Well the first thing he's going to do when he lands in a MYSTERIOUS GREEN MIST is cast his Air Bubble.

it’s safe to breathe though, he worked really hard on that part 

It’s already starting to dissipate. 

(The color and sound-resonance-glow effect was only intended to last about thirty seconds. Longer, Lucien said, would have been overdoing it.) 

The sky itself isn't visible yet, but it is visible that there are three different sun-bright light sources, shining through the fog, in completely different parts of the sky. 

There are a lot of running footsteps. There's a general background din of voices - yelling, frantic, someone shouting orders (in a language Blai does not even slightly speak), interspersed with screaming. 

Someone runs right into Blai, hard. He could probably have seen the collision coming, visibility is now up to a meter, but he had a lot of momentum. 

Oof. "Excuse me! Taldane?"

Nope! He's apologizing and also swearing loudly in three different languages but Taldane is not one of them, and he seems to be in a hurry. 

(Where's Rio, he has to find Rio - once the riot-or-whatever-it's-called started, it took approximately three seconds to realize that obviously the kid has never been in a real fight before and he's been on edge for days, those are the worst possible circumstances to be startled in - funny, that, it's the first time he's thinking the word "kid" alongside Rio's use-name, they were born in the same year, but riverfolk grow up faster than fae, and anyway that's not the point, it's not– this was a bad idea, wasn't it, blood and brine it's going to be a whole shitstorm, great thing how he'll be gone down into the River the instant he's sure that all of his friends are, like, still alive...) 

Rio: currently pinned flat on the stone by four of the Summerlands guards. 

(A fifth is half-encased in a block of ice.) 

(He's not one of the ones screaming. He's not making a sound.) 

oh shit

As the fog swirls away in loops and eddies, Blai will see: 

The outlines of a plaza, paved in huge slabs of some unrecognizable stone, ringed with pillars. 

Banners, though most of them are now on the ground. 

Really quite a lot of people, most of them over thataways. Now that it's possible to see more than a meter in front of one's face, the crowd is starting to successfully disperse towards the - well, probably those spirally holes are the exits? 

(There are no suns in the sky. There are three enormous floating crystals, glowing vibrantly.) 

Some of the people do not look entirely human. 

(Rio looks human, right now! Approximately! There's a lot happening, sure, but he can hold his glamour together until a little bit of stress. His father made sure of that.) 

The guy currently pulling out a dagger to, apparently, try to simultaneously fight all four of the people holding the tall pale teenaged boy down, does not look human! He has gills! 

...Some of the crowd are not making their way to the exits. Some of them are down on the stone and not moving. 

Oh, and there's the green-haired man currently mostly inside a block of ice. Also not moving. 

Blai does not have a spell to tell him if people encased in ice are dead yet or not.

This situation is hideously illegible. He doesn't know which of these people are on whose side or what any of them are trying to accomplish, so any actual combat spells he'd better avoid. He could make something way worse by dropping a channel in this mess, too.

Sucks to be him.

He sprints for the concentration of downed people and hits them all with positive energy.

This is a very surprising and confusing turn of events for everyone nearby enough to witness it! 

(It's also a great way to collect, like, four simultaneous life-debts from the people down who would not otherwise have been on track to survive. In case Blai wanted some of those.)

(There is no sensory correlate of this on Blai's end, so he may not be immediately aware that it happened.) 

The guy inside the block of ice wasn't dead, and is now substantially less injured, but is not actually out of the ice and is pretty unhappy about it. 

There are perhaps as many as several things here that Solomon did not think through all the way. Like the part where the fog is disappearing like it was meant to and he's now more or less fully visible, rooted to the spot, in front of all the - but no one actually saw him set off the fog, right, that was the whole reason he set it up with the delayed release (that part alone took a month and was brilliant and he can't ever publish it now, can he, because IF HIS MOTHER FINDS OUT THAT–)

- wait, what? 

What 

Oh there's something interesting happening over there!

It would probably be a wiser idea to, you know, not fly directly toward the person who just ???did some kind of magic he's never seen before??? 

Then again, if Xavier were the sort of person who did thing because they were a wise idea, would he be here, no, he would not. 

A very small man with wings drops out of the sky near where Blai is standing, and stares intently at him. 

What????!!!

- well, nobody's hurt, anymore, apparently, which means that the guards have no excuse to do anything lethally nasty to Rio, and it's not like Marlowe owes the kid, he's not here to rescue him if the only thing at risk is his precious dignity. 

Marlowe drops his dagger on the stones, holds his hands briefly up and open at the guards, and then turns to also stare at the person who– wait, what faction is he even here with, Marlowe has an excellent memory for faces and is pretty sure he's never seen this man before in his life?

Rio also does not recognize this person.

He does know approximately all of the various insignia and iconography of approximately every faction that could possibly be represented here. (His father made sure of that, too.) Is the stranger wearing or carrying any recognizable indication of his house or affiliation? That seems kind of important to know, all of a sudden. 

"Taldane? Chelish? Infernal?" Blai asks without much optimism, mostly at the small guy but everyone else is also welcome to chime in.

Xavier doesn't recognize any of those words! Weird. 

Fine. It's not the first time that he's been faced with a no-shared-languages communication barrier, and it won't be the first time that having the ability to do a magic light show proves to be useful and not just good for one's popularity with the neighbors. 

...How can he depict whatever the heck this man just did with a lightshow, though. That's the tricky bit. It'll take a moment of thought to come up with something good enough - he's not going to do it badly, that would just be an insult to the man - 

The man's garb is mostly deeply uninformative as to his allegiance. He's wearing something on a necklace, though. Rio hasn't quite managed to get a good look at it but he doesn't think it's one he recognizes...

Somewhere nearby:

Two years ago - or, fine, maybe three - Evangeline would have been pretty into the bit where Lucien snatched her up around the waist and hauled her off into the– into what would be a sunset if they were on Earth, but they're not on Earth, so it's just a sort of misty hazy thing on the horizon, probably one of those Summerlands light-source-rain-clouds.  

(Volkov had a theory about it, how the magic worked. That's not important right now. It's a relief to remember that she can be pretty sure Volkov will walk out of here just fine, looking like somebody else...) 

He's not actually here to cater to Evangeline's feelings.

(Not anymore.) 

He was just fairly sure that Evangeline did not, actually, want the entire town of Cedar Hollow to know that she had been standing with the wolves at the moment the butterflies and then the fog went up, and thus blatantly involved in the demonstration. The cute little silk mask wouldn't hold up to real scrutiny. Nobody was scrutinizing the woman in the crowd; that would have changed if she had still been standing where she was when the smoke cleared. It's admittedly a little absurd that she's been going about this whole time with her hair uncovered, one would think that would be an obvious tell, but apparently not. He would be disappointed in them, if he still bothered with disappointment.

- wait. 

Actually, maybe, he would like to stay within earshot of this. Something is about to happen, and - well, everything up until now was rather predictable, though judging by Evangeline's face she is intending to have words with him about it later. But the new thing was not, actually, predictable, or predicted, and Lucien is confused. 

(With vampire senses, staying within earshot does not require stay very close. Lucien and the woman in his arms are long out of sight.) 

Okay, here goes! What if he shows the strange man this, and then tries to make it extremely clear with his gestures and facial expressions that he has no idea what the fuck and has never seen anything like this before and has so, so, so very many questions. 

(Xavier is a performer, and not an inexperienced one; the Summerlands embassy would hardly have picked him out for this if he didn't know what he was doing. He can make his gestures and expressions very evocative.) 

So, uh. Yeah. Never seen this shit before. Didn't think you could even do that, with magic, surely the good doctor would know, so – what the fuck? Questions?? So many questions????

(Maybe he's overdoing it on making the man look heroic in the lightshow depiction? Xavier is not unaware that good art calls for subtlety, sometimes. He's in more of a hurry than usual, though.)

"........Iomedae?" suggests Blai, tapping his holy symbol. Is that much sparkle the artistic convention for illusion shows here -

...He doesn't know that one. 

(The man is from Earth, presumably, and human or close enough, what with how he is apparently completely unaware of the multiple life-debts hanging onto him right now. Rio is not even party to any of them and it's still incredibly distracting!) 

Xavier also doesn't know that one! And he's had reason to memorize, not just all of the current house insignia and signs, but also the ones that died out decades or centuries ago. Sometimes they show up in theatre pieces. It's kind of debatably Summerlands-y, it's got the whole lightburst thing going on, maybe it's representational - no, he's never seen a sky-light, or come to think of it any other kind of light, that looked like that - there's a sword in the middle! That's not how lights work!

...He did catch the syllables that the man just said. He doesn't recognize them but he can repeat them, very carefully, almost perfectly imitating the man's accent. "Iomedae." Are facial expressions sufficient to convey that he heard it just fine and just actually has no idea whose house or court or land or whatever that is? 

(The fog is almost entirely gone, now, and so is the crowd, and uhhhh probably Solomon should take this opportunity to find the ability to move again and scuttle off with the stragglers. ...He's still pretty sure that no one's put together that he did the fog. It's actually almost disappointing, somehow, but maybe it's not too late to be home in the basement before his mother has reason to go knocking on the door–) 

As much as Marlowe enjoys watching the butterfly boy do his lightshows, there's no longer any good reason for him to be here - the guards aren't going to hurt the Winter lordling now that the guy he iced has mostly extracted himself from said block, with no remaining injuries except to his dignity - and Marlowe he should really at this point be telling someone about this shit.

Dad's long gone, almost certainly, he would've bugged out the moment anything out of the ordinary happened. It's not that he's a coward. It's that being the River Lord is an important responsibility - and he should know, Dad will not shut up about it - and if anything were to happen to Erasmus Marlowe (as he puts his name down on the human-world papers) then someone else would have to take the job, and drowned gods forbid. 

Call the River to directly under where he's standing, and begone from here? 

(He really hopes the wolves aren't going to be a problem. But either way, it's not his problem anymore.) 

(If the guards were less distracted - and definitely if Marlowe were still going at people with a dagger - then they would certainly not just let him call the River and flee the scene. But they are distracted, and the riverfolk boy has just been standing there ever since he dropped his dagger on the stones, and it does not actually seem worth it to restart a fight that has, apparently, stopped.) 

He needs information. He's heard one word - well, four syllables, it's a guess that it's a single word - out of the man's mouth, and it's not a word he knows, and he has so little to go on.

Come on, stranger from a faraway place. Say something. Do something. Lucien doesn't care what, he just needs literally anything to go on here. 

Maybe three years ago the whole snatch-and-run thing would've been hot, but Evangeline is pretty sure that at no point in her life would she ever have been into the part where Lucien has now stopped midway up a ridge, right smack in the middle of one of the mobile light-up rainclouds, and is holding perfectly still and not even slightly offering her any explanation. 

(Yeah, she's mad at him, and it's mostly not about the grab-and-flee-the-scene thing, but the rest hurts to think about.) 

Nobody here has a plan, do they. 

Volkov, to be clear, also doesn't have a plan, not since plan: distract guards from the werewolves fell apart due to the guards, instead, being distracted by a stranger from - 

- another world. 

He's not sure of it. He doesn't trust it. But he knows magic, if he knows anything, and - that isn't from here. That isn't from anywhere he knows. 

(The werewolves do appreciate the distraction, whatever its source. And they haven't been a problem, thank you very much. The problem was - well, Jack didn't catch all of it, in the stinking fog, but it sure seems like a big chunk of it was his Lordship losing his– you can't really say 'losing his cool' about a Frost Dancer, but, you know. Losing it. It wouldn't be so funny if the guard were really hurt– okay, fine, it would still be hilarious...) 

...It's so very deeply unclear what's happening right now, the plaza guards are very confused, but - this man did turn up with awfully convenient timing. Ergo, maybe it was all part of the demonstrators' plan. Which would imply that the man was a co-conspirator, and thus should be detained along with everyone else who is both obviously involved and still on the premises?

Does Blai want to resist being detained by half a dozen armed guards? 

(They're not incredibly sure yet where to take the prisoners. Holding them on Summerlands ground - specifically, holding a Winterlands noble kid on Summerlands ground - will cause problems, and honestly today has already contained enough problems. They'll figure something out, though.) 

He will go quietly with the guards! They're uniformed and were not obviously doing anything escalatory when he arrived!

.....He did not really think this through, did he. 

Nobody is having a good day today, okay? They’re not happy either. 

…Maybe the Threshold Guardian can be persuaded to step in, this one time. At the very least, nobody can possibly complain that the Earth-side crossing town is insufficiently neutral. 

It’s going to be a long walk. 

This is the worst day of his life but it would be undignified to show any sign of that on his face.

They leave the stone plaza and the scenery: is weird. Really, really weird. They walk through something like a valley, where the land curves up and around like a bowl. There are floating islands in the sky, connected by rope bridges. One has a waterfall with no obvious water source. A little further along, they cross a brook that flows uphill. The path is mostly well-lit, but there continues to be no sun, just fluffy glowing clouds here, shimmering golden rain there, over here some vast floating luminous globes harnessed in rope nets and anchored to a tree. 

It’s REALLY HOT but guess what would be undignified to show the slightest sign of discomfort about. 

From Blai’s perspective it’s a perfectly pleasant balmy-summer-day temperature.

The gravity in this place is not normal. There’s something very odd going on with the scale of the landscape. For a while there’s no sky at all, only a black membrane that hangs barely a meter over their heads, almost close enough to touch.

What plane is this - the maelstrom surely doesn't have uniformed guards? - nobody is animals and angels have truespeech - this is probably a weird demiplane.

"I think you owe me an explanation." 

"Trust me, I am precisely as eager for an explanation as you are. The man spoke one word, in a language I do not recognize, and then went quietly. As to the rest, you know as much as I do." 

"Fuck off, Lucien. Are we finished? I'm going back to–"

She's very angry. Lucien...hadn't quite seen that coming, actually. 

"It would be unwise to return to the meeting-place," he says. 

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you think I was asking your advice? Did I stutter? I said, fuck. off. And we are finished." 

Storming off into a golden rainstorm isn't quite as satisfying as slamming a door. 

Nobody died, he doesn't call after her, because all it would accomplish is drawing attention to the fact that he was expecting deaths, and she - apparently, somehow - wasn't. 

She's very young. It's easy to forget that part. 

Lucien doesn't go after her. He leaps back down to the road and keeps walking, instead. A vampire's hearing is good enough that he can follow from half a mile back and still hear just fine if the party heading for the crossing cares to have any informative discussions. 

