"I think that it was centrally my error; as your commander it is my responsibility to ensure that you know what's expected of you. I failed to do that because I have been very busy with other things, and because I'm not in the habit of being in direct command of junior paladins, and really I should have assigned someone else to be your direct commander but failed to do so because everyone else in the order who is read-in on what the project is is also busy with other important things. Nonetheless, I should have found someone."

They're planning to go to war in a few months. If anyone has to spend time babysitting Iomedae this is obviously Iomedae's fault for needing babysitting, not theirs for having been busy. Iomedae is not going to argue this point because she does not in fact want to be difficult to manage. She struggles for a second to think of a truthful response, given that. "I understand, sir."

"Needing some amount of guidance is normal and expected for a junior paladin."

And that's why you don't have them running extremely large-scale important operations - "I do not think I'm unusually incompetent for my age, sir, but I obviously am unusually incompetent for my position."

"I didn't just mean your age, also - someone who comes to the order at thirty is often still unused to the ways we do things and needs guidance from those who are more experienced. I agree that we would not normally put someone with your level of experience in charge of a project this large and important, but - anyone coming from Earth with the knowledge you have would have been unfamiliar with the way we run operations here. And if your inexperience leaves you unequipped to handle something of this scale, all the more reason that I need to make sure you have adequate support."

"...I think the project - of course it'd be better with more resources but we ask for what we need, and it's going about as well as it could, and I can't think of personal failures that have made it worse that a mentor could have bailed me out of. I think the broadcast is relying on a lot of people I didn't know existed taking risks I can't quite forgive myself for making them take, and also I'm insufficiently skilled in - acting like nothing happened, giving convincing nonanswers - and also it's annoying my allies and I thought that was worth it at the outset but I was totally ignorant of how much they were risking for me and at this point I feel terrible about it. I'm not sure that's a mentorship shortcoming, though it does seem like an example of people maybe letting me get away with things either because of my name or because the project is important, when I did not intend to benefit by either of those things."

He sighs. "Do you think you are uniquely capable of evaluating those risks?"

"I don't think it's - just, to assure myself you've thought about it and so I can do whatever I want until someone tells me to stop - and I think in a sense you didn't get a fair chance to decide because I didn't ask in advance 'hey, I'm going to expose you to a lot of risk by insulting Abrogail as much as possible, is that worth it to you or just to me -"

"We knew from the beginning that the radio project would be provocative to Cheliax - We didn't know about that particular episode in advance, but we did evaluate whether it was worth the risk of provoking them. We didn't tell you to be careful not to provoke them, which we could have if we were worried. We haven't told you that now.

To be clear - your provocation of Abrogail Thrune is something we consider to have been a success, not a failure. Without intending to comment at all on what was actually lost here -" because he doesn't know what was actually lost, on top of the normal obvious secrecy reasons not to say, "- If one of our agents in Cheliax had had their cover blown, for this, and was tortured and sent to Hell - this is something that everyone we send into Cheliax knows might happen. They took that risk willingly, and in this case what we won for it was absolutely worth the risk."

" - and you will tell me, if I'm picking fights that don't serve the people who are protecting my ability to go on picking them?"

"Yes, of course. Even when Freedom picks fights with our priests about how Lastwall isn't a democracy, that's - it probably causes Cheliax to think you're not working with us, it's good for her credibility - if we thought you were making mistakes that we'd noticed we'd tell you.

…I understand why you were a lot gentler with Andira, but it would probably be a mistake to be similarly uncharacteristically gentle with Codwin if you can ever get him on."

"- understood, sir. Thank you."

"I want to emphasize that that's just my perspective, not an order. You still know a lot more about radio shows than anybody else. My guess is that if people get too strong of an impression of your show as being an Andoren show pushing Andoren politics it will have less of an impact but if you have reasons to think otherwise it's your call."

"I think I'd feel uncomfortable having orders about the tenor of the show because I'm representing myself to people as saying what I want, but I agree with you. I have plenty of fights I can pick with Andoran. …sort of similar to some of the ones I had with America, actually! It turns out one thing people do with freedom is run away from all their responsibilities."

"I do not expect to give you any orders about the tenor of the show, for that reason. Though while we are on the topic - And do not take this as an indictment, I am sure you have enough sense that this order is redundant but it seems better not to rely only on my guess of your good sense here - you are forbidden from broadcasting any military secrets, or information about the progress of your other project, on your radio show."

She does occasionally have to wrestle back temptation to start explaining things about airplanes. "Yes, sir."

"If there is nothing else, you are dismissed."

