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"How was school, honey?"
She tries to make the kids' favorite meals on their first day of school, but when she asked Iomedae's favorite meal the girl first stared at her blankly and then after some extended clarifications proposed that they could roast a pig, and she can't actually roast a pig, so dinner is pork chops, and potatoes, and salad from the farmer's market. Iomedae is not a picky eater.
(The girl is in fact clinically obese. The doctor suggested they talk with her about cutting back on junk food, but the social worker said that was a bad idea, with a kid new to care - don't restrict her food access at all, just get her more exercise. So Jenny signed her up for swim lessons at the YMCA and for track and field at school. Iomedae balked at the swimming lessons on the grounds that swimsuits were immodest, and they do actually make hijabi wetsuit things but apparently not in her size. Hopefully track and field she'll actually enjoy.)
"Fast enough to get away from you and your invisible evil magic conspiracy that got my friends and my brother and my goddamn favourite hobby!" she shouts, loudly enough that she'll be heard when the phone is in Iomedae's hand, and also loudly enough to let just a little of the tension and pain and confusion rip from her heart out of her vocal chords, which turns out to be really quite loud.
She is steadily accelerating towards a hundred. If she remembers correctly Aethelmearc is about a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred miles from here if she goes straight northwest on 501 and then... maybe she'll want to get on 64 going west? Regardless, she can be out of Atlantia in under two hours if she steps on it.
He has never had to induct anyone into the secrets of magic under quite these extreme circumstances and he has no idea what to say. Someone smarter than him ought to handle this. Someone better at languages. Preferably someone who does this conversation more regularly than three times ever. But they called him.
He wants to handle things methodically, slowly, one thing at a time. He's not a great thinker, but he's had a lot of experience, and he gets there in the end if he just doesn't stop working. But if he lets Haley wait until he's figured out Iomedae, she's going to do something stupid.
"Haley, we didn't tell you about magic because we didn't think you were quite ready to know - I mean, Isenburn or Layla were going to tell you, if you ended up taking a belt - look, yes, there's secret magic. We don't tell everyone because it's possible to abuse magic in horrible ways, and to gain power through being terrible, so you only get told magic exists if you've proven you're honourable enough to handle it. I swear to you I've only ever tried to use magic for good."
Well if that's true then she has made as many as several very serious mistakes, but luckily for her, it sounds exactly like the kind of lie an evil conspiracy would tell her to get her to come home.
"Fuck you! No! We're going to -" she realises suddenly she should not tell the truth about this- "Meridies!"
"Maybe what you are saying is true," she says to Raoulin, "but if it is not, and we listen, we die, so better to leave, if can leave no hurting any person. Leaving we can change, if we are wrong. Staying, no can change if it was wrong. Yes?" She still has a horrible sinking feeling that she's missing something, unless it's just the horrible sinking feeling of a car at full gallop.
This is reasonable from Iomedae's perspective, he supposes, she's just very confused about the entire situation. He has somewhat less sympathy for Haley's choices.
"There's no circumstance at all under which I would kill you - I mean, unless you tried to kill me first - or you were evil and trying to kill lots of people - look, I'll swear to you on my honour that I have no intention of killing you. If you come back now we might still be able to avoid having to memory-edit some cops, I shouldn't even be discussing this over the phone, and Jenny is frantic and very upset. If you go to Meridies you're going to cause an entire interkingdom incident and then they're just going to send you back. Please pull over."
" - why is talking make the car slower? And is - very important holy warrior rule, to talk, if maybe confused. We for sure maybe confused! They say that they not serving evil and not mean to kill us! They no did kill us, when he catched us first time! Maybe they lie, and we need to go away, but - keep talking maybe help decide if they lie, or if we make a mistake."
"If I get so angry I can't see I'm going to crash the car. We can talk in Aethelmearc -" oh no she shouldn't have said that. She's just feeling so, so overwhelmed. It's simple and easy to pick the side of a possibly-abused foster kid against the system, even simpler and easier to pick her side against an evil magic conspiracy, and suddenly complicated to be driving the getaway car while the evil magic conspiracy tries to convince her that they're actually good. She didn't come this far just to decide everything was fine and hunky-dory all along!
"Also I don't want to say anything else stupid!"
"Look, I don't mind if you want to talk now or later, please at least just don't crash or get pulled over. I really really don't want to edit anyone's memory that I don't have to."
Iomedae hangs up the phone. "Haley. You doed very good. Many people, would no believe a runned away foster child, would be too scared to do things, would no fight, would no make a plan. Many people if an evil magic conspiracy would die. We not die. We away, we safe. God is with us. But God ask us no just be brave, no just be strong, no just be good, also ask us be not strong, when this is the way to win. It may be God ask us now to say 'oh we was wrong', turn around, and that would hurt a lot, and be so scary, but we do it anyway, if it is right."
Well explaining to everyone that she basically kidnapped Iomedae across state lines for no good reason sounds like the single most mortifying and embarrassing thing ever, so she'd really prefer if that was not the case!
Haley clearly isn't going to get away from having to have complicated overwhelming exhausting conversations regardless of whether they're on the phone with Raoulin. She forgot that talking to Iomedae can also be confusing and tiring and difficult.
Reluctantly she takes her foot off the gas and slows down to sixty miles an hour.
"But that doesn't make any sense. They kept secrets from me, and you used your evil detecting power and you said they were evil. Really evil, you said! And your foster parents are abusing you!"
"It doesn't make sense! No things make sense! I am so confused! I want to not do anything cannot fix, when so confused. They really evil - ah, the Queen really evil, Raoulin a bit evil, Katherine a bit evil, and sayed he have an evil magic with him not an evil person. I think he sayed why keep secrets but I did not understand what he sayed. I also not really understand what he sayed about Robert and Jenny?"
"Oh your English is worse than I thought - sorry, that's rude of me - just, okay, I can use really small words if that helps? He said it's illegal, against the law, for them to make you work for no pay. It's slavery. He said they were going to tell me about magic but they didn't. He says only good people can know about magic and apparently I'm..."
" - but none of them good, they evil.... I do not think Robert and Jenny doing a thing against the law? Not against - the law the way it work really, I do not know about the writed down law. People keep saying 'oh in America working for five dollar illegal, working for no money illegal', but these things are doed openly, no one pretend not doing them, no one get in trouble for them. I no understand."
"No they're illegal like - really really illegal. But the cops don't catch everyone because the cops are racist pieces of shit. If someone tried to pay me five dollars a day, or make me work for no pay, they'd go to jail, because I know how to make the right complaints and stuff and I'm white. But the law is supposed to be for everyone - it's supposed to protect you just as much as it protects me - it only doesn't because of shitty people looking the other way."
"That is a good idea! I like that idea! God like that idea! Praise America holy and noble!"
"America is not holy and noble, it's a racist shithole. We're all just stuck here because we don't have the money to move to Norway. But - you get it's against the law to abuse foster kids right?"
"You just sayed that the law is supposed to be the same for everybody even foster childs! It is no so in Taldor. I think it a very good idea.
I do not understand 'abuse' but if it is not allowed no pay me, then a not allowed thing happen, because I no payed since I go to Robert and Jenny."