So they both get one of those, and a small glass bottle of sparkling mineral water* each, and they can sit on the benches in the big train station and have lunch.  Zapiekanki** are a great invention.

There's a lot of people to watch, and Marek will quietly do that for a while unless Agnieszka starts a conversation.

*tap water isn't drinkable, so if you want drinkable water in public you have to buy the bottled sort, which is inevitably sparkling mineral water for some reason, maybe to make it clearer that it's not just bottled tap water?

**a specific sort of open-faced baguette-based toasted sandwich that's one of the most common cheap street foods in Poland.  Nom.

Oh wow, the melty cheese is really tasty!

...The water is NOT tasty. The forest water was not this bad so it can't just be that it tastes better if it's from a priest!

What does she notice about the people here?

They're mostly all taller than she's used to, and healthier-looking. All of them are wearing variously strange and surprisingly colorful local clothes, and often a lot less of them than she's used to, men and women showing their knees and shoulders. 

Nobody's carrying recognizable weapons, except some of the guards with short little sticks that barely seem like they count.  She doesn't see anyone casting a spell, although some people do have things that must be magic items, by how they're talking into them.

People yell at each other sometimes, but she doesn't see anyone getting hit, except one noisy small child eventually.  ...The children generally misbehave and disobey their parents as if they haven't had the inclination whipped out of them. And it seems like they haven't - none of the children, or the adults for that matter, have visible bruises, scars are weirdly rare, nearly nobody walks funny or winces in pain when jostled.  These people just don't look like they're getting punished at all.

It's obvious that some of them are richer and some poorer - there are even some beggars, mostly women with children - but it... doesn't seem like it matters as much?  People get glared at pretty equitably.  Nobody's acting like a slave, as far as she can tell (and everyone's human, no halflings or orcs or anything) - and nobody's acting like a priest or wizard or lord, either, nobody the crowd parts respectfully or fearfully for.  Maybe a little, for the people in various guard uniforms, and similarly a little but in a more friendly way for the people in long black robes, whoever they are.  People aren't mostly friendly at each other, but it still happens much more often than in Cheliax. Women smile at other women's babies or stop to chat about them.

People complain a lot - about their health, their families, their work. About their government, completely out in the open.

For a few moments she feels her chest pulling tight, and it's hard to breathe. You can't just talk treason in public — it's stupid to do it in private, but at least in private you can get lucky, if you guess that someone won't turn you in and get lucky. But in public — in public you'd be punished for it even if every single person who heard you agreed, because no one would want to risk seeming disloyal by not turning you in. Her first reflex is to shout at them, or something, only that wouldn't even help, everyone's already heard it.

Agnieszka has never seen how her lord would have responded to someone saying those sorts of things about him, because no one would have dared. (Well, the people saying things that sound like compliments in tones that make it clear they really aren't might have, but in Cheliax they would have meant it as a compliment to call him callous.) Probably most of the people here would have gotten by with just a whipping, with the kinds of whip that get used for real punishments, unless the Crown really felt like making an example out of someone, or the lord or the priest or someone important really wanted an excuse. 

The people talking about... some kind of war, it sounds like it's between two countries she's never heard of... would have died.

They aren't going to die here. Or, technically she doesn't know that, but they're treating it like it's just a normal conversation, no one is giving them nervous looks, no one even seems to think it's any more notable than the pair of young women (dressed halfway like whores, but so did most women in Egorian, if Egorian is real) complaining about the taller one's boyfriend. The guards are close enough to hear, and they aren't moving closer, aren't surrounding them, aren't even trying to listen closer, at least not that she can tell.

They're just... allowed to complain.

(Her chest doesn't feel tight anymore, which is sort of weird, it's not like she knows them.)

Yes - they complain for a while, then move on to how one of the men can't get the bugs to leave his tomatoes alone, as if both topics were equally commonplace.  Nothing at all happens.

Marek notices the change in her breathing and gives her a concerned look, but he has no idea what she's reacting to.

She hadn't meant to be that obvious about it, now he's probably going to think she's pathetic. She attempts to force it to be a bit more regular and look around the rest of the station like there's nothing special about that pair in particular.

That's enough to make him stop looking worried, since it doesn't seem like there's an actual problem, but they could still do something else instead of sitting here for another hour and a half.

"This has to be pretty different from what you're used to.  We could walk around and see more of the city, there's time, but I figured with your leg you'd rather be sitting down?  We could at least go sit somewhere different if you want."

