Something about his tone is enough that she knows the right response is, "I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't really understand him all that well myself, except that - the Worldwound is a place where people tend to die or grow stronger, and where a lot of powerful people are needed, and so if someone grows strong here his Goddess might not renounce him, even when he screams 'You are beyond redemption!' at a servant of Baphomet."

"I don't exactly have much room for entertaining guests here, shall we take a walk?"

"Yes, let's. I had suspected something like that, for why Shelyn keeps Sosiel empowered. I plan to write to his superiors, if I can figure out where they are and - perhaps he can be swapped for another priest more temperamentally suited."

She's glad the conversation is staying on Sosiel, for now. She's not sure what she'll do when the priest gets around to asking about her. Lie, presumably.

"Isarn had some of the grandest temples to Shelyn that I've seen - well, when I left they were still undergoing restoration. I would write there, for Shelyn, if I had to pick any place on the continent. I don't think they will send someone with a better temperament, though. Priests of Shelyn are not usually well-suited for a battlefield, and the Worldwound is a particularly brutal one - also their church doesn't work like that. They don't have a central authority that can recall and reassign clerics. I think only the churches of the Lawful gods do."

"Ah. I see. I suppose the Worldwound would - appeal more, to a Shelynite...struggling with the redemptive aspects of his goddess's teachings. What with most of your foes being genuinely irredeemable."

She laughs. "I can see you haven't spoken to our true Shelynite yet. She would tell you that the demons aren't so different from us and can learn to be better people."

"Oh?"

"Ember. The elf child. Her insights about people do tend to be genuinely quite good, so - maybe she has a point. I don't really believe it myself, but - I'm keeping an open mind."

"Well, many demons used to be mortal."

"Not all, though, right? 'Nirvana is for everyone,' they say, but does that mean creatures born of the Abyss?"

"I really wouldn't know. I have always wanted Heaven, myself."

"So did I. But I wasn't always sure if I'd make it. I grew up in Galt when it was still Cheliax, you know, and - I don't think the revolution was good for anybody's Law." Nor, reliably, their Good. "I had a - friend of a friend, once, who was an Iomedan cleric. He fell, I think."

"I'm... sorry to hear that. Did he recover before he died?"

"Does it matter?"

"Of course it does! Nirvana is not the same as Axis, which is not the same as Heaven - I assume he did not fall so far as Hell but if he did of course it matters whether he recovered -"

"Well. None of those, for any of them."

"...Oh. Of course. I'm sorry, I've been terribly insensitive."

"You were fine. I brought the topic up. You know what I miss, from those days?" Besides the people, of course, but she's trying to change the subject. "Coffee. Have you ever had it?"

He accepts being steered. "I've tried it. Some people in Vigil drink it. Most people there prefer tea." He will not follow up on his mistake with Catherine's dead friends by insulting her preferred beverage but he really cannot stand it.

"Why am I not surprised - Tea is a much more Lawful drink." She says this as if it makes perfect sense.

"...Sorry, I'm afraid I'm going to ask you to explain that."

"Well, I don't know how it is in Vigil, but in Isarn - if you drank tea you were probably wealthy, inherited land - you drank it in private with friends in your salon, or theirs. You sat in the Assembly, probably near the front. You supported the King, when we had a proper Galtan one - maybe even when we didn't. If you were strong enough to read at all, you probably read Lawful. If you drank coffee, you might have been wealthy but if so you certainly earned your wealth, you drank it in public coffeehouses, you might have been a wizard or a lawyer or both - You were probably a Republican. If you had a seat in the Assembly, you sat in the back, but you might also have been just outside, speaking to the crowds."

"...I inherited wealth, and supported the King, but I sat in the back of the Assembly, so I drank coffee."

"I...see. I don't think that's how it is in Vigil."

"Right! Because you are all Lawful, and you're all front-of-the-house conservatives, and so you all drink tea!"

"I've known people to drink coffee and never noticed them being particularly... revolutionary."

"Well maybe my knowledge of how hot beverage preferences relate to political opinions is only applicable to Isarn at the turn of the century."