Iomedae does not renew her paladin vows. She is still deeply invested in the Glorious Reclamation's work in Cheliax, and when she went and did an audit of every order Cansellarion gave her during the war she ended up concluding that they were all completely reasonable and the result if he'd been unable to order her would have been ten times as much time spent persuading her. She thinks she does want to be in a paladin order, in the long run. But for the last year Alfirin has been supporting her in doing the thing she thinks is best, even when that has committed them to a scary and confusing situation, and she is pretty sure she owes it back to Alfirin, to be unentangled in pursuing Alfirin's best guess of how they can improve the world.

It'll be in Almas. 

Almas really has a lot going for it. It's a big city, so plenty of labor to draw on, it's got Felandriel's university so plenty of wizards for anything they want magic for, both powerful wizards to ward their new home and do theoretical and prototyping work, and junior wizards employable for a little more than a laundryman's wage. It's a port, so it's easy to ship in any materials the area is short on. And the construction sector recently expanded, to rebuild after Razmir's attacks.

Alfirin consults with some locals and builds an industrial-scale brickworks first. She knows barely anything about brickmaking, but she knows more than a few things about factories by now and the local brickmakers she's bought out know how they make them by hand and together that's enough to get started.

It's a few months into this, when the Almas brickworks and steel mills are up and running, if not at full capacity, and Alfirin is spinning up the first local chemical plants and glassworks and looking into land purchases for an eventual hydroelectric dam upriver, that she hears about the Opparan gunworks and the gun-backed autocoup, and Marusek asks her if she'd be willing to start a local arms industry next. She says she'll think about it and see where it might fit into the schedule.

"I am worried about the next war," Alfirin says to Iomedae that evening.

"Mmm. I guess it is too much to hope that everyone will smoothly transition into industrial democracies without any massacres along the way if I ask them nicely."

"That didn't happen on Earth, and I'm sure there were people asking nicely… Gods, I wish I'd paid more attention in history. Or taken more classes. World War One was bad because of…trenches and machine guns and mustard gas, right? And Lastwall has machine guns and everyone else probably will too, eventually, and it's not like trenches are a secret technology we can hold back…I'll hold off on trying to rederive mustard gas."

"Machine guns affect how fast you can slaughter people and make a lot of things that used to be a good idea suddenly just lead to the slaughter of your army, and trenches mean the lines can go a long time not moving - I don't know if magic affects that, maybe Cloudkills just beat trenches and make them non-viable tactically - I think the other thing that contributed to World War One being so deadly was just that the world was richer, and had better logistics, and could afford to build larger armies and keep them in the field longer, where that would've collapsed a country before - there's no way around that richer countries can do and endure more killing, if this is stupidly what they've set their mind to - Lastwall won't start a war."

"Lastwall won't, but Taldor might - maybe that's not fair, maybe Taldor got better about not starting wars all the time in the last nine hundred years - but even if they did it looks like Cyprian's got a real Napoleon complex. And those are just the ones I've heard of."

"...yeah. Even if we use our vast sums of money to somehow broker a peace in Avistan - and I'm not totally sure that's the kind of thing that can be done - there's still the entire rest of the world and they're also going to be getting guns and probably doing conquest with them. If it's like Earth there are actually more people in Vudra and Tian Xia than there are here - was that true a long time ago or was that a new thing on Earth -"

"I don't know. It might've been a post-fertilizer thing… Also I don't know if Vudra and Tian Xia have the same - good rivers or high birth rates or whatever it was - just because there's some superficial cultural similarity."

Iomedae frowns out their fancy new glass windows. "Why aren't there more wars on Earth now - is it just because America could beat everybody else up -"

"I think it's that and that all the big countries have nukes…giving all the countries nukes seems like a really bad idea though."

"We could ask the gods if it would make things better?" says Iomedae dubiously. "I kind of see how it makes things better but it seems like it does that by taking some chance of making them a lot worse."

"Yeah. And…maybe it's more likely to go badly if we jump straight to giving them to everyone before - well, I don't know what the other important things are. But it seems like there might be some."

