"It is very very strange and rare for someone to do that on purpose because the Church strongly discourages suicide. I don't think anyone will suspect a discrepancy."

That is good to know but also it was only one example.

"I think you are more likely to come across as eccentric than as - fundamentally inconsistent -"

Jane comes back.

"Thank you, Jane." He takes the Theology. "So this might be an interesting supplement to the Duality itself, though of course it's just one man's opinion even if his interpretation is currently pretty well in favor with the Church. It's very dense, I wouldn't recommend reading it all in one sitting."

She's - upset with him for not telling her, before she read it, but she's also upset with for telling him now, because she'll have to act - and she doesn't even know whether he's right; Zoyah thinks it's true, and she doesn't know about their parents...  If nothing else, she has to act like he thinks it's true...

She kind of thought that she wouldn't have to live any lies, among humans.  - No, that's not quite true.  But when faced with the amount of knowledge they collectively had, she kind of thought they wouldn't disagree on such terribly important things.  They have - so much, but now she has to check every single thing she encounters to see whether they really in fact have it.

It's..... it really is still so much better than anything sea people had going on.  Really really very much better.  But she can't help but feel like something, something wonderful, amazing, perfect - has been taken from her.  Even if apparently it never existed.

She nods.

"I'm really very sorry about the misunderstanding," he murmurs as Jane goes to busy herself with making the bed.

(And the perfect thing wasn't even this religion, was it; she didn't even particularly like everything about the religion.  It's not as if she had time to get used to it, or even really process it as something which applies strongly to her life.  The perfect thing was... humans.  As people who know things, who can teach her things.  And even if the religion ends up being true, then - that's probably broken.  But she should have known that already, because Cymbeline told her that people in different places did different things....  Maybe it's just specifically really upsetting to read a whole big book that's doing things with words that you didn't know were possible and then find out that it might (or, importantly, might not) be fake, and she shouldn't try and take any broader philosophy from this incident.)

Nod nod.

Who told you this was not true?

"Nobody, I - pieced together a few things that didn't seem right and didn't find any reasons to believe it when I looked harder."

Which things

"For a complete account I'd have to go get my notes. Things like - there was no explanation for why not everybody even in foreign countries would be a Dualist, besides that demons might have told them lies? But there could be some other religion explaining Dualism the same way, saying that somebody told us lies. There's some prophecies that the church is really stretching very hard to make square with what seems to have happened in the historical record. One doesn't see miracles or angels, and one does hear stories about them but not much more often than one hears stories about all kinds of nonsense that doesn't fit in well at all."

.....Nod.

Is there anything else humans disagree on like this?

"...humans disagree on a lot of things. For all kinds of reasons. People disagree on things because they've - seen some of the things that exist and not others, and don't believe what they hear about the others; or because they have different opinions about what things would be good or bad; or because they're not very bright and don't understand some complicated thing and believe a simple one instead. But exactly like this, not that I know of."

She shakes her head.

This is so big.  How did it happen if it is not true?

"I don't know. But it's happened more than once. Foreigners have lots of different religions. And there are multiple Dualist sects too."

Is being a king real?  Is human magic real?  These are the size of disagreement I mean.

"Human magic is real. Being king is... sort of real. A king has power only because everyone agrees he does, but it's very hard for everyone to change their minds all in the same way at the same time, so if one person suddenly decides that the kingship isn't real, they won't be able to accomplish anything about it. If a lot of people all decide that someone else should be king, sometimes wars happen that way."

Nod. 

I want to see the future telling and the past saying that made you decide this.  Those are not the words you called them but I don't remember.

"The - prophecies and the histories?"

Nod nod.

"It wasn't so much any specific book, but I can recommend you some examples?"

How do you know those are true?  Is the history of Loegria true?

"As far as I know the history you've read is true but it's always possible that an author made a mistake. I determine things are probably true when they're plausible, not too vague or - convenient - and not contradicted by other equally credible sources."

She puts her face in her hands for a few seconds.

Okay.  She's fine.  This is fine.

Books are like people.  They are not where you can get knowledge that is more true than what people know.

"Right. Books are written by people. They let us keep information that people a long time ago had, and compare what lots of different people had to say, but there's no way for things that aren't people to participate in writing a book."

I have so much to do.  Knowing what is true is very important, but seems like it will take so much time that I will have to do less magic.  But if I don't know what's true I might make bad things instead of good ones. 

(Probably this is no longer so sensitive that she can't switch to paper?  She does that.)

"...if you don't want to just take my word for it on what would be a good or a bad idea, then I can see why that would make sense."