She will stand next to the door, ready to attack should things go wrong.

The door unlocks easily, but someone must have been listening with their ear pressed against it on the other side, because as Anevia works there are muffled screams of "please go away!" and "leave us alone!"

"They'll be a danger to the tribes if we leave them here," Lann says flatly. "Is there a place for them topside?"

"Confirmed cultists are executed in time of war... and this attack is worse than just a war. I don't know what else we can do with them. Just keeping them imprisoned for trial would take guards away from the fighting..." 

"Let me try to talk with them. I wouldn't want to kill them if there's still other options..."

She can shout back through the door, or they can open it just a little and hope nothing terrible happens so they can talk without shouting like civilized people.

He'll try speaking through the door first.

"Hello? Can I come in? I don't want to hurt you more."

That sounds like something someone who wants to hurt them more would say!!!

"What do you want?"

"I want to talk, to find a way to help you."

"Help us do what?"

  "Aren't you the people who came in and slaughtered everyone else?" another voice interjects.

"By 'help us' do you mean 'not hurt us' -"

  "Just tell us what you want and we'll do it!"

"I want to find a way to not kill you, but everyone keeps telling me you're too dangerous to just leave here, and they seem to be right about that."

"How are we too dangerous! It's you who have been killing us!!!"

    "We'll go away, just let us go away and we'll never come back I swear!"

  "We don't want you to kill us either! Why do you feel like you have to kill us! Why is everyone about killing people?!" This voice sounds rather unhinged, though it's hard to tell through the door.

"You kidnapped children, and the people who were here tried to kill us as soon as we came in. If you go away, where will you go?"

"That wasn't us -"

  "We'll leave the city and you'll never see us again -"

"We'll go anywhere you want us to if you don't hurt or kill us!"

He turns to ask Anevia. "Are there places we might send them that are better than dying, but also not in danger from them?"

Anevia sighs. "If we assume they're liable to betray and backstab people, for no good reason, because they probably didn't have a good reason for worshipping Baphomet... Nowhere is categorically safe against backstabbers, except I guess the Upper Planes, and if you can send people there then I might advise you to spend it on someone much more deserving but it wouldn't hurt anyone."

"Convicts can be sentenced to hard labour, which is basically slavery to the state. Some places chain up slaves securely enough. It's a shitty life but better than death if you're going to the Abyss. But if you tell them to go turn themselves in at the mines or the road gangs, they obviously won't actually go there if you don't watch them all the way."

"If they were repentant we could test that with truth magic and then trust them to be somewhere else. But if they're just terrified, that'll go away as soon as they don't think we can go after them anymore. Even the penal battalions don't want someone who, faced with death in battle, could stab his own comrades in the back."

"We can find a short term solution, like locking them in some prison in the city which is being guarded anyway, or even just a cellar for a few hours in an emergency, but that just delays the problem for a bit. Mendev doesn't have a good solution for untrustworthy convicts, other than hard labour in chains where half the people die inside a year. I'm not sure anywhere in the world does." 

"I think the best - the most hope I can offer is that if we lock them up for a few days, until the crisis passes, and then a judge has the time to interview each of them properly and figure out what they're personally guilty of, some of them might turn out trustworthy or to have had mitigating circumstances for being cultists. I don't know if we're technically in the city, we could sort of - pretend we're not and have them judged by the nearest available paladin rather than handing them over to the Kenabres inquisition specifically. I don't think it's a good chance, and if they fail they'll be executed anyway, but - that's probably the best you can do within the law, if you're not going to just set them free."

"Locking them up does sound best then."

He conveys the idea to the cultists. He's sorry he doesn't have a better solution yet. 

He adjusts his plans for a haven so that when he actually builds it, it will have place even for people like these.

They really (really!!) don't trust her about not hurting them and would rather they all just went away!!! Why don't they lock them up in this room! It was already locked anyway!

...but, with some difficulty, they can be persuaded to surrender and be transferred to a different room in which to be locked up and, hopefully, not to be hurt too much in the process.

With the door finally open, there turn out to be four of them.

One is a completely reformed not-at-all-cultist whose name is totally, uh - Alexius! And not Hand, haha, what kind of a name is 'Hand'. And his pentagram pendant is definitely an orthodox Asmodean one, that's completely legal right? (Anevia confiscates the pentagram.)

"Where next?" he asks Anevia, as someone who seems to have the most context on the global situation. 

"We should take the kids back to their tribe, and then try to get to the city. We can ask the neathers if they can guard the prisoners for at least a few hours, until we find a better place to put them. We don't know what we'll find up above; I don't want to fight while guarding people who might try to escape."

Lann is definitely in favor of returning the kids to the tribe to be lectured by their parents (and Chief Sull)! They need to have it very thoroughly explained to them that something that ended well can still be a terrible mistake!

Wenduag isn't happy about giving the tribe cultists to question, but her opinions no longer matter, so she won't voice any.

They can escort the kids then, and he'll talk to cultists while they do this, asking how did they come to be like this. 

They might find it hard to form lies when talking to him directly. 

One of them really wanted to impress his girlfriend and she turned out to be a cultist and he thought 'how bad can it be' and in fact it had been very good and the cultist thing was fine too but he totally regrets that now given the outcome!!

This one had a cultist cousin and he didn't turn him in, and when the Inquisition got the cousin his family wouldn't protect him (because doing that had gotten him in trouble), and so he had to run, and also he was pretty OK with revenge and burning down the city at that point!

This one used to work as a servant in the Garrison, and he really really wanted to be a wizard but he didn't have any money, and then a guy offered him some private lessons in exchange for some harmless gossip, one thing led to another, and now he has his own spellbook with three (3!!!) first circle spells. Also he's on the run from the Inquisition but really, is there anyone who wouldn't have done the same in his shoes? He doesn't worship Baphomet, he's an honest Nethysian, he just hangs out with these guys hoping to copy another spell.

This man who is called - huh - is he enchanted? He finds himself not wanting to lie to Miquella, over and above the obvious reasons!

...anyway, this man whom she can call Alexius is actually a veteran of the last crusade. By the time it ended he was strong enough to read Chaotic Evil, which meant he was going to the Abyss anyway, after all he's done and suffered for Mendev. The inquisitors gave him the stink-eye and there wasn't enough work for all the old soldiers. Way he sees it, a cleric circle's the least of what he's owed. Better to try to get an in with Baphomet then delay the inevitable wasting away on some farm.

(Anevia sighs and confiscates the proudly presented spellbook, which nearly causes a mutiny.)