Alfirin doesn't know either, and it did take them a while to get firearm manufacture down - probably this will be faster though. It's very rewarding.

The feedback loops are wildly more convenient!!!

Iomedae tells Cansellarion the next day that she would like to take the one-year oaths of his paladin order, if it would like to have her.

"We'd be honored to have you. I can administer them on Oathday morning in the cathedral."

"May I invite a friend to attend?"

"Of course you may." He vaguely wonders whether it's the obvious candidate or if Iomedae has somehow found time to make more friends despite being incredibly busy and mostly interacting with people more than twice her age.

Iomedae in fact considers inviting the President and telling him Cansellarion said she could bring a friend, just because while it would not make him crack a smile it would entertain her immensely. However she's pretty sure that's not how to do international diplomacy. She asks Alfirin to be there, and to help her read over all the oaths in advance one last time and make sure she didn't miss something that's unreasonable. 

Alfirin will do both of those things, not in that order. The oaths don't seem to contain anything unreasonable.

Then that's that, then. She's terribly nervous but she thinks only because she is correctly identifying this as a big decision important to get right, rather than because it feels like a bad one. 

(She notifies the President and the rest of his team at the next big high-level strategy meeting, which is sooner than Oathday, and says that she assumes that they're very busy and that their attendance would be notable and so does not expect it, and that she won't mind at all if they just miss it but that if they wanted to do something helpful to her to commemorate the occasion they could tell her some time when it's convenient how they decided to take the oaths of Lastwall leadership. She is pretty sure this is closer to how to do international diplomacy.)

The workshops under Vigil are warded pretty heavily against all the traditional divinations, which means that Catherine is forced to do all her espionage here in person. It's not her favorite way to learn what Lastwall is up to - if it goes badly it would both reveal her involvement and her status as a powerful spellcaster - but she's under a mind blank and she's never yet encountered an organization that performs routine random exorcisms on their employees - it's almost safe. She rides along with a different worker in the morning and hops over to Iomedae's friend when she sees her in the workshop checking one of the devices. With any luck if she does this regularly enough she can be present for a strategy meeting.

This means she's present when the workers break for lunch and Iomedae bounces over to see her friend (neither of them need to eat). "The batch 3 bullets work fine on demons, and they're only ten percent cold iron."

"Incredible - That should at least make the supply situation at the worldwound a lot less expensive until we can get the electroplating process smoothed out, and suggests that if we do get that process working the bullets should work as intended."

"Mmmhmm. How do you feel about a break now?"

"Well this belt's starting to get a bit worn down and I was going to replace it, but that's a whole trip downstairs and across the street - it can wait, nothing's going to explode. Just let me finish updating the log. I know it's not a sensible prioritization but as far as personal convenience goes, I really wish we'd done ballpoints first, rifles second…

…done. I'm all yours."

"Gosh," says Iomedae, delightedly, and locks the door behind them. "You know, I have this terrible problem now where I'll be doing my work, going about my business, and suddenly a voice in my head will say 'did you know that Alfirin is the most beautiful person in the world?' It does this…once or twice an hour. Maybe three times."

There is a moment of panic - how did she find out - how is that at all a sensible response to finding out - before the alternate hypothesis even occurs to her. The other girl, the one who doesn't resemble Iomedae and bear her name - she is Sarkorin - it - still doesn't make any sense. Why? How? - these girls are younger than the real Iomedae and Alfirin were when they met, younger than they were before either joined the Crusade -

"Hm, really? What a strange problem to have -" She pulls Iomedae close and runs her fingers through her hair. "Do you think it's your own voice, or are you being haunted? I don't think I've seduced any ghosts lately…"

"It sounds like my own voice!" Iomedae leans into her and kisses her, happily. "If it's not ghosts the next obvious hypothesis is madness."

Alfirin does not respond with words for a while, for some reason. "You know, I did not happen to memorize the process for making antipsychotics. I think we might be forced to rely on behavioral or environmental changes -"

"Nuh huh, nuh huh, I refuse. We know what happens if I lead a life of blinding virtue, and I found a military dictatorship. For the greater good one supposes I should remain mad."

"Well, you have a point there. No virtue for you, I will have to refrain from disfiguring myself. Such sacrifices we make for the good of the world, I suppose."

"I don't think it would work, anyway. I have a suspicion that the voice in my heart that names you the most beautiful in all the land is assigning a lot of credit to your personality, and your brilliance, and your knowledge of industrialization, and your political opinions no one born to this beknighted planet really stands a chance of improving on, and your smile, and the way you tease me, and -" She has gotten distracted. They should kiss some more. Shapechanging outfits are really convenient for kissing.

They are, aren't they? They can just change from no-fasteners single-piece jumpsuits that aren't actually possible to get into or out of normally, to no-fasteners vests that can be shrugged off in half a second. It's very efficient.

This is simultaneously incredibly informative and incredibly confusing and incredibly upsetting. She would like it to stop, now, but there's nobody else around to jump to - she could just leave but then she'd appear, right there, and that would panic them and raise alarms - she could put them both to sleep, but that would almost certainly alarm them too -

"Wasn't much to decide, by that point," Jan tells Iomedae over tea later that day, "I'd been serving for decades, I'd already sworn half a dozen oaths of office. When they asked me to be Lord-Watcher, I was thinking about the responsibilities of the office, not the oaths. The responsibilities are what matter, here. The oath is just putting those into words."