The spinning class has been going on for a while now and is going to wind down soon, but they have a scroll-making class getting set up. An older woman in Seljuk garb is setting out paper, paints, little dishes of something shiny and gold, and little pre-drawn sketches to be painted or coloured in.

Behind the barn, the heralds are still coaching each other to be louder. Through the walls there's an audible, "Oyez - no, *Oyez*! no - *OYEZ*!! - no, project, don't yell -" 

Iomedae wants that job, once she can speak English better. Talking so people can hear you very far away is an important paladin skill. She does not particularly want to spin, though it's kind of weird that this is the first place in America where she's seen anyone spinning. She was kind of assuming they had Azlanti technology for that, if they didn't even make their slaves do it.

She will paint, if Jenny wants her to paint. She has no experience with paint but no objections to it either.

Jenny just thinks it's probably not a good idea to spend every waking moment on schoolwork or violence.

Wow, these paints are cool. "God is good!" she says delightedly.

The woman is named Layla and she is delighted to show Iomedae the paints. They have yellow, red, black, green and blue based on period dyes, and in the little dishes there is shell gold made from real powdered gold.

If Iomedae is careful and has steady hands, she can try applying gold to colour in a pre-sketched big illuminated letter A. This is for a scroll blank that will, once it's fully painted, be given to someone as an award. Does Iomedae want to try the shell gold? 

Iomedae will look to Jenny for instruction on this; she has no opinion.

"I think you can go ahead and try it, sweetie!"

Then she will, very meticulously and carefully but with no particular enjoyment. She does a good job.

"That is so great!" Layla says enthusiastically when Iomedae is done, holding up the paper to the sunlight so Iomedae can see how the gold sparkles. "You have very steady hands, wow! It's so nice to see young people getting involved in illumination. - Usually we have the teens just make scroll cases," she adds as an aside to Jenny. "Would you all like any take-home materials?" 

Look at Jenny.

"Did you like it? Do you want to bring some home to practice?"

Iomedae prefers it to homework but disprefers it to not having to sit down and do fiddly things. She tries to figure out if there's a polite way to say this. "No homework, ma'am?" she says, hopefully.

"No, we still have to do your homework, this would be for after homework."

"There is no much after homework, ma'am."

"...that's fair. Okay, no take-home I think. Thank you!"

The heraldry class is over; a gaggle of new heralds come through the back door of the barn and immediately get to chattering and distracting everyone in both the wrapping-up spinning class and the starting-up illumination session.

"Alright, well, thank you for your help! I should go see if these folks want paint," Layla says apologetically, and runs off to snag some of the heraldry students and drag them into learning about medieval paints made from rocks and berries.

Iomedae and Jenny are left alone with a table full of half-finished scribal work - tiny pieces of medieval splendor, diligently painted birds and leaves and elegant swirling letters on translucent leathery paper, looking a little out of place on a folding laminated table from Costco. 

Not to Iomedae, who regards folding laminated tables as miraculously works of Azlant. "I can see sword now?"

"Sure. Thanks for giving something else a try."

"Thank you ma'am" and she's off to watch the swordfighting. 

....is anyone here evil? She couldn't do much about it if they were, what with how she's unarmed, but she does check, now that she's looking at noble armored people who might be strong enough a paladin could sense it.

Oh yeah. Lots of Evil. And strong, too.

More evil auras than there are people present, though the locations aren't really matching up. There's Evil in the unoccupied tents and dayshades, and Evil in some of the piles of armour lying by the side of the field. Maybe half the combatants on the field - disproportionately the better ones. It doesn't make sense.

That woman in the Elizabethan gown, the one who everyone is bowing to and keeping a respectful circle around as she moves across the field? Before Iomedae can get a clear count of which aura is which level, that woman walks into the corner of her vision and the power of that aura stuns her.

She doesn't look evil. She's smiling warmly and acknowledging each of the people who approaches her, handing out trinkets and praise. 