"Before they - stop all being feudal monarchies? I think it might actually be really really bad specifically when a country tries going in one generation from a feudal monarchy to an industrial power - I think you could kind of gloss Russia that way and that was really bad, and Japan that way and that was really bad, and - I should really have read more history books -"

"Mm. Do you remember, did Japan and Russia keep being - I guess not feudal - keep being the same sort of monarchy while they industrialized? Or is it also dangerous if they switch from monarchy to democracy and industrialize all at the same time."

"I think Russia tried being communist," says Iomedae. "And Japan - kept being a feudal monarchy, maybe? I only read one World War II history because the tactics seemed less applicable than the earlier 20th century wars and it was really depressing. I'm pretty sure Japan had an Emperor the whole time."

"Well that doesn't bode well for Taldor… we should try warning people not to be communist. Not that we'll be very credible about that. 'Collective ownership of property is bad, says Mrs. Moneybags who along with her wife has a controlling share of Industry, Like All Of It.'"

"I'm not sure how - historically contingent - communism was - it might have literally just happened because Marx wrote about it and was convincing -"

"Maybe! But… what do we do if someone who's not Marx starts writing about it and convincing people?"

"I explain on the radio that it got tried on Earth and it didn't actually work very well though I don't really remember why not….it would be nice if I remembered more about why not…"

"Maybe that's credible enough…my model of a marxist does not find you credible, but my model of a marxist doesn't know about paladins."

"I can't even enhance my credibility by giving all my money to the poor since I think people will notice I remain, after that, one of the richest people in the world by marriage."

"And I've learned that what I spend my money on, when I have unfathomable amounts of it, is mostly more factories… which is better than yachts but probably does not endear me to the anticapitalists."

"You can try having less appalling working conditions than the early Earth factories and see if that takes some of the teeth out of anticapitalism - I feel like we're focusing on the wrong thing here, or something, somehow. We meant to build a thing bigger than us that will have most of its effects in places we aren't looking on people we'll never meet. And we did that. And it's a - very very big thing - and we were pretty sure it'll have more good effects than bad ones but it's going to have a lot of both - this isn't to say we shouldn't be trying to figure out how to make it go more well but -"

"But it's going to be out of our hands, soon. I guess it's been mostly just good so far and the next things looming are - much more mixed. I don't want it to be - my fault - that world war one happens."

Iomedae hugs her. "I think we should try to prevent World War One. I don't know how exactly but - I don't really believe it's inevitable. And maybe if people really understand what they're risking they won't risk it quite as readily. The last industrial civilization in this world destroyed itself, after all. It's not like people just have to take our word for it that it's possible for wars to get really, really bad."

"Yeah. I think I'll start the factories Marusek wants. Because Andoran doesn't want more real wars right now and…if they're making their own guns maybe that'll keep Taldor or Galt from starting something. Here at least."

Alfirin is supervising the assembly of her first prototype steamship and mostly not thinking about the war when Cansellarion arrives. She peels herself away to greet him. "Ser Cansellarion! Is this a social visit or are you here to ruin someone's retirement?" Not that either of them are retired, exactly.

"Aren't you a bit young for retirement?" he shouts over the din.

So not a social visit. Probably here to ruin her not-retirement. "I own Industry, Like All of It, or at least a solid third of that, depending on what counts! I can retire whenever and however often I please! Do you want to go somewhere quieter?"

She prestidigitates herself clean and dresses more formally on the walk back to the tower. "So, what brings you here? Me or my wife?" She smiles. She really is so wonderfully delightfully fond of Iomedae, and there's something special about being married to her that wasn't there when they were just dating.

"You. I want you to open some factories in Westcrown."

Oh. He really does want to ruin her retirement. "Planes, trains, and automobiles? Or guns?" she asks, even though she knows the answer.

"Guns."

"It's going to be very bad, you know." She is not very optimistic about warning him off. Even if he believes everything she has to say, about the war to come, it’s still in his and Cheliax’ interest to be armed for it and not be defenseless like… Switzerland? Belgium? One of those European countries with lots of chocolate.

"What is?"

"The war you're all gearing up for."

"I'm not - gearing up - I mean, I don't have a war planned. It just wouldn't be wise to have no weapons for the army if a war did start."