"What are, uh, the other places to go in the city?"

"Hmm. The old city center is pretty close to here, it has a lot of interesting old buildings and little shops and one of the biggest churches."  He somehow makes it sound like that last one is a nice thing.  "The royal palace, not that we'll have time to go inside, but it's still interesting to see.  There's a fire-breathing dragon in front of it.  ...Uh, not a real one."  Just in case she was unclear on that.  "Wisła - the biggest river in the country - is impressive-looking, there's a nice walk along it." 

...It turns out he doesn't have a lot of ideas for places to go.  He likes the city, but he tends to just walk around and enjoy the atmosphere rather than aiming for anywhere specific.

A lot of those options seem pretty bad! She definitely doesn't want to go anywhere near the palace (although she must have misunderstood something there, there's no way someone important enough to just walk in and get an audience if only he had more time would be wasting their time helping random teenage girls. (It might be interesting to see the... statue? magical construct for killing the Crown's enemies?... but absolutely not worth getting close.) The church is — well, it might not be just as bad, if the gods here are Good, but she doesn't know if they are, and either way there's the risk of the priests having magic that'll force her to tell the whole truth. The shops could be fine, except the guards took all her money, and in any case the shops are apparently right near a church, so if she asks to visit them it's possible that he'll try to bring her to the church as well. The river is... probably fine, probably not that interesting, and apparently would involve a lot of walking — she's not a little kid, she'll do it if she has to, but she'd rather not.

...Also, it sounds really boring to just look at a river for an hour. They've been doing a lot of leaving her with nothing to do for hours, it's not like it's a big deal or anything, but still.

She... probably still needs to pick one.

"...Could we go see the shops, but not the church?" If he says that's alright, but then he tries to take her to the church anyway, that's good to know.

"Huh?"  That's just... a strange question, not that he has any intention of dragging her to church, there's just something about her phrasing that throws him off.  ... Anyway, right, satanist cult.  "Yes, of course."

In that case they can go on a short walk, across a few streets and through a narrow green park, to a huge stone plaza inhabited by hundreds of pigeons, with a long half-open building in the middle. There's a very tall presumably-church on the near edge of the plaza, but Marek heads the other way and to the central building.  It has a covered walkway all along the side, with dozens of little shops selling a wild and colorful variety of objects.  Jewelry (so much amber), clothes, toys, weirdly colorful sweets, art, ceramic, books, so many tiny ?paintings?, not to mention a lot of objects she has trouble figuring out the purpose of.

Here too there's a lot of people, shopping and chatting and exclaiming about how cool something or other is.  They're mostly a more cheerful crowd than the train station one.  A woman is trying to get her family to leave so they aren't late for something.  A group of teenagers is talking about camping trip plans.  A small child is yelling that she wants ice cream.

These people are so rich. Cheliax is — Cheliax said it was the richest country by far, but the amount of jewelry and expensively-dyed fabric and artwork all in one place, is... she's never been to the cities before, but she's pretty sure even Egorian wasn't this wealthy. At the very least, any shop selling anything this expensive surely would've all had a soldier or a wizard or something standing around to protect their wares. That's probably not a great sign for how Evil the people here are going to be, but it's still better to know.

She heads for one of the book shops. She's not going to be able to buy anything right now, obviously, but books are at least the sort of thing that normal people can afford. (Or at least, they are in Cheliax. Maybe here they're expensive, if they have to copy them out by hand rather than having a wizard do it.)

The probably-prices written on little pieces of tape vary from 80 to 500, although someone's buying one and it sounds like they're saying it's 80 thousand?  But then the woman pays a few pieces of paper, not thousands of anything, so it's hard to tell what any of it corresponds to.

In front of the store there are big expensive books filled with colorful images that don't even look like someone could have drawn them, of the city or landscapes or metal armor or a dozen other things.  There are cookbooks and history books and travel journals and people's biographies.  A large majority of the store is just fiction, labeled as such - romances and detective stories and adventure novels and "fantasy".  People are handling the books and looking through them.

The train ticket was 5000 gold, clearly they don't use quite the kind of money people used back home. (She's honestly kind of surprised they use paper money here? In school they said everywhere else used coins, even though they were heavier and worth less, since you couldn't use them to buy yourself enslaved souls for once you go to Hell and become a devil. ...Though depending on how Evil the people here are, they might still want to buy slaves for when they get to Hell.) In any case, she doesn't really have any idea how hard it is to make trains, so that's not really helpful, regardless of whether the books cost 80 "gold" or 80,000.