Running into an extraordinarily powerful Evil thing is rather like running into an extraordinarily loud noise or an extraordinarily bright light - for a second it's hard to remember that there's anything else in the world. She drops the detecting-evil and turns away and closes her eyes, though that doesn't help at all. Then she realizes she's being an idiot and the evil people might see her and kill her (that being the kind of thing that you probably have to do to get that Evil, that's the kind of evil of a vampire or a fiend.)

She stops, and bends over to cover for the shock by tying her shoe, and then gets worried that's Lying. She doesn't fall of it, in any event. 

Oookay. Evil important noble. Very evil, very important. She's glad she checked, or she will be once her head stops stinging.

There's a parable in the Histories - an obscure one, relegated to a secondary book and not in any sermons Iomedae has ever heard but one Iomedae has always been particularly fond of - about some petty king who was in Iomedae's copy pointedly not named. The parable went that he was terribly impressed with his own might and glory, and with his own goodness, though in fact he was damned, for reasons that became clear later in the parable. 

It is said that the king, having amassed great riches and led Oppara to great victories, and having done the sort of deeds that men do to be good, like building great shrines to good gods and paying for the widows of his men, became convinced that he was the greatest and noblest of kings, that he had built Axis in the Material himself, and no one contradicted him in this, until he went for counsel to the greatest priest in the city, a priest of Abadar who had actually been to Axis. And he asked that priest if he was destined for paradise; and the priest demurred, for he was not (anyone could see it, but it was not the sort of thing one told a King. Tell me of your reign, the priest said: who in Oppara fears you? All my enemies fear me, the King boasted, and my friends fear nothing. And who goes hungry? said the priest. Only the lazy, said the King. 

And then the priest said, if a man in Oppara became wealthier and more successful even than you, would you rejoice, or would you be angry? And the King was angry even at the question, and said that no man would ever surpass him. 

Then, the priest said, your kingdom is not Axis, where no one is hungry, and where no one fears their enemies, and where many people will grow and surpass you, and all witness their growth without envy. The King was angry, and asked how the priest dared insult him so. I dare, said the priest, because your land is not as good as Axis, and all you can do to me is send me there.

The King killed him, of course. 

The commentary that Iomedae read on this parable was mostly about hubris. Arodenites are commanded to hubris. You should try to surpass the gods; Aroden said so over and over. But while the determination to surpass the gods is a virtue, the conviction you've done it already is a grave sin; the man could not comprehend that he did not already have paradise in his grasp, and so lost it entirely. 

There was not a commentary about the thing where Kings will murder you if you annoy them, because this was hardly the kind of thing you need any commentary on, it being extremely obvious. 

 And there was not a commentary on under which circumstances you were supposed to tell a King he was evil and be martyred for it, which in hindsight would have been really useful!

Iomedae watches the woman in the pretty dress and tries to derive the answer from first principles.

Principle number one, it is other things equal better not to die. Aroden didn't do it. You cannot accomplish most other things if you die. You also can't accomplish any other things if you're too afraid to die, which is why paladins are elevated above the mortal emotion of fear, but they're still not supposed to just go riding at the nearest dragon. You should, generally, try to solve problems in a way that gets as few people killed as possible including yourself. And you can only die of one thing so you should probably try quite hard to make it the most important thing around to die of, and not just whichever one presented itself first. 

Principle number two, paladins can never ever lie. Even if it's about a very small thing which isn't at all the thing you wanted to die of. Iomedae has always found it incredibly intuitively obvious why this is true. If the woman in the pretty dress asks, Iomedae definitely has to tell her that she's evil. But the priest in the parable waited until he was directly asked. So that's probably permissible.

Principle number three: ....it is in fact an IMPORTANT FAVOR TO SOMEONE to inform them that they're evil, if they're somehow unaware of this, since it means they will be ETERNALLY TORTURED and they should instead cease their evil ways and make up for them and go to paradise. If she has a way to convince the woman in the pretty dress to stop being evil she is definitely obligated to do that. But not to just insult her, because that won't actually save the woman from Hell and will probably make her more damned for executing a paladin for insulting her.