They don't care to, apparently. Walk walk walk. He could be at the crossing in five minutes if they let him fly but they're not going to do that, are they. This is boooooring. He can't talk to the mysterious stranger because they don't seem to have any languages in common, and he's not inclined to talk to anyone else. If this walk lasts much longer then he might actually be able to say with a straight face to his parents that he regrets involving himself in politics. If they ask. They probably won't disown him without ever having a conversation again but he's not actually sure of that. 

They trek up a ridge, past a very physically-impossible sort of many-tiered reverse waterfall, and the trees are very small - it's the weird scale effect again - but recognizably cedars. The path winds into them, and they follow it and shrink, or the landscape grows, and the trees are normal-sized, and then there are two birches and something about the air between them is odd and - 

- it's not actually dusk, on the Earth side of the crossing, so they might be here for a while until it's open for passage. 

Oh, did they not bring anyone who can– he probably shouldn't, his grandfather would say that he's already shown them too much of what he can do, but it's really hot and he doesn't have any sugar with him and he isn't actually sure how long he can stand this before something undignified happens. 

Fine. Hands up, the old courier-way gestures, vertical blade of light slicing between the two trees and then it's open and can they go across now please. 

Oh wow the stuck-up Winter boy has moves other than ice after all. 

...They can cross, sure. 

It doesn't feel like much. It feels more like the opposite of something, really, a sudden absence in the air. They're in what looks like a completely normal forest, with a normal night sky, moon and stars and everything, and the path runs down to a paved road under a lamp-post, and there are buildings in the distance. 

Maybe that was... the First World...? Arguably a plane where he landed mid-riot is already a location where he should have had his guard up to maximum but a forest is certainly also such a place. Not that he can do a lot about it if something attacks, while cuffed.

Nothing scary jumps out of the forest at them. They reach the road, and - clearly someone got word ahead of them, because there's a blue-and-white RCMP police van parked less than fifty yards thataways, and someone at the wheel who brings the engines and the headlights up as soon as he spots them. The van noses its way to them and stops, and the door opens, and a Mountie gets out. 

Corporal Danby has been the RCMP officer in charge of the Cedar Hollow detachment for over a decade. So, yes, he's seen the weird stuff. It is, however, a first to see a fae walk through with visible wings. They normally glamour up for the Earth side, can't tell them apart from the regular folks. 

He doesn't do a double take. "Need a ride?" he says. 

(Rio has his face on properly and has the whole time and it's honestly kind of embarrassing how the artist guy is just, like, not even putting the slightest effort in?) 

(He's putting in the effort to show them a plausible human skin tone, okay, he could be putting in so much less effort than this. He likes his wings. Deal with it.) 

The guards decline the offer of a ride, politely. Danby sighs, and asks again, and is politely declined a second time, and manages not to roll his eyes and asks a third time and is accepted. Prisoners go in the van? 

Well, sure, if they insist.

It's approximately a three-minute drive. There isn't all that much Cedar Hollow.

Here's the jailhouse. Earl is already there, rousted out of bed with a phone call and unhappy about it.

Danby isn't particularly happy about the situation either. He's going to have to come up with something to put on the paperwork. "Starting a riot" is in the criminal code, that's not the issue, the issue is that it's deeply unclear why anyone thinks that Cedar Hollow could conceivably have jurisdiction, and also that almost certainly none of these people even exist according to the government of British Columbia.

He could put them down for vagrancy, that's the classic option if you need to hold someone for a bit and don't have a better excuse, but - well, there's fudging the paperwork, which is unavoidable in this posting, and then there's wildly making shit up for convenience and it's not the same and he would like to think he's better than that.

There's the usual case to be made that they're breaking Canada's immigration law by having, technically, entered at a point that isn't a port of entry, but he's definitely not going there.

He could just skip the paperwork entirely, but this is a political matter, and someone might have questions later, and he would prefer to have something to back up his answers.

Also they only debatably have three cells. Two upstairs, the small one and the drunk tank, and then the basement, not that they've used the iron ring down there in approximately a decade. 

...Can he get some information about who these people are and what they actually did? More specifically than "starting a riot at the treaty negotiations"? Not for the paperwork, just because he'd prefer to know what he's agreeing to take on, here. 

misery misery misery misery misery don't mind him he's just here looking convincingly human (except for the being seven feet tall, the eye can gloss over that when he's outdoors but in a building not so much) and having the worst day of his life and why do the humans keep their buildings so hot but he's not going to show a sign of any of that on his face. 

He's never seen the inside of the jailhouse before! Maybe this next bit won't be boring. 

...The guards can report that this one tried to kill someone - might have succeeded, too, if not for the other thing they'll get to in a moment - and the one with the wings was not observed doing any violence, but was definitely an instigator, probably a thousand people could testify that they saw him set the whole thing off. And this man, they're not really sure? Probably human, no indications to the contrary. Probably a sorcerer, what with how he did some flashy magic that no one recognized. ...Didn't hurt anyone. To be clear. The weird sorcerer magic healed a lot of injured people. Has he heard of that being a thing, by any chance. It's news to them that sorcerers come like that. 

WHY IS THIS HIS LIFE RIGHT NOW

No. Corporal Danby is not an expert on sorcerers, and actually it's news to him that a sorcerer being able to heal people is supposed to be weird. ...He's not a Compact healer, right?

(Probably the Summerlands treaty-negotiation guards would not be stupid enough to arrest a Compact healer?? right??? He really wishes he could be more sure of that than 'probably'.) 

The guards are not really sure of much about this man. He doesn't seem to speak any languages they speak. ...Incidentally, is 'Iomedae' an Earth country? Because that's the one thing he's said about his allegiance. 

Corporal Danby is pretty sure that's not an Earth country. 

(He's so tired right now.) 

...Whatever. Fingerprint them, get names for the sheet - he writes "Ayomaday" on the sheet for sorcerer-healer rather than navigate the language barrier, whatever - ice guy gives a whole list of use-names, wow he's really not used to that, whatever he'll just put "Rio" on the sheet - wings guy gives one name like normal - and then cells. Ice guy can get the solo cell, healer-sorcerer and wings guy can share the drunk tank for now. 

(Danby is starting to have a bad feeling that these aren't going to be the last treaty-riot prisoners brought to his jailhouse for unclear reasons. None of the three seem like even vaguely plausible candidates for the ringleaders. He might want the basement free later.) 

Aww, roommates! Blai gets a sunny smile. 

...The lights in here are terrible, like almost painfully bad, and the long walk was the worst kind of tiring - no sprinting, no resting, just slog slog slog slog slog - and he should probably have eaten something a while ago but he doesn't actually have any food on him, not even sugar, he left the pouch under the risers because it messes with his silhouette.

This is not by itself enough to count as a bad day, yet, Xavier doesn't believe in having bad days if it can possibly be avoided, but give it a few more hours like this and it might get there. 

...The ceiling in his cell is just barely too low to let him stand fully upright. Maybe that makes it no longer undignified to sit down? It's not like scrunching himself in is especially dignified. ...Maybe not. Maybe sitting down will just make everyone think he's tired from the walk and, to be clear, he's tired from the walk, but he's not about to let them see that... 

He stands. Scrunched. 

(You are definitely required to feed people you're holding in jail, but Earl didn't wake his wife when he got the call and she's the one who does meals, and also the meals have to be billed, unless Danby decides to pay out of his own pocket, and he is still so very unclear on what he's supposed to send back to Victoria about all of this. Eh. They'll get breakfast in the morning.) 

---

Dr. Blackwood wasn't at the meeting. There had been an invitation, of course. An invitation wasn't a mandatory summons. There had been enough meetings for a lifetime, back when. 

It had therefore been a surprise, and an unpleasant one, when the urgent summons did arrive. Riot at the plaza, or something, the description of the events wasn't all that clear. There was fog? For some reason? And injuries, some critical. Compact healer requested, urgently. 

They went, obviously, and then it was a different flavor of surprise altogether to arrive and find no critical injuries after all. Minor injuries, sure, no shortage of those, they'd crammed ten thousand people in for the - for whatever it was they had scheduled for today, it's not as though Dr. Blackwood had any obligation to stay up to date on the agenda and so they weren't - and ten thousand people abruptly trying to flee an area while unable to see where they're going has predictable consequences. 

The scrapes and sprains were not, at that point, among Dr. Blackwood's top ten concerns. The first several items on that list were variants on 'what happened, who did what, how'. 

The reports were confusing, but it was eventually possible to establish that the man in question had been detained along with two others (implication: mostly that the three of them were the ones who held still long enough to be convenient scapegoats for this whole mess) and that they were en route to, for some bizarre reason, the crossing to the Canadian mountain village. 

With a Frost Dancer. In June. Because apparently everyone involved in this entire mess was an idiot. And they had a winged one - Light Weaver, probably, from the description - and of course they wouldn't have the faintest idea about anything for that either. Those two things were plenty of an excuse to hurry to the crossing. 

Once Dr. Blackwood was out of sight of any curious eyes, they hurried. 

One o'clock in the morning, by human clocks. Ninety minutes to go until nautical dawn, the earliest possible point at which the usual crossing will be soft.

Too long. Up to the falls, then, the midair crossing that's terribly inconvenient for most people (Dr. Blackwood is not most people), landing beside the creek, and then to the jailhouse. 

"Show me the prisoners." 

(You know what would be lovely? Not being lectured in the middle of the night by the mildly alarming Compact doctor. Danby certainly wasn't the one who called for them!) 

...He can show Dr. Blackwood to the prisoners. 

Frost Dancer in the small cell. 

"Not at maturity," Dr. Blackwood says sharply. "I would put him at twenty-six, twenty-seven - for them, that is equivalent to fourteen, fifteen, for your people. His tolerances will be lower. He needs a colder room. Now. Must I repeat myself." 

...If the room was a problem, the guy could perhaps maybe have said something??? Or the guards could have mentioned? Danby really doesn't feel like this one is on him. 

"We don't exactly have climate control in here." Pause. "Doctor." 

Sigh. "Fill a washtub with ice. Put it in the cell with him. Do I need to repeat myself." 

Where is he supposed to get ice, exactly, it's one o'clock in the fucking morning, the store's closed–

...He'll have Earl go wake Elizabeth after all. They must have a freezer, or if not the neighbors will. "Yes, Doctor." 

"And get him sugar. Cold." 

Why is that– whatever. Elizabeth can bother the neighbors for a tub of ice cream too, while they're at it. "Anything else, Doctor?" 

Handwave at the other cell. "Light Weaver. They photosynthesize, you know. A lichen symbiote. Your lights are inadequate, but it will not be so long until dawn, and I see you had the good sense to put him in the cell with a window."

(Dr. Blackwood is pretty sure this was by accident, but still.)

"And the other man. Has he explained himself." 

"...Uh, he doesn't speak English. Or French. Or anything they speak over in the Summerlands, apparently. Have you heard of, uh, a place called Ayomaday?" 

"No. - give me the keys to your van." 

?????????

"...Yes, Doctor." Keys. No questions. 

Dr. Blackwood takes the keys without looking. Their eyes are occupied with staring intently at Blai in the drunk tank. 

...The man has some fascinating belongings that Dr. Blackwood would very much like a closer look at later, but he's not currently doing any impossible healing sorcery. 

"Expect me back in twenty minutes with your ice." And they're gone. 

- wait, is he - what - is he still supposed to be sending Earl to wake his wife or is Dr. Blackwood taking care of– probably better safe than sorry.

Danby will go tell Earl the bad news. 

That was the most abjectly humiliating two minutes of Rio's entire life but, like, probably at this point it's not going to make anything worse if he sits down. 

Awwwww he's embarrassed. Cute??? 

...Xavier is really tired, actually. The stone floor isn't exactly inviting but it's reaching the point where becoming horizontal isn't really a choice.

He lies down on his stomach on the stone. 

What is he DOING and WHY, it's giving Rio SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT 

Dr. Blackwood is back in fourteen minutes. With a washtub full of ice, and an impatient gesture for Danby. 

Did he literally break into someone's house to raid a freezer???? 

...The cell can be unlocked long enough to insert the washtub. "Liz is on her way. She didn't have ice cream, but she's bringing blueberries. Frozen ones, I mean, she says about a pound. She'd like to expense it. They're not cheap to get out here, you know." 

"Your expense policy is your own problem, not mine." 

Dr. Blackwood will go back to hovering and staring intently at Blai through the bars. 

Blai doesn't understand what's going on! This jail does not seem to have been expecting fae (he's now pretty sure they're weird fae) but neither do they seem particularly petrified about having been presented with some anyway. Blai does not know what Staring Person Who Bosses Them Around And Brings Lots Of Ice is and furthermore cannot tell their gender which makes him anxious, which is stupid, since he can't talk to them, but he will be able to communicate after dawn and still won't know what they are. He is willing to sit down in a jail cell but is not planning to fall asleep in a room with a fairy who keeps smiling at him and is mostly just avoiding eye contact about that. Is he still cuffed? He's not going to be able to cast any translation spells in the morning cuffed. He doesn't know anyone around here to feed him while he's in jail so he's going to keep the Create Food but he won't be able to cast that either. They didn't seem to recognize Iomedae but hopefully the humans, if not the fae, recognize that he's a cleric and will not interrupt him at dawn unless they specifically mean to prevent him from preparing spells? Why is this person staring at him. Is a cleric who came quietly really more interesting than an ice fairy and a fairy with wings. Is this a man or a woman or a species that doesn't have those things like, uhhh, arbiter inevitables. The person is not a flying metal basketball and Blai is stupid for making this comparison. AAaaaaugh where is he. Iomedae here is a sitrep, again, if this is getting to be too many sitreps he apologizes.

Yes! Unheard-of sorcery that heals over a dozen people of serious injuries in an instant, at range, is enormously more interesting than the hundredth time Dr. Blackwood has seen a mildly heat-stressed Frost Dancer. Not that staring at the man is doing much to provide an explanation. 

He sits stiffly as close to the tub of ice as he can. 

Corporal Danby is, to be clear, really quite stressed! 

He has three men in his tiny jail with no Canadian documents and nothing he can afford to put on the record for why, exactly, he’s holding them. Much as he would like to, he can’t send them back with the guards who delivered them, that might start a war or something, but if he mishandles this badly enough then that might also start a war. Also, his town is full of werewolves - he’s not talking about the local packs, the local packs are mostly lovely people, but the packless drifters, the ones who came from all over the continent this summer. And of course the vampire houses are all here, for the invitation, and that’s not a great combination. And if he sees one more fucking manifesto around town he’s going to be tempted to start setting shit on fire. 