Lady Pallares has a reading hobby, though of course she doesn't own anywhere near as many books as this shop does, and she used to let Agnieszka and the servants' children borrow her books to read as long as they groveled enough and let her humiliate them about not being able to just buy their own. (She stopped letting Agnieszka borrow them when she was thirteen, which was supposed to be a punishment, but really meant she didn't have to force herself to beg for permission to read Asmodean books so she wouldn't give herself away.) But she used to enjoy reading, and maybe she could still enjoy it if the books aren't Asmodean.

...She still heads for the history books first, even though what she actually wants to read are the ones about adventurers, to try and get a sense of what she's supposed to believe about it, and to see if there are any names at all that she recognizes.

The history books are... weird, and seem remarkably unoptimized for telling her what she's supposed to believe.  There isn't a neat history of Poland or Europe or anything, just a lot of variously specific stuff.  The Napoleonic Wars, the history of the Kraków University, a detailed account of the Battle of Grunwald, something about ancient Slavic tribes, and so on.  For newer history there's a "The Road to Freedom" and an "Empire".  (Marek grabs an "Empire" to look through, and is making faintly unhappy faces about it.)

She doesn't recognize any of the names anywhere.  One thing that sticks out when skimming a few books to check for that is that they're... weirdly uncertain about things?  They specifically say they don't know something or other and can only make guesses about it.  Sometimes they list a few different possibilities believed by different people and don't tell you which one is right!

Oh, so probably it's part of the complicated sort of test of loyalty, where no one's ever told you the right answer and you just have to guess which of the "different people" you're supposed to agree with, and it's just that she doesn't know enough about any of these places to have a good guess what the answer actually is. It's kind of weird how much detail they go into about the different ?heresies?, though, it seems like they'd be risking people deciding that the heretics are actually right, especially if they're not smart enough to figure out what they're actually supposed to believe.

She's kind of curious about "The Road to Freedom," and probably if they're just letting it sit out in the open like this it's not secretly illegal or something. She takes it down from the shelf to get a closer look.

It's really hard to read, because it relies on so many things people already know and she doesn't, but with the help of the foreword and the blurb on the back she can more or less figure out what's going on.  It's the autobiography of the current president (meaning the leader of the government, who is elected by the citizens, apparently??), who led a - rebellion? but one with protests and with refusing to do work and with giving a lot of speeches, rather than with trying to kill people? - against the previous government, and kind of mostly succeeded?  The big government change happened four years ago.

This is the new second book of the autobiography, apparently - if she finds the first book ("The Road of Hope"), she can read about how he was the son of a common farmer, went to school and got involved in various confusing politics after that, started protesting against the government oppressing workers, went to prison but only after a decade of doing this, was released from prison, and got some sort of big international prize for it.

Things the books mention a lot:  the local religion, which is apparently also against the government oppressing workers and additionally against killing people, and a powerful neighboring country, which has a confusing stance on oppressing workers (it's called "communism") but is definitely against both the religion and the protests.

Things the books don't mention at all:  any kings or nobles of any description, in either this country or the big neighboring one or most of the rest.  It's all presidents and ministers and generals and "party leaders".

Okay, that's a lot more helpful.

The president's just what they call the king here, that part's easy, lots of places have different words for what their ruler is supposed to be called. The part about elections is more confusing — obviously no king is actually just going to let someone else be king, but she's not really sure what the point of pretending is. (It's not like it'd be hard to pretend. If you held an election in Cheliax everyone would be too scared to vote for anyone but the Queen, and if for some reason people did, they could just lie about the total.) Generals are presumably generals, Cheliax has those too, and then the ministers and party leaders are probably a mix of nobles and paranobles and other people who work in government, just called something else.

The part about having a rebellion is probably true. She can't think of a reason why they'd pretend they had a rebellion if they didn't, if they were going to lie about anything it'd be the opposite. Obviously when it talks about protests, it means something more like riots — no one would care if it were just a bunch of people giving speeches, the old government would've just killed them. She's not really sure why they're pretending about that — maybe they don't want to look weak by talking about all the times when a bunch of people got killed? Maybe they started killing innocent people too, like in Galt Province, and they want to seem less Evil?

Presumably the reason the old government didn't just kill the president right away is that they couldn't find him, if wizards are so rare here that most people don't even know they exist it's probably a lot harder to track people down, especially if he could use a train to get so far away that they can't have dogs follow his trail. The part about them locking him up instead of just killing him is a lot more confusing, though. Maybe they were trying to torture information out of him, but it took longer because they couldn't just check with truth magic? Maybe they did kill him, and the new president is just claiming to be the same person because it makes him seem more like he ought to be king?