Yeah that’s what she thought he’d say. "Mhm. So you want at least as many as Cyprian, who's the one who you think is going to start the next war, right? And Cyprian sees an Iomedean theocracy to the north, making guns for the worldwound, and an Iomedean theocracy in Lastwall making guns for Ustalav, and an Iomedean theocracy in Andoran making guns to shoot slavers, and an Iomedean theocracy in Cheliax making guns just for the heck of it and maybe he's worried that he's got to have just as many guns as you lot… or at least enough guns to fully equip his army, which he can't downsize too much because of all the people with guns surrounding him."

"That's - we're not going to declare war on Cyprian!"

It’s not that she’s heard that before, exactly, it’s that she expects if she’d read more earth history she’d have heard that before. "Not even if he invades the rest of the river kingdoms? Brevoy? Druma? Mendev? Molthune?" Belgium and/or Switzerland?

"...Maybe then."

"So either he gives up on war entirely - which I don't expect - or he has to be ready to fight you, and you have to be ready to fight him - and you're all going to have machine guns, and airplanes, and dynamite, and - artillery guns aren't complicated, I'm sure you'll all have those too even if I refuse to make any. And then - I don't know. Ten million people will die? Maybe more? Maybe less, just because there's not as many people around to die. It's going to be very bad."

"How sure are you? Do you know if there's a way to stop it, or make it - less bad...?"

What does he think she’s trying to do!?

"I don't know! I'm not a general! I'm not a politician! I'm just someone who half-remembers her American world history classes and brought this world all the weapons of world war one because we thought there was a horrible necromancer taking over the planet who needed to be stopped! And - Infernal Cheliax was also very bad and also needed to be stopped. I'm glad we did it. But I don't actually know how to build a peace or stop a world war or even whether that war is as inevitable as it feels… don't have a bunch of secret alliances. And don't blow up any Australian Archdukes. And no… unrestricted underwater warfare, wow, I bet Golarion has that already even though there's no submarines - that's - really all I've got."

"...Are you okay?"

No. No she is not. She’s a bit embarrassed to be showing it to Cansellarion. "I might be the worst mass-murderer since - well probably there's someone else between now and Earthfall but not someone I've heard of."

"I think that's judging yourself too harshly."

"Say that again after the war… This is really giving me a visceral appreciation for the Nobel Peace Prize."

"I'm hoping there will be no war. What's a Nobel Peace Prize?"

A good idea that she should spend some time trying to replicate, is what it is. Mental note to make a plan for that after this conversation.

"It's - the man who invented dynamite felt really guilty about it and set up a fund to give a bunch of money and prestige to whoever does the most to…make the world peaceful, I guess - each year. According to a committee…There was a big fuss about them giving it to Obama when he hadn't done anything yet... I don't think eternal peace tends to last but I sincerely wish you the best with that. But today you're not here for peace, you're here to ask me to build you guns."

"Yes."

"When are the first elections?"

"Hm?"

"The first elections. In Cheliax. When are they?"

"I don't know. We haven't decided what form the Chelish government will take, in the long run, and even if we were sure we wanted a republic the Chelish people aren't ready for that..."

"Well that's my price. Plan for a republic. Set a date. It can be a few years out, it can even be a couple decades out, but plan for a republic, set a date for elections, and make an announcement."

"I think you want me to move faster than is wise, on that -"

"I think democracies don't usually start wars with each other. So that's my price for handing out guns." Will it work? Probably not. It might help.

"Cheliax has guns already. The government doesn't, but there's private arms manufacturers who are learning… It's not just about Cheliax being armed, it's also about the Reclamation being armed and not having all the gun manufacture in the hands of the old nobility."

And here she thought Iomedan paladins weren’t supposed to say misleading things… maybe he just doesn’t understand the situation very well himself. "Uh huh. The Henderthanes don't have steel at scale, they don't have smokeless powder, yet - I know they'll get there eventually, but for now - building you the factories you want would be giving the new Cheliax significant capabilities. Set a date."

"I'll think on it…will you help us set up some non-military factories, in the meantime?"

"Well, there's the problem, isn't it? I give you good steel mills and fertilizer and that's everything the Henderthanes are missing."

"...fertilizer?"