What he’s not particularly stressed about is the current crop of prisoners causing any problems. They were, fairly clearly, the people who let themselves be arrested, which means they’ll probably behave themselves long enough for someone with authority to show up with a plan.

(Fae just aren’t very stressful. Probably 10% of the town’s actual population - distinct from its census population, of course - is refugees from the Summerlands, or rather from places that were in the Summerlands until they weren’t, anymore. They keep to themselves. When he gets a call about a bar fight, it’s never fae being the problem. Sure, once in a while they’ll have very polite duels, but at least they don’t do it in the grocery store.) 

He’s pretty sure that the real problems are still ahead.

He paces. 

Elizabeth arrives with Earl at one-thirty in the morning with more ice and frozen blueberries and - since she’s awake anyway - some breakfasts for the other two as well. 

Prisoners can be uncuffed to eat. And maybe left that way, if they’re cooperative and don’t make it a problem. 

Elizabeth smiles kindly at the Winterlands kid while she frees his hands and gives him a mixing bowl of frozen blueberries. Apparently he hurt someone badly in the riot, but it's hard to find him particularly alarming when he's sitting there being obviously petrified about the enormous amount of trouble he's about to be in with his parents. (She raised four boys. She can recognize the look.) 

He picks at his frozen blueberries and doesn't meet anyone's eyes. 

And sandwiches for the other two? 

Blai also gets a warm smile. Earl's explanation had a lot of holes, but it's not obvious to her if this poor man even committed any crimes, as opposed to having the bad luck to exist near them and then draw attention to himself by saving some people's lives. 

Gosh, they're feeding him. It's tempting to be like, no need, I prepared a Create Food, but "will uncuff a prisoner to eat" does not necessarily mean "will let a ten minute casting time go by uninterrupted". He provides a brief communicative smile in lieu of words and eats the sandwich.

"...That's not even food. I can't eat that." There are perhaps more polite ways to express this, but if he just says 'no, thank you' then the human will just think she's supposed to be asking him three times and he's really not in the mood. 

"Oh dear. The grocery store opens at six?"

If there's no edible food then he's just going to go to sleep on the floor until the sun is up. 

That doesn't look very comfortable but she's not going to wake him to offer him a blanket, then it'll just be a whole thing. She relocks the cell. She lets them be. 

Corporal Danby has some phone calls to make. 

The situation does not make an enormous amount of sense. It makes less rather than more sense the longer Dr. Blackwood spends staring at it. One of these people is not like the others.

It’s going to be fucking Stillwater all over again. It was doomed from the beginning, really, as soon as someone made the idiotic decision to host the negotiations on factional territory. It would literally have been a better idea to host here, the town at the crossing, but did anyone think of that, no, not until they had a mess that would embarrass everyone if it happened on their land. 

They are not, in fact, learning anything further by staring at the puzzle, and diplomacy calls. A Compact healer can go anywhere, this particular Compact healer (sigh) has ways to cover ground fast, and someone had better carry some messages before the story gets too garbled in the retelling and someone picks a fight over something that didn’t even happen.

“I will return at sunrise.” And they’re out. 

It’s nearly the summer solstice and they’re a long way north. Sunrise will land around 4 am, local time, three hours or so after their arrival at the jail. 

Blai was not even confident that whatever plane they're on had a sunrise. He feels it more than sees it and then he promptly drops to his knees in an out of the way corner of the cell to give approximately the same sitrep he gave five minutes ago but now with at least slightly more feedback that he is definitely still a cleric and has not somehow managed to fall for any of his shortcomings recently. He will... drop the Create Food? They seem to have that covered and if he's mistaken the sandwich will hold him till the next day. Though he does have to mull on what he wants instead - Remove Curse maybe? Is anybody cursed? This seems like the sort of situation in which it might turn out somebody's cursed and if it's not he can turn it into a Cure and there is no known prior art on just failing to fill up one's slots being helpful to balancing the budget at all so that's what he'll do. Share Language x2. It was warm and not obviously daytime in the other plane, and warm and definitely not daytime in this one, so he will keep the Endure, though it's not too hot indoors and he has not gone through the rigamarole of removing his armor. (They didn't even take his weapon??) He'll keep one of the second circle Oh Shit spells... which one though... does Hold Person work on fae if that comes up?... it doesn't, does it. Burst of Radiance as the Oh Shit spell. Drop Spark for Stabilize. Re-up the Air Bubble, he knows this is prepping for yesterday's emergency but maybe weird fogs are very common here. Drop the Forbid Action and the Ant Haul for a couple Comp Lang, though...

…okay this is actually miserable. Behold how compellingly regretful Xavier can be after three hours of lying on a really uncomfortable stone floor under awful lights. 

There's a window, but it's high up and the angle is completely wrong to get any direct sunlight. He drags himself to the brightest patch of floor and looks forlornly out at the sky. 

How is he so embarrassing 

...Huh, their weird sorcerer is religious, apparently. Danby will will leave him to it. 

(And, yes, leave him his weapons. You're generally better off, with practitioners, if you leave them an option to defend themselves without using magic, and avoid making them feel too threatened. And when it's not even clear if you have the legal right to imprison someone at all, you're better off sticking with whatever decisions you inherited from the last folks, and the Summerlands guard left the guy his armor and weapon.) 

4:30 am finds him on the phone, again, and not happy about it.

"The Cartwright boy? Are you sure?" 

     "Just about. Mr. Davies called in the tip. Said he let Solomon borrow the chem lab in the high school to test some project of his." 

"Dear God. Does his mother know yet?" 

     "You know she doesn't get out much these days." 

Sometimes Danby really, really hates this job. "And we think he came home last night? Suppose I'd better wake the constable sooner rather than later, send a car over before he's up." Sigh. Such a sigh. "At least this one has a Canadian passport." 

Dr. Blackwood sweeps in from the back tea room. (There is not, actually, any kind of entrance to the building on that side. The tea room doesn't even have a window.) 

"Which one has a Canadian passport?" 

AUGH do they have to do that. "Dr. Solomon Cartwright. Circumstantial evidence the fog was his chemistry project." 

"Alchemy, not chemistry. Your Light Weaver is hypoglycemic." 

Conversations with Dr. Blackwood are way too frequently reminiscent of tripping on the stairs.

"Look, we tried getting him something to eat. He said a sandwich 'wasn't food'." 

"I expect he can eat table sugar. - granulated, white, brown sugar might be too suspicious." And then he'll be bouncing off the walls, Light Weavers kind of only have two speeds, but that's still better than his people arriving to find him like he is now. "Any good housewife should have that at home." 

"...I'll send Elizabeth back for, uh, table sugar. Doctor." 

"You know," Dr Blackwood says conversationally, "the Cartwright boy could kill everyone in this building with three reagents he keeps on his person. I would be careful to avoid leaving him the temptation to do something stupid." 

That's 

uh

but it's Solomon, Danby doesn't say. "I'm grateful for the warning. Doctor." 

He's not looking forward to having to explain to Mrs. Cartwright that her only son is being taken into custody on charges of– he's still not sure what he can put on the information sheet, the riot didn't happen in Canada and that's not exactly easy to explain to Victoria when you're ostensibly in a landlocked mountain town a fourteen-hour drive from the nearest border. But he'd better figure out something, because the Summerlands folks arrested one of theirs and it wouldn't be a good look at all for Cedar Hollow to agree to act as a neutral party, and then blatantly not even be trying to hold their own accountable. 

Well. No point in putting it off. He'll accompany Constable Pruden to arrest the Cartwright boy, and hopefully there won't be any explosions involved. 

When Blai finishes praying, the person of indeterminate gender in the coat and hat is back, in a chair pulled up near the bars of his shared cell, watching him. 

Xavier is eating granulated white sugar out of a bowl with a spoon, and vibrating with the effort of holding still and keeping his mouth shut out of courtesy to his cellmate. The man looked like he was very occupied with something.

He rises from his knees. ...is that fairy eating salt? That can't possibly be right but what else looks like that? Well. He is not sure the fairy is who he should spend a Share on, and that question certainly doesn't inveigh in favor, it's not important. Who does he spend a share on - no one has tried talking to him and he can hardly blame them for giving up, and no one is mid conversation right now or he'd spend a Comp Lang to eavesdrop.

Oh he's done. Finally. There's still not much possibility of conversation but at least Xavier can hum and pace and sort of bounce a bit, it's not the same as flying but it helps. 

Dr. Blackwood has a little more background on the whole leadup to this mess, now. 

The stranger wasn't with the demonstration.

No one has ever seen the man in Cedar Hollow, before, and it did not actually take long to establish that, almost certainly, everyone involved in the demonstration had met either at the old bookshop or the Moonrise Café.

Not all of them under known identities. There were masks, apparently. "It's a treaty re-negotiation year, and people are meeting Earth-side of a crossing in masks to write political manifestos about how Earth is insufficiently taken seriously" should, itself, perhaps have been taken more seriously as a harbinger of, well, problems. 

(It's been a long time coming. Sixty-eight years ago, when the last treaty was signed, one could already have noticed the trend. Nobody knows how many people live on the Other Side, but whatever the numbers, they're half or less of what they were in the year Dr. Blackwood was born. The Earth-side population, on the other hand, is nearly three times what it was, and - the world is changing in more ways than just that. Even the Summerlands are importing more from Earth than they're exporting, now.) 

...But, anyway, there is at this time no reason to think that the maybe-sorcerer came in with the idiotic children - and some old enough to know better - who arranged that little show. 

Which leaves Dr. Blackwood with a different set of questions, about who exactly did send the man, and why now. 

The language barrier is a puzzle. But Dr. Blackwood has been sitting around waiting for a full thirty minutes, and the good corporal was able to provide a sharpened pencils and some unused forms, blank on the back. Dr. Blackwood learned to draw anatomy long before photocopier was invented. They're capable with a pencil. 

Dr. Blackwood has four high-priority questions: 

- How, exactly, did the man reach the plaza in the first place. 

- Who or what or where is "Ayomeday". 

- How limited is the healing, and when and how often could he do it some more. 

- What the fuck was he thinking by doing all of that without the token of the healers' Compact. It could be interpreted almost as a hostile act, showing up on one faction's ground under the insignia of a different faction nobody even recognizes, and saving some people's lives without asking and without the neutrality of a healer standing between you and them. Plenty of people will assume the man wanted to collect them. Dr. Blackwood...is not making any assumptions, yet. 

And now the man seems to be finished with his prayers. Excellent timing. Dr. Blackwood drew some pictures for him. They're quite detailed. 

Are any of these a reasonable depiction of his method of transport? 

........item II is not completely ridiculous as a depiction of the snake that ate him? He guesses? Maybe? It would have to be a front view and it does not show any of the snake at all. The snake could have posed like that but it would not be a natural pose for it, probably, and it is not an informative pose to draw. .......maybe he can have the pencil and paper? And draw the rest of the snake?

...Sure, pencil and paper can go through the bars. 

The next question, in drawn form, is hanging loosely in Dr. Blackwood's other hand. Is "Ayomeday" and the insignia meant to represent something more like a ruler, more like a house, more like a country or region, or more like a vocation or calling akin to the healers' Compact (except, apparently, MISSING HALF OF THE USEFUL PARTS.) 

Well, that question is easier to answer but the answer is "all of the above". Maybe not the building one? He could be misunderstanding any of these actually. If they don’t know Iomedae he can hardly complain that she should be depicted in armor but is that supposed to be a queen rather than a goddess? .......He’s going to finish drawing the snake tail and show it to the person of indistinct gender in case this gets him forwarded directly to the Department of Plane Shift Snake Refugees while this person mutters that they can’t believe they forgot about those. When that doesn’t happen, that’s what Share Language is for.

(Dr. Blackwood frowns faintly at the snake drawing. It doesn't seem to be familiar to them.) 

...What 

Well, it answers some questions. Or rules out some answers, one of those. 

Because Dr. Blackwood knows the magic of the Other Side as well as anyone, and whatever the man just did, isn't.

And Dr. Blackwood knows the magic of Earth as well as anyone, and it isn't that either. 

"You are an Outsider?" Dr. Blackwood says, in the language that they did not speak ten seconds ago. (And it feels like they said something significantly more specific than they meant to, just then, the language magic glomming onto a concept that only half matches...) 

"....I am from the Material Plane within Creation."

As opposed to the plane not made of materials?? How would that work?

"You arrived before to - we call it the 'Other' 'Side'," both words in the phrase can be translated literally but Dr. Blackwood has a feeling that the phrase isn't hanging together like it would in English. "Which is a plane where objects are made of materials but I suspect that is not the thing you meant. You are currently on -" Does 'Earth' translate with the language magic? 

There is not a proper noun for that in the idiolect Dr. Blackwood has been granted.

Just the syllable of it without translation, then. "'Earth' is a planet with a sun and moon, not a plane– no, in this language I think 'plane' might include the kind of place it is in? But one that is extremely large and mostly void. - The planet is still made of materials, there are just very large gaps." 

It's always seemed like such an inefficient use of space to Dr. Blackwood. The humans write stories about traveling to the stars in their sky, but there's so much emptiness, and no shortcuts, it would take centuries. And humans have such short lives. It's not a very practical idea. 

"I am also from a planet. It's called Golarion. We use the word 'outsider' to refer to beings from other planes, which I think tend not to have planets in them though I couldn't swear to it."

This conversation has a very high information density and yet still feels like it's not keeping up with the newly-introduced confusion. 

"Ah. The word in our language is less specific than that. Is Golarion known to be linked by - snake portal crossings, to -"

Actually, does 'Faerie' translate into the other language, it's not really the politically correct term in English anymore but another planet would have its own conventions. 

"No. I've never heard of that kind of monster before in my life."

Yes, there are words for faeries and their locations in Chelish.

"It is possible that what we call the Other Side, your language calls Faerie. I have not heard of crossing-points to planets other than Earth, but," a small snort, "I do not know literally everything. ...I am gathering that perhaps you did not intend to enter the warm lands as an emissary of Iomedae in order to intervene in the treaty negotiations? Your timing was - convenient." 

"I was on my way cross-country, encountered the monster, failed to kill it before it - passed me through its face. I do not know what its motives if it had any may have been but I had no intentions regarding anything I landed on. I didn't have any context on where I landed at all."

It's such convenient timing. But it doesn't seem as though it's going to help, really, to be blatantly suspicious to the man's face. That's not the winning strategy for getting answers about the healing. And apparently the not-actually-Outsider-magic doesn't stop at 'healing'. 

