"Interesting. Those are certainly rare, and narrows the field. Do you have a prediction of where?"

"Yes, but not a confident one. I'd expect Andoran - her democratic impulses seem much more Andoren than Galtan. How you find Arodenites there I don't know, I don't think they're common. Maybe have someone professional guess whether her voice is human or aasimar; aasimar lifetimes might make the old-fashioned view mixed with the new one make more sense with the Abadaran-verified claim that she was born within the current borders of Cheliax."

"That is a workable theory. Raised by heaven-touched parents?"

"Most likely. It's also possible her parents were killed trying to flee to Andoran, and she survived to be adopted by aasimars, in which case she could be any species; survivors of the Civil War who fled to Andoran would be among those most plausibly attached to Aroden's philosophy, and raising Chelish-born children in that philosophy is a plausible life goal they might choose. Many other things are possible, and I wouldn't lean too heavily on this guess, but I wouldn't lean heavily on any other guess either."

"Yes, I see. I'll want to pass this on to the Church itself; do you have a written summary prepared?"

"Of course. Was there anything else you wanted to ask about?"

"I don't know a thing about Lastwall. It's a hanging offense in Kenabres."

He sticks his head out his door. "Tibex, fetch me my atlas, please, I think it's on the blue shelves."

"It was, sir. Here."

"Of course he wouldn't get a fair trial. Why would the Church of Iomedae care about fair trials?"

Okay, that sounds wrong. Not just not Good, but questionably Lawful; even in Asmodeanism, trials are meant to be fair in a certain sense, in that there is a system which is meant to work; manipulable by the skilled and the powerful, but a system nonetheless. If you kill a man in broad daylight (and don't have special status which makes you above the normal law) your trial should reflect that, not just let you threaten the judge into letting you off

(Some people feel much more strongly about that very particular notion of fairness than others. Theo's view is biased because he's carefully-not-dating one of those people.)

"Maybe got the chance to say under a truth spell that they'd never done anything wrong, if that was true, but who's that true of?"

"I don't know," says Freedom. "Certainly not me."

Hmmm. This seems meaningful, but he couldn't say why. He lets the unseen servant take dictation for a while and looks through his atlas. Where is Kenabres? Galt? Cyprian claims to be Iomedan, and all he's heard says it's sincerely meant. ...Doesn't look like it. He checks East Druma, not there either. Wait.

since they stopped burning them

Ustalav? No, that's Pharasmin. Except the northern bit that Lastwall took back from the Worldwound... No. Oh, of course, Mendev. And... yes. Right on the Wound, Kenabres, from the lines drawn clearly a wardstone site. Backwater, queen is a paladin of Iomedae and extending her life repeatedly to keep prosecuting the crusades. He remembers one of the Mendevian Crusades being a witch-hunt for traitors and involving a lot of burning - Third or Fourth, who can remember which. Probably Fourth, if the man remembers them ceasing to burn convicts.

Has he learned anything important?

Probably not. Except that Freedom is, as she admitted, sheltered and fairly ignorant of the world. Which, actually, seems uncharacteristic for the kind of people who idealistically raise the escaped children of Cheliax in Aroden's philosophy.

Maybe that is important.

Her response being to stay on the air for hours talking to more listeners is... straightforward to the point of naivete but obscurely charming. He leaves his servant to copy it down - and it will last six hours, it should be fine even if she's more excessive than she says - and considers the person behind it.

She's tied to the radios. And some new weapons, type unknown. And knows fairly little about the world's politics, though she knows plenty about the churches and major countries and their failings.

...maybe the Arodenites were trying to raise gifted children to be inventor-wizards, and one of them came out Splendid rather than Cunning. And so she's seen the inventing and had the narrow, eclectic education for it but instead talks on the radio.

...that doesn't really convince him.

But he considers a slightly vaguer frame - that she is, by means unspecified, an unusually Splendid, and more-than-ordinarily clever and insightful, person who was close to the invention of radio and whatever else. That part still seems true. What does it mean? It probably suggests that much of the radio programming was her plan. Presumably not the Worldwound or the Abadaran's things - price reports and shipping warnings. But the rest. The adventure stories, the chariot races, everything that doesn't have a direct practical purpose.

He hasn't been paying much attention to those. Maybe he should.

There isn't much more to be learned from that broadcast, or really from the next two month's. All the clergies she interviews are Lawful or Good or both, and none of them are Evil, which since she already talked to Pharasmins and Nethys is insane doesn't rule out many churches. Gozreh, Calistria, Gorum... and Sivanah, technically, but who even knows who Sivanah is, other than wizards? Point against her being raised with inventor-wizards, he guesses. She doesn't get any major political figures - nobody from Lastwall, not Cyprian or any of his marshals, no one from Oppara - and her interviews are generally less sensational than her first few.

She does have a shocking range of practical knowledge that's unusual for even fairly educated people to know, most of it in the same practical vein as the knowledge of disease and newborn care. Point in favor of being raised by or to be wizards. And it does seem like... something Arodenites would emphasize, particularly if it was clear they'd be able to speak to the peasantry and urban poor. If they could, but mostly they couldn't - these would have to be unusually well- and broadly-educated wizards.

