"Oh. Well it sounds like the Empire is worse at some things." He looks awfully smug about that for a fox that never did anything to shape the institutions of the Crusade.

"In the Empire people would also be - keeping a lot of track of who belonged to who, and would go with them when they parted ways."

"Oh if for some reason there were a split almost everyone would go with Iomedae. If you want the company you should stay with Iomedae, if you want the cool magic you should come with me and Alfirin. When they split. Nonviolently."

"...Also we don't so much do the 'slavery' around here, people don't really 'belong to' other people. Except in the sense where Alfirin could make you or Altarrin do whatever she wanted, I guess, but she'd probably take that off if she was leaving."

"I'm not talking about slavery, the Empire doesn't have slavery, I'm talking about - clientage, or favors owed, and, yes, about the sense where Alfirin could make me or Altarrin do whatever she wanted, that seems like an important sense of who belongs to who. Iomedae - asked if I wanted to instead be her prisoner, but I didn't - have anything with which to answer the question - and I don't know if I offended her, or would've offended Alfirin answering differently. 

- obviously I want the cool magic. If that's how the split gets decided."

"I don't think you offended her. Iomedae's too Good for that. I don't know if Alfirin would have been offended, depends how much she likes you, but if she was she'd try not to let it affect her actions. You can change your mind if you want, I can go tell someone to tell Iomedae that you'd rather be her prisoner after all, but you'll probably still be in the same dank dark cell eating the same horrid gruel you are now."

Well if one of them might be offended and the other considers herself too powerful for the behavior of beings like Aritha to give her offense then she's definitely going to stick with the one who might take offense otherwise! "I like Alfirin. I saw her cast a spell and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

"I like her too! She made me into a person!"

"...So did you have any other questions or do you just want to know about those two."

She has so many other questions about magic, she just knows full well that if she doesn't get the politics out of the way first something horrible will definitely happen to her as a result. 

She wants to know how their kind of mage-artifacts are made. She was planning to figure it out from scratch but maybe here they'll just tell her.

"...OK so I can give the short version of that but really you want Alfirin for the long version." Wait no - "...or another wizard! Probably another wizard."

"Anyways, the short version is that there are some materials, the one everyone talks about is spellsilver but there's others that are important too, that can hold a scaffolded spell, and either release that spell later or if you build in a good energy source perpetuate it forever - and you can get a lot of effects that don't stabilize normally, because you have the artifact there to hold most of the structure while you tweak some of the details - that's why you can make a belt that makes you stronger than a strength spell - "

"I knew that part, that part you can tell just by looking, but when I try to do it myself I don't see how to actually root a spell at all, or how to give it consistent power draw -"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm just a talking fox. I can see about getting you a real wizard though. Or some books?"

"Either of those would be great." Aritha will, of course, if she's ever free take this back to the Empire, but she doesn't really expect to be free before Alfirin has conquered the Empire. 

"Well if all you want to know about is magic, I'll go see about finding you a tutor."

And off he goes (A servant gets the door for him)

"...So Aritha had some questions about magic items and already knew as much as I did just from looking. Says she wants a real wizard to teach her."

"I'll pass that along to Iomedae in case she has anyone who can be spared and