They are supposed to be pretending that they are Evelyn's children!

Evelyn feels like there's definitely some kind of Subtext going on here that she can't quite put her finger on, and she's not a huge fan, but - it'll probably be all right in the end, right? Evelyn is very used to not being trusted at first, it would be unfair of her to expect to be taken at her word, and the poor girls will eventually notice that their lives really are different now and she doesn't go back on what she says - and, however uncomfortable she is about the secret foreign-language conversations, she does think it's good for both of them to have someone else there who understands, and that they'll figure things out faster if they can compare the pieces they have. 

"Why don't I show you the drawer in your room that locks?" she asks Alfirin. "Not that anyone should ever go into your room when you're not there, it's against the rules of the house, but Lily is seven and she might forget. You can keep the knife in there, where it's safe and no one but you can get in, and you can keep other private things there too, if you want." 

(Evelyn does not, in fact, have a copy of the key for the cheap lock on the bedside table drawer. If she ever thought a child was keeping...a gun in there, or drugs, or something...it's not like it would be spectacularly hard to unscrew the bolts and take the bedside table apart. And for the most part, it's actually none of her business whether her foster kids want to keep photos from their past or their diary in there, or even money they're not really supposed to have. She had very torn feelings the one time that a foster child hid a second secret mobile phone in there for a couple of months before she uncovered that whole complicated mess, and differently torn feelings about the foster child who went around quietly stealing jewelry and knickknacks and hiding them there, but - kids do need privacy, and a locking drawer isn't against the foster agency rules.

Not that she, you know, really expects Alfirin - or Iomedae, even - to believe her that no one else has a key.) 

...Right. She does not believe that at all. Not even real children get locking drawers that their parents can't get into! She will put the knife in there, though, and lock it, because that's clearly what's expected of her.

"Thank you."

Lock! Key! (It would be obvious that it's a cheap and flimsy lock to anyone who knows things about locks - it's the sort you could pick with a hairpin without that much effort, not that Evelyn personally knows this - but this may be less apparent to people who have never seen industrially-manufactured furniture.) 

"You have one in your room as well," she tells Iomedae. "I didn't think to bring it up before, sorry. There were a lot of other things to explain." 

"Thank you, ma'am." Yesterday it would've been accompanied by a genuine smile even though Iomedae too cannot think of a reason one would offer that, but today Iomedae understands more about how being a foster child is.

Yeah. Evelyn is pretty sure today was...bad...for Iomedae's feeling-of-safety here.

(She's also pretty sure there is absolutely nothing she can productively say about it, not across the current language barrier and...whatever-the-word-even-is for the other kind of barrier, the kind where even when Iomedae does know a word, she...emotionally lives in a different world with different rules...and honestly you would THINK that Evelyn would be VERY GOOD at that by now, at understanding when a child in her care is emotionally inhabiting a different world, when things that seem normal and fine to Evelyn are baffling and terrifying to them, but - well, they do say that you never stop learning new lessons, in this line of work.) 

It's tempting, almost, to feel like it was her mistake, to take Iomedae to try to find her migrant friends - or at least to do that without covering her back first without sanity checking with someone from Social Services whether this was an even slightly reasonable plan. With the benefit of hindsight it feels like definitely a crazy plan, and - it's felt a bit like this entire weekend has been an experience of repeatedly faintly feeling like a crazy person, and she doesn't understand why and that's got to be the real mistake, here. 

- none of that line of thought is helpful right now and Evelyn should stop making this all about herself and her feelings. It's going to be okay, she tells herself, and - it feels forced and unreassuring, but it must be the thousandth time she's tried to tell herself that, and most of the times it was okay and all her self-doubt was...well, maybe reasonable, but not necessarily helpful, and definitely her catastrophising about it was proved wrong in the end, most of the time. Kids do settle, it's just that the thing they need is time, and not Evelyn trying even harder, and - feeling like she's not trying hard enough is sometimes another way of making it all about her own feelings and not what they need. The thing they need is to learn more English and start school and meet other children from normal, healthy families, and it's going to be okay. 

(Evelyn's mind still doesn't really buy that it's going to be okay.) 

She takes a deep breath. "I'm going to go downstairs and watch some television. You're welcome to come along, if you want, but you can stay up here and - talk about things - if you'd prefer that." (Evelyn will not even slightly be able to focus on her TV show, if they take her up on it, but it's not like she could understand the conversation even if she were eavesdropping in the room.) "I'll be awake for another couple of hours, if you need anything. - Alfirin, I put some of our spare pajamas out for you, they're in this cupboard and you can pick the ones that fit best." 

