagine. Her holy symbol is displayed openly, the wasp emblem hanging from a strategically placed necklace; at a guess, she looks to be in her early thirties. A hint of surprise crosses her features when two more people follow Justice in, but rather than comment she gets to her feet with a smile.

"Justice, was it?"

Smile! She's staring a little bit at Maya's holy symbol. 

"That's me! Uh, what about you?"

“Maya Torres. Would you mind casting a spell with this? Anything will do, it doesn’t have to have visible affects.”

She’s got another, simpler wasp decoration in her hands, but her hands were empty a moment ago and Justice didn’t see her grab it from anywhere.

She takes the wasp decoration. (Where did it come from?)

"Light."

There are a couple of way someone could fake that, but they’re not trivial and it rules out Justice being mistaken, which was the thing she was actually worried about. 

“Welcome, sister. I’m glad you made it out.”

And then unless she objects to this plan Maya is going to pull Justice in for a hug.

Oh. Oh, this is really nice. 

Hug hug hug. Justice has never in her life had a hug before and it turns out that hugs are really good. If Maya wants her arms back she will probably have to be the one to break it off.

"There, there."

Maya will hold her for a couple of minutes, before gently loosening her arms. 

"Do you want to talk about it, or should we just chat about other things? I was going to put on some tea, but I don't know if you drink it."

"...I think I'd rather talk about it." She's not entirely sure what she wants to say but probably this is a stupid problem to have. "I don't, uh, object to tea?"

She can pour a second cup of tea then. And a third and a fourth, when they nod at a questioning look. It's a mixture of bitter and sweet, the natural flavor of the tea leaves alongside a bit of honey.

"I never lived in Cheliax myself. I know it's unpleasant, that they ban our lady and want to make everyone slaves of Asmodeus, but I don't know all the details of how or what you went through. And if there's details you don't want to share, that's your choice."

"I was actually only picked as a priestess a few weeks ago," she says. "I had just — there was a man back home—" No, she's telling it all out of order, it's not going to make any sense that way, only now she's starting to have trouble talking, which is ridiculous, it's not like talking is hard, she was doing it just fine a moment ago.

"I hadn't been expecting Calistria, or anyone really, to pick me as a priestess," she tries, which is at least the sort of thing she can say without her words getting all tangled up in her chest for no reason. "Guifré, he — he was one of the lord's sons, he thought that — meant that it was his right to, to have whoever he wanted—" (this is ridiculous, he's dead, he's dead and burning in Hell where he'll never touch her again) "—I was, that was, a couple years ago he — I guess I caught his eye — and three weeks back I managed to poison him, and the next day Calistria picked me." For all she stumbled through most of that sentence, there's a sharp edge of satisfaction when she talks about killing him. 

She swallows a mouthful of tea. If she's drinking something that's a much less stupid reason to not be able to talk properly.

Yeah, that would explain it. 

"Men who don't care about the women they sleep with and won't take no for an answer are the worst sort of scum, and need someone to teach them better in a way that will... stick. Congratulations, I'm sure our lady is proud of you."

This is slightly concerning advice in general but in this case it's absolutely justified, and it's not like she has a leg to stand on. She'd have killed the man himself if he'd been alive when she got there.

What do you mean it's concerning advice? The world would be a better place if more people were willing to kill their oppressors.

Nod. Tiny smile.

"...Until she chose me it hadn't occurred to me that anyone else would care what he'd done to me." That probably sounded really pathetic — no, probably it'll be fine, it keeps being fine.

That sounds like a call to squeeze Justice's hand, and smile at her again.

"And then you had to escape?"

Handsqueeze. 

"I — sort of. I knew I was going to need to escape, but I had sort of assumed — I wanted to see if I could find a way to take out the priest and the lord. They hadn't — they weren't Guifré, but they were still... an Asmodean priest and an Asmodean nobleman, you know?" She glances at Liberty and Treason. "...And then, uh, the Eagle Knights showed up and took care of them and helped me escape."

She's not personally one of the Calistrians that most resonate with Calistria's aspect of vengeance, but she knows a fair few who are still feels it herself.

"I understand completely. I'm glad to hear it they got what they deserved, and glad you're here to tell me - if you need a place to stay you're certainly welcome here."

Smile! A little less tentative, this time.

"I've got somewhere to stay for now, but — thank you, I appreciate it." She's guessing at the right way to express the sentiment she's going for, but people were using that one at the seafood place and not treating it like a big deal, so probably it doesn't secretly have some sort of terrible extra meaning the way most ways to show gratitude back home would.

"It's not a problem, believe me. I think there's only one other question I have, then."

