"I think I'm less confused. - accordingly a little less optimistic that I will like Good once it's all explained, but I am grateful to be less confused. I do want to keep trying, if you're willing. If you come up with what you'd want I will try to be it."

"You wouldn't have to get all the way to Good but making the case for Good seems more accessible than guessing what exactly Cheliax's mechanism of Evil-manufacture is so you can specifically repent of being caught up in it." Shrug.

"Yeah. Thank you."

Out goes Belmarniss.

"Wow, fuck Cheliax," he says once they're well clear of her cell. "What a - stupid, wasteful -"

"I wish I knew what they were doing! She has a stupid philosophical position but that wouldn't send her to Hell by itself, it's just making it hard to Atone her, there's something else, and I vaguely imagined it would become obvious if I talked to a Chelish person long enough and it's not at all!"

"Maybe we should go through a - day-by-day schedule, I can't see why she'd be eliding 'then we brand children with hot pokers' but if it's subtle - and it must be - or something she's assuming everyone is doing..."

"Maybe you can actually be evil just for supporting Asmodeus and working loyally for His country. I think you can mostly get Law off supporting Abadar and working for His."

"Law is different, Law just is about the same things that being loyal to a sufficiently consistent country is about - I can't rule it out but - the schedule's a good idea."

"What do you think of her."

"I really hope they don't kill her. I - it wouldn't really be a proper marriage and I don't think I like the thing it'd be. Feels petty, to kill someone for that, but -"

"'s it legal to just buy her, not call it a marriage, just have a high-maintenance slave making magic items in your basement? Guess the paladins might not like it."

"I'm not sure. If she'd committed a crime it'd be legal, but - she hasn't actually-

- also keeping a woman enslaved in your basement seems like the kind of thing where you shouldn't be trusting in your own character."

"We could drop by and be your character."

"Yeah, Fazil's got truth magic and everything."

"I can - look up the rules for importing slaves." He grimaces. "If the paladins will go for it."

"They probably are not allowed to sell prisoners into slavery."

"What, and they didn't dismiss 'marry her off to my Osirian best friend on pain of likely death should she refuse' out of hand?"

"I mean, they weren't thrilled about it, but just killing her isn't better, and they don't have a policy against arranging marriages for prisoners, the way they are absolutely going to have one about selling them into slavery."

"If they pay me to take her then that's not selling her into slavery."

"I feel like this is really just an example of why people say Lawful Good is Lawful Stupid."

"It makes a lot of sense to have a policy against selling your prisoners into slavery even if there are weird edge cases where it is actually a good idea! It also makes a lot of sense to not have a similar policy for marriages and evaluate them on a case-by-case basis, if you trust you can filter for the ones that will be good for both people, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to suppose that sometimes you can. There are genuinely fewer incentive issues on their end with them paying Mahdi to take her so it is possible they'll consider that, which doesn't mean -"

" - hey. I'm sorry. I didn't mean - I know you're trying really hard, here."

"Well, I doubt if it'd be good for both people except when compared with death."

"I think it'd be ...fine. Which is why I feel like a bit of a jerk, it'd be easy to say 'no way' if it was going to be a disaster."