...It would hurt. Possibly more than the first betrayal. I - do you think he feels betrayed by us? That we failed him? I - we did, I suppose, I am so angry with myself as well as Her...

It's not your fault! It happened in a completely different country! 

This is true and he responded as fast as he could once he was aware of it, and somehow this doesn’t make him feel much better.

Vanyel still hasn’t said anything. Nayoki took a step toward him and put a comforting hand briefly on his shoulder at one point, presumably noticing that he was upset. He’s trying really hard not to be visibly upset because it’s not like any of the awfulness here happened to him, and surely it could only make Leareth feel worse if he burst into tears right in front of him. 

Leareth finishes dressing, folds up the sheet and sets it down on the floor, and levers himself up. Wearily, even though he’s not physically tired at all, some part of him feels exhausted. His soul, maybe. His mind is producing a very pointless desire to go home, which - isn’t a place he has.

He is not discernably having emotions; everyone else is discernably having emotions and he doesn't exactly blame them but if he were doing it it'd be on purpose.

"We're in the Dome, because it's safer. If you'd like to remain here you are of course welcome; otherwise I'll let you know if we hear from Abadar about raising Starwind and Moondance."

“I thought they got out- oh, did you kill them, I suppose that is sensible if you did not know what else they might do next.” Leareth glances around, trying to think. “I doubt I will be in more danger than I was before if I return to Cheliax, but - perhaps I will stay here a while until you learn more.”

He lives alone in Egorian, in a house which is very thoroughly warded but it still feels weirdly lonely to imagine going there right now. Also he wants to talk to Abadar, which will predictably leave him incapacitated, and even though the last awful thing happened at the pharaoh’s palace, he still feels obscurely safer doing that here. Especially since it’s Abadar’s territory and Abadar is apparently willing to protect him.

He gestures for a (unfamiliar) servant. "Show him a room, please, and anyone else who wants one."

And he stands, and wishes everybody well in the correct formal fashion in Aroden's case, and leaves, and then mopes.

Aroden glances at Parmida, then Leareth. 

“Leareth, would you prefer if we stayed as well?”

“I expect they need you more in Cheliax.”

“Cheliax will not fall apart in a day without my attention. I would be a poor leader indeed if it did. If you would feel safer with me nearby until we know more here...”

“Thank you, but I think I will be fine.”

Parmida frowns and squeezes her husband's hand. Maybe we can come back for dinner?

I think that is a good idea. He suggests it. 

Leareth agrees, absently. He nods to both of them and follows the servant to the offered room.

“I’m staying. I can make diamonds just as well here as there.”

(Nayoki wants to stay as well.)

Comfortable rooms can be arranged for all of them!

Leareth tells the servants he would like to be left alone because he has a headache (he doesn’t yet but he will soon), and once he’s alone he stretches out on the bed, tries to get comfortable - it’s hard, he’s not physically uncomfortable but some part of him is scared to close his eyes even though that’s really unhelpful.

He reaches for Abadar, and then reaches past the usual cleric interface.

It feels exactly like it did the last time, the sense of falling headfirst into something big and fast-moving and magic. 

:Leareth: Fondness, and something that might be worry.

Leareth wants Abadar to know that he’s grateful Abadar was able to prevent the Star-Eyed from grabbing him. Though he doesn’t think he can really blame Abadar for not catching it before it happened.

Shuffling - 

Abadar broadly endorses the decision procedure that led to not catching it before it happened, things this bad happen an acceptable percentage of the time and are recoverable and it's an advantageous position to be in, having been reasonable and been betrayed about it, all the other Lawful gods are with Him on retaliation. But Khemet is upset and while he hasn't come up with an articulation of his upsetness that actually points at anything, usually there is something, and it might point at a change of decision procedure? Abadar considers it more likely than not though probably it won't change along a dimension legible to Leareth anyway.

Huh. Leareth...didn’t realize Khemet was upset and does not blame Khemet for this at all and - maybe does feel a bit less safe, here, as a result, but in a way he suspects is calibrated - he hadn’t even recognized until afterward how relaxed and uncareful he had become in the pharoah’s palace until afterward.

He shuffles for a while and then shares a Khemet thought rather than try to figure out a god thought on the topic which Leareth could parse -

Khemet speaking to a man Leareth hasn't met - "...and if I'm better at getting people to let down their guard around me than I am at keeping them safe that's awful."

"That feels like putting it a little strongly! You're a cleric with True Resurrection, drowning in diamonds, a god expended a lot of resources to murder someone in your palace despite reasonable precautions, you fixed it."

"I didn't. I raised him, I didn't fix it. They were Vanyel's friends, they were Savil's friends, there was trust there you can't throw ninth-circle spells at. They were probably decent human beings, just expected - if Abadar told me to kill someone I'd probably do it, because I'd expect He had a damned good reason, because I'd expect that the - real heuristic that 'don't stab your allies in the back with a smuggled superweapon and cause an international incident' is an approximation of doesn't make sense to me and does make sense to Him and I should listen - okay, I don't know if I would do that, but -"

The man hugs him and murmurs sympathetically. He goes on.

"Valdemar's mad at me for killing Moondance and Starwind, which I'm actually kind of frustrated about, what the fuck did they expect me to do? And Leareth felt safe here and now he doesn't, and that was valuable, it was important to me, I worked hard on it, and I feel like shit about having worked hard on it if he's worse off for it, that's not what I thought I was doing. They seemed uncomfortable -"

"The murderers did?"

"Yeah. I should've - I don't know what I should've done. I told Abadar to figure out what He should've done but He seems pleased with Himself, He gets to steal fifteen world-destroying superweapons and nothing got spent that anyone would've spent money on, so nothing got spent - that's uncharitable -"

- caveat, Khemet is wrong about some things and is communicating here with weird complicated human intent that Abadar's on shaky ground with -