"English spelling is hard! I'm sorry about that. Most of the letters make different sounds in different words, it's confusing - there are rules to it, sort of, but they're confusing rules."

Evelyn leans in to look at the words on the paper. "...Oh." She carefully erases the E in TEBLE and replaces it with an A. "'Table' is actually spelled with an 'Ay', though. If it were an E, it would be pronounced like 'pebble', I think." Which she spells for them as well, in much neater handwriting. "Lily is still learning her spelling too." 

"Lily is still learning but is already good spelling, I think."

"She knows enough to make herself understood, which is a good start! Everyone expects young kids to misspell things." Sigh. "But you and Iomedae aren't kids, and - people will assume you're not well educated if you don't have good spelling. I think there are probably principles you can learn to make it make more sense, rather than having to just memorize everything, but I don't know them. Maybe Miss Enderbridge would." 

"People assume we are not well educated, people are right. When later time, maybe we are well educated, but then we are good spelling also."

...Nod. "I suppose that's fair enough. I just - I guess I don't want people being unfair to you just because you didn't have the opportunity to learn English at Lily's age. But I'm sure you'll catch up. You're both smart and I know you'll work hard on it." 

And they've got half an hour left before dinner, and Lily is (for the moment) playing nicely on her own. Evelyn can spend a few minutes doing her best to think of examples of words where letters make different sounds, or where words that have the same sound are spelled differently, before she's pulled away by thumps coming from the living room and has to coax Lily through putting back a lot of books she just knocked down. 

Lily seems to be in a weirdly tense and restless mood, despite a clear ongoing effort to be well-behaved. She does not request a Barbie accessory, over dinner or afterward. 

Evelyn leaves the girls downstairs while she takes Lily up for her bath. She trusts them not to get up to any mischief. 

Taldane. "Lily gave me a map I think, to the house where the man who cursed her lives."

"I see. What are you going to do?"

"I think I need to go there and - well, see if he's Evil, I guess, first off. There's not all that much I can do if he's in fact possessed by a demon or malign spirit or something - the Americans won't believe it, and that's not a fight I can win. Nor one I'm allowed to pick, unless he starts it, and I think if I try to arrange his starting it that's - it's like not-technically-lying, but for killing."

She nods. "That makes sense. So just go and look? Not fight him either way?"

"Unless he is hurting someone else, or - I don't know, maybe if he is possessed by something I can make it go away like a priest could. I don't know how powerful a paladin you have to be to do that."

"Wouldn't you need to learn how to do it even if you are strong enough?"

"I don't know. Not like a wizard needs to learn, it'd be a power Aroden gives me. I certainly wouldn't want to plan on being able to do it... I should have asked my uncle more questions, the time he visited, but I was already in trouble for asking too many questions. ...I guess that means I should have asked him different questions."

"I guess so. Unless the questions you asked him were more important."

"They were most of them sort of silly. I was eight. I asked him why he hadn't fixed the bad afterlives yet, and why Tar-Baphon wanted to kill everybody, and what you had to do to make Aroden pick you as a paladin, and what powers paladins had, and what their oaths were, and so on, but I also got distracted with silly things. I'd have been more focused if I'd guessed it was all I'd have to go on."

"There are a lot of things I'd have tried to know better if I had known we'd be in America."

Snort. "I guess.

I think I'll go tomorrow."

"When? Should I keep Evelyn from paying attention?"

"I will tell her I am going out biking." Truthfully, of course. "I worry if you do anything to help then you will get in trouble if I get murdered by the demon or something."

"Maybe. I do not know how getting in trouble in America works."

"Evelyn really makes it sound like it practically cannot be done. The guards seemed like competent guards of an ordinary place, though, when I stabbed Martin."

"Yes. I mean that I might get in trouble if you get killed anyways, even if I do not help."

"You might. I'm sorry. I think that I ought to do it because - Lily is one of the only people who knows I'm a paladin and she asked me to protect her from evil and that is what paladins are for."

"You should do it! But maybe it is not bad for me to help."