"No."

He buries his head in her shoulder while he tries to think of something to say. The obvious 'well that seems dumb of you' can remain unsaid, she's not in fact an idiot. 

"I keep thinking about how - she was a better Knight-Commander than me because she wanted to trust everyone, and was pretty sure everyone had good in them and that you could just be honest with them, and she was wrong but it was so good for people anyway -"

"She didn't. Trust me, that is, not after -

...She wanted to, though. I suppose that was good for me in itself."

"She'd have been so upset, if she'd guessed your plans. I assume this is part of why she did not get to learn of them."

"If it was just that - I would have told her. She would have hated me for it but - it's not really doing right by her, not to tell her for that reason. I knew what she was going to become and I knew what I was going to become and - I was afraid."

"- she would have been devastated but I can't imagine she would have hated you for it." Iomedae hated Asmodeus, and Urgathoa, and Erum-Hel, and vanishingly rarely any human beings. Took a grim satisfaction in beating them, sure. 

"Maybe you're right. Your memories of her are definitely more recent."

"The difference may not really matter anyway. I am sure you care more about whether she tries to kill you than how she would feel about it."

"Yes. Her hating me for it would not be reason not to tell her, her trying to destroy me for it is - so it doesn't really matter what - precise emotions she would have felt - no, I guess maybe it does. Not to my choices, just to how - I feel about it - when I let myself.

If you weren't here this would be well past the point where I turn into a wight."

"Does that ...help?"

"In the short term sure. On the scales of years or decades - maybe. It doesn't seem to make it worse. Maybe it does on the scale of centuries, I don't have a wight-free century to compare it to. It doesn't come up very much."

"Well I think I'm not going to try it because it will feel very hypocritical to be mad at Iomedae for not feeling anything if I'm doing it too. ...tempting, though."

"Oh, wights still feel things, it's just that - most of it is quieter, softer. Easier to think about things when the emotions aren't - screaming at you...Except anger. It doesn't help at all with anger." She sighs. "At any rate don't try it now, please. It's good to be touching another living person who's not at all trying to suck my soul out with it."

It really is. He just holds her for a while, quietly. 

They aren't going to take a second shot at Terendelev; there's no point, until they learn who has been successfully spying on them and probably until they neutralize them. It's in any event time to start planning for the campaign season. They can't push the perimeter in very far, because the rifts are growing, but they can reclaim two more of the fortresses lost since the First Crusade, which shores the strategic situation up at least marginally. And they can in fact start trying to take prisoners and get an understanding of the geography of the Abyss and the situation there such that operations there might not be completely insane. 

Ember persuades a Baphomet cultist to come to Marit and tearfully confess, resulting in the arrest of three more of them, by promising that Marit won't execute any of the four. He intends to abide by this promise even though Ember had absolutely no authorization to make it but he's mad at her. 

"They should go somewhere far away from here and stop being Baphomet cultists! Being Baphomet cultists was really bad for them!"

"Yes, it was, and I'm proud of you for talking one of them into confessing, but you cannot make promises about what the Crusade will do with their friends. What if one of their friends had been - the person who interfered with rescuing Terendelev, or someone else who poses a great danger if let go?"

"Then it would still be good for them to stop being a Baphomet cultist and go be something else instead!"

"Again, that is not where our disagreement lies. If you are not going to promise to stop making promises on my behalf, then I will have to tell everybody that your promises aren't real, because otherwise I'm - letting them rely on them, when I don't in fact mean to necessarily keep them -"

" - well of course I wouldn't promise anything you're not actually going to do!"

"Ember, this is very important to me."

"You don't like killing people. It's not good for you. It's not good for them. And it makes it harder for all of the other Baphomet cultists in the city to - stop, and walk away."

" - we can discuss a general amnesty for former Baphomet cultists who are willing to renounce him and be sent out of Drezen to someplace that'll take them. If there's some place that'll take them. If you agree you won't tell anyone I've organized that before I have."

"That sounds really good, I think. And - I'm sorry for making you afraid. I didn't want to do that."

Marit will grumpily ask his assembled advisors if any of them know of a place that wants arguably-repentant Baphomet cultists.