Also, the last thing this situation needs is a powerful and ignorant stranger giving everyone the impression of political aims by accident. 

"Would you like to hear some context now?" 

"I would appreciate that."

Well. What are the first five things that a man from another planet needs to know. Dr. Blackwood has never actually had reason to mentally prepare that list. They've prepared it for people who didn't know about magic, but that's not quite the same. 

"The," 'flux' doesn't translate precisely, "the - magical nature - of the Other Side, as well as its peoples and their faction groups, have traditionally been stabilized by a series of treaties with a maximum duration set at 72 years; I am sure at some point there was a good reason for that number. Going by the histories, this was stable for millennia. Eighty years ago, when the prior treaty came due to renegotiate, there was an - unnatural winter - the humans would call it an ice age."

Dr. Blackwood thinks that phrase translates to something sensical, if not necessarily idiomatic.

"The treaty negotiations failed. There was a gap. A very large number of people starved, or were frozen in their homes, before the factions reconsolidated into the Summerlands," did that translate as the thing Dr. Blackwood meant?, "and the Winterlands as they are now, and they were able to coordinate on meeting and agreeing on something to sign. - the riverfolk of the Deep River were also party to that treaty, which was a departure. This was sixty-eight years ago. In the year 1899, there was still a neutral ground - one not belonging to any specific faction - that could be reached by all and could safely host several thousand people. The ice took it within the decade, and then all of the others. The Summerlands offered to host talks. Four years early, just in case."

What next, what order to put it in...

"In the meantime, the town we are in has become one of the key crossings on this continent, perhaps the last one remaining that is still open daily. Over that same period, the peoples of Earth - mostly humans, mostly unaware of magic in these days - have been multiplying rapidly. They invented better methods of farming, and better medicine such that most of their babies survive childhood now, I think that is most of it. - In any case, there are supernatural species native to the Earth-side, whose numbers track the human population, and also humans who can touch magic in other ways. Two hundred years ago, their numbers were a rounding error next to the peoples of the Other Side. That changed. The Summerlands invited a number of Earth-side factions to attend and witness their negotiations. For some reason that I am not entirely clear on, a number of those who grew up on Earth found this very insulting? There have been young people - and people old enough to know better - flocking to this crossing all summer to do politics." Dr. Blackwood spits it out like a curse. "Culminating, today, in– I am not actually sure what was supposed to happen. It seems unlikely that what did happen will make anybody happy, so - one assumes they had imagined it going differently. There would have been deaths. If not for a man who claims to be of another planet, with magic unknown to either world I know of, arriving at the exact right moment to intervene."

Pause.

"...And collect four life-debts, I am told. It seems more likely now that this was unintentional. Does your planet lack the concept of healers' neutrality? - I am not ungrateful. I do not think I could have saved everyone. But if you go around doing things like that, here, then people will get the impression that you did it on purpose." 

"Summerlands" and "Winterlands" do not have their own native Chelish terms but are cromulent compounds and Blai doesn't evince bewilderment at those words.

"It was not intentional. I do not intend to - collect on - those debts, being as they weren't something anyone had a chance to agree on in advance - I don't see how healers being neutral could posisbly work."

'I don't see how healers being neutral could possibly work' is making Dr. Blackwood feel like the translation magic broke something in their head and words have stopped meaning coherent things.

Just. What. What set of life experiences could possibly lead to someone producing that sentence with a straight face???? 

('I do not intend to collect on those debts' is also a statement that could be parsed as hostile, to the extent that it implies a plan to just, what, leave them hanging forever? ...That was probably not the intended meaning. Dr. Blackwood can address it later.) 

"...I think your planet has different expectations of its healers," Dr. Blackwood manages. "Perhaps deeper differences as well. Where does the magic come from?" 

"Most healers are clerics with magic from our gods. My goddess is Iomedae."

....So Dr. Blackwood's first guess was right, after all, it is Outsider magic. 

"Is that...generally considered to be a wise idea?" Ninety-nine times in a hundred it's a terrible, no good, very bad idea to go mucking around with Outside entities for magic, there's a reason sorcerers have the reputation they do, but - another planet. Maybe they have better infrastructure for it. "Do these gods have political opinions, then? I would not actually have expected that." 

"...how wise it is depends on the god. It is not unwise to accept Iomedae's powers. I would expect every god to have some kind of political opinion if they are interested enough in mortal affairs to be known among mortals at all but some of those opinions are such uncontroversial material as that the undead are not to be tolerated."

Obviously the man thinks his own god is trustworthy, but - it's not zero information. 

"That sounds complicated. ...What would Iomedae's political aims be for the situation I described to you?"

It would be vastly simpler if the man could just be a neutral party, it's going to make everyone incredibly uncomfortable if he refuses to operate under the healers' Compact because it would conflict with his allegiance to Iomedae, but - better to know what to expect, and maybe it's something they can work with. 

"...it may not be prudent to assume I haven't massively misunderstood anything. If we assume that anyway - getting a treaty securely hammered out seems the top priority? Arresting the, ah, saboteurs, if some escaped, and trying them?"

Nod. 

"The town guards are detaining one of them now. I cannot imagine he was among the organizers. My impression is firmly that the people in custody now are the people who were easy to arrest, not those who bear the most responsibility for it. - and you." Dr. Blackwood ducks his head. "You took it very calmly. It must have been quite an alarming situation, if you had so little context, and - it could have played out much worse, if you had resisted." 

"I'm Lawful. So is Iomedae."

“…You are saying that word as though you expect it to convey significantly more information than I think I am successfully understanding from it.”

This is some fascinating language magic. Dr. Blackwood is getting - something mundane and human, a general tendency to follow the law, taking one’s word seriously - and also something more metaphysical than that, which would suggest Other Side native, except that the man obviously isn’t. The fabric of it sits loosely on him, like it would on anyone fully human.

"...if you don't have clerics perhaps you have little enough alignment detection magic to not be aware of them?"

“…Indeed, I think we have no way to detect this as a - metaphysical fact about a person? - many practitioners can detect a person’s species but I would be surprised if that is the concept you mean.”

"Many species have leans toward some alignment or other. Humans don't. The right spells can see whether someone with sufficient power to be readable is Good or Evil, and Lawful or Chaotic. Though many people are neutral on either, or both, and a weak person looks just like a strong one who is both."

....What. That's not. That doesn't. Somehow the idea of goodness and badness in a moral sense being baked into the fabric of reality, as a measurable metaphysical fact about a person - and Dr. Blackwood does not think the language magic is misleading them as to that being an appropriate translation - feels significantly more like– well, disturbing for one, but also there would be ramifications, it would sink into everything, society wouldn't look the same and Dr. Blackwood is abruptly having trouble imagining how many other unstated assumptions conflict between the two planets, just waiting for one of them to stumble. 

"We have no privileged magical ability to detect Good or Evil," Dr. Blackwood says, quietly, after roughly a second of looking very slightly, but visibly, taken aback.

And because it's obviously important to ask, even if it risks insult: "Which way does Iomedae lean, on that dimension? Is your own alignment necessary the same?" 

"Iomedae is Lawful Good. A cleric must be within one step of their god. I am probably Lawful Neutral but would look Good if you checked me because Her aura is strong enough to see even in a novice cleric, though I'm third circle."

Nod. 

It's a lot of things. (And fewer of them are independently verifiable than Dr. Blackwood would prefer, but it would be such an unnecessarily elaborate lie to spin. And the magic is real.) 

"I am trying to think what else is important to cover in case we are interrupted. - your other abilities, it clearly goes beyond healing. Conditions under which you would or would not be willing to use healing. Is there a limit on the language spell - I am sure the leader of the town guard would like to speak with you directly -" 

"It will last on you for 24 hours. I have another one of those if I should cast it on someone else. I have also two Comprehend Languages. ...wizards get these spells too, are they unknown here? - I suppose that's not a priority topic but I cannot summarize all magic as used on Golarion very briefly."

Not particularly time-pressured, then. Convenient, because Dr. Blackwood is not expecting to last the whole day uninterrupted. 

"...I think 'wizards' does not translate to a specific recognizable type of practitioner known on this planet. We have," does this language have words for: witches (as in, inherited bloodline magic, usually various forms of precognition, in people who are otherwise human for medical purposes)? Sorcerers (as in, usually, people who have called a fragment of something from Outside into themselves)? How about alchemists? Ritual practitioners? 

This idiolect would tentatively assign those things, respectively, "sorcerers with a divination bent", "witches" or maybe "warlocks", "alchemists", and "ritualists [but this word has the connotation of being weird and foreign]".

Dr. Blackwood will briefly relay those guesses with appropriate caveats. "And - we have very little that resembles your healing magic. Ritual work is the most general - I am a ritualist - and alchemy can do quite a lot given the lead time to prepare it, but we have nothing that works on non-magical injuries regardless of what the injury is. If there were a mass casualty event, and you were reachable, that - you have it area-effect - is there a limit to the number of subjects you can cover -" 

"It's a thirty foot burst. I have only two a day. Individual cures I can drop prepared spells for but those are all single target at my circle."

Brisk nod. "And it cures traumatic injuries, clearly. Are there species it does not work for or works less well for, on your planet? Does it work on damage from starvation? On poisoning? On contagious diseases? On exposure to temperature extremes? ...And what do you mean by 'prepared' spells, I thought they came directly from Iomedae. Are steps required by you to ensure that it is safe to wield Iomedae's power? What is a circle, I am getting - how powerful - but not in a sense that would translate to anything in how our magic is known to work." 

"It works for any living species. Not starvation or poisoning or infection but yes temperature, and also drowning. I prepare my spells in prayer each morning and have to wait for dawn to choose new ones. I don't understand the question about steps... circles are a topological feature of spells and a caster is more powerful the higher circle of spell they can cast, more or less."

“Ah. What does it mean to prepare a spell, is all I meant, I am getting something like - if one could complete most of a ritual working and leave only the final minute. Most forms of magic I know of do not have that feature, or - topology in a way that clusters in the way your language describes it.”

Sigh. “…You could save a great many lives, as the only man in these two worlds who can wield Iomedae’s power. But there are the political complications, if you cannot operate under the healers’ Compact due to your existing obligations. …Fewer on Earth, I suppose, and there are places I could bring you where they need healing badly. They are mostly unaware that magic exists, though, there is that.” Sigh. “And Earth is not very Lawful, I think. I cannot recommend drawing the attention of any Earth governments.”

"It's a little like that but maybe more like that for wizards, who prepare out of books... I'm not sure what it would mean for topology not to cluster but I'm not qualified to explain that. I... am not yet late for but was on my way to an obligation in my home country. Working out any long term arrangement here is premature when I don't know if I can be sent home, or if I will be noticed missing and fetched by the archmages orchestrating the affair. I find myself - confused - about the state of government you describe -"

“The number of holes in the mathematical sense does not correlate particularly with the difficulty, or with who can carry out a particular working.” 

A slight shrug. “The human governments are confusing. Maybe to the humans, too. There are suddenly three and a half billion of them, that is part of it. They have non-magical workings for crossing the planet in less than a day. They recently learned to build weapons that could wipe out civilization on their entire planet, and their society is not ready to wield that power. Reality does not keep track of their obligations for them and it makes their politics deeply illegible. They have laws against killing their healers, in wartime, and they do it anyway.”

The archmages who might show up to retrieve their man are a whole other complication. Dr. Blackwood need to put more thought into what to say, there. 

...Iomedae, he has an ?Azlant? on his hands,,,

"Does this mean that I am in the custody of some nongovernmental authority?"

Snort.

“You are in the custody of the only party anybody could think of who it can be argued is sufficiently neutral that the Winterlands will probably not immediately go to war about it. I believe he is technically employed by the human government of this region, but since his country’s leaders are unaware that magic exists…”

The sun is high enough now that a beam of it is reaching the window, shining across the bars and painting a block of vertical lines against the opposite wall. Dr. Blackwood scowls at it. 

Ohhhhh he’s standing in that one exact spot, then.

(He’s curious, but it’s not even uncharacteristic of Dr. Blackwood to pull a language no one else speaks out of their hat and then not explain a thing.) 

Sigh. “You need to talk to Corporal Danby,” does the rank translate? “Please excuse me. I need to call the humans who predict the weather.” 

And they swoop away without another word. 

That was... remarkably unhelpful and unapproachable considering how much the person (who didn't even introduce themself, not that Blai could have derived a gender from a name but now he can't even refer to them by a nice transliterated proper noun or title?) seemed to have believed/intended/attempted themself to be both knowledgeable and helpful. Blai doesn't think he can replace basically any of his preexisting guesses about what kind of situation he is in with the explanations he now has besides "they have different kinds of casters on this planet". He already got "maybe Azlant-ish" from the van and now he's leaning slightly harder in that direction, but only slightly. He doesn't know how long he is going to be arrested for, or what the fuck it could possibly mean to have healers be neutral - if you heal someone they will get up and probably go back to whatever they were doing! If they're Evil, it will likely be an Evil whatever, and they will have no qualms about considering the healer who enabled it a sucker to whom they owe nothing and of whom they can continue taking advantage forever! Why are there suddenly three and a half billion people here? Is most of the population refugees from somewhere that doesn't have magic at all? The natives with magic decided to hide instead of doing literally anything else and the refugees didn't discover any magic at all? All of them? That's probably not right but the person (what kind of person??) didn't explain!

He hopes he is not as confusing to his custodians as that because if he is he should expect to be locked up for a really long time.

There's enough light that he can read the Acts to himself, now.

Oh, yeah, he’s super annoying like that. Has a reputation. Weird foreign man can get a friendly smile of solidarity in Being Annoyed That Dr Blackwood Is So Annoying.

“So when do you figure your folks will be in to collect you?” he calls across to the other cell, where Rio is sitting huddled beside his mostly-melted tub of ice. 

DOES HE LOOK LIKE HE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THAT

A few minutes after Dr. Blackwood’s departure, Corporal Danby is back. With the constable, and a cuffed and very abashed Dr. Solomon Cartwright. 

“- Wait, why is he here, he wasn’t—“

Because Solomon still hasn’t learned to keep his idiot mouth shut, apparently.

Wasn’t at the meetings. Yes, Danby had rather suspected that, but it’s interesting that Cartwright - who admitted in about the first ninety seconds that, yes, he’s attended some of the agitators’ meetings at down at the Moonrise, but insisted that he didn’t know who any of the others were, because they wore masks - apparently is sure that he would have recognized this man if he were present. 

