"That sounds good." She's beaming at him. "Good luck."

Leareth writes out a brief innocuous sample of text, in code, and shows it to her so she can test if Comprehend Languages makes it readable. 

Comprehend Languages does not think Leareth's code is a language it should translate!

That's a relief. Leareth Mindspeaks Nayoki, asks her to delegate some of his people to study Golarion scrying in more detail and design countermeasures. This doesn't need his attention, specifically; he can throw some magic researchers at it, they're welcome to see if Carissa is available to help too. 

And he kneels, like he's seen the paladins doing, and settles in to pray. 

Right. Think about...what he's confused about, what's hard, what he's avoiding thinking about or feeling...? 

Hmm. On the 'incredibly obvious' front, there is a lot to do. He doesn't feel nearly as daunted or overwhelmed by it now as he did; he suspects that most of that was actually fear, and not even fear about the actual situation, just... It shook him, how easily he could be caught off guard by the magic of another world. Carissa and her team of soldiers from Cheliax shouldn't have been able to capture him, of course - they only succeeded because Vkandis was willing to go beyond the usual coincidence-nudging and - he's still not sure exactly how the earthquake was done - an explosion on the other side of the barrier at just the right time and place? It must have been very expensive for Him - 

Digression. He was scared, because multiple times in a row he was unable to defend himself against capture. Because he spent days helpless and badly injured in Haven, right next to a Heartstone, with stony-faced Tayledras Adepts guarding him day and night. And...he didn't escape that by his own cleverness or planning, did he? His abilities were critical to Carissa's plan working, but - it shouldn't have worked -

Oh. Right. He is confused about that. Jisa, that whole scenario... A god's intervention, it has to have been. Not the Star-Eyed. Valdemar's god, surely. Valdemar's god, working...in Leareth's favour? 

(- he's not alone and he can feel the warm cloak-of-Iomedae around him, the mantle of being Her paladin and belonging to Her, and it makes it so much easier to think about this - and it does help, he thinks, that he's doing it in front of Her shrine, on ground consecrated to Her, bringing that alliance closer to the forefront of his thoughts -) 

Iomedae is almost certainly in communications with Valdemar's god. Or attempting it, at least. Leareth doesn't like that he himself lacks any context She learned there, but...it is what it is. It would be expensive for Her, to convey it in human-legible terms, and it would be bad for Him, and -

(a mental motion that isn't quite relaxation, isn't quite giving-in, certainly not giving up - but noting that he can put weight there, he can know that Iomedae has all the information he does - because She can read his mind - and far more, and that She will make the best decision given the information they have, and he couldn't do better anyway and so it's all right, for that to be happening in the background without his knowledge - if he does need to know then She will tell him -) 

(is this what trust feels like...) 

...Actually, there's something important here. It's like what Iomedae said to him, during the Atonement. He's not accustomed to having allies. He's...used to thinking as though he's the only person in the entire world who is trying to do this. And being Her paladin is a shortcut, a very powerful one; it removes most of the blocks and mental barriers standing in the way of making that update; but it's not, in itself, all of it. He has to build new habits-of-thought, the hard way. 

(- or maybe the fast way, if he knows what he needs a reminder of he can ask Nayoki to do some redirects, skip most of the repetition of practicing a thought that will wear a groove into his mind - but it has to be very specific already, before she can do that.) 

...It doesn't naturally occur to him to delegate tasks to Iomedae's people; he asks them questions when he thinks of them, and he expects they're handling their own side of various preparations, but - he hasn't even been inviting them to strategy-meetings with his people. Which in hindsight he should really be doing.

And then there's Zahra. He's barely spoken to Zahra; he delegated that to Nayoki, and - there were good reasons for it, at the time, but - is there something else there as well...? - It's not exactly that he's afraid of Aroden. Since he's now immune to fear. But...it does feel like there's - a way that his trust in Iomedae is loadbearing, that his plans and thinking can - use that as a surface to build on - and he doesn't have that with Aroden. Not yet. There's - he knows Aroden chose Iomedae, when she was human, and that means something but there's...still a step of indirection, there, and that was when Aroden was a god and Leareth doesn't, actually, understand very well how much of Him survived the transition. Whether...the original value alignment was preserved? 

(That would be a terrifying thought, if he were thinking it before this. Now it's - compelling, and disconcerting, and he wants to tug at it...) 

Iomedae immediately sided with Aroden. And can presumably read his mind too. Which implies that enough of the core of Him is still there, still intact, that She is willing to put weight on it. 

- he notices that this does not make him feel especially more inclined to pull Zahra into their meetings. 

Well, there's another step of indirection there, isn't there. Leareth trusts Iomedae, who trusts Aroden, who trusts his daughter. Leareth barely knows Zahra as a person at all; only the outlines he can infer by knowing who her father is. He...should address that. They're going to badly need their communications to be low friction, in ten– gods, no, in nine days' time... 

