"Yep. I am curious whether they'll say anything about it, and if so it'll be 'that's a rogue priest' or 'that's fine, what are you upset about', but - mostly I'm just thrown off because I'm reminded how high stakes everything is, and how hard it is to have the whole picture of what's going on."

"Mhm. We checked a lot of things but we didn't check 'is it a capital offense to not inform on your neighbor' and - It's a reminder that we could be missing a ton of other things."

Iomedae does not bring it up at the next strategy meeting but it's a bit of a pointed not bringing it up and she's not a hard person to read.

Alfirin's the only one here that listens to every broadcast, these days. "Is there something wrong?" Xiomarra asks, eventually.

"Sort of depends what one thinks is wrong, doesn't it," says Iomedae. ('no one brought it to their attention' rules out both 'this is something it was important to them to conceal' and 'this is something that people expected they'd obviously intervene in'). 

That sounds like something is wrong, and Iomedae does not want to talk about it here and now. Fine. She'll drop it for now and pull Iomedae aside after the meeting is over. "I'd like to speak with you in my office, alone. It should be about half an hour."

"Of course," says Iomedae. She's pretty sure that's more how getting scolded for not cleaning your room works than how international diplomacy works but she doesn't actually know what she wants here and not talking to them definitely won't get her it.

"If you don't want to tell me anything that's fine," Xiomara says as soon as they're behind closed doors, "But I'd appreciate you staying the whole half hour even if so, and not telling anyone what we did or didn't discuss. That said, I think something is troubling you and I'd like to know what, if you can and wish to say."

…she likes these people. She really really likes these people, and trusts them, they make sense to her, it's not impossible to believe it's the civilization she'd have built if she didn't know that it was possible to make democracy work. That's why it keeps hurting every time she needs reminding that, in fact, they run a military dictatorship - "I got a caller on the radio who wanted to make the case that the real problem with the Church of Iomedae is that they executed his son, for not reporting his cousin for being in some kind of cult. I don't know if that's what happened, I don't have a good way to check if that's what happened, not all the callers thought it was a problem even if that's exactly what happened, but it saddened me. America was so stupidly rich they hardly ever put anyone to death and I don't expect that but -"

"Did he say where this happened? Was it in Mendev?"

"Yes. Kenabres." She looked up what country Kenabres was in after the broadcast.

"Then… I would not be surprised to learn that that's what really happened. The Church in Mendev is a mess, the nobility of Mendev fervently resists every attempt we make to clean it up or even just explain theology to them - and they do genuinely have a serious problem with demonic cults. I don't know if I would manage to do better if it was me, there. I suspect I would but it's very easy to look from afar and judge a task far easier than it is when you're actually up close and doing it."

'ah, yes, that's the badly behaved cousin who executes people at the drop of a hat, awkward about him' - she's being unfair. She has insufficient context to be fair in either direction, here.

"That's not the law here?"

"No! I don't think it would even work, here, to get people to report their cultist neighbors more than they already would."

"What does Lastwall put people to death for, mostly?"

"Murder, rape, espionage - being a demon cultist, or a diabolist, or part of the Whispering Way or Skinsaw cult or any number of similarly sinister groups -"

"And what - counts - like, in a sense criticizing the government serves your enemies, it's probably some evidence of sympathy for your enemies-"

"Well, generically 'serving our enemies' isn't a crime, it's much too vague - if someone can say under a truth spell that they don't worship Asmodeus or any devils, that they've never called a devil or made a pact with one, and that they don't plan to do any of those things - maybe with some more similar clauses depending on the particular case - they won't be convicted of diabolism."

"And they get a truth spell, if they insist it'd clear them?"

"Yes. Well - they say what they'd want to say under a truth spell, and work out with the court a set of things they can say that would clear them if true, and then they get a truth spell. The court pays for it, unless they can't - or refuse to - actually say the things they worked out ahead of time."

"The man on the radio said that no one got a fair trial, but they might be let go if they could say under a truth spell they'd never done any wrong."

"That does sound like a way this system could be misinterpreted on the ground in Mendev."

"Would you be willing to explain on the radio how it's supposed to work? Because - I don't want to drop it, if the man isn't lying, but I also don't want people to think that's how the Church of Iomedae does things, if it's not."

"Ask your secretary to find you a magistrate. I'm really not an expert."

"I'll do that. Does it make sense to you that I was upset or does it seem like a way I have unreasonable expectations given the magnitude of everybody's problems around here."