The part where the revolution was about workers being oppressed is... probably a good sign? It might not be true, but even if it's a lie, it's really not the sort of lie that people in Cheliax would tell. And it seems like the Church probably isn't Evil — she's not sure whether they're Good or Neutral, it depends on whether they're always against killing people, or just usually. It'd be pretty hard for a church to pretend to be totally different from how it actually was, the Asmodeans don't even bother to pretend they aren't Evil, so if the Church says it's against oppressing workers and killing people, it probably really is. Saying their president is the son of a farmer is the same sort of thing, it might or might not be true but it means he'd rather people think he's a farmer's son than the heir to an ancient noble family.

...She thinks she might be starting to understand the country now. There's a lot she still doesn't know, like what Communism actually is besides 'some kind of local heresy,' so this probably isn't totally right, but it seems like they're trying really hard to convince people that the government is good for them, that it cares about their 'rights', that it's made of regular people rather than awful nobles.

Cheliax didn't bother, and Cheliax didn't need to bother. Even if people realized that Asmodeus was terrible and no one should ever worship him, that didn't mean they'd be able to get rid of all the Asmodeans. She killed Guifré, but Guifré was two years older than her, not really an adventurer and not a spellcaster at all. Maybe she could've gotten the rest of his family — actually, now that she's thinking about it, her chest is getting all hot and twisty thinking about everything they did, she was focused on Guifré but she should have tried for them too — but most people didn't have access to their lord's kitchens, and she's pretty sure that fancy nobles just test all their food on slaves or something. Even if a whole village of regular people all got together to try to fight someone really important, a single decently powerful wizard could just kill them all with a Fireball.

But there aren't wizards here, at least not a lot of them, and it doesn't seem like there are sorcerers either, or really anything at all except for priests. And the priests aren't Asmodeans, they think regular people should have rights too. If all the regular people got together, maybe they could kill the president, even if he's a powerful adventurer. So the president has to act like he cares about regular people, wants to pretend like they could all just get together and ask for someone else, and probably that means he can't be too Evil, because if he said that actually he was going to have all the schools whip kids for staying home to help with the harvest everyone would know he was lying.

(Or else she's totally wrong. She might be totally wrong. It's not like she knows anything about how this country works.)

...Are there books about the local Church and its gods?

There's a little section of religious books, yes!  It has the biography of the high priest (an old man dressed all in white and smiling in his depiction on the cover), a book of essays by some other local priest on assorted topics, a "Bible quotes for every day of the year", a couple of biographies of saints...  Oh, and a catechism! 

It has a crucified man drawn very detailedly on the cover, so that's not a great start.

It does, conveniently, have a prayer that lists all the things you are absolutely supposed to believe in order to be considered a Catholic.  It goes like this:

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy common Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen. 

I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth

Oh! Pharasma, except they call her a man here for some reason. It's weird that they only mentioned Heaven and not any of the other afterlives, maybe the Church here is really Lawful?

and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord

She doesn't love that they're talking about one of their gods as a lord, but it's possible they just mean that he's powerful and important, and not that he should be allowed to just do anything he wants to anyone no matter what?

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit

The... undead one? ...Probably this is at least sort of a metaphor, she doesn't think undead can do that.

born of the Virgin Mary

A... fourth god?

suffered under Pontius Pilate

....An Evil God, maybe?

was crucified, died and was buried

Probably this is also some kind of metaphor? Gods can die, obviously, but she's not really sure how you'd crucify or bury one.

he descended into hell

...So he was Evil? That's — kind of upsetting, actually, she'd sort of gotten attached to the idea that maybe these people were better.

This part is kind of confusing too, she didn't think gods just stuck around after they died to get sorted.

on the third day he rose again from the dead

She didn't think gods could do that either?? If it were possible to just resurrect Aroden people would have done it.

he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty

...Okay, probably she was misunderstanding something earlier. It said he descended into Hell, maybe instead of getting sorted there he went to go fight Asmodeus or Pontius Pilate or something. (Though if he was suffering under Pontius Pilate before that then maybe Pontius Pilate is Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil or something?)