And she'll show Alfirin the cupboard again, and then quietly go downstairs, unless either of them say anything to hint that they'd rather she stay. 

Iomedae doesn't speak until she's gone. "'television' is a magic item that does illusions, they use it to tell stories and educate children. With clothes, the rule is to wear new ones every day, but the laundry isn't a great imposition because they have magic for that too. She'll buy you clothes at the market, if you want that. Pretty ones too, not just ones like mine. I did not want to be pretty."

"...every day?"

"I said that too. Evelyn is very rich, her children would be very rich, they would have seven sets of clothes and wear a new one every day and a laundry day once a week. - I refused seven sets, said she should give the money to the church, but you are not a paladin and so I guess you can just have seven sets of clothes if you want."

"I do not need seven sets of clothes. No person needs seven sets of clothes - Maybe if a set of clothes is two days work to make that is not crazy. I suppose I have more than two weeks' work of clothes now."

"No person needs seven sets of clothes, but - one of the aims of civilization is to be so rich and to make things so cheaply that people have many things they don't need. In Azlant every free man lived as a king and I bet kings have seven sets of clothes." She shrugs. "But also I refused the clothes for being ridiculous, so I don't really know."

"Maybe I will take the clothes, then."

"Are you staying because you are a paladin or because it is hard to leave?"

"- I am a paladin so I have not thought very much about how hard it would be to leave. The police do have dogs. I don't know how to make the beasts go where I tell them. I think probably it would be pretty hard. 

Evelyn also argued to me, before I knew I was not allowed to leave, that it would be very unwise to leave until I speak English well, that the school will educate me and I'll get my papers and it is much better for most goals I might have to be well behaved and get papers and eventually become grown and be allowed to work for pay. I can't really argue with her logic but - there is a part of me that says 'if this were in my interests you could let me work for pay, and pay Evelyn room and board, and be allowed to leave, and if it were in my interests all you'd have to do is tell me how much I have to pay to stay with her and I'd decide to do it on my own. You threaten people with the guard to get them to do things that are not in their interests.'

But it doesn't matter because I am a paladin and unless she puts Aroden's claim to me at odds with hers I will stay even if I see a way out. And - I don't like this place personally, I'm very angry, but I don't actually think it's a worse place than Taldor. In Taldor the bad things just happened to other people and not to people like me."

"Do they worship other gods here at all or is it just Aroden?"

"I think there are other gods but they don't share churches with Aroden, except Mary does a little bit but She doesn't have her own altars in it, and none of the gods have the names I know. I also think the gods just...don't do as much here? The guard did not understand that I was a paladin. The churches don't have healing."

"Where do all the magic items come from if the priests do not do things?"

"...I don't know. Where do magic items usually come from, do they usually come from priests?"

"I do not know. I think probably the people who do magic make magic items, and at home that is mostly priests. In stories sometimes it is dwarves, but I have not seen any dwarves here."

"The Crusade has lots of magic items and I have heard of them being inherited but I have not heard how they got made. I have not seen anyone here who does magic, except they had me swear to what happened with Martin on a Bible and I thought that might've been magic but now I think it probably wasn't. - there were magic-users in the television, which had a legend about a castle with 'wizards'.

The churches do have holy water. Maybe the priests can do magic but not healing."

"I see."

"I had not met a lot of people who could do magic at home, I don't know much about it. I know about paladins because my uncle was one, and we had a priest of Aroden, and druids come to negotiate about the land in the spring, and my father took me down the river to a place that had a wizard once. I don't have good guesses about America."

"I mostly know priests and druids too. I saw a wizard once." Why did she say that??? That was not a smart thing to say.

"Aroden was a wizard. I'm not smart enough, though, not to be a great wizard hero like He was."

"You would be a wizard if you were smart enough?"

"Well, I want to fix the Evil afterlives. And I don't know how to do it, exactly, but Aroden's trying, and I don't know who else is. And Aroden is a wizard. And Tar-Baphon is a wizard, and that's why he's been able to fight the Empire. So it really seems like the most obvious kind of leverage to attempt to get, if you can get it. But I can't, because I'm not smart enough. I think being a paladin is also a reasonable thing to do, of course, or I wouldn't be doing it, but there isn't an obvious paladin to point to who already conquered a Empire-sized chunk of Abaddon and say "yeah, that's what I''ll do if I live to be powerful"."