"Yeah, that figures. Well. The Elysium stuff has never actively screwed me over before, so - I'm going to hope that it works as intended. A tuning fork to the material would be nice, though, if you can make me one. Iomedae wanted me to see Cheliax before I left, so - I guess I should probably do that, before I go."

"I wish you enjoyable travels."

"Thanks." She should have a better response to people's well-wishes than that, but she's tired. 

She can't go to Westcown by herself, since she's never been there. She can't go to Egorian, because it doesn't exist yet. It'll have to be Kintargo. And she can't do a round trip to Kintargo in one day, because she's only got one spell kenning left; she spent the first going from Kalsgard to Kintargo in the morning.

She supposes that she can take Ember, even though Ember isn't the absolute best person for keeping a low profile. She kind of wants to do this alone, but that isn't much of an excuse for wasting time or spells.

It's getting on towards evening, by the time she and Ember reach Kintargo again. She isn't really sure she wants to see it. Her younger self would be so disappointed in her complete lack of historical curiosity, she thinks. It wouldn't even have to be a very much younger self. She wonders when exactly she lost that curiosity.

But she ought to see it anyway.

She looks for a bookstore, this time.

There's one not far from the magic shop; adventurers have money.

There are lots of books, overflowing from the main room into an upstairs one and a downstairs one. Books from Oppara and from Absalom and from Augustana and Almas and Ostenso and Corentyn and Korvosa and Middlemar and Hyrantum. There are also flat papers with the latest news, done in cheap ink that smudges on your fingers. The latest news is of a royal wedding in Oppara and a great victory by the Shining Crusade and a bank failure and a public allegation that the governor's embezzling. There's a word-puzzle and this week's reading from The History And Future Of Humanity and commentary from this week's reading and artwork purportedly of Axis.

It's beautiful. She doesn't care quite as much about beautiful things anymore, she doesn't think, but it is in fact beautiful. Even if all of these books are full of lies, too, at least they'll be full of lots of different people's lies, and seeing the shadows the true things leave is much easier if you can look at them from multiple different angles. 

She shouldn't buy them. Dorelinda's always telling her that they don't have enough stuff, and books don't win you wars. On the other hand, Marit brought up that books from nine hundred years ago might be really valuable, and she bets that Arsinoe would pay for them after. Of course, that only works if she does sell them, and doesn't just leave them in her room next to the shelves and shelves of other books she's collected while adventuring, hoarding them like a dragon, even though she's only had time to read a very few of them.

She buys a few, and then leaves to wander around half-aimlessly outside, not really very sure how you're supposed to go about deciding whether you like a place in a matter of hours. She's not sure she's ever been to a place she particularly liked. They all have their upsides, of course, but none of them fill her with pride or the desire to claim them as her own place, above any others. 

But eventually the half-aimless wandering will land her outside a temple of Aroden, and because she doesn't really know what temples of Aroden are like at all, she figures she might as well at least see the inside of one.

It's got a great glass domed ceiling, and an attached library of its own, and children at lessons in some long square rooms running alongside the main hall. It has a statue of Aroden, a staff in one hand, at the helm of a great ship and pointing off into the middle distance, and it has a dozen more depictions of Him in the murals on the walls. Aroden farming; Aroden fishing; Aroden reading; Aroden surrounding by adoring listening children. Aroden was, of course, an archmage, and it's hard to think why he'd ever have knelt in the dirt to plant seeds by hand, but that's how the murals have him. 

A plump, cheerful apprentice asks her if she's looking for something particularly.

"No, just from a long way off and haven't been to a temple in a while."

"...actually, how do the lessons work, is it okay for people to listen in if they're quiet?"

"You have to pay to send a child, or indenture them, but if you want to listen to see if it's worth paying for you can do that."

"Yeah, just for a bit to see how it is, if that's all right. Come on, Ember."

It's a history lesson. It's about how (it is speculated; no one wrote it down) people got useful animals out of wild ones. Wild sheep shed their wool; people picked sheep that shed less of it, so it was easier to shear them and get the wool yourself, and kept doing that for a very long time until now a farmed sheep will overheat and die, if you let it roam, and has no instincts for avoiding predators besides. Dogs might've been wolves, once, and humans picked the smartest and most loyal ones and bred for that. The students are to think of an animal their family relies on and what people breeding that animal might be breeding it for, what people will pay most for in the next generation, and what that animal will be like a hundred generations hence. 

She listens. And she watches the children, whether they're attentive or bored or nervous or stressed, what attitudes they seem to have towards the lesson and towards the other people in the room.

Some of them are attentive! Some of them are bored. One girl is eating her sleeve. One boy wads up his paper and throws it across the room and gets swatted for this, though not hard enough to leave a mark. While they work on the thinking-of-an-animal exercise they're permitted to speak, apparently, and some of the older students are having a heated argument about whether the final state of horse-breeding will be flying horses or not.

It is not, on the whole, deeply awful, although it's a little hard for her to say whether they're learning anything useful, either. She heads back out, after a while, past the murals of Aroden and the cheerful apprentice and back onto the streets. 

You probably can't learn what a place is like in a matter of hours, really.

Any other obvious temples in Kintargo?

Lots! Erastil? Irori? Sarenrae? Shelyn? Abadar? ...Norgorber, apparently?

Isn't Norgorber the god of.... crime? She's heard that he's allowed to be openly worshipped in Absalom, but of course Absalom is into all of the ascended gods. It seems like you wouldn't generally want people to be allowed to build a temple to him.

....fine, she'll see what they're doing at the temple of Norgorber.

It's the aspect that's about secrets!! They have nothing to do with the aspects that are about other things.

Is she in the market for secrets?

Well, it depends what the going price is, doesn't it.

It's not easy to price secrets. That's what makes them such a fascinating business. A fascinating, legal business. 

She seems like a secrets-having person, really. Is she selling?

...she supposes that also depends on the going price. How do you price a secret on either side, anyway, not knowing what it is until it's bought?

Minor prophecy. Obviously. Same way they do it everywhere.

Oh, of course.

Nah, not today. But have a good day, Norgorberites.

All right, other temples. She hasn't seen a Desnan one, and obviously hasn't seen an Asmodean one, and Iomedae is not yet a goddess. 

Maybe she should check out Shelyn. It's not that she likes Shelyn. She's annoyed with what she knows of Shelyn, actually, thank you very much. But, and this is very important, if she ever meets some other Shelynites, then she might be able to come up with sicker burns for Sosiel.

What's the temple of Shelyn up to, at this hour.

It's hosting a concert! It's a....women's-only event with lions from Nirvana providing childcare, apparently.

....what??

The church of Shelyn in Kintargo, it transpires, is mostly the personal project of Isavenna Coliaris, a rich retired adventurer who built the concert hall and the sculpture garden and holds whichever events please her, and right now that's women-only concerts, and she uses Planar Ally to call lions from Nirvana to play with women's children during the concert so they can attend. They are wildly popular. The children adore the lions and the lions adore the children and the concerts are lovely.