Also, Pharasma's True Neutral, she doesn't live in Heaven. ...Unless the Asmodeans were lying about that, which now that she thinks about it maybe they were, it makes sense that they wouldn't want people to know about her being Lawful Good. And Pharasma does plenty of Good things, like stopping babies from dying and sending Evildoers to be punished in Hell and fighting Undead.

from there he will come to judge the living and the dead

...She's pretty sure that Pharasma does that, not Jesus Christ. But Ms. Wójcicka said that they think all of their gods are one god, so maybe they're just confused?

I believe in the Holy Spirit

They said that part already.

the holy common Church

She has no idea what this part means.

the communion of saints

Or this part.

the forgiveness of sins

She's supposed to... believe that sometimes they don't execute people even for really serious crimes? That's probably not right but she doesn't have a better guess.

the resurrection of the body

Yes, priests can do that if they're strong enough.

and life everlasting.

She's not sure if priests can do that or not. Really strong Evildoers can turn into liches, but that's not quite the same thing, they aren't alive.

If she starts reading the rest of the catechism from the beginning, what does it say?

There are a few pages of not very relevant-looking explanations about who wrote this and when and so on, and then the main part starts like this:

1 Q. Are you a Christian?
A. Yes, I am a Christian, by the grace of God.

2 Q. Why do you say: By the grace of God?
A.I say: By the grace of God, because to be a Christian is a perfectly gratuitous gift of God, which we ourselves could not have merited.

3 Q. Who is a true Christian?
A. A true Christian is he who is baptised, who believes and professes the Christian Doctrine, and obeys the lawful Shepherds of the Church.

4 Q. What is Christian Doctrine?
A. Christian doctrine is the doctrine which Jesus Christ our Lord taught us to show us the way of salvation.

5 Q. Is it necessary to learn the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ?
A. It certainly is necessary to learn the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ, and those who fail to do so are guilty of a grave breach of duty.

6 Q. Are parents and guardians bound to send their children and those dependent on them to catechism?
A. Parents and guardians are bound to see that their children And dependents learn Christian Doctrine, and they are guilty before God if they neglect this duty.

7 Q. From whom are we to receive and learn Christian Doctrine?
A. We are to receive and learn Christian Doctrine from the Holy Catholic Church.

8 Q. How are we certain that the Christian Doctrine which we receive from the Holy Catholic Church is really true?
A. We are certain that the doctrine which we receive from the Holy Catholic Church is true, because Jesus Christ, the divine Author of this doctrine, committed it through His Apostles to the Church, which He founded and made the infallible teacher of all men, promising her His divine assistance until the end of time.

9 Q. Are there other proofs of the truth of Christian Doctrine?
A. The truth of Christian Doctrine is also shown by the eminent sanctity of numbers who have professed it and who still profess it, by the heroic fortitude of the martyrs, by its marvellous and rapid propagation in the world, and by its perfect preservation throughout so many centuries of ceaseless and varied struggles.

10 Q. What and how many are the principal and most necessary parts of Christian Doctrine?
A. The principal and most necessary parts of Christian Doctrine are four: The Creed, The Our Father, The Commandments, and The Sacraments.

11 Q. What does the Creed teach us?
A. The Creed teaches us the principal articles of our holy faith.

12 Q. What does the Our Father teach us?
A. The Our Father teaches us all that we are to hope from God, and all we are to ask of Him.

13 Q. What do the Commandments teach us?
A. The Commandments teach us all that we are to do to please God - all of which is summed up in loving God above all things and our fellows as ourselves for the love of God

14 Q. What does the doctrine of the Sacraments teach us?
A. The doctrine of the Sacraments shows us the nature and right use of those means which Jesus Christ has instituted to remit our sins, give us His grace, infuse into and increase in us the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

The entire book is in this weird question-and-answer format, and it's clearly written for people who already belong to this religion and just need a lot of detailed questions explained to them, so it doesn't have a convenient summary for someone who doesn't already know what's going on.  (Although she can find the Our Father or the Commandments if she wants, and the Creed was the prayer she found first.)

After the introduction there are sections on each part of the Creed, on the other prayers, on the Sacraments, the Commandments, and Virtues and Vices.  It's not a large book, but she still definitely can't read most of it here.

That's really confusing! From the parts she did understand, she's pretty sure they're more Lawful than she'd like — it's not really surprising that the Crown's official religion would be Lawful, obviously the government wants people to follow the law, but still. The part about loving God more than anything else seems like it might be about primary worship, which is also not a great sign, but she's not really sure.

...Rather than trying to figure out this really confusing book on her own she's going to go take a look at the section of the store with books about adventurers.