Swordfighting lessons sound kind of fun, actually, even if they won't be especially useful once he goes home if ever he does. It'll keep him in shape differently than walks will, at least. He isn't sure what they're confused about but if they want him to talk to more clerics that seems fine?

They enroll him in swordfighting lessons. They think they can get a cleric in by the end of the week, the confidentiality agreement is the hard part.

"His god will notice, won't - he? Is my understanding."

"Yes. So Abadar has to commit to Iomedae that He will work with Her on this which includes not allowing Asmodeus to notice. And the cleric has to agree not to tell anyone but that part's easier."

"How does Abadar confirm that he's on board?"

"Iomedae will give us the go-ahead."

"With - dreams, or -"

"Probably. Or sometimes you just get a feeling of - presence, and certainty -"

"And that's always - genuine?"

"It's pretty distinctive. I imagine if someone got it wrongly then Iomedae'd have to tell someone else that that was a mistake and it'd get sorted out but at a higher resource cost."

"What exactly is worth all this just to have a cleric of Abadar's help with?"

"We're - confused about Ibyabek. We've been doing more scrying and - I think we don't understand how the allocating things works, or -

- whether people are happy and living good lives -"

"What've you been scrying?"

"We've been - identifying people from previous scries and then scrying them too. Trying to find someone in a hospital so we can talk to people without them being upset about hearing voices. We have about twenty people we can reliably get, now, and mostly know their schedules."

"Of course people in hospitals aren't going to be the happiest ones. There is no magic healing and they're sick."

"We actually haven't gotten anyone who works in a hospital yet except one person who is a janitor and we think wouldn't be believed about the voices being real."

"So who are your twenty people?"

"Just coworkers of the people we started with. Wulaar Peng and your father."

"...are they not fine? Is there something wrong on Ibyabek?"

"I don't think there's an emergency. Just - a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense, and we don't know what we're missing, and - this is very important to get right, so we want to be very sure we understand everything."

"What's the advantage of getting a separate god's cleric in?"

"We haven't thought a lot about what a wealthier future human society would be like for the people who live in it, and Abadar has."

"All right."

"We'll update you once we've set a date."

"Thank you."

He resumes his new routine.