Danby does know how to keep his mouth shut, when it’s not the time. He’ll put Pruden on doing the intake forms. Fewer of the fields will be left blank or marked ‘N/A’, this time.

(Yeah, it’s not particularly believable as a story, is it? He panicked, okay, and said it without thinking. Everyone knows Jack showed up at the meetings, and it’s an open secret that the Philosopher and the eccentric bookshop owner are one and the same and also a vampire. And both of them can look out for themselves. The Nightingale has been the most careful of any of them, because she has the most to lose, and Solomon has seen her face without the mask.)

Dr. Blackwood glides out of the Corporal's office, a scrap torn off the blotter pad dangling from their hand. 

(It's where the phone is. It's also where the records are, and the Corporal keeps it locked and the key on his person whenever he's not physically in it. Pruden has a spare key, and Danby's wife has one in their safe at home, but Earl doesn't, so there was not in fact a key on the premises while they were picking up Cartwright, and it's not the direction in which Dr. Blackwood previously departed the room.) 

"Weather department report. Could hit eighty today." They slam the blotter note down on the desk. "Instructions. I have business elsewhere." And out. 

...wow, did something rattle the good doctor, that's even more...like that...than usual for them. 

Fine. What do his instructions say. 

??????????? he can't speak to the foreign man?????? that's kind of the entire problem there??????????? 

- thermostat.

There's one for the building. Over by the lockers. It reads 69º F. 

Danby looks over at the kid sitting in the cell with his tub of– mostly meltwater, at this point.

He's been quiet all night, and the doctor just walked out. 

They don't have air conditioning. Why would they, it rarely gets above eighty even in the heat of summer. Mrs. Biersley has one of those window boxes for it, but that won't work even if he could persuade her to lend it to a good cause, the cell doesn't have a window. He could switch the kid to the drunk tank, but he has to keep the Light Weaver in sunlight, apparently, and he is not making those two share a cell and also, like, the window unit would block the window and then. No sunlight. 

Why is this his life. Whose idea was any of this. Did the guards who brought him in just fail to think of it or are they actively hoping that the Winter kid will die in his jail cell and it'll be the humans' fault. 

- the grocery store will be opening about now. He'll send Elizabeth to buy ice. And ice cream. And a thermometer that isn't built into the wall, if the grocery store has that, if not they can call Bill Hollowell and get him down to open the till at the hardware store a few hours early. 

And then - glance at the note - fine, Danby will go over to the drunk tank and wave to get the foreign armored sorcerer's attention and then stick his hand near the bars where the man can touch it. 

...is this supposed to be his second Share target? Blai admittedly does not have a better idea. It would have been nice of the Mystery Person to... say so... or write a note, he can write in Chelish for the rest of the day! - but Mystery Person has various deficits so it is not that odd for him (her??) to have directed this guy here in this way and assume they'd figure it out... "Share Language." Boop.

...Well. Okay then. That's one reason why Dr. Blackwood might have left those instructions! Danby was not aware that sorcerers came in "magic language-sharing powers" but he's not a practitioner, is he. He too would like if Dr. Blackwood had explained themselves in slightly more detail but he can understand why the doctor might have a lot on their mind right now. 

His expression is level. You learn not to visibly look rattled, around these parts. 

"Corporal Theodore Danby, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Cedar Hollow Detachment." Well, he's going to try to say that, as much of it as he can in the mysterious foreign language that was just abruptly inserted into his brain. "Your name and affiliation, sir?" 

That actually all translates fine except for "Canadian" - there's a different way to turn "Canada" into a demonym, if he prefers that to transliterating it - and he might or might not want to translate "Cedar Hollow" but they're words.

"I'm Select Blai Artigas. The... other person... had led me to believe I'm not from this planet and that this one doesn't have clerics, but I'm a cleric, of Iomedae, the Lawful Good goddess of defeating evil and of triage."

Blink. 

...He's going to write that down. Phonetically and/or in translation as seems most appropriate, not in the other language. Well, for all he knows it makes perfect sense for a guy from another planet whose religion gives him healing powers (!!!) to be attending some Other Side treaty negotiations. He wouldn't claim to know better. 

"Would you like an explanation of...?" Handwave at the cell. "I'm sorry, just, not sure if you've also had, er, cleric powers to understand us this whole time, or if you're just as in the dark about us as we are about you." 

Terrible how he doesn't actually have a great explanation for why Select Blai Artigas is currently behind bars in a small-town Canadian jail cell. It's embarrassing. Woe is him, his life is very unfair, blah blah blah, and hopefully the poor man will go on showing the same restraint he has this whole time. 

"I didn't have any translation magic yesterday because I was expecting to be in my own country all day; I arrived by accident when a monster of a type I'd never seen before attacked me. I have to choose what magic I'm going to have for the day at dawn during prayers."

Useful to know. It goes on the notepad. 

"I'm going to assume that if Dr. Blackwood explained anything, it was in the most frustratingly useless way they could pull off, but interrupt me if I'm repeating things you know. You were handed into my custody," and so God help him, "by the guards at the treaty talks, who believed you might be working with some people who - caused a disturbance. Purely based on where you were standing, they admitted that they knew almost nothing else about you and that no one had witnessed you actually committing a crime. All of this, to be clear, is an unwritten side arrangement with some people I really don't want to piss off because they have magic powers and I don't. The riot happened outside my jurisdiction. We're a neutral ground mostly on the basis of a man who does in theory have the power to back us up, if he cares to, but who doesn't live in town and will show up precisely when he feels like it and not a moment sooner. I haven't charged you with a crime. - technically you have entered the country not at a legal port of entry, but so have a quarter of my citizens. Under the law I'm sworn to, I don't have grounds to hold you. I'm doing it anyway, right now, because like I said, some powerful people asked me to nicely, and I don't think you would be better off if I'd refused. Just wanted to make sure that's clear. Since I said yes, I consider myself responsible for your safety and good treatment - is there anything you need that you weren't able to convey to us before?" 

Pause. 

"...Can't get you a message sent to another planet, or a trip home. Sorry. I'm not one of the magic people." 

"I've been comfortable and in fact dropped the spell that conjures food because you seem to have that covered here. ...you are being intimidated into holding prisoners who, themselves, have magic powers, over whom you do not have jurisdiction, by the expedient of your not wishing to anger additional people with magic powers, and your commanding authority doesn't know about any of these people with magic powers existing? And the - port of entry law - is substantially fake?"

Yep. Embarrassing, isn't it. 

"It's not a great situation. ...I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, but I like to think I wouldn't do it just to appease a bully. They're not wrong that it would have been a disaster to hold him," gesture at Rio's cell, "on Summerlands territory, and a different kind of disaster to send him back to his own people without any investigation. They're not wrong that I can hold them, it's not an issue, the vampire would be an issue - or the river man - but fae are pretty well-behaved. Honestly, they're probably not wrong that we're as well placed as anyone to run that investigation, the planning happened this side. Though I don't love the part where I'll have to lie my ass off on the paperwork. Or the part where they accidentally kidnapped a priest from another planet."

Hopefully, "- Is anyone from your, er, church, likely to come looking?" 

"No, but I may be noticed missing by a party of archmages when in a few weeks I am late for an obligation to a political project of theirs. Is this situation a - temporary between-treaties irregularity?"

?????????? 

....Probably not the top priority to ask about.

"I am told it's been an irregular century. There used to be institutions for this, I think, on their side? And I'm told," or he's read on the stupid manifestos, at least, "that they used to think Earth was a backwater of ignorant savages not worth paying the slightest attention to. Kind of a mess all around. I could resign, if I wanted out." 

(The Threshold Guardian explained to him quite clearly what his options were. He opted to stay. There was the bit where the air got weird, and the old man - who doesn't look old but talks about 1899 like he was there - is scary, they say he has the blood of angels in his veins, and if you swear an oath to his face it doesn't matter what species you are, it binds humans just as deeply as it binds the fae. Danby has never actually tried to test it. Anyway, the conditions were clear. He could still resign, and go somewhere far away from all this, and take this town's secrets to his grave. He just...well, someone has to. And it'd be a whole thing bringing the next man up to speed.) 

"...it's good that you can resign if you feel the need," says Blai dubiously. "Are you authorized to clear me for release or are we waiting for the person you mentioned? Who won't be able to talk to me directly because I only prepared two Share Language - I can use Comprehend Languages but that's one-way."

Waiting on the - the Summerlands folks didn't actually, explicitly, claim jurisdiction either, just - wanted the figuring-it-out to happen on someone else's watch, they really didn't seem to want the man on their hands even though it's not like it could have pissed off any other faction if none of them were claiming him - ohhhh is it because of the 'healer' and 'not under the Compact', that actually makes perfect sense, stash the guy who can heal people without even touching them among humans who don't have the stupid thing where doing someone enough favors convinces the universe that you get to order them around now. 

(Danby does not, actually, have a particularly high opinion of the Summerlands as a government. He likes the fae just fine, as individuals. Mostly very polite law-abiding people. It's not a crime to be weird. And a lot of the ones who live in town are awfully jumpy.) 

....Ohhhhh, he meant the Threshold Guardian. Well. That makes it clearer. If the Summerlands had wanted him to do anything specific, other than 'carry out as much of an investigation as he had reason to, and do as he saw fit' they could have told him so. 

Religious man. Prayed for an hour first thing. Went quietly with the guards in a foreign world even though he hadn't done a thing. No one ever said he'd hurt anyone. 

(And, you know, also a practitioner. Who has people, even if they're not on the right planet yet. Nobody could fault him for preferring not to offend the man or his 'archmages'.) 

And he needs to free up some space in his goddamned jail. You know, in case they manage to get anyone else. 

"No. I agreed to this, it's my call. Are you willing to give me your word that you won't try to start any shit in my town?" 

"Are you clear on how very little I understand what might or might not constitute starting shit, such that my word that I will not try to suffices?"

"...You've so far given the impression of being one of the least shit-starting people I've ever met, but I suppose that's fair. Don't attack anyone with a weapon or with magic. Don't brandish a weapon at anyone to make them think you might hurt them. Don't steal anyone's car, don't break into anyone's house, don't take things from stores without paying. I realize you probably have no local money but I'm sure I can find someone with a spare room for you. Don't, er, try to have sex with a woman who'd rather not." He would hope that a religious man wouldn't, but Artigas made a good point that he probably shouldn't be assuming.

"I would say 'don't get drunk and start political arguments in the grocery store' but this town is full of werewolves and I haven't arrested any of them over it. ...Oh, and please actually don't go around getting any of our fae indebted to you on purpose because you'd like to acquire some traumatized refugees as servants, I'm– I was assuming the thing before was an accident," ugh and what are they even going to do about it, he really hopes that isn't the thing that's going to explode next, "but I should probably be making fewer assumptions, and I would really prefer you didn't. Which probably means not healing anyone with your religious magic unless they agree to it? I could write a sign, if you can't give everyone you meet the translation magic. Er. Does most of that roughly make sense, as things your planet or your religion would agree count as 'starting shit'?" 

"...does 'anyone' include anyone who is themselves already threatening me or a third party, for the attacking and brandishing items? I told - Doctor Blackwood, is that the person's name - that I didn't intend to collect on any debts - I can carry a sign but sometimes people who need healing are unconscious and in any event they won't speak any of the languages I do."

Oh, he likes this guy. 

"I think that self-defense doesn't count as starting shit. Killing someone in self-defense is - the sort of not-a-crime where there would be a trial to establish if it was really definitely a proportionate use of force - that's a bit hypothetical because the paperwork would be a nightmare, but if you have nonlethal ways to defend yourself I would be much less likely to regret this. I - would generally recommend not intervening in altercations between third parties, in these parts, unless you're very sure that you know what's going on, because some of them are altercations that both participants want to have and believe are lawful." 

Ugh. He really can't ask a religious man whose religion gives him healing magic to not heal unconscious people, that would be fucked up.

"I was thinking I'd write the sign in our language, but I'm realizing a lot of the affected people can't read that either. What if I inform our best gossipy housewives that we've got a healer in town who's not under the Compact, and they'll put the word out, and anyone who would prefer to be dead than owing a stranger a life-debt can avoid going outside for a while just in case, does that work? And if something happens anyway we'll figure it out somehow. I'm not going to ask you to watch someone die in front of you because you're not sure." 

Danby doesn't personally think that gossipy housewives are the best way to make important public announcements, and he's letting it show a bit on his face, but the relevant population certainly won't speak to him about it, what with the whole 'terrified of any government ever anywhere knowing that they exist'. Ugh, he really hopes it's true that there's a spare-room open. The housewives don't tell him how many boarders are sloshing around, because: see above, and - well. Events. At least there's some warning, sometimes the only way he knows that the population of his town is suddenly up by 20% is because the grocery store is all out of cereal by Wednesday and MacArther is calling the desk asking if Something Happened On The Other Side Again. 

"I am unlikely to achieve surety of what is going on. I am not prepped right now for nonlethal combat - I can prioritize that tomorrow but it is even with magic hard to calibrate, especially if I don’t know if anyone involved is Evil, and has not much featured in my career to date especially with weak opponents. I am... unfamiliar with housewife based news distribution... and was assuming based on the sign idea that most people are literate..."

"Our system for housing people is– isn't a system, it's housewives with spare rooms who don't tell me anything. There's some sort of fae cultural thing where they hate being - documented - and I work for the government," ostensibly, the government just doesn't know a fraction of his heroic services to the province, "I have paperwork obligations." 

It feels like he's rambling, but - he's going to stick with overexplaining everything, for now, because someone should, and also it's kind of nice to rant, in a language no one else in the room can possibly eavesdrop on, to someone who is politely disappointed about all of it. It's been a frustrating day. ...It's been a frustrating decade.  

"I think most of them are literate in something but I don't know how big a favor it'd be to ask Xavier to write it for me and I would kind of prefer not to deal with that today, he seems like he might be irritating. And like you pointed out, someone might be not be in a state to read, and you might not want to wait around for someone to figure out who could decide it for them. If Dr. Blackwood shows up again I can ask them and it'd probably be covered under the Compact." 

Pause. 

Guy from a completely different planet, right. 

"...Has anyone actually explained the Compact? It's - you would think Blackwood was qualified to do that, if anything, but I probably shouldn't assume they made it clear." 

"I would not describe it as clear. I told the doctor that it seemed difficult to have neutral healers; on Golarion, my planet, most healers are clerics and must be presumed to have some commitments of some kind."

Nod. "The Compact is - a commitment of some kind, I think it's fair to say. With some very useful perks, though nothing quite as useful as range-effect instant healing. - would you like the full wording of their oath, I have it written down in my office. With annotations." 