Oh come on, that wasn’t even secret. She knows he got copies of her lectures to the Iomedans…which he might not have read. She won’t call him out on it. "Yeah it turns out the same things that help plants grow make all the best explosives. A factory that makes fertilizer is very easy to turn into a factory that makes smokeless powder and bombs."

"I see. The Henderthanes are probably going to get themselves established if I can't get your help or enough people from Vigil. I really don't think this is the best way to advance your interests."

She really hates it when people act like they know better than her just because they’re twice her age. They almost never do. "Well then you'd better get started on those elections… if it makes you feel any better I'll see about buying the Henderthanes out." She was considering doing it anyways. Even though being a monopolist is sketchy and unamerican.

"That might make the situation stable a little longer.  Thank you."

"Yep, that's me, selflessly consolidating a monopoly on arms manufacture for the good of the world. The hypothetical marxists are going to love it."

Cheliax' new engineers will need a tour of the facilities. Alfirin decides to have them shown the gunworks first; it will impress the handful of them who are actually Chelish and haven't seen the factories in Vigil, and a factory for a finished product will be a better demonstration of the factory process and some of the general-purpose machines than the more specialized chemical plants or the blast furnaces. And maybe seeing the amount of steel needed will make it clear how the gunworks are not actually the important part.

She has her guide ask Carissa if she'd be willing to meet with Alfirin after the first day of tours are done.

She would be delighted.

The meeting is in Alfirin's office in her only-technically-wizard's-tower. "Please, have a seat. How did you find the factory, Miss Sevar?"

She sits. She is mostly managing not to look impressed. 

“It was extraordinary, ma’am. I am very happy to be here.” 

Chelish people tend not to be very expressive. Mostly managing not to look impressed might mean 'very impressed.' It might also just mean mostly not impressed. Either way, she should really just make her pitch.

“Thank you. I’m rather proud of it. Ser Cansellarion, as best I can tell, wants you to spend your days making and overseeing copies of it, with a little bit of weapon enchantment worked in at the end. I think that’s a waste. You figured out how to lay enchantments on guns on your own, without a research team?”

“I was shown some other peoples’ work on the problem but I did not end up using most of it."

"Do you expect you could do the same for headbands, or rings - I know, there's not the same previously-unsolved problems there -" Yet. "- I'm just asking if you have a special talent for weapons or for long metal tubes or if you're equally skilled at other magic items."

“I have no training in other magic items.”

"Do you think if you had that training you'd be able to enchant a headband as easily as a rifle?"

"I think so, ma'am."

"And likewise for rings?"

"I think so, ma'am."

"Well, then. I'd like to sponsor you getting that training at Morgethai's university here, and then I'd like to work with you to build a factory that can spit out twenty enchanted headbands a day. To start, as a proof of concept. How much is Cansellarion paying you?"

"Four hundred Absalom pounds a week, in spellsilver."

"Oh I can double that, though I suspect you'll mostly decide based on who has the more interesting project and not on who has the larger pile of spellsilver on offer… those are both me, though."

"...your project sounds very very interesting, ma'am. I would want to think through the implications of doing that work here in Almas instead of at home."

"You want Cheliax to be richer? Or Andoran to be poorer?"

"I don't want Andoran to be poorer! But - Andoran's not bothering to hold the Worldwound - and Andoran wasn't just burned to the ground -"

She's slightly offended by that, even though she's sure Sevar has no reason to know better.

"Almas was, actually. Razmir. And about half the guns and most of the ammunition made in the factories you saw today are going to the Worldwound… I'd like to see Cheliax rebuilt as much as the next person, though maybe not quite as much as the next person who lives in one of the more damaged areas. Perhaps I should have included the brickworks in the tour after all, I'd like to set up one of those in Corentyn and in Pezzack and I imagine Westcrown will want one too even though there's less reconstruction happening there."

"That would be - very useful, ma'am. I'm glad you're sending weapons to the Worldwound."

"Did Cansellarion tell you anything about me, before you came here?"

"The Lord Marshal said that you might try to hire me and that I was allowed to leave if I wanted to. And I know that you led the engineering project that let the Glorious Reclamation liberate Cheliax."

"I suppose that's enough to get by on… I also led the radio project. And the first airplanes on Golarion. I'm not just interested in making weapons of war."

 "That is a - very impressive range of inventions," she says. "Almas is fortunate to have your patronage."

