"I follow him," says Mahdi cheerfully. "He empowered the founder of Osirion and was its initial patron, thousands and thousands of years ago. Abadar's much more suitable as a patron because he is not insane but there are still lots of holy sites of Nethys."

"How do you follow a god who's insane? Isn't that, like, confusing?"

"When the first pharaoh died, Nethys picked a successor, a woman, and sent her visions of the true nature of magic and drove her mad. She burned his temple, and herself alive in it. After that he decided to not do dreams and visions and active intervention and so on. So I mostly just aspire to learn more about magic and then we're good. I don't hear from him."

"Huh. I guess that's good if you don't want a lot of rules to follow." She looks up at Korva. "Does this mean Asmodeus doesn't know everything?"

"No, not everything. Not quite."

"Hm."

She's still for a moment and then sits up. "We're not in Osirion anymore, right?"

"We're not," Fazil says.

"You said to ask who your god was when we weren't."

"I'm fond of Desna. I wouldn't say I follow her but I pretty up her shrines, when we pass them. - you can't proselytize for chaotic or evil gods in Osirion. You can follow them privately if you want but you can't go telling other people about them."

"Huh. Even Cheliax lets you talk about other gods."

"Really? I would've expected that if I went to Cheliax and was like 'hey I'm a paladin of Iomedae' my life expectancy would be unimpressive."

"You can't be a paladin. But Asmodeus lets people honor most of the other gods as long as they worship him the most."

"Well, in Osirion you can worship any god the most, even horrible worthless gods with nothing going for them like Asmodeus, but you can only proselytize for them if they're not chaotic and not evil."

Flop. "Sounds complicated."

"I think it's a bit precious but it beats banning all paladins from your whole country. What happened to them when Asmodeus seized power?"

"They fled or were killed."

"They were lucky, then," says Fazil. 

       "If we're going to be together for months we should maybe not talk about whether Cheliax sucks," says Mahdi.

"Possibly."

"Verita might die," Fazil says quietly.

"And Kor - Imrainai's got the opposite of an incentive to help make that an outcome we're okay with, here," he says, not quietly. "So we should probably drop it even though, yes, it bothers me too. I think she'll be all right anyway. Smart kid."

"Where d'you think I'd go if I did?"

"I don't know. Let's try not to make it happen soon."

"Keep practicing magic and Fazil'll be able to tell," Mahdi says. 

"Cool."

She'll just keep practicing magic, then. Right now, actually. She makes a pile of little toys for herself and then moves them around with mage hand.

Mahdi is enthusiastic about this.