Iomedae still isn't sleeping very often or very well but it turns out that having a list of the rules of her paladin order and an assurance that she'll be told if she's taking too many risks makes her not scared, somehow, and everything else is just easier to face if you're not scared. She continues to not have political opinions during strategy meetings but it's a deliberate effort of will instead of being scared and tired and not even really feeling like saying anything. 

She gets Codwin on the show and expresses the opinion that the rest of the world, looking at Andoran, might reasonably think that democracy and a national ethos of irresponsibility go hand in hand, and the opinion that no state worth emulating has beggar children on its streets, and that if it were true of humans that this was what freedom produced then that would be fairly discouraging. Codwin seems fairly exasperated but it probably plays well at home for him to vocally defend his people against complaints that they are the worst, and probably plays well everywhere else for Freedom to make the case against them. 

"I think you could stand to have more sympathy," he says, "for the plight of a woman who finds herself pregnant with a child she cannot support. Should she subject herself and her child to years of abuse at the hands of a man she didn't love, even if she can get him to agree to that? Is that the highest triumph of civilization, for all of them to suffer together until someone gets sick and dies and then leaves them in the same plight anyway?"

"When I was fifteen a man tried to force himself on me," Freedom says thoughtfully. "...I stabbed him, but that's a bit besides the point. If he'd succeeded I certainly wouldn't have married him, nor would I claim that other people ought to, in that situation. To become a mother alone and unready is a terrible thing but not the most terrible thing, and I think to become a wife to a man like that is worse. 

I would have wanted the society around me to help me feed myself and my child and help me care for the child, and not to assume that I'd been at fault in whatever came to pass, and for men to consider whether they'd marry me, as they might a widow. I'd want people to look at me and have, in their hearts grace and mercy and the knowledge that no one can actually be so virtuous as to be spared all misfortune.

I would not want them to tell me to abandon my child. I would not want them to tell me it'd be all right if I abandoned my child. Those things aren't all right and I don't like being lied to. If sympathy for this woman means that we agree that her lot is outrageously hard, I have it. If it takes the form of helping her with her expenses and watching her child for her and embracing her with love and compassion, you are entirely right to demand it. If sympathy for her takes the form of claiming that she can't be expected to do the right thing, that if you're wronged enough yourself it's okay to start doing Evil - well, it's not. 

And every abandoned child is abandoned by two parents, and their fathers have precisely the same duty to them, and are just as guilty if they fail in it. Their abandonment is less obvious, it's less dramatic, but it's just as despicable. Don't sleep with people if you aren't prepared to raise your children. It really is that simple. You will never be respected as a free people if that's what you do with your freedom."

Having even a little bit of access to teleportation is of disproportionate value, with a factory; if production is held up on one reagent, and it exists somewhere, you can dispatch the wizards to go get some immediately. They've had delays for supply problems, and delays for quality assurance problems, but really fewer of them than they have any right to, considering the sheer number of people and moving parts.

Iomedae is exhausted, but now that she doesn't feel lost and scared it's the good kind of exhaustion, the ache of exercise. They're going to have rifles for approximately Cansellarion's whole army, and a couple of really good ones made to much more precise tolerances through the strategy of making the barrels really large and then using Shrink Item, for sniping at nearly a mile of range. They're going to have portable radios. (Alfirin wants radar too, but portable radar wouldn't be ready by spring regardless so she hasn't put the time into building a prototype to test whether it picks up invisible creatures. Next year, maybe, if the war lasts that long.) They're going to have the crank guns, now working to the specifications Iomedae and Alfirin had memorized as achievable.

They invite Lastwall's command for a demonstration once they finally have the crank guns down.

Lastwall's leadership is very impressed, if a little ill-at-ease following the demonstration on a crowd of straw-filled dummies.  

Iomedae finds it very endearing how little anyone in Lastwall seems bloodthirsty. It is really a failure mode you would expect in a military dictatorship at war with their orc neighbors and the forces of both Hell and the Abyss. Whatever else Iomedae the goddess did she does not seem to teach them to take joy in the destruction of their enemies. "Where machine guns go from here is using recoil or the explosive gasses to operate the reloading mechanism," she says. "Alfirin thinks she can do it and have a few ready by the spring. And making it a little lighter will probably let paladins with weapon bonds have a weapon bond with it, which they presently cannot. …Greater Magic Weapon doesn't help with the accuracy, probably because you aren't aiming. It does help with the damage. The weapons enchanter thinks making it seeking would help a lot with the accuracy, but isn't going to have that figured out by spring."