"I am here because I don't expect Andoran to start any more wars."

"I'd heard the claim, ma'am, that Andoran intends to end the international slave trade."

"Believe it or not, I expect that to be achieved without any wars. More piracy than I'd like, probably, but I think most of what will be actually instrumental there will be economic leverage." 

"I understand, ma'am."

She suspects that means 'I disagree but don't want to say so.'

"Did you have any questions for me?"

"...how do airplanes stay up?"

Delightful.

"The air around us is always pushing in every direction, you just don't notice because it's pushing the same amount in every direction. An airplane's forward motion and the angle and the shape of its wings make it so that there's more air underneath the wing than above it, so the air pushing it up from below is stronger than the air pushing it down from above. Would you like to ride in one?"

"...yes."

"I think you're next free during daylight hours on Oathday. I'll ask my wife if she wants to take you up then." She could ask another pilot, of course, but she's discovered she's curious about how a Chelish person will react to gay marriage. She's seen how the Lastwallers react (polite confusion until they realize Alfirin can polymorph) and how the Andorens do, (polite confusion even after that point) and can hazard a guess as to the Chelish reaction but wants to confirm it.

"Thank you, ma'am."

The Chelish reaction is... possibly just well-concealed polite confusion? Well, that fits the pattern.

"You are free to go. Please let Jandi know if you have any more questions for me or have made your decision about working for me."

"Thank you, ma'am. I will."

Flying always fills Iomedae with glee and euphoria which takes a long time to wear off. Well. Almost always. Going flying with the gun enchanter that Alfirin is trying to hire away from the Reclamation turns out not to have this effect, because Carissa Sevar turns out to be highly effective at turning all feels of glee and euphoria into deep concern, instead. 

"I'm upset about Cheliax," she tells Alfirin that evening.

"I thought it was probably something like that...What...happened, exactly?"

"We were talking about the war. And she said she was from Corentyn, and that - she got out - by being a wizard, presumably - but most people she knew didn't get out. And of course I said - I'm so sorry - and she said 'the liberation of Cheliax was noble and good and I am glad of it' -"

"Oh no that's - gods - like she... thought that was the 'right answer' and she'd get in trouble for a different one, or...?"

"Like she didn't want there to be any question of whether she was appropriately appreciative that we burned her city to the ground. 

And I said, well, it seems reasonable to me to be pretty upset about that, and she said, well, either Hell is fine and I shouldn't be upset my family went there, or Hell is bad in which case you were in the right."

"Oh." Alfirin hugs her. "I'm upset about Cheliax... should I be offering her a big chunk of her pay up-front, for resurrections -"

"Maybe? I think it'd be worth asking." Iomedae stares miserably at the wall. "But she's just one  - most people in that situation aren't talented weapons enchanters -"

"We would drive up diamond prices a lot, trying to raise the whole population of Corentyn… it's not worth it now, I don't even know if we could do it. If I'd known how magic worked when we were on Earth I could've learned how to make - cubic zirconia or something - and seen if that would cut it -"

"Mmmhmm…I want to do something about Hell. I know we don't have the resources yet but I hate - going around not doing anything about Hell -"

"And people call me ambitious…I support you in all your dreams and especially that one, as long as support doesn't have to come in the form of optimism. It seems like a very hard problem even with all the resources we could dream of."

"Becoming a god doesn't seem to do it," Iomedae says consideringly. "I guess there isn't guaranteed to be anything that does. Ugh." 

"- Becoming a god doesn't seem to do it in a thousand years," Alfirin corrects her, "It's not impossible that it does in two thousand… This really does seem like the sort of question your godself would have thought long and hard and godly about. We could get a cleric to ask Her."

"Yes. I should have done that ages ago, really. Do you have a plan and how long will it take."

"And how can we help."

Alfirin gets Sevar her advance pay and set up explaining her process to some of the other wizards on staff. She attends the first one herself; in theory at some point Industry will be too big and complicated for her to know every process herself, but she's trying to stave that day off as long as she can. By spending a lot of time learning everything new, not by slowing it down. That would be wrong.

