"Awwwww. What's she do?"

Look, Élie's never been accused of being a sensible person, but there are some conversations he knows damn well not to have. 

"She's a healer. A – a cleric of Pharasma, who also compounds mundane medicines. She specializes in healing children. That's why she couldn't come, she can't leave her patients just now." 

His voice gets just a little warmer. 

"Are children different to heal than adults? I guess they probably die of different things."

"Yes, they're much more likely to die of diseases – of course, so are most people who aren't adventurers, but children are more vulnerable because they're weaker in the first place. If you're interested in doing anything scalable about disease you end up seeing a lot of kids. It's not really what divine healing is good for, that's what a great deal of our research – " 

Aaaaaand that's enough about that subject. He trails off. 

"Is she planning to leave Chelish children out of the eventual medical revolution? I guess they don't go to Hell, if they die as babies."

"I have nothing against Chelish children – why, I used to be a Chelish child myself – but seeing as we're both forbidden from entering the country I don't think there's a great deal she could do to help them." 

"Well, we could send some people to learn from her."

"You could, but you haven't. What's she supposed to do, go begging for acolytes from a government that wants us both dead?" 

"I think if the Chelish government wanted you dead you probably would be, with all due respect. Possibly they do not think about you nearly as much as you think about them. I can see about the acolytes, if they won't get told they had better renounce their faith and change their names and move to Absalom."

Oh, he wishes he could tell her about their honeymoon in Isarn. Fortunately, his sense of self-preservation is greater than his ego. Just a little. He's got a family now. 

"Oh, I just meant opportunistically, last time I checked I was still technically a wanted rebel against the crown, and one does assume they like to keep up with these things if it's at all convenient. I you could rustle up some students – well, I wouldn't say they'd be required to do anything, but we live in Absalom and given a choice of students I can't see a good reason to choose Asmodeans. In my experience, it's not a faith that lends itself to intellectual inquiry." 

"I'm a big fan of the 'only country in the world to educate girls' thing. But I've long since learned not to expect Good people to care about that as a part of what intellectual inquiry looks like, next to important things like whether you can build temples to the god of drunkenness."

"Cheliax is the only nation in Avistan that educates anyone at public expense, and that's because they need a way to squash their children into numb groveling compliance. Honestly, I don't know or care what opinions Good people have on the subject. All I've ever wanted out of an education is the right to believe things that are true." 

"Like that Chelish children are better off dead, is that true?"

Élie doesn't expect to make a convert here. The woman is a true believer. Ah, as long as he's not going to accomplish anything, he might as well be honest.  

"If my wife and I succeed at inventing some novel cure for disease that scales without her personal involvement, she'd share it with Cheliax, I'm almost certain. I'd – at that point I'd like to think we'd be powerful enough to have more options, but that's cheating. So – I don't know. I've thought about it a lot. Ever since I was a child myself. When I was eight and my youngest sister was a baby, just before I went away to school, I used to spend hours and hours sitting by the cradle and wondering if I should – I mean, in expectation, because she'd be tortured for eternity, nothing she could do in the seventy or eighty years she'd be alive could matter nearly as much. Or if I should drown myself in the mill-pond behind our house, or if it was already too late for me and it wouldn't make a difference. Even then, I believed there wasn't enough in me for the Lord of Hell to shape into the kind of tool that he could use. I used to think about this a all the time, actually, it's like a disease with me, if I'm not supposed to think about something I just can't stop. I'm not any closer to having an answer I'm happy with than I was then. Chelish children deserve better." 

What an utterly bizarre problem to have. She expected dissident Galtans to be weird but this is not, actually, the way in which she expected them to be weird. "Is your baby sister all right?" she says, because what do you even say to the rest of it.

"Oh, yes, she's fine, I couldn't make myself do it, the last time I scried her she was happy and healthy and working as a modiste in a town north of Isarn." 

"I'm glad. I don't know who scared you so badly about Hell but - I talk to devils. It's all right. A journey to get there, but would you want to be the same thing your whole life?"

Okay, that's it for vulnerability hour. 

"Oh, you know, they tell you it's where you become the version of yourself Asmodeus can best use, so I always assumed it'd be like school only moreso and that just about did it." 

"I've never met a fifth-circle wizard who hated school before." If he's sixth he'll correct her; it's the safer direction to err. "I shouldn't keep you standing here, but do think what I can trade you for a look at the ring, even if everything you're working on is terribly secret."

"Sixth," he correct automatically. "Ah – as of a few weeks ago." 

Of course, he's not going to meet with her again. He's not particularly interested in the latest techniques for self-sharpening swords or demon repellant or whatever else it is the kinds of people who go the Worldwound come up with. There's no way she has anything he'd really be interested in. 

"I don't suppose you know anything about ancient Azlanti technology for artificially simplifying and distributing spellwork?" 

"Huh. I mean, in a sense all magic items do that, right, make a spell into something anyone can cast with a single gesture instead of needing to be a wizard. But I think specifically you'd want to look at the itemwork for stabilizing spells that wizards can't cast into magic items wizards can make. Like Glibness, it's a bard spell, but it doesn't have a stable spellform so no one's ever figured out a wizard version. But wizards can make magic items that hold it stably. The most obviously useful extension of that is casting self-only spells into objects that let you cast them on other people, there are so many useful self-only spells, and I'm working on that, but I think it'd have some implications for simplifying and distributing spellwork, too. If you could stabilize half a spell, and have the rest completable at a lower circle - the other thing you should look at is the notes I have on metamagic rods, and whether they could be done in some other format -"

Damn it. 

"The obvious question for off-list spell stabilization is 'well can you do it with divine spells too' and I think it probably depends why they're divine spells, right - if they can't be stabilized, then, sure, this approach should solve that. If they're funneling complexity directly through your god, then that'd require a different technique -

- but really, this is quite enough when I've been promised nothing in return. Should we get lunch tomorrow?"

Well, he got the ring from the King of Korvosa, which is basically a Chelish protectorate anyway, so she'd hardly be the first Chelish wizard to get her hands on it, and it's not like it's anything game-changing, really, just a better pearl of power – 

"Noon. Not at your camp." 

"The Calistrians have the best food and don't look at me with either pity or terror. Noon."

And she heads delightedly back to her barracks.