"It might be ideal to save it for when I need a Comprehend Languages up for some other reason, to fit more use into the spell duration, if you're not confident of how you'd translate it."

He wouldn't have thought it was very ambiguous in translation, he's done it on the fly in French before to that vampire that one time who was very angry about something related to Dr. Blackwood having gone and done the Dr. Blackwood act somewhere or other, but maybe Artigas cares a lot about exact wording.

"Sure. Gist is that if a healer is on Compact business - there's a token they wear, to indicate it - then they're obligated to treat anyone they see who's in need of treatment and agrees to it. In exchange, they get to just opt out of all the whole fucking favors and debts thing that fae have going on. No one can mess with them, and I mean 'can' literally, on the Other Side a healer on Compact business can just walk right into the middle of a declared fight, carry the injured party out, and commandeer the nearest house as declared sanctuary, and nobody in that house can raise a hand to anyone else in it until the healer says he's done." 

They don't have a version for officers of the law and he's too old to go back to college now, but if Danby were a younger man he might consider literally attending medical school in order to earn the right to swear the oath and bear that token. The magic doesn't actually care if a person only wears it for thirty seconds once a year. They say Dr Blackwood themselves doesn't travel under it anymore, and has a habit of pulling it out two seconds before touching a patient and wearily declaring sanctuary in 'you know, that voice they have' which Danby can, in fact, hear perfectly in his head right now. 

"I... do not think it is quite appropriate to commandeer people's houses and render all their inhabitants enchanted against participating in nearby fights the outcome of which might matter to them... the example in my holy book is about quartering soldiers so it may not be perfectly applicable but it was considered a regrettable necessity requiring compensation where remotely feasible, not, uh, a perk. I can very easily run out of healing for the day if I use enough of it, and even if we assume for the sake of argument that I and my goddess would both broadly approve of every injured person I come across remaining alive and fully well, which is not necessarily a given, we might approve of this different amounts and prefer - being as She is a goddess of triage - to save some healing for possible eventualities of greater importance later in the day."

"It does seem like much less of a fit for your planet's healing. Dr. Blackwood's kind of medicine needs hours or days of work, and somewhere safe to put the patients in the meantime." Shrug. "It's a big deal over there. The favor-debts thing must be a lot of it, it's - I mean, I'd be a hermit. I wish there was a way to sign on just for that, but apparently it only works if it's been how things are done for several thousand years." 

"I don't think I understand, ah, that thing."

"...Huh. Your language has a word for the fae, did it never come up?" 

"One is generally advised to keep one's distance at, not all costs but most of them, and there are enough kinds that it would be impractical to learn them all even if one had an unusually fae-facing life situation."

Danby isn’t really sure what to say to that, honestly.

“Might’ve been a worse idea here two hundred years ago,” he produces, after a solid eight seconds of silence. “Back when they’d pretty much always have the upper hand. Times’ve changed, at least over on this side.” 

For him the debt thing is mostly inconvenient in the opposite direction; he’d like to do more for those people, he’s just not so enamored with personally gluing himself to their problems. Like, it’d be one thing if he could be confident it was only one specific guy or gal, but he can’t see at a glance who has a complicated situation back home, and wow is accidentally transitively glueing himself to some asshole three crossings over not a complication he needs in his life. Not that he’d judge the people who are willing to risk a mess, there was the whole business with Mrs. Bigby and to be quite honest she deserves a medal for it, just. Well, it’s moot anyway.

"They seem plausibly a different set of kinds entirely."

“- Right, or that, the translation could be doing something odd with it. Er, well, here there’s a fae thing where - how do I put this -“ 

He really hates using the obvious analogy, it’s - you know, pretty fraught, and also right now it feels worse because he’s embarrassed on behalf of Earth, not that that even really makes sense, Canada was always - and it was before he was even born, anyway - 

Shrug. “If there’s a mismatch in how helpful two people can be to each other, and at least one of them is fae, then - whoever’s owed more favors, the magic thinks they’re in charge of the other guy now. Also, I gather it all gets transferred upward, to any other guys who're owed enough favors by the first guy, and then they have a stake in it too. I think for fae it's," what was the word that Artigas had used, again, that was actually a perfect word for it and it's weird how he's never heard anyone describe it before, "- it's like being enchanted, if they owe someone else enough, they - can't say no to anything that person wants from them. I - hmm - I'm not actually sure how much humans, on Earth, would– well, I'm given to understand that either of those factors weaken the effect."

He's a bit flustered about this, isn't he. Why, because it's embarrassing?

"A human who'd run a big enough debt in the wrong direction could be kept against their will, if they were on the fae's territory, that's - well, people say it used to happen sometimes. But nowadays we're shipping them an awful of food and goods through the crossing here. I actually reckon the ones in charge want to avoid pissing us off almost as much as the reverse."

"Ah. ...can I transfer the debts to my goddess and then just be a consultant on how to execute on that? I am in Her service."

"I–" Wow. What a good question! "...I might have to ask a priest. One with local context, I mean. We do have one and I actually think it might be a good idea to introduce you for other reasons too. The church has rooms to put up temporary visitors, and - it's sanctuary, the real kind, like the Compact. While you're there, no Other Side natives could raise a hand to you. Seems less likely you'd end up in a spot where you'd have to defend yourself. - and it still holds even if their treaty over there falls apart." 

...He's so expecting the treaty to fall apart, isn't he. It might have taken him longer to notice if not for the pre-emptive twinge of embarrassment. 

Rennie said, approximately last week, that the church would stand in spite of it. And that if it happened, anyone who didn't feel safe where they were would be welcome, he'd make space for them somehow. Danby isn't certain how the Vicar even knows that. It's not like he was here for the last go-around either. But he said it, so he must have a reason to believe it's true. 

Rennie's in a very similar position to Danby's own, really, in how he's theoretically under a bigger institution that would have the right to relocate him any day they wanted, which would be a disaster, and it's not workable to tell the bishop the truth about why, and he's constantly having to fudge his paperwork too, what with how a surprising fraction of his congregation does not, according to the province of British Columbia, exist, and yet if he doesn't report them the numbers might not justify keeping a mission out here at all. And the town needs it; the town is using Rennie's church as surely as it's using Danby's cells. It would be a nightmare if the Anglican Church of Canada decided they might as well merge this parish with Terrace. So. Fudging the paperwork, because it's not like the institutions they work for actually want to know, and because - well, it seems pretty likely that when Rennie was sent in to run this mission, the Threshold Guardian chose to poke his nose in and make the man swear an oath too.

The little Anglican church in town is always what people refer to as "the church". It's not the only church in town. It's not even obviously the one that gets the most attendees on a regular Sunday. There's the United Church of Canada, and there are the Lutherans who meet in that lady's basement, and at one point there was a Pentecostal group meeting in some other lady's basement but Danby hasn't stayed up to date. Irregardless, "The church" is the one that still holds sanctuary, in that mildly disturbing way that he now has a word for (enchantment, what an excellently evocative word) in terms of how it affects the fae, and to a lesser extent anyone with supernatural abilities, but it's mostly the fae who creep him out with it.

No, Danby doesn't know why it's only the Anglicans who get the good stuff. Yes, he's absolutely certain that the Sunday church coffee ladies have all sorts of gossip. No, he doesn't want to know.

"What sort of church is this?"

An...gli....can...? 

- another planet. Right. 

Could this be someone else's job, he's not, it's embarrassing when he hasn't been to church except on Christmas for, like, eight years he's the one with the language. It's not as thought Dr. Blackwood of all people is any better placed for it.

AUGH.

Look. Corporal Danby likes to think he pulls his weight as a cop, but he's a really bad Christian. When did he last pray. Like, for real. He...honestly has no fucking idea? Back when his mother was still alive. 

"It's a -" it doesn't feel like 'denomination' is going to translate directly, "a side branch of the church of Jesus Christ. Jesus was, er, the son of God? Who died to save humanity from our sins?"

AUGH. JESUS PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR MAKING YOU SOUND STUPID TO THE PERSON FROM ANOTHER WORLD. THIS JUST ISN'T REALLY MY FORTÉ OKAY. 

"...so the god is dead but the institution is holding on for the time being? Or... the church is the church of the dead one's parent, but this branch focuses on this one event theologically speaking?"

Wow he is really bad at this. Actually. Fuck. Okay. Lord's Prayer. He has that memorized, actually, definitely, for sure, right? Which bit did he forget to include? ugh, no, wait, not the Lord's Prayer, the other one, the long one he used to zone out during and get smacked across the ear by his dad about - he is absolutely going to say something INSANE, his excuse is that trying to explain religion using a language from ANOTHER PLANET that was just shoved into your brain by someone of an entirely different religion is not, the best setup, but that's a shitty excuse,

sorry Jesus he's just. he has a day job, all right. it's a lot. he'll try to do better but

"He didn't stay dead, that part is important and I skipped it, sorry. He suffered for our sins and died and went to Hell on our behalf and then on the third day he rose again and ascended to Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. - they're both God and there's also a holy spirit, they're all God. I don't think I'm explaining it very well. I'm not– I'm not a priest, this isn't my job." 

AND HE'S A BAD CHRISTIAN SORRY JESUS but he's already kind of running out of steam on that. How in the world did they even end up on this topic - oh, right, Artigas was worried he would disturb the peace by accident because he didn't know better, then it seemed he in fact really didn't know about the stupid fae glueing-spaghetti-to-their-complicated-interpersonal-situations thing, then he had a question that needed a priest to answer. Right. Shit he feels like he's forgetting something. The...wall....Elizabeth...fuck. 

"- Please excuse me, I need to make sure the prisoner from the Winterlands isn't about to die of it being too hot in here for him." 

"- I have a spell for that?"

...Well. Now Danby feels differently stupid. It's the preferable kind of stupid, though. The kind that means there's a solution to what he thought was an intractable problem sitting there this entire time and he just failed to look. 

"You do? How does it work, exactly, would it risk spilling out of the cell itself - how long does it last - will it fix anything that's already wrong from probably being too hot since we got here -"

(Danby has worked a little bit with practitioners before. Well. He's worked a little bit with Dr. Blackwood before. You learn to ask the dumb questions.) 

"It's called Endure Elements. I don't, obviously, know how it will interact with this specific kind of fae, but it's cast on the person, not the environment, and it should be completely harmless even if it doesn't work. It's touch range and it lasts twenty-four hours the same as Share Language does. It will probably help with some but maybe not all existing symptoms from having been too hot but my experience is mostly with using it in cold places so I don't know which ones."

Dr. Blackwood is going to be so betrayed that they missed seeing this. And also would probably be asking more questions, but. What questions. How is Danby supposed to guess them. 

"If you're confident that if it doesn't work it'll do nothing rather than harm him, and that you would have heard if it had ever done something dangerous instead - then I think it's worth trying. Er. I expect it'll cause some of the debt spaghetti problem. I don't think it'll be an intractable amount to sort out, it would only be life-debt scale if I was on track to kill him otherwise and I don't think we've been falling down that badly, just seems - well, cruel, and I wouldn't condone that with a human prisoner. Debt wouldn't be in the direction that'd be dangerous to you. He just might, er, act like he's enchanted, toward you," though wow is that hard to picture with this specific kid, "until that's sorted out, which might not be for a bit what with how he doesn't have any of his valuable possessions to give you–"

Oh, right, switch back to English. "You, Xavier. Stay where you are. Sit down. Thank you." Danby really doesn't expect him to cause a problem but he doesn't want to look like he's not paying attention, either. 

Back to the other planet language. "Here." He unlocks and slides the bars just far enough for Select Artigas to slip through. "Uh. It would probably cause a war if he dies in our jail, and I'm not entirely convinced that wasn't the plan - the kind of plan no one says out loud, but still - when the Summerlands people brought him here. But I'm not pretending I have the right to give you orders. I would appreciate it if you tried the spell on him, and I accept responsibility for it if it does somehow manage to make things worse." 

"It’s an abjuration, which - yes, I’m sure. Did you have a guess about transferring the debt?" He steps out of the cell.

Danby doesn't know what that– apparently he does know that as a word but he's not sure he's getting all the nuances, what with how he continues to not be a practitioner and thus is deeply ignorant about how any of the magic shit works, whether it's on this planet or a different one. Artigas seems really quite sure it can't hurt Rio by mistaking him for a person who lives at a normal temperature, that's what matters. 

"Transferring to– ohhh, to Iomedae? Feels like the sort of thing that should work, I'd guess yes if I had to pick, but I don't know really? ...I'd rather do it retroactively. There's probably a form I could use to explain it to him where it'd go right in the first place, but this is really not my area." 

"Understood." Does he need a minute to explain to the fairy what's going to happen?

Dr. Blackwood said the kid would hold still and let people touch him if ordered to, but Dr. Blackwood is, quite honestly, an enormous asshole. Yeah. He should probably explain. 

Over to the cell with the washtub of former ice in it. Back to English. "Rio. I've been speaking with this gentleman - he has language magic - and also a working that he thinks will help you be–" No don't say that. "Will keep you safe even in our climate. I am sorry about that." 

- visible flinch. 

What did he say. Oh for fuck's sake it's the apologies thing. WHY IS THAT A THING. In particular why is it INCONSISTENTLY a thing, sometimes the fae who wash in up this town apologize almost compulsively, maybe three in ten are capable of being more or less normal about the Canadian 'sorry' within a few years and most of the rest are only mildly weird about it, like, the way the Quebecois French people are a bit weird about not using any English loanwords even when the France-French people blatantly do. Andf then occasionally he'll run into someone who - does that - and looks at him like they think he's fucking around with them on purpose and they acknowledge he can get away with it. 

He haaaaaaates it when people look at him that way. 

He cannot say he's sorry for saying sorry that will not. Help. 

"Stand up and come close to the bars," he says instead. 

Well, see, the this is that obviously the human guard man doesn't owe Rio anything! And it's hard to parse 'sorry' as not including a claim toward something like 'I acted in a way that resulted in owing you something, and I am conveying that I intend to deal with that the clean way'. Except that literally wouldn't work! Because currently the debt here is all in the other direction!

(It's not a lot. The Compact healer covered most of it; delegation to others can be folded in, and the healer knows the forms.) 

It's just. A completely unambiguous fact about reality that right now this human man is doing Rio a favor by keeping him in this horrible cell. It's right there???

He does understand that the human guard - he should try to remember the rank and title, his father will -

his father won't 

- anyway. Rio is aware that humans say all sorts of things. It's just kind of disorienting and upsetting and weird to be interrupted by someone claiming something is true that obviously isn't and, like, in an upsetting way. 

