She can imagine some circumstances where stealing things for a demon cult is the level of serious crime that justifies risking sending someone to an evil afterlife if that's the only way to prevent them from doing it again.

She can imagine a lot more circumstances where that's wildly disproportionate and horrible.

She does not, actually, have any reason Hulrun should do things her way, or anything to offer him in exchange. But she very much doubts that this is how the people of Kenabres want their city run.

The words TODO: Invent democracy if it hasn't been invented here yet appear on her back where they're hidden under several layers of clothing. Her eyes temporarily stop having tear ducts.

What does Seelah's face look like right now?

Seelah started wincing when they got to the bit about it being for stealing, but she doesn't seem openly horrified or about to speak up. This is at least probably not wildly unusual.

Yeah, she thought as much.

Getting the Wardstone fixed and the demons gone is still priority one. She continues silently watching Hulrun until he acknowledges her presence.

After he finishes up that interrogation he gestures for her to come forward.

"Back again already?"

"Yup. I talked to Terendelev and she said she'll be ready to move on the Wardstone in a couple hours; she's putting a team together that she expects to be able to deal with whatever the lilitu has up her sleeve. We're supposed to meet up with Terendelev and the paladins at the temple of the Inheritor."

An annoyed scowl fills his face, but frankly it’s not especially different from how he normally looks.

“Hmmph. Well, if Terenedelev’s decided I suppose that’s that then. Did she give a time frame?”

"Not more precise than 'a couple hours'; she's going to have some people teleport in."

"Understood. I'll make the most of the time I have left before I need my subordinates to take over, then, since weaker truth spells mean more guilty people will escape their fate. If it were only practical to hold them until we finished."

"Oh, I recognize you now! You met me when my father and I first came to Kenabres!"

"I have no memory of this, and I rarely forget a face, much less scarring like yours. Unless by meeting you mean seeing in a crowd?"

Ember shakers her head.

"No, this was a while ago, and you looked pretty different then. Your hair was still brown and you had this mustache."

She draws something vaguely reminiscent of a handlebar mustache in the air with her finger.

"I didn't have the scars back then, either, those are from when you and the other knights tied us to stakes and started lighting the bonfires. My father died then, so I guess maybe that makes it easier to forget, but I survived because one of your knights changed his mind and rescued me from the fire before I died too. Don't you remember?"

"Don't be absurd, nobody's been burnt at the stake for being a demon cultist since the third crusade. Besides, if I did execute your father for his crimes I'm sure he was guilty."

Hulrun's reply is dismissive, but after he finishes speaking his eyes flicker to her ears and he looks ever so slightly less confident in his pronunciation.

Hulrun has been doing what?

Hulrun has been doing this shit for how long?

Hulrun said that to the daughter of a man he had killed?

Her options for fixing the Wardstone are the one Areelu Vorlesh endorses and whatever this guy comes up with?

"In my home country," she says softly, "we have a proverb. 'Better to let ten guilty men go free than to imprison a single innocent.'"

"That's pure folly. Sparing ten cultists their fate will end up killing innocents in even greater numbers, to say nothing of how many will die when the city falls and the world comes that much closer to being conquered by demons. Where do they publish this kind of nonsense, Kelesh?"

He's kind of betting it's somewhere in that area; it's the sort of foolishness you expect from overly idealistic Sarenrites and Shelynites before they learn enough about the real world to know better, and for all its other flaws Andoran has enough experience with the puppets of Hell that they don't tend to make that mistake.

"America, on the planet Earth. We don't have demons, only human criminals, but we also have no magic with which to catch them and no gods to help us. And a family with no skill in combat whatsoever can wander the whole country from the cities to the farms to the forests and never spare a thought for their own safety. It's hardly a perfect country, but the closer it gets to its ideals, the better it becomes."

"I'm sure it's an easier job without demons, since if they're just pickpockets it's safe to let them cool their heels in lockup or let them make up for their crimes with hard labor or a stint in a penal battalion, but I can't imagine why you'd be sure your country was on the right track without even knowing how the gods are steering you or what sparing criminals has to do with forests being safe. There's time to reach perfection in the next life, this one is for doing what's right."

Brenda feels like she's lost the plot somewhere. "The country is on the right track because it's a good place to live, but also what are we even arguing about at this point? What's the difference between pursuing moral perfection and doing what's right? What are you trying to persuade me of? Why did you try to kill Ember?"

“If this girl really is who she claims to be, she and her father were sentenced for witchcraft, consorting with fiends, heresy, and for being accessory to demonic plots. Given what you said earlier I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’m doing what is necessary for keeping this country safe.”

“We weren’t consorting with any fiends, though. We get our powers from grandmother, not the demons, and he just came here to help people.”

“It’s true that not all witches work for the demons; the ones from Irrisen are as wicked as they come, but even they have enough self interest to want the world to stay intact. But only the fiendish powers pick witches, since the gods of good stick to clerics and paladins and inquisitors.”

"I don't know enough theology to say who's right but if an evil power is giving Ember healing magic they sound pretty bad at being evil." Sudden flashbacks to the time in second grade when Timmy said Satan invented dinosaurs and ten minutes later they were both in the principal's office.

"Evil is often self defeating," Hulrun agrees, rather than engage with the rest of that point. "In any case, unless her patron is a demon lord witchcraft alone is no longer a capital crime in Mendev, so as long as she's fighting the demons I have bigger concerns. If you just need to learn more theology you can talk to someone like the Select, but I don't have time to do that and judge these cultists in the next few hours."

"Oh yeah I definitely wasn't saying you should explain anything now. I'll read up on it later. See you at the temple, then." Time to exit the scene like a coward for lack of any clue what a better action would be.

"That was very nice of you, but you didn't need to do that for me. I've had a long time to come to terms with it and my hands rarely hurt these days."

And here she was about to apologize for not being helpful enough. "It isn't right. I don't know what's right but it isn't this."