"That's kind of beside the point, don't you think?"

"No, not at all. If she's harassing people who are performing their duties and do not want to talk to her that is something I can tell her to cut out. If she is having conversations with people who engage with her and they bother you, then that is a you problem."

"She's undermining our efforts to maintain discipline."

"Do you have a case that you can trace to her of an actual problem as opposed to a problem of the form 'someone was healed slightly early'?"

"If we catch him again at the same thing, will that be enough for you, sir?"

"If you catch him again at the same thing I'll talk to her, but I will not promise to deliver her any specific instruction."

"Understood, sir."

Anything else he's hoping to handle today?

Nothing in particular besides his neverending sub-crusade against misinformation and corruption.

Most of his men continue to be enthusiastic about his anti-corruption crusade! His officers and logistics personnel continue to be deeply unenthusiastic about his anti-corruption crusade! Someone has heard the idea that he likes Abadaranism and wants to pitch him on the idea that bribery is actually a very Abadaran way of allocating scarce resources.

Does he want to try pitching Rathimus on that idea?

No, Rathimus might try to charge him for his time. Which is like bribery, when you think about it.

This person seems to have a very broad view of bribery, in that case, and may have stumbled across some functional form of it. Blai is only attempting to eliminate the kinds that are bad and involve requiring more payment to do your job than comes with the job as agreed by you and whoever is paying you.

How does he feel about, ah, accepting payment in exchange for services being expedited?

Well, that seems like it might depend on why the default speed of the service is not already as fast as might reasonably be expected.

Well, sometimes lots of people want a service, and someone has to be first, possibly by weeks or months. It's really not so different from the Abadarans when you think about it.

"I did not come to appreciate Abadarans because they said their own religion's name during conversations. If you rightly have the free exercise of discretion over what order you provide a service in - which I cannot imagine coming up frequently in a military context where this must almost invariably be dominated by strategic priority - then you might openly auction slots."

If you aren't sure what the greatest priority is, letting people bid for earlier attention might... mean that people with bigger problems (and thus often more important ones) bid more money? Or something like that? (He's pretty sure he could argue this better if he were an actual Abadaran, but he's definitely not going to admit to that.)

"Well, enabling this does not seem like a great priority to me, and if you want to spend money on seeing it implemented, you could spend it on Fiducia Rathimus's time."

The Abadarans should sell the service of 'explaining to your boss why he should let you do a little bit of under-the-table salesmanship,' he bets it would be popular

No one else feels like making the pitch for 'corruption is not a big deal' tonight.

Great. He has been Knight-Commander for multiple consecutive days now and he's still alive and stuff.

No one attempts to kill him in the night! In the morning his guards pass along a message to the effect that there's some sort of disease outbreak brewing, currently limited to the Condemned but not necessarily going to stay that way if it isn't contained, and it would be helpful (if he doesn't have higher priorities for those slots) for him to prepare some Remove Disease castings.

He'll prep it; are they quarantining and notifying the other relevant clerics?

They are quarantining insofar as feasible (and have rotated out the supervising personnel for disease-immune paladins, even though they don't normally like to have paladins supervising the Condemned), and have already notified the other clerics who can prepare the spell.

...he needs to go pray now but will not in that hour think of a particularly promising explanation for why they don't like having paladins supervise the Condemned. He asks when he's through.

"Well, sir, the paladins Fall if they do Evil even once, even if they're still Lawful Good at the end of it, and they're really a lot more useful with their powers, and — lots of people are Good people, who can nearly always do the right thing, but who'll eventually make a mistake if you set them to something with a chance of being complicated. Supervising the Condemned isn't so bad as these things go, it's not like having them conduct an interrogation, but there's not usually much reason to set the paladins to it when there are plenty of perfectly responsible people who don't have that same constraint."