He does stand up - scrunched, the ceiling is still too low - and move as close to the bars as he can. Obviously. 

"You can go ahead," Danby tells Blai, though he doesn't sound perfectly happy about it. 

Iomedae, You may be about to acquire more fairies in some forthcoming transaction of some kind, Blai hopes he isn't presuming excessively about Your ability to manage this - "Endure Elements."

It's the first time in well over a year - maybe two years - that Rio has experienced being a comfortable temperature and he. He should not be making any undignified faces about it. He shouldn't. It's fine. He - he - 

(It's traditional for the good houses, the ones with manners, to send their children to live with other houses for a while once they're grown.)

(Rio's grandfather could not have cared less about manners, obviously. Rio's father was determined, and also there was a new baby and it was awkward having the not-quite-grown child still taking up so much space. None of the other Winter houses wanted his father's son. Rio's grandfather said, well, why not send him to these people. They're allies, more or less. I'd like to be on better terms. We can use their crossings.) 

(And so Rio went to live in a house in the Summerlands, and it was fine, really, it was fine, it wasn't going to kill him. They gave him one of the store-rooms, cleared out clean of stores and made up all nicely, to sleep in. It wasn't dangerous. He could rest there. He couldn't fall asleep in it, which was obviously a personal failing. His grandfather would have handled it with no complaints. Not one.) 

(He spent over a year sneaking into all the wet places to catch naps. Sleeping half in the River isn't exactly pleasant - it's still a fucking liquid, there's something really very discomfiting about being surrounded by some much ice gone wrong and turned liquid - but he could, at least, sleep like that, for snatches.) 

Rio holds still and does not let anything show on his face and it's a lot more debt than Danby would have been expecting but Danby can't see it, can he. 

....Xavier is so confused about what just happened over there but he's pretty sure it's hilarious. What did the man do.

can he teach Xavier to do it too

it's cute okay

Bounce bounce bounce maybe fly about three yards this way and bounce off the wall, he has considerably more space to maneuver when he's not worried about hitting any sentient objects whom he might owe something just because he ran headlong into them for no reason. Bounce. ...Ow. Not that angle again. Bounce like this? 

is....that...normal....? Dr. Blackwood said 'loud' was reassuring - but did not specifically mention - unless it was about the sugar, he did say bouncing off the walls and it's really on Danby if he interpreted that non-literally - they haven't even given him sugar though - what time is it, anyway, is Elizabeth late back from the store, what would be keeping her...

Focus. "Did that fix the temperature?" he asks Rio. "We can keep bringing ice, but you'll have more room to move around if we don't have to..." 

"Yes." Very neutrally. "Am I permitted to sit down."

He hasn't slept in....a kind of absurd number of hours, actually, what with the not being capable of sleeping in warm places, knowing that it's a character flaw did not actually solve the problem. He should not sleep now either but the fact that he's no longer too hot to sleep either way is making it much harder to resist it. 

Blai of course can't perceive any debt of any kind but the spell went off normally and the conversation doesn't appear to contain angry recriminations. He waits by the door to his own cell, gaze continually drawn by the bouncing one with the wings. ...polite of him not to have done that while Blai was in there with him, he guesses.

...Yeah, that went fine. Right. Where were they again...? 

Well, first things first. "Thank you." Danby ducks his head. "I'd say you answered my prayers, but I'm actually a terrible Christian and I don't think I thought to pray at any point during all of this mess. Guess I'm hoping Vicar," does that translate? "Rennie will have me covered on that. I. Sorry." Rio doesn't have this language jammed into his brain with other-planet-religion magic and so cannot possibly object or make that face again. "I just. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if we were going to be stuck with a mysterious third prisoner, we're very lucky we got you." 

A very brief sigh. "I'll handle the paperwork for releasing you." Danby had not, in fact, done the paperwork yet for the part that came before releasing him, like, the whole 'holding him in a jail cell at all' part. He can do it now. Fast and badly. "Any objections to having your name and title written down phonetically in our alphabet?" 

Vicar translates! Blai doesn't even make a face! "You might want to translate 'Select', but feel free to render my name."

...Danby can come up with an English translation that seems appropriate and fits in the box, sure. 

He's bullshitting so hard on the paperwork. The oath itches. It doesn't feel like anything at all, most of the time, but this morning he's having to remind himself repeatedly that his ostensible superiors do not even want to know and it would not help anybody or win him any points with anyone and that includes God if he were to get himself committed to an asylum for telling a truth no one wants to hear. So it's actually completely irrelevant that he, also, literally can't. 

...He does stare for a while at one of the blank fields. Eventually, he rolls his eyes a little, and writes, slowly and neatly and carefully, "received into safekeeping at the request of parties known to the detachment."

It has the downside of sounding more like utter bullshit than a charge for vagrancy but it's not, actually, a lie. 

And that's it. Prisoner signed out.

"You are, officially, free to go," he tells Blai. "...Not sure where to. I'd be happy to translate for you until tomorrow - and to take you down to the church in a bit - but I'd prefer not to leave until I've got at least two bodies here."

Solomon's in the basement. That'll be annoying if they get the riverfolk guy, it's the only place they could conceivably hold the riverfolk guy, but like. How exactly are they meant to accomplish it. The Rio-related problem has been deferred for precisely the 24 hours but Danby is trying not to mentally count on still having Select Artigas at that point - he should, uh, see if he can make heads or tails of the maps, the ones with his family's province (he's not sure 'province' was translated correctly, on the note he got from the crossing, but he's not about to ask Rio about it right now) - anyway. Maps of the Other Side are a fucking nightmare because that place is not topologically normal but he could at least make a guess at how long it would take to summon the kid's family here, so everyone can kiss up to each other and agree to take their respective children home...

Nobody actually answered Rio's question, so he is still standing. ...He can lean against the wall a little, though. 

(He is in fact going to entirely by accident fall asleep standing up, scrunched, and leaning against the wall.) 

"I have no objection to waiting here at your convenience."

...There is literally a cot in that cell. How is the kid even doing that without falling over. Is it normal for them to sleep like that??? 

"I appreciate your patience," he says to Blai. "Could I get you anything? Tea, coffee...? Elizabeth should be back anytime now with the proper breakfasts, not sure what's keeping her. We'll feed you, of course." He smirks a little. "Since I asked you to give your word not to steal from the grocery store– ....I didn't actually get around to the formally swearing part, did I. Got distracted, and I'm not actually sure if you feel caught up enough yet to be more confident you can avoid causing a disturbance, enough to give your word on it?" And he tries and fails to stifle a yawn. "Please excuse me, I need that coffee I mentioned."

Danby had not actually gone to bed, last night, when word arrived from the crossing ahead of the prisoners. At this point he's been up for 24 hours and counting, and he's not a twenty-something who can shrug it off anymore. 

"I’m fine, thank you." He demonstratively creates some water into his mug.

Danby manages not to jump. It's fine. It's not a River-portal. Aaaah could the man have warned him he can create water out of thin air– it's not like Danby did any kind of comprehensive questioning about his religion-related magic powers. Hopefully that's not about to bite him. He can't quite bring himself to start interrogating the man even once he's back with his coffee. 

...He's going to actually pray. For real. Jesus Christ our Lord, the fae are Your children too - he thinks that's unambiguously true, they can be validly baptized - what, did someone check, how do you even check that - it's mostly a myth that holy water burns vampires, they don't like it but they don't like the creek much either - how in the world does Rennie manage the baptismal certificates, putting a name that is definitely not someone's real name on an intake sheet is one thing but the other thing would be, like, lying to God - this is off topic, focus -

Elizabeth is back at 7:35 am with breakfast!

The reason it took ninety minutes is that she got there and immediately realized that, one, she did not actually have the faintest idea what Wings Guy would eat - she thought sandwiches would be safe! The doctor did not see fit to leave them instructions! (You kind of have to catch them in the exact right mood for it if you want to collect a (moderately condescending) lecture; she managed it once when they had a riverfolk would-be-bank-robber in here overnight, and now has a very comprehensive index card on the exact intervals at which riverfolk need to breathe water and the exact problems it causes them if you slip up on that. But she's never caught him in the mood for a, whata, for a Light Weaver before, because she didn't know that was a thing. 

- and, two, it really wasn't going to be trivial for Danby to put expense receipts for this morning through the official channels, and he might just pay out of his own pocket to avoid the hassle, so she had better not fall back on just buying half the grocery store. 

So, instead, she spent an hour in the car up and down town, or on the phone, chasing down someone's roommate's sister's roommate's blah blah, in order to get back a report sufficiently anonymized that she couldn't possibly tell you whose the one who knew a Light Weaver once who liked Lucky Charms lives with, let alone their name. 

(It was, in fact, Lucky Charms, as in that flashy new cereal. Admittedly she had been asking for foods she could buy here, on Earth, because crossing over to pick weird berries is just a teensy little bit over her pay grade, but she was still a bit taken aback. Apparently the boxes travel well, and apparently this is an entire species of people who eat like the pickiest six-year-old imaginable.) 

She has a box of Lucky Charms cereal, and a solid dozen other options in a large carrier bag.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is that - did they really get - you can just buy it here why did nobody ever tell him you could just do that - yes, that's food. That's definitely food. Is it for him. He's willing to owe her for it. Quite a lot, apparently, she must've had to go a ways for it or maybe it's just that expensive or– Can he have it. Like now. 

"Yes, of course, dear." With other folks it'd be polite to tell them it was nothing, but. "It was mostly the asking around. Next box won't be so much, I think."

He can have a bowl of Lucky Charms. 

Rio gets ice cream. She got four flavours. If he doesn't like some of them it's fine, she's got boys at home, it will definitely not go to waste. 

Is she going to shake him awake for it though. 

...No! (At least not after Danby hurriedly explains that they've found a spell to make the room comfortable for him, that's enough reason to ignore what the doctor wrote when they didn't know yet.) She'll, uh. There isn't a freezer in the station to stash it, but Priscilla who runs the flower stall lives just down the street, and Elizabeth happens to have a key since they have a mutual houseplant-watering arrangement whenever either of them makes a trip out of town. Ice cream can be stashed safely and nearby until prisoners who are obviously exhausted are ready for it. 

(The poor boy! ...No, she won't say that to him, he might try to duel her over it or something absurd like that.) 

She did also pick up some carry-out boxes filled with stuff from the little hot breakfast counter they've been doing lately, for the normal people, who don't eat like picky six-year-olds and can eat foods above freezing. Would Blai like one? 

(If she's even slightly taken aback at the man who was formerly inside the bars being now set up comfortably outside of them instead, she doesn't show it.) 

...looks like the Corporal is maybe not urgent about getting Blai competent to wander the streets, which is fine because he is not particularly excited to go do that right this second anyway. He drinks his water. He accepts his breakfast; what is it?

Eggs, scrambled! Hash browns! Toast! Bacon, ham, and sausage, in case he turned out to only like one of them! A fried tomato! 

(It's hardly a gourmet meal by Earth standards, but it's better than average for a grocery store breakfast bar, and will probably vastly outperform Worldwound stew.)

Oh, food! That should perk him up for a couple of hours. Danby has been...maybe, a little, vaguely hoping that if he sits here a bit longer, answers will arrive from the crossing without his having to do anything perhaps in response to his prayers, if not even trying got him Select Artigas then who knows what might happen if he does try

He eats at his desk without speaking. He finds himself reciting in his head that if even he, a terrible Christian, feels the urge to pray, then probably he can guess that the man who is presumably not terrible at his religion might also want an opportunity for quiet reflection. ...He asks himself how much of that is an excuse not to stand up just yet. He's too old for this crap - 

- and they say the Threshold Guardian was already a grown man when the last treaty was signed, and Danby's seen himself that the man's skin is still unlined, but, also, he's not coming until he feels like it, is he...

The Light Weaver in the cell has eaten all of his Lucky Charms except for the ones with blue on them, which he's now glaring at suspiciously as though they might sprout into poisonous toadstools at any moment. 

"It's just sugar and food dye, dear," Elizabeth assures him. "I could read you off what's on the box -" 

And Danby lobs his empty cardboard container perfectly into the trash, and hauls himself to his feet. "Select Artigas. I'd better bring," he's not sure if 'constable' will translate helpfully, "my junior officer Pruden up to speed, before I leave the premises. You're welcome to come down with me, if you'd like, or stay up here." 

Some part of him doesn't want to leave until the doctor is back - what if the prisoners stage a breakout! - but the doctor will do what they want, and - it's not, actually, as though Danby has any more power to keep practitioners who don't want to be in a cell where they are than the others. Just a shinier badge. 

Blai gets up to follow along. He is all out of Share Language for the day.

Pruden cuts off the conversation he was having with the alchemist as soon as he hears the creak on the stairs. (They're about the same age, and seem to know each other.) He stands at attention. Danby mutters that he can sit. 

They talk, for a while, in English. Pruden is making much more evocative faces than Danby did at any point. 

And eventually Danby turns back to Blai. "Select, are you able to do the water thing again, to show Pruden here? Or something is fine, if you don't want to waste it, but - the water's safe to drink here, we treat it, so I don't think that particular power is critical to save." 

"That's one of the ones I can do an unlimited number of times. Create Water." Voila.

Oooooh. 

(Pruden does not seem to find it particularly surprising or hard to believe. He didn’t grow up locally, though every so often someone assumes the Pruden creek or Pruden mill must be named for one of his ancestors. Eleven months ago he learned there’s another world full of magic people. Why wouldn’t there be another another world with different kinds of magic people?) 

Solomon looks pretty interested! He is, however, practicing the virtue of Keeping His Stupid Mouth Shut.

And now Pruden is briefed! The important bit is to tell anyone showing up for Rio immediately that however it might look, they are definitely holding him in safe and comfortable conditions for his species and nobody needs to have a diplomatic incident about it. Elizabeth seems to be getting on fine with the fae prisoners but Pruden should handle it if anyone shows up from that side to demand an explanation. If anyone does get angry about anything, he can blame Danby for it, and if he needs backup he can call at -

- switch back to Artigas’ language. “Did you want to head to the church next and get Rennie’s advice on the debt situation? I thought about it more and he must have something that works for the church, I don’t think he’d - consider it very appropriate to his position - to have anyone he gives a room for the night owing him personally for it.” 

"It seems like it may be a high priority to figure out."

And Rennie has a phone. “Call down to the church if you need backup, I can be back in five.”

