"I was led to them as I was led to you."

"I have many questions."

"I have disappointingly few answers."

"You work for the government of Cheliax, you say.  In what capacity?"

"I'm not really sure how to describe that... I could say, spy-taker, or hiring assistant, but that doesn't really cover what I do at all.  Conspirator, I'd maybe have said, before..."

"What sounds least false is to say that I'm a student of Law."

"Who commands you?"

"The Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus, Aspexia Rugatonn."

"Directly?"

"There's somebody else above me on the organizational chart, but I actually hired her a few hours ago and she is not the one in charge of this current operation..."

Pilar realizes, with a stab of disorientation that she'll deal with later, that she does not, really, have a well-defined place in Cheliax anymore, except that she still ultimately answers to Church and Crown.

"Your teacher left you, you say.  Who was that?  A cleric of Asmodeus?"

"She was a - priest of Irori, without powers, as I understand it, for a time.  Lawful Evil, to be clear.  She renounced Irori, though, and then -"

"- had to go about other business."  Pilar remembers, barely in time, that Carissa Sevar's defection is a secret.

"Oh, she had come far enough to renounce Irori?  Tell her I congratulated her on that, do you see her again."

"I - don't know if I will.  Congratulate her.  I will probably see her again, one way or another."

"Sometimes you must leave your students if you do wish them to prosper.  If she told you that you must now seek your own Way, I would not cooperate in your attempt to seek another teacher in her place."

"I suppose it's been hinted to me that I'll need to seek my own Way.  But I'm very sure the twenty students need a teacher."

"You're not telling me the whole story."

"I'm trying to figure out which parts to tell, especially when you haven't agreed to teach."

"If all your words were true, I'd fight gods did they stand in my way.  You seem to have no comprehension of what an impossible treasure twenty worthy students would be.  I wonder if any teacher in the history of Golarion has ever had such."

"Who was your teacher?  Name her to me; perhaps she is known to me, if she was also a priest of Irori and likewise Lawful Evil.  There are not that many of us."

Oh.

That makes sense.

The Project just has to find another Lawful Evil cleric of Irori to take over Carissa Sevar's job.  Who says she was special?  Maybe it was just that Lawful Evil priests of Irori are rare in Cheliax, and really any of those will do, for that part of the Project.  Maybe you can get a better Irorian if they're of high circle.

There's something crushingly sad about the thought.  Pilar sets it aside.

And then there drops the other copper coin.

Lawful Evil Irori cleric in Egorian.  Pilar hasn't met them but she knows who that is.

"Sajvara."

"That's more clones of me than I was expecting to have to deal with today."

"I - what?  No!  That wasn't our teacher, I just realized that you're -"

"What a holy mess."  (As a good Asmodean, Pilar of course uses 'holy' rather than 'unholy' as the swear word.)

"Enough of this.  Why do you not speak plainly?"

"Too public of a place and my escort has run out of Silent Table."

"I have that spell myself."  She executes a few gestures, and then casts back her hood.