(another mental note, he's lost track of when the stupid geas is supposed to wear off; it's been fine in practice now that Nayoki and some other staff are delegated on it, Nayoki just Mindspeaks him at intervals, but it's...in fact an important limitation - he can't remember exactly how many days it was supposed to last but it must have been in the vicinity of a week...) 

Right. Next actions. Talk to Zahra. Maybe ask to read her mind - if he explains that it will help him trust her and work with her -? Ask Nayoki for a redirect - any time he notices that he should delegate something, add a loop so that he includes Zahra and Iomedae's people and Aroden's other resources in his mental stack. 

And - pray more. Because it's apparently doing a lot, just - meditating on the concept that he's not alone anymore. And it's fine - they have time - it's not surprising, that such a huge change hasn't instantaneously propagated through all of his habits and reflexes. But he should make sure it has, in nine days' time. 

Cheliax puts the Valdemaran delegates up in a lovely, sprawling house with a sandstone tiled roof and a spacious courtyard full of grape and olive trees. There's a temple attached to the building, and most of the surrounding town is invited for a religious service on the next holy day. They're welcome to go into town, too, to wander around and learn about what Cheliax is like. It's rich, for one thing that's immediately evident - the roads are paved, even though this isn't a major city, and there's a lighthouse ten stories tall with an ever-burning flame at the top at the edge of the sea, and even children have well-fitted clothes.

Lissa sleeps well. (Less because the bed is very comfortable, though it is; it was an important skill during the war to be able to sleep anywhere, and Lissa is perfectly capable of a solid night's sleep in a damp tent lying on rocks and stones.) 

She gets up and, with almost no friction, finds a place to wash up, and breakfast, which she takes out to the courtyard to eat while she watches people going in and out of the temple, and will cheerfully talk to anyone who approaches her. 

On the one hand, she isn't not annoyed about being rudely hauled off for a diplomatic mission in another world. As though she's a diplomat! She's also annoyed that during her brief sojourn in Haven before they Plane Shifted out, Savil brushed her off when she asked if Van had time to come see her. And wouldn't tell her ANYTHING about what's been going on in Haven, which is clearly a lot. King Randale was incredibly tense when he gave her and the Heralds a - deeply unhelpful - briefing on their mission. 

He told her to stay on her toes and keep an eye on things, which would be way more useful if he'd told her why. Or what to keep an eye out for. It's probably "need to know" or something but Lissa feels that if they're going to unceremoniously yank her out of her routine in Sunhame and dump her in ANOTHER WORLD then she needs to know slightly more! Randi did say that he didn't want to give her preconceptions. But that she should pay particular attention to the religious observances, here. He looked very unhappy when he said that. It's intensely frustrating when she can tell someone is stressed and they can't or won't tell her what they're fretting about. 

...Still, despite her multiple layers of annoyance, Lissa is in a good mood. She likes travelling. It's a particularly pleasant and welcome change to be travelling in luxury. Everyone is treating her like she's very important, and Lissa can't deny that she likes this, too. (Thank the gods they didn't send poor Van. He would detest it.) 

She eats and hums under her breath and people-watches. 

This part of Cheliax, they've been told by their guides, grows mostly wine for export; it's only two days by sea to Ostenso, a major port. Under normal circumstances they'd love to show their guests around their major cities, but they're as off-balance about this 'other worlds' thing as Valdemar and don't necessarily want to advertise Valdemar's existence to an entire world of people who'll then be able to scry it and show up themselves, not until Valdemar gives the go-ahead. So a sleepy town a little more distant from everything, and important people will use magic to come in to visit them. There are no important people scheduled for today, though, just a tour of the village and the school (orderly, with students in matching uniforms), and then a short religious service in the evening; proper services will be tomorrow morning.

This makes a lot of sense as a justification, and might even be true! It might, of course, instead be a cover for all sorts of other things! 

Lissa is not, by any means, a people person. She solves her problems with fighting, not words. (She has been told firmly that there is to be no getting drunk and picking fights with anyone on this trip, which is just unfair, that's half the fun of travelling to new places where no one has any idea who you are.) 

She's been in the Guard for a long time, though, and for most of it she was being groomed for advancement within the officer ranks. And reading people is an important component of doing that well. She's had tutoring. And also, of course, the entire last year of being one of Queen Karis' confidantes, as she tries to stabilize her shaky reign over a country still in turmoil. Lissa has gotten a lot better at noticing when people aren't saying everything on their mind, or when they're steering around something.

And she's always been rather good at picking up when people are afraid. That's relevant in fights, too, not just negotiations. 

...She watches the servants in particular very closely. How do they react when she makes a polite request for more tea? ...How about a slightly snappish request that her table is dirty? 

- they in fact seem to find it pretty alarming to be snapped at, though they hide it well. In general people seem anxious around them, as well as fascinated; they do a good job of not staring but seem exceedingly conscious of whether there are guests in the room. Clearly no one here has ever had such important guests before.

It's not surprising they're on edge about having important guests! Presumably no one in the entire country has ever had guests from an entire other world, and also if this town was selected for being out of the way and less important...

It's interesting that they're good at hiding it, though. Most people are terrible at hiding when they're alarmed about maybe having made a mistake and being in trouble; it takes practice not to. 

(...Or not giving any shits anymore. That's Lissa's strategy. If she screws up in a way that doesn't get a thousand of her soldiers killed, then eh, whatever.) 

Siri comes down a while later. She's less of a morning person than Lissa. 

She also looks about seventeen, though she was introduced to their guides with the exact same rank as Herald Marius, twenty years older. She's one of the cohort graduated early during the late war, and she's been thrown into situations well above her pay grade ever since. Which at least means this is nothing new. 

Lissa waves to her. 

The interesting thing about Siri, she thinks, is that to outside appearances, she's shy and soft-spoken and has a permanent deer-in-the-headlights sort of expression. She looks like someone constantly out of her depth, guileless and innocent. And that impression, at least, is incredibly misleading. There's a reason Siri was immediately assigned as one of Queen Karis' personal liaisons in Sunhame, and it's not just her incredibly powerful Mindspeech. 

Siri politely and shyly asks one of the servants if it's all right for her Companion to run around a bit and graze outside the village. The Companions are used to having space to run around and plenty of exercise. 

"Yes of course! They shouldn't go into the forest, it's not safe, but the lowlands are fine."

Then Siri's Companion is going to go exploring! 

- while, of course, relaying everything she observes. They have a huge amount of practice in sharing each other's eyes via Mindspeech without this being at all obvious from the outside; Siri is good at multitasking. 

Herald Marius gets down a while later. He likes to exercise and bathe before he has breakfast or talks to anyone. 

"So, what's on for this morning?" 

"Tour of the school later, I think! I'd better take notes for Karis - you know she's been thinking about getting an education program up in Karse, like we've been doing in Valdemar, but the temples to Vkandis mostly don't have the resources to run it." 

"Cheliax is the only place in the world to have free schooling everywhere," their guide says. "It's expensive and - some people think it's inefficient, since if they have to pay families will send their most promising child and they'll be very motivated, whereas if it's free then you'll get the least promising ones too and they won't try very hard. We've found it works, though; families aren't always good at telling who has potential. It is expensive, but the Crown pays for things that are an investment in the future."

"That makes perfect sense to me! Valdemar's been moving toward that, though - for a lot of poorer families, you'd really have to pay them, so they could afford going without the children's work at home or on the farm, and that we can't afford. And even children who aren't necessarily the brightest will do much better, if they can read and do basic figuring." 

"Yes, exactly. School's scheduled around the planting and harvest seasons, here, and we feed the children and provide uniforms, so that makes it worth it for everybody. But again, most people can't afford that. We have our dead working in Hell on behalf of the living, and that's not an easy thing to arrange."

...Hmm. That could be really neat or could be deeply concerning depending on how, exactly, one interprets 'Hell' and also 'working'. 

Lissa beams, though. "That must be incredible. What sort of work do they do, there? I, er, I don't know if you can grow crops in 'Hell' - does it have soil there, or is it more like one of the elemental planes -?" 

"You mostly can't grow crops there, it's more like the elemental planes in that way - it's actually on fire? Devils are immune to fire, so it doesn't hurt them, though I've been told if you're ticklish it takes a lot of getting used to, but it's not very friendly to growing things. They make magic items, mostly - that just requires lots of skilled labor and, well, you don't stop being skilled when you die. Magic items and new breeds of animals and copies of books, that sort of thing."

'Ticklish', huh? Bets on whether this is a euphemism for 'actually it's awful'...? Tragic, she can't speak out loud with the others to make bets about it right now, even assuming they'll ever get to find out the answer. 

The guide is kind of cute, she decides. Well-spoken. Nice shoulders. She hasn't had a hookup with a stranger in way too long and her damned aunt didn't think to ban THAT. She lets her eyes linger a bit on the guide's muscles, just to see if he notices and if so how he reacts. 

Glance at the others. "Well, I think we're about ready to move out for that tour of the village?" 

He raises half an eyebrow at her. "Yes, absolutely. You know, if you want to talk to a devil later, we can call one up, there are some who answer summons in exchange for things like chickens that you can't get in Hell."

And they can go out on their tour! The village has a temple, a tavern, a tailor's shop, a wizard's shop, an apothecary, a blacksmith, a few more houses; there's also a nearby farmer willing to tell them all about winemaking. Cheliax produces some of the world's best wines and the guests can taste a few if they'd like.

The students are studying composition and accounting; they're quiet and only speak up to answer questions and always get the answers right. They look well-fed and alert and are surprisingly good at hiding their curiosity about the visitors. 

Siri mostly follows in Lissa's wake and doesn't speak much, except to occasionally compliment the buildings. (She is multitasking, watching through her Companion's eyes as he wanders around the outskirts of town, in a meandery not-very-purposeful way that might trick some of the locals into thinking he's less intelligent than he really is.)