Every time he tells her she's being reasonable, she's both relieved that he isn't going to give her a failing grade in Knight-Commander-ing and extremely annoyed with herself for letting her absolutely pathological relationship with being Knight Commander be that obvious.

"All right then. I think I'll pay Arsinoe to cast the truth spell and have a team standing by to apprehend her if she does run, and then... we'll see what she says. Do you want to be there, or - doing the thing that you're purportedly here to do."

"I expect you and your adventuring companions can handle it and prefer not to draw attention to myself. I'll have a spy nearby so I can react if anything goes terribly wrong."

"Sounds good."

That's it for today, then. 

- except that she left a note for Woljif to meet her on the courtyard wall tonight, back when she was six hours younger and more foolish and didn't realize how absolutely wiped she would be by this hour. But Woljif isn't Harmattan, and isn't Dorgelinda, and isn't Marit, and isn't even Anevia. He waves at her as she enters the courtyard, and she climbs up to where he is. Sosiel is painting across the way, on the other side of the wall, too far away to hear anything they say.

"Heya, Chief. You find any more eighth circle Baphomet cultists in the last eight hours?"

"No, I was busy killing a dragon in single combat. And talking to Harmattan about the Kuthite we apparently have working as a prison guard."

"Well, that's... arguably scarier, honestly."

"It wasn't fun, but I think Sunhammer did actually manage to be scarier than social interaction today. He was so shocked we were able to touch him at all."

"Oh, not Harmattan, the concept of a Kuthite jailor. Either one is bad enough, but together..." He shivers.

"Yeah."

She casts Silent Table. "I think Dorgelinda's been stealing crusade supplies in quantities that are significant enough to be a serious problem. I had a long talk with Marit about it, and he thinks she's behind the missing supply shipments that were supposedly stolen by bandits. I'm planning to confront her about it tomorrow and am going to need backup on the off chance that she does something crazy, like attack us or try to run away. I don't think she's an eighth circle Baphomet cultist, so I'm not incredibly worried."

"Hey, you say the word, Chief. Not surprised she's skimming off the top, she always did seem sharper than the others. Can't let her get away with taking what's yours, though."

"That's not exactly the idea, but yeah."

"I - am going to have to make a decision about whether to arrest her or let her off with a serious warning that this can't happen again, I think. And then I'm going to need it to not happen again. Which - it will, across everyone, even if Dorgelinda doesn't do it again, because that's how things have been done around here. But I want to take cracking down on it seriously. If it's actually the case that the rampant corruption is making all of the supply problems drastically worse - and I don't think Dorgelinda even really disagrees about that, it was one of the first things she said to me, that officers bribing the logistics team for fancy gear meant that common soldiers were being sent into battle with little more than kitchen knives - then that's arguably a bigger problem than the demons. Or at least, like, making fighting the demons a far more uphill battle than it needs to be, which it already pretty uphill. It's not fair to anyone who signed up with us, if we're not doing our best to equip and provide for them effectively. And... you know me, I hate this, but I think to be decent to people we may actually have to have laws, and stick to them, and punish people who break them, otherwise there's no reason for people like Dorgelinda to stop stealing shipments."

"...anyway, we were talking about this, and I realized that - if I'm going to start actually punishing and not tolerating crime and corruption, then I have to do it across the board, you know? Nobody's going to take it seriously if I tell the rest of the men they can't, and then turn a blind eye to my best friends fencing stuff for the thieflings."

"You use the stuff I sell, Chief. Lotsa mercs here do, to make them better at fighting demons."

"I know! I'm not blaming you! All of this is currently one hundred percent on me. I haven't asked you to stop, and have in fact encouraged you, and I am not going to be such a shitty friend that I ignore that and try to make you take the fall for this. I don't even actually think that we made the wrong call, in Kenabres, using the stuff that we had on hand and paying who we had to to get it. But - this isn't Kenabres, anymore. If we run the crusade like a crime ring, it'll be a crime ring, and crime rings don't win wars. Not real ones. Not ones where the enemy is a hole in the world."

"I get that breaking ties with the thieflings is a lot to ask. And I get that six months ago it would have been terrifying, and that it might be terrifying now. But we're a lot stronger than we were six months ago, Woljif, and if they come for you I'm not going to let them take you, any more than I would let the inquisition take you. I promise that if you stop stealing I will keep protecting you. And - I don't even really want to unilaterally impose rules here, on anyone, least of all you. I know it's going to be hard. I know that a lot of other people are also going to have trouble stopping. I - would also like you to help me come up with what the rules should be, and what the penalties for breaking them should be, and help me make them as livable and as non-terrifying as possible, when we do this. If you're willing."