Unfortunately, that day might have come already. Despite her best efforts she struggles to keep up with Sevar's explanations. It's probably not just that she's a fake self-taught second-circle wizard, because the older, more experienced wizards also seem to be confused. It's frustrating and embarrassing. She goes to every lecture.

After a couple of weeks of this she invites Carissa to have dinner with her so Alfirin can check how she's settling in. Carissa is very cool, and very smart, and really good at making magic items and Alfirin wants to learn all her secrets and be her friend. The fact that Alfirin is also her boss is a little awkward but probably surmountable.

She picks one of the classy restaurants that can afford spices teleported in from across the world, not so much because it's classy but because she likes spices teleported in from across the world. America had spices teleported in from across the world, or near enough. It was one of the cool things about America.

"So how are you finding Almas?"

"The university is wonderful. It is no wonder that Almas is so prosperous."

"The university is wonderful, I wish I had more time to spend there. I do regret - not being more of a wizard. Not having the time to be more of a wizard and do everything else. Your enhancement work is very cool."

"I hope it'll be of use. I was thinking, of course most of the reason it's spellsilver-intensive to layer enchantments is that they interfere even if they're activated only separately. Otherwise you could thread them. I've been wondering since I saw the factory if there are magical insulators that'd let you separate the parts of a gun and enchant them each separately and more cheaply…"

"Hmm, so you could put one enchantment on the barrel and one on the chamber and have them still both apply to the bullets fired without interfering with each other? But wouldn't they fail to combine, like if you cast magic weapon on a weapon which is already enchanted? Or - oh it should still work if you have, say, a flaming barrel and a holy chamber and a shock magazine, if you can get all three working, is that what you mean?"

"Yes, just as you can make a flaming holy shock gun anyway if you want to, it's just that the costs get prohibitive. But if there's such a thing as a magical insulator with the right properties you could do it cheaply and interchangeably."

"There's, oh, seventy or eighty elements that I don't know if anyone on Golarion has isolated. There's probably a good magical insulator in one of them and if there's not, well - hundreds or thousands of complicated organic compounds to either find or synthesize. I have no idea where to look, yet, but I bet we'll find something."

It sounds like they'll have a perfectly lovely evening talking about magic item manufacturing! Carissa seems to enjoy it to the point of being positively giggly. 

Alfirin is delighted to spend hours talking about magic item manufacturing. She's dispositionally a wizard even if circumstantially she's not much of one. Yet. Growth mindset.

...Eventually the conversation turns back to Andoran. "I know you've only been here a few weeks, and busy ones at that, but I was wondering if you're planning to apply for citizenship."

 "Do you think I should?"

"Well, it's really up to you. But if you're planning to live here for a long time it seems like a good idea. You'd get to vote."

"Of course. Can you tell me more about how voting works?"

"Oh, well here in Andoran there's an election every five years. Next one's 4715. There will be polling places, where you go and mark on a ballot everyone you're voting for. You get one vote for each race, so that's one for the Supreme Elect, and one for your representative to the People's Council - Almas is big enough to get three reps, so which race you're eligible to vote for depends on where exactly you live, probably you're in the second district. And then you also vote for the city council, again depending on where exactly you live." Alfirin is excited to vote; she's only done it once before and mostly only for state offices.

"And we can learn who is worthy of our support in the election by listening to Freedom Radio?"

Alfirin frowns slightly. That sounds... like there's a hint of something Chelish in it. "I don't think she does any endorsements? I think - well, it's not illegal and obviously it happened sometimes in America but I think right now it would be - kind of improper. Andoren democracy is still very young, you know. She did have Marusek on the show, of course, but she had Codwin too, we were much too busy at the time to be taking a stance on Andoren politics." Wait, no, that probably just reminded her of the war and her dead family which is maybe still upsetting even now that they're back. Nice going, Alfirin.

"I think, coming as I do from a Chelish background, it is obvious why this would be - more efficient for a society with less wizards - but it is less obvious why she wouldn't give - endorsements - and where one could find them, in that case -"

"Well, Freedom Radio is very popular right now. An endorsement for one candidate or another could be decisive, and... well, I don't think Freedom is totally unwilling to swing an election like that, but she wouldn't want to do it unless she was very confident that her preferred candidate really was much better than the others, or unless she had some special knowledge that most of the voters don't have that was relevant, like if -" She can't just say 'if a Marxist were running for office' because Carissa will have no idea what she's talking about. She kind of enjoys completely ignoring those considerations when talking to Cansellarion, but doing it now would be mean and make the conversation less productive. "- If there were something that had been tried in America or one of America's neighbors, that sounded like a good idea but worked out really badly in practice, and one of the candidates really wanted to try that. Then she'd probably explain on the radio why the idea isn't as good as it looks."