Her smile widens, and she pitches her voice low even though it won't do anything to prevent anyone else in the room from hearing it.

"Do you like boys, girls, or both?"

Blink.

"That, uh, works?"

"Of course! I swing both ways, but some people are only interested in men or only interested in women."

That doesn't really answer her question but she's not sure how else to ask it.

"...Probably girls, then?" So far it really seems like sleeping with men sucks. Sex is a lot nicer for men than women, everyone knows that, but if it were two girls maybe it could be nice for both of them?

Oh, sleeping with a man can definitely be nice, but it's not for everyone. She didn't seem that confident about it, but apparently it's the first she's learning it's even possible, and it's not like anyone expects teenagers to definitely have it all figured it out. It's somewhere to start, at least. 

"I'll make sure to let some of them know for the next time you drop by, then."

...She doesn't actually want to sleep with random women she's never even met. Are Calistrians supposed to — she doesn't actually care if Calistrians are supposed to, she's still not going to.

She's not really sure how to say that.

"I, uh, don't know them?" Wow, that probably sounded really stupid. In the cities lots of people sleep with people they barely know, there's no reason it'd be different in Andoran.

It’s a non sequitur but Maya has more than enough experience to know reluctance when she sees it.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to, but I expect a number of people would be interested in getting to know you if you did."

...Now she's not sure if she was just misunderstanding what Avenger Maya was saying. Which — is fine, actually, it feels dangerous but that doesn't mean it is. Even back home it's not like she'd have been tortured to death over it or anything.

"I'd be fine with, uh, talking to them...?"

"Then I'll tell them they should try not to come on too strong."

There are going to be people living here who'll try their luck with a pretty new empowered priestess if she stops by, and the only way to avoid it would be to never show up. But limiting it to people she could plausibly be receptive to and flirting is probably doable.

They can try their luck, that's fine, as long as they're not going to get all upset about it if she turns them down. ...Which they... probably won't? It feels sort of ridiculous to object to people getting upset about it unless they actually hurt her, but Maya's a Calistrian too, so probably it'll be okay?

"In that case I'd be happy to meet them."

This looks like it might be a call for another hug, but Maya is going to go a bit more slowly this time so Justice has time to object if she wants.

Hug!!! Hugs are really nice, Justice has absolutely no objections.

Then she can get another few minutes of thorough hugging. 

"It was good to meet you, Justice. Don't be a stranger."

"It was good to meet you too!"

Justice can keep the wasp symbol if she wants, they've got plenty, but they're hardly going to oblige it. When she heads back through the front entrance she'll see a middle-aged man waiting for something, but he doesn't acknowledge their party as they pass out the door and into the street outside.

"Was it what you were hoping for?" 

She hangs the wasp symbol around her neck. It's sort of incredible that she can just... wear her holy symbol openly, in plain sight, and it won't mark her as someone who ought to be tortured to death.

...She's not really sure what she'd been hoping for. It wasn't what she was expecting, exactly, but now that she thinks about it she was kind of expecting that everyone there would be basically like her, and that was obviously a ridiculous thing to expect.

"It was nice to meet another Calistrian," she settles on eventually.

"I'm glad."

While they're already out and about, Treason decides to take the liberty of showing her around, with Liberty only occasionally objecting to a descriptor. That's the Arthfell river, over there is the tenement housing that's only just not slums, nearby it is Shelyn's soup kitchens, over there by the ocean you can see the shipwrights, here's a statue of the Inheritor with a raised sword that people often use to orient themselves in the alleyways... neither of them are exactly natives, but they've spent enough time in the city to put on a decent facsimile of it.

It takes her a few moments to figure out what's actually happening at the soup kitchen. They're giving people food, and they're not taking money for it, and it's hard to tell for sure but from the look of things they're mostly giving it out to poor people. They're not just using it as a way to hurt them, they're not even making them beg for it, they're just... giving them food.

Because — because in Good countries they don't think it's pathetic to care about other people, so some of them do, and apparently one of the things they care about is making sure people have food.

...Other people having food still feels like a confusing thing to care about, but — it seems good that people can care about it, she thinks.

Eventually though she's seen what's there to be seen, and Treason and Liberty drop her off by her apartment so they can go make a report at the chapter house. It's not really a goodbye, since she won't have any trouble seeing them again later, but it is a kind of farewell.

Despite being further to the east, there's not really any difference between a sunset in Cheliax and a sunset in Andoran; the shadows still lengthen, the air still chills, and the sky still turns the same brilliant red and orange. But for the first time in her life - when the sun sets on Justice Ferrer, it sets on a free woman.