His tail swishes nervously. He doesn't immediately say anything.

"I don't think I'm any better than you, you know."

"Hey, that's not what this is about. I think basically everyone on the planet would agree that you're better than me. Cosmically and officially better than me, even, half because I'm not trying and half because you're - you. The rest of us poor mortals are kind of left in the dust behind."

The wind blows. She thinks it's the real wind, this time, not the fake wind that goes around trying to make all of her conversations this dramatic. It's snowing just enough for her to see that it's not just hitting her. It's cold, spending this much time outside.

"I was a bandit, before I met you in Kenabres. I don't think I've told - anybody here, about it. Not the nice, romantic kind that you expect chaotic good people to be, where you leave noblemen to go home in their underwear and give away half your ill-gotten gains to the poor. The kind that shows up at random homes to steal all the valuables and murder anyone who gets in your way. For about the same reasons as you did anything you did, I think. Because I was scared, and hungry, and didn't feel like I had any good choices, and other people were pressuring me into it, and it felt like  a way of being powerful and of protecting myself."

"I killed people. People who had done absolutely nothing wrong, except have something they'd worked hard to get, and not want to give it up. So - I'm not judging you. For anything. But I do think - that if I don't do better, the crusade is not going to hold itself together, and a lot of people here will die. And I don't think I can do it all on my own. That's why I'm asking this of you."

"Well, I guess it's not any worse than fighting demons," he says, unhappily. "I dunno what we're gonna do with all the stuff, though."

"Yeah. That's - a good question, honestly."

"There was one other thing. We were talking about the legal code, and what punishments the shining crusade used for what things, and - Marit talked about how they execute people for desertion. And I told him that I didn't think that was very fair, under these circumstances. Or - I guess I don't think that the people we have here are people who it would be being decent to, or fair to, to hold to that standard. I told him about how you ran off during the gargoyle attack, and then came back later, and maybe accepting you back hurt unit discipline, and stuff, but - it wouldn't have been right, I think, to punish you for running away from us."

"And I guess I got to thinking about - Galfrey did not really give me a choice, about whether to accept this posting. I didn't want to do it. I wouldn't have, if she had offered me the choice. I was mad at her about it for a long time. I guess I might still be mad. But - it isn't really any different from how I've been treating you, is it. I don't regret the deal we cut in Kenabres, I think that that was fair. You got to get out of prison, and we got to have your help in saving dozens of people during the demon attack. But failing to clarify your situation afterwards, when we marched on Drezen - that was wrong of us, I think. Wrong of me. And if I am going to notice ways in which I need to be kind of a shitty friend, for the sake of being a better knight commander, I - guess I would like to also notice ways in which I need to be a better friend, even if it makes me kind of a shitty knight commander."

"So I want to be clear that you can go, now. If you want. I like you, and I rely on you, and I want you to stay, but you're allowed to go. I won't consider it desertion, and I won't consider it a personal betrayal. If you ever leave, and come back, and want to help again, or need me to help you, I won't think that you've done something shitty to me. You've paid your debt to society a dozen times over, you're not a prisoner, and you can go anytime you want. But I hope you won't."

...Woljif does not, entirely, know what to say to that.

"You know when you want to talk to Dorgelinda?"

"Late morning, I think, I have to go arrange a truth spell casting with Arsinoe. I doubt she's very powerful, but I'll probably have Daeran standing by just in case anything very ridiculous happens and someone ends up dead."

"Well, later, then. You know where to find me."

"Yeah."

She can get some sleep, then. 

In the morning Woljif is gone. She stops by his room at the inn and it's empty, cleaned out of all of his stuff. There's no note, and no evidence of recent habitation besides the rumpled sheets.

She'd accepted that this might happen. That doesn't mean she was prepared for it. She thought - that they were friends, apparently, and that he cared enough that it outweighed the mountain of reasons he had for not being here. That was possibly kind of stupid of her. 

But she meant it. She has to be okay with it, or the thing she said didn't really mean anything, did it, and she wasn't ever being a friend to him. And she has a job to do, even if she feels a little more like her guts have been scraped out than usual.

She rounds up Arsinoe and Daeran and Seelah, to replace Woljif, and heads off to find Dorgelinda.

As part of the investigation into the missing shipment, Korva would like to have Dorgelinda accept a truth spell from Arsinoe. Dorgelinda tries to deflect; Korva insists. Dorgelinda doesn't try to run away, and doesn't try to attack them.

"Where is the shipment, Dorgelinda?"

"I don't know, Knight Commander."