She looks relieved. "So where there is an orthodoxy it'll be on the radio, and where there are no - endorsements - it is because it doesn't matter?"

Alfirin is looking at her with a slightly horrified expression. "That's not - I mean there's not supposed to be one orthodoxy. But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter. People are should get to make up their own minds about who should rule them. If Freedom were to say who to vote for on the radio and everyone listened to her - Well, you might as well declare her dictator-for-life, there's not a real difference anymore."

"...well the important difference is obviously that if you make everyone 'vote' then you can tell who's loyal and who isn't? Cheliax does that with Detect Thoughts but Andoran doesn't have enough wizards, so it's clever, really. It's not as good as Detect Thoughts because you can lie but I think making people lie is still useful, usually."

"...I think I understand now why in America it's illegal to take a selfie with your ballot. Uh. The point isn't to find…disloyal…people, it's to pick the new government."

"Right, of course."

"I suppose it must seem…unbelievable… if you lived your whole life in Cheliax."

"I think you will have a harder time getting anything useful out of employing it there."

Right. Unbelievable. So, uh, how to communicate that democracy is...real... "Do you, uh, believe in paladins?"

"The Lord Marshal and the Supreme Elect are both paladins," says Carissa. "So is Freedom, and many of the officers of the Glorious Reclamation, and the people who defend us at the Worldwound. Iomedae, as a mortal, was a paladin, and chooses paladins who embody Her virtue and bravery and honor."

"Right, but is it true that they can't lie or is that just a trick to make gullible people trust them?"

"Well, they can't lie very often or they wouldn't be able to maintain the pretense they can't lie at all. So they're unusually trustworthy."

"Okay. I can, uh, work with that, I guess. So when Codwin says very publicly that he'll step down if he doesn't win the next election, he's probably not lying. Because we'd all be able to tell, if he didn't step down, and lots of people are going to be looking for proof that they're lying about the vote totals so it'd be pretty risky to lie about those."

"I - apologize if I seemed to be questioning the honor of the Supreme Elect. Of course I trust his word."

Oh no. "I, um. Didn't think you were. I just meant that - if he says he'd step down, and he can't lie about something public like that where he'd get caught, and people paying attention in Lastwall and Galt and Taldor all think he'd step down... one -" no, don't say 'should' "...wouldn't be particularly stupid to believe that he'd step down. If he lost the election." Maybe the thing to do is to find some of Carissa's coworkers who oppose Codwin and suggest Carissa talk to them and notice how they're not being dragged off to gulags.

"I, uh, would have expected people to believe that he'd - quite reasonably and correctly change his mind under some circumstances? Like...say that the Most High Aspexia Rugatonn won, he would not step down in her favor, nor would he be expected to, nor would it call his honor into question that he didn't, since of course a paladin can't enable an Evil person coming to power. And ...that's an extreme example but probably there are lots of unworthy people like her."

"I think he might, actually. It would be terrible for the country but he swore in his oath of office to step down when his term is over and - I think paladins usually stick by their oaths. Even when that has terrible consequences. If, uh, it was some other terrible person who was actually eligible to run, I don't think his oath obliges him to step down if someone ineligible happens to get more votes than him."

"What makes someone, uh, eligible?"

"Landowning Andoren citizen, over the age of - I don't actually remember all of them, but thirty for humans - not an Asmodean or a diabolist or demoniac or soul-sold, willing to take the oath of office."

"Oh. All right, I understand."

She somehow suspects Carissa does not, in fact, understand. That... seems like a problem that, if she should try fixing it at all, she should try fixing more thoughtfully. Later. For now, she'll steer the conversation back towards magic for the rest of the evening. It's a much less uncomfortable subject.

When she gets home, Alfirin collapses into her wife's arms. "I'm upset about Cheliax."