He doesn't know. She doesn't make sense. On one level this is a relief, because it means when he is checked in on, he has nothing useful to give them and doesn't have to bluff. But it's frustrating.

And then the war starts.

Three days is enough that he's heard there's fighting, and not on the Andoren border, but not enough that he's heard details. Which means he strongly suspects that the details are "it's going badly", of course - it might be slow to be proclaimed if it was going reasonably well, but it certainly would be slow to percolate if it's not.

He's pretty sure that if he checked that his permission to listen still stood, he'd be denied. So he doesn't. And goes back to having an unseen servant take dictation and reading it an hour or two later.

He's distracted from his monitoring and theorizing by also considering what he should do to protect himself, and just as importantly his 'household'. He probably couldn't get away with planning to flee, but there's got to be other things he can do.

He does have some energy to spare on it, though, and clearly there's things to learn

I have joined the Glorious Reclamation in its fight to liberate Cheliax. I joined them a few months back, actually.

Iomedae is with us. Iomedae is with us more than She has been with any war effort since Her own crusade. Iomedae is, Herself, from Cheliax, and wants to see it free, and will see it free.

This is compatible with her not being an Iomedan. But not, he thinks, likely. It's not surprising, given he was already pretty sure she was a Good Arodenite, that she is one of the Inheritor's. Strikes him as off, a bit, but so does everything else about who she is.

I don't really expect you to believe me about this
[...]
I will tell you that on the walls of Citadel Dinyar, men started falling when the invaders were a mile away.

He believes her. He knows how hard it is to fake truth magic even partially, and also the mental picture of her he has built up wouldn't lie even if she thought she could get away with it. And she just doesn't have the bluffing skills of anyone Chelish, even someone as bad as him.

And that's terrifying, because what in Hell could manage that? Local sonic magic delivered over a modified radio broadcast?

He hears a lot on the radio. He hears some more from his counselees. One, Senyora Arlet Cadena, is responsible for a substantial piece of local weapons manufacturing and has been supplied with (broken, they think) examples of the weapons. He expresses interest in examining it - being a wizard, he might have insights. The woman's smiths have been stumped, so she agrees.

Hollow metal tube, two mechanical assemblies at the handle end, one seems to be finger-operated and strongly resembles a crossbow trigger, the other is used to slide part of the tube to the side while not allowing it to jump sideways when not in use. The smiths have concluded it's clearly an advanced variant of a crossbow in some way, but are stumped on where it gets its motive force. They've found scorch marks inside the removable butt-end, so something is being ignited, but they're lost as to what it could be.

"Did you receive any bolts?"

"Four intact, a dozen used in various states of damage. I was told the ammunition is needed to retaliate immediately. They appear to be complex objects, with some black powder next to a shaped slug of lead."

"I'd be interested in examining one, especially one you've already disassembled. But I can look at the weapon first, I imagine you're protective of it, given the scarcity."

He fiddles with the trigger assembly but doesn't learn much. The sliding butt-end... smells faintly familiar.

"Send one of the apprentices to ask if the High Priest can examine it without interrupting," she says to one of the men.

"They're not magical, which I assume you were already told. Given that they seem to be reliable in quantity, I have a hard time believing any serious alchemy is involved; from my time abroad, I'm personally familiar with how little you can rely on anything more sophisticated than a tanglefoot bag to work more than once or have a predictable scale. Master alchemists can replicate a number of spell effects by supposedly mundane means, but no one else can use the results and they detect as weakly magical. I can look at the ammunition to confirm but I can't imagine the army would have missed that. I'm not sure what that leaves." Other than leaving him further impressed, which it does.

"I don't think we knew that about alchemy, sir," says one of her smiths, "That does help, I think, though I'm as much at a loss as you are."

"Glad to help. Just for completeness's sake, walk me through what you've learned about the mechanical assemblies?"

They're happy to do it. There's probably meant to be a smouldering string in this bit lighting something on fire, there's the traces of fiber and soot, but there's too much soot. (And of course the tube is warped, that's the way it's broken, but they're not sure how that happened.)

He doesn't learn anything more useful until the apprentice comes back and says it would be a good time for him to look at the disassembled bolt-roll.

It's on a small table, wooden and well away from any forge or metal tools. In fact, they seem to be very carefully preventing anyone from bringing in metal nearby. Money pouches are fine as long as they're not iron-clasped, but the apprentice explains that they're afraid of sparks; they lost two of the four already when the paper caught and the powder flared up in a second.

"I'll be careful. Brief, too. My word on it."

He is. with the wooden tongs, he picks up the metal slug (lead, he was told), which is mostly cylindrical, but round at one end. The powder... he recalls the butt's smell. He picks up a small pinch with the tongs, sniffs it. It definitely smells familiar, but he can't place it. The paper is very thin and smooth, but doesn't seem to be remarkable in any other respect - thin will help it burn quickly, he assumes.

"I assume I can't take a pinch home with me? If not, I believe I'm done here."