And they can go. They’ll take the van, just in case the call he gets from Pruden is “they want more people picked up at the crossing ten minutes ago.” 

The church building is small, and stone, and old. It's on a lot considerably bigger than the building strictly speaking needs, with a lovingly well-maintained garden. There's a small orchard, a grape vine wrapped around a trellis, and around all of it a stone wall. It's only knee-height. 

There's also a slight man of indeterminate age with traces of green in his dark hair, sitting on the front steps and watching the road.

When he sees the RCMP van pulling up, his eyes widen in alarm, and he's up and through the door inside in seconds. 

What. 

The vicar comes out, his face stony. The sexton is with him. Mrs. Rennie is usually the one who comes out to greet people, and she isn't with them. 

What the fuck. 

- oh. Oh no. He hadn't thought of that. 

"Try to, uh, look nonthreatening," he says to Select Artigas. "I have a bad feeling that things are about to be - awkward. I'm very much hoping I can avoid making it any worse than awkward." 

"- awkward," repeats Blai. "I will do my best." Hands out of casting position and away from the mace.

He approaches the gate. Stops a yard short of it, and takes off his hat. “Good day, Vicar,” he says in English. 

“Corporal.” Danby does not, apparently, get a ‘good day’. “What brings you here?”

Gesture at Artigas. “An errand and a question that I suspect aren’t at all related to what has you so tense. What’s going on, Alistair?” 

“Nothing that need concern an officer of the law. Corporal.” Apparently today is also not a first-name-basis day for Danby.

OH NO.

Danby looks at the knee-high stone wall and the locked gate.

It can’t physically keep him out. Obviously. He wouldn’t be breaking the law; he is pretty sure that he has probable cause, to go in and see exactly what Rennie so badly doesn’t want him to see. Church sanctuary hasn’t ever been written into Canadian law; from the perspective of his duties, it’s just a building. 

The magic can’t keep him out. He’s human. It doesn’t even feel like anything to him.

Just a century of everyone respecting an old custom, willingly, with nothing enforcing it, consistently enough that whatever old magic is listening believes that Rennie’s church is more than just a building.

He doesn’t know how many times someone has to ignore custom to make the magic change its mind. Once might be enough. Also, like, Rennie would never forgive him. The town would never forgive him. There are things even more nebulous than magic that he could break. He’d - have to resign, probably, get someone in who could start with a fresh reputation. 

Maybe it’s not what it looks like, but - would Rennie say yes, if - he probably would agree to shelter someone in a place where they would be safe from their own people even if the entire reason they were in danger from their own people was ‘having organized a riot that might cause a war.’

The town can’t afford to piss off the fae, either.

Sometimes Danby hates his job.

Rennie looks levelly at him.

“My good friend Theodore is welcome for a cup of tea any day of the week. But I want your word that all business you might think you have, as an officer of the law, stays outside my wall.”

HE HATES HIS JOB.

Sigh. He takes off his badge and stuffs it into a pocket. “I don’t even fucking have jurisdiction. - excuse my language.”

Still waiting, unsmiling.

“Fine. I swear that I’m not going to arrest anyone sheltering in your church. Or report them to other parties. Or do anything else to compromise the safety you promised them. I wish you hadn’t, but.” Shrug. Hands at his sides, unthreatening. “I’m just here as your friend Theodore, hoping for a cup of tea and some advice, and I won’t come in without your invitation.”

That earns him a smile. Rennie stoops to unlock the gate, then pauses with his hand on the latch. “You’re invited in, then. Who’s your, er, friend, and can you speak for him as well on this matter?” 

“This is Select Blai Artigas, it’s - a long story - I’d better confirm we’re on the same page. He doesn’t speak English. Long story.”

He turns back to Artigas. “The church is sheltering - someone, don’t know details yet - who I assume has good reason to think they’re in danger from at least one of the factions. I don’t know if the reason for that involves them having committed a crime, but Rennie wasn’t going to let me in unless I gave my word that I wouldn’t involve the law. I agreed, it’s not why I came here and I don’t actually have any legal jurisdiction on the Other Side anyway. He asked me to confirm that you wouldn’t cause trouble either. I don’t see any reason to think why your obligations to Iomedae would require you to do anything that compromises the Vicar having promised them safety here. But I’m aware that we don’t know much about the details yet.” 

"I do not have the power to involve law enforcement save by asking you, and will obey whatever the church's rules are on its grounds or else leave them," says Blai. "You should be aware that I'm not allowed to lie, but I can refuse to answer questions."

“Thank you.” And he’ll relay this to Rennie.

Blai gets a nod and a smile. “Then you’re invited in.” He stoops to unlock the gate. “And I can’t wait for that cup of tea and the story. You told me you only spoke English and French.” 

“- Well, that part’s simple, he has magic for it. Lasts a day. He used it up for today on me and Dr. Blackwood, so I’ll be relaying.”

Rennie doesn’t blink. “Then could I trouble you to ask him if he would mind taking off his armor? Just, I’ve got a terrified family back there. They can’t safely go home, because the Summerlands decided to blockade that crossing.” Rennie sounds restrainedly furious. “There are kids. There’s a baby and they won’t even let me look at the baby and I don’t know if it— River guy snuck them across to our side, that one’s currently open with permission they didn’t have, they clearly thought it was safer to risk it than stay put and I do not get the sense it was pleasant. If I bring in a man in armor with a mace they’re going to panic.” 

“Oh dear.” That description deserves a lot more choice curse words but Danby manages to keep them internal. “I’ll ask. - are there injuries? Because part of the long story includes Artigas having magic healing powers from his goddess.”

This gets surprisingly little visible reaction. “I mean, they all walked in. Except the baby. But, yes, they did not get across a guarded crossing unscathed.”

Well that’s not great and also what the fuck is everyone thinking, why in the world does one Winter noble’s kid doing something stupid call for the highly proportionate response of preventing several hundred random people, who it sounds like had no involvement in the situation unless you count also living somewhere cold, from leaving??? 

“Select, he has a family with children and there are injuries. - It does not sound like they committed any crime apart from maybe technically crossing a border without permission, but - this is maddening - it’s not their crossing to close, it’s everyone’s…”

"...I'm not sure what I should be imagining as regards the crossing but it's at any rate probably not the sort of thing I absolutely mustn't enable by healing perpetrators, if that's what you're suggesting."

"Yeah. - You'd have a leg up on me for imagining it, it's the way you came, I've never actually been that particular way. It would've been open as usual when you passed through, so picture that route, but with a bunch of Summerlands guards stopping everyone who's face they don't like."

Danby drags a hand over his face. "Sorry. I just. It's going to make everything worse and there's fuck-all I can do except, you know, not arrest them. ...Oh, forgot to add, the Vicar's wondering if you would be willing to take the armor off. They're pretty freaked out." 

"I would really rather not lose it. It's magic."

Wow. Of course it is. Why wouldn't magic armor for magic priests be a thing. "Rennie could probably give you a bag to carry it in and you could keep it with you? ...And we should sort out the debt thing first, anyway, it won't be as - dramatic - if they weren't dying otherwise but might as well avoid the complication. I didn't get the sense it was urgent on the scale of minutes." 

He relays to Rennie that Artigas is attached to his armor and does not want to risk losing it, but is otherwise amenable to healing injured escapees. “Though - this brings us back to the actual reason I came today - he would prefer not to personally end up in any more of the spaghetti. He asked if he could set it up for his goddess to hold it instead. Uh. Complication being that he’s from another planet. I don’t know what your arrangement is but if the bishop had to sign something for it to work, or whatever, he doesn’t have that option.”

“Hm,” is all that Rennie says. They go in.

The inside of the church is remarkably clean, tidy, and well maintained. (Rennie's predecessor gave him the tip that it was never a bad idea to keep a nice long list of housekeeping items that would count as favors done to the church. The absurdly high-maintenance garden has the same justification.) There's a sort of covered porch front area with a bulletin board and coat hooks and an inner door, currently propped open, to the nave straight ahead - nine rows of pews on either side of a narrow aisle, stained glass windows, the chancel and altar rail and risers for the choir and (discreetly) the door to the vestry, which is also Rennie's office.

The door to the side hall is on the left. There's a smaller and significantly older-looking door on the right, set down a step from the floor; based on that and the fact that there was nothing on that side of the building visible from outside, it probably's the stairs to a cellar or something. The slight man from before is standing in front of it. He looks moderately petrified about the man in armor with a mace, but he doesn't budge. 

"It's okay," Rennie says quietly. "He's a priest too." Hopefully that's not an untrue explanation even if it's definitely an incomplete one. "And you'll notice that Theodore isn't wearing his badge. Could I have you watch out front for us, again?" 

The man nods, glances back at the door, and then heads back out. 

Rennie glances around. "Haddow," he says to the sexton, "can I trouble you to rearrange the hall? If anyone official shows up, we’ll show them our best hospitality. I need to speak to Theodore and this gentleman. We’ll be in the vestry.”

Danby will quietly translate the back and forth while they walk across the nave. He would really hate being stuck somewhere he couldn’t understand the language.

"If this is going to be one of the two hours of the day in which it's most useful for me to understand on my own I have two Comprehend Languages spells but they won't let me talk," Blai mentions.

He is sure glad that the Corporal mentioned the dying god theological point earlier or the iconography here would be pretty concerning.

There sure is some moderately dramatic stained glass imagery in this church! 

“…If Rennie has an idea but it’s complicated, maybe at that point you’d better? I’m happy to translate but I don’t really do theology. Let’s see what he says?”

They reach the office. Rennie shuts the door, and fusses around with moving a pile of freshly laundered choir cassocks and surplices off the second guest chair. 

“So the way we do it,” he says, “it goes to the church as an institution. I have no idea if anyone’s tried handing it directly to our Lord and Savior, it…might…work, but I wouldn’t know how. The important part here isn’t that a bishop had to sign anything new. They already signed my license when they assigned me out here with the duty of running the ministry and a budget. Everything has to be church funds, if I don’t want it accruing to me - I can put word out for alms if I must but I wouldn’t want to risk saying who or what specifically it was for. And it has to be - appropriate behavior for a minister, and reasonable to count as part of the ministry work. No, I don’t actually know how the magic decides what’s reasonably part of my role as vicar and what isn’t. I wouldn’t risk, hrm, putting someone up in my bedroom, or lending them my personal car. …And I can cover other people if I’m unambiguously delegating something to them with my authority as part of the Anglican Church. But, er, I’m just - imagining the bishop’s face if he heard I’d asked a guy to do miracles that he claims are from a goddess? I don’t - I’m not saying I’ll stop him from healing my parishioners - yes, I know they weren’t in the parish yesterday, they are now - anyway, er. It does make me…a little uncomfortable. I’m not going to object but I don’t think it’ll fly if I try to claim I ordered him on behalf of the church.”

…Nod. Danby isn’t sure if any of that is complicated in a way where very precise wording choices matter? He’ll do his best to translate, though he has to ask Rennie to repeat some of the second half by the time he gets there.

“In our religion it’s pretty emphasized that there is one God and we aren’t supposed to worship any gods above Him.” Whoa this language has, like, an actual different pronoun for God, huh. “I sort of figure that it’s, like, more complicated than that if there are other entire planets on entire different planes, but that’s why he doesn’t feel comfortable - taking the right kind of responsibility - for you doing this. Uh, if the way I explained doesn’t make any sense, it’s probably the right time for your understanding languages spell.”

.......yeah that didn't make sense. "Comprehend Languages. I'm not asking him to incorporate me into his church on any level, this one apparently has no relationship to Iomedae and wouldn't want to - which is itself a little concerning, the Good gods are all friends - I'm just asking how, magically speaking, I could go about assigning the debts of fey I heal to Iomedae, from Whom I got the magic, I thought we were consulting the Vicar on how he goes about that."

…The Vicar still can’t understand Artigas, so Danby will relay that, eliding the bit about the thing being concerning - he’s not sure he actually followed it - and adding that Artigas will now understand him and just can’t answer.

"I would in fact also like to know why this god does not consider himself a friend of the other Good gods," Blai prompts.

This is SUPER AWKWARD but FINE it would be a dick move to refuse to translate just because he doesn’t personally like the topic.

(Rennie had kind of not been expecting Danby to translate that, or he would have put it a bit differently, it’s mostly that Danby has seen him rope people in before and might reasonably wonder if that would be faster for this particular set of injured people in need. Ah well.)

“It’s always been my belief that there unambiguously only is one God - who is good - and anything claiming to be a different god is lying, and not - trustworthy. You clearly think otherwise and it would really, really not be the first time it turned out that my knowledge of reality was woefully incomplete. If you can work magic from your goddess on what sounds like a regular basis, and you’re - suggesting there are also priests of other gods who can do the same - then your planet has vastly more, er, divine intervention, than anyone on this planet has seen in centuries or longer. It seems not inconceivable that our God may have known of others, but not expected any of them to ever act in ways that would affect us here? Or maybe that part of the Bible got lost, I don’t know. …I don’t really expect it to turn out that you’re using magic from a - demon that’s tricked you, or something - but going from our holy book, that’s something that could exist on this planet, and the other thing isn’t. And I can’t exactly ask my bishop for counsel. So - I may need some time to think. I won’t take it out on you. If you have objections to the delegation arrangement anyway, I don’t think it affects how I intend to work with you. Just - weird, you know?”

"It doesn't surprise me that Golarion might have more divine intervention," says Blai. "I do not think I have been tricked by a demon, that would be inconsistent on a few levels with how my magic fits into the framework we have. I have to assume that there isn't some kind of binding treaty forbidding the use of divine magic from my goddess on this planet since She gave me a new set of spells this morning, but if there's some reason to think it would be unusually risky I would like to know that. I don't think I can reasonably operate under the umbrella of your church through this ambiguity, but if I can just pass the debt on to Iomedae Herself then all the relevant fae can just find some important Good thing to do and do it, thus advancing Her interests however much their natures demand."

Awwwwww??? This man is just very likable! 

…And, right, translation.

“…Huh. I would normally say it would be a lot easier to direct it to the institution, but the church being on another planet would make that difficult, assuming they didn’t send you here with a specific mission and instructions? Is it - hmm - are there a clear set of things that are licit within your role as a priest of Iomedae, and would Iomedae stop letting you use Her magic if you bent that too far? I think that would be the kind of thing the magic has opinions about.”

"Yes, I'll automatically fall and lose all my magic if I leave the permissible corner of alignments and I would expect Her to also pull my spells for conduct or circumstances that fall short of that but still mean She cannot have me operating under Her banner."