Kellan is feeding Savil some words to say and the appropriate facial expressions to go with them. She has no idea if this is a good idea but what else is she supposed to do. 

- she is NOT going to object to the characterization of Carissa's soul as 'innocent', that will not help in any way at all, she doesn't need Kellan to tell her that. 

She looks sorrowful, and frustrated. "- I want to point out something here, which is that - I think we've got some significant differences between our worlds, in terms of - how much mortals can expect to know, much less control, much less apply words like 'sale', to...what happens after our deaths. Moondance wasn't able to answer all of the wizard's questions on that either, because She didn't tell him. It sounds like in your world, it would be expected that that be communicated by the god or gods involved?" 

"- it is not generally communicated, no, but if gods did communicate an arrangement by which persons captured in a particularly military action inside another country would become the property of the gods that authorized the operation, that would be a very unusual situation and a matter for very grave concern, and efforts would be made to apprise everyone involved of everything that was known, so as to minimize the number of innocent people whose souls were thereby forcibly captured and transferred while they stood accused of no wrongdoing.  If this state of affairs had been known to Cheliax, for instance, we could have helped you to control your prisoner in a fashion that did not involve enslaving one of our representatives or making her soul the property of this god, if indeed it is."

And to Tran, "so Valdemar, because of the long history of alliance with the Tayledras, accepted their assurances that the woman they had captured had gladly embraced becoming the property of the Star-Eyed, considering it inconsiderate to challenge their allies on such a claim, and permitted the Tayledras with their prisoners passage through Valdemar?"

"- I feel that someone needs to point out," Tran says tightly, "that at the time this was occurring, all we knew about Cheliax, as a country, was that they were invading an allied country, and that Ifteli troops had fled to seek refuge in Valdemar and ask for our aid. I don't think anyone ought to have expected that to be the kind of situation where we would reach out to your people for aid in securing Leareth." 

"In Cheliax if our best option is enslaving someone we consider a lot of other options, even ones we don't expect to work, because we think enslaving people is quite objectionable and it's worth exploring a lot of things that might not work if it means that it can be avoided. But certainly, these were extraordinarily difficult circumstances. We'd of course like her back, now, and require the Star-Eyed Goddess to renounce Her claim."

"- The Star-Eyed Goddess does not generally take orders from random mortal diplomats. Asmodeus can speak with Her if she wishes." 

Yelling 'Staaaaaaarwind' at him will NOT HELP. 

"- This is actually slightly beside the point," Savil says, tightly. "Because Starwind and Moondance don't, currently, have custody of the wizard in question, or the other prisoner. The current investigation is - into exactly what happened that caused them to lose control of the situation."

A cold look in Starwind's direction, the Savil sighs. "It's obviously in both of our countries' interest to - resolve this matter promptly. So I want to ask you, under a first-level Truth Spell, to confirm you had nothing to do with it. And then I would like to share everything we know and figure out what in all hells went wrong." 

:Why are you looking at me in that way?: Starwind snaps in private Mindspeech. :It was your mistake: 

:Because I'm trying to do diplomacy here! Damn it, Starwind, if you can't– why don't you just go find Van and cast the past-watching spell with him? We'll handle this part: 

"I think you haven't finished explaining what was going on. The slave escaped? And word of this just recently reached Haven? But why, then, were we confined to our quarters here - surely if the slave escaped Tayledras territory, or even from any point in transit from Iftel to Tayledras territory, she would have to be very foolish to come to Haven."

"- It's not at all clear that she escaped. It looks like some external party was responsible, and it's just as possible they were retrieving Leareth - or that he escaped, I suppose, but given the, er, geas that shouldn't have been possible. Are you willing to say you weren't involved under Truth Spell so we can jump to the productive part of this conversation." 

:Savil: 

:What?: 

"I am going to go handle some things," Starwind says with great dignity, and heads for the door. 

"We are happy to affirm under Truth Spell that we have not aided any slaves in escaping Valdemar or the Tayledras, or in preventing the illegal and monstrous transfer of their immortal soul to a monstrous lunatic god. Cheliax, just so you're aware, does not return escaped slaves who have reached our borders or our forces to their owners, nor do we respect claims on their soul to which they did not voluntarily agree in advance while not under mind-control."

Savil spends a few moments just staring blankly at them, wondering why they even feel the need to specify this - why would literally anyone ever expect a polity in Cheliax's position to return Carissa to the Star-Eyed if she got away...? 

"All right. Tran, Truth Spell?"

She waits a beat. 

"Can you affirm that again, please." 

"We have not aided any slaves in escaping Valdemar or the Tayledras. We were unaware of the crimes that you enabled against our forces until just now, and were Cheliax to have sought redress they would not have done so through envoys aiding the slave in escaping, because Cheliax is a Lawful country and understands that the banner of truce is a sacred one, and loses none of its force when one is surrounded by despicable lawless lunatics who betray their very birthright of a human soul, as we are at present."

The Truth Spell shines brightly as he says this.

Savil is so close to snapping and losing her temper entirely. 

She feels so thoroughly outmaneuvered here, and she's - well, clearly Herald-Mage Savil Ashkevron is not the right person to be attempting to have this conversation, but it's not clear anyone is? Valdemar does, technically, have diplomats. The non-Herald diplomats usually have very little authority to make any commitments on behalf of the Heralds, or even make claims about the Heralds' positions on anything that weren't directly provided to them in advance. 

She's getting the sense that Golarion does international relations...very differently, in general...but it's hard to put her finger on exactly what the difference is. 

...Vanyel would handle this better, she thinks. Not because he has any more diplomatic training than she does - he doesn't - but he's better at reading people, and he's - more flexible, more open-minded.

(- in hindsight, she wonders how much of that is thanks to a decade of secret conversations with Leareth of all people -) 

"Tran?" she says, to stall, and then she reaches out with Mindspeech. :Van?: 

He is kind of busy right now. 

:What: 

:Could really use backup on talking to these damned Chelish diplomats - they're making all sorts of assumptions and basically calling us evil people and I don't - I have no idea how to handle this gracefully! And I think it's important that someone does! They seem to be expecting it!: 

:- Well, I'm still not done trying to track Leareth's bloody Gate, and also Moondance just asked me to come cast a spell with Starwind, so I can't exactly help you there: 

:Do you think you'll actually get anything from trying to track the Gate: 

:....Well, no: 

:Then we should switch places. I have a lot more experience with the spell and with concert-work with Starwind, and you're - better with words. Get your ass here as fast as you can and then I'll go help Starwind: 

"Thank you," Tran says. "Er, one more question - do you know of any plans on the Cheliax side to - track down Leareth and retrieve him? I can't imagine they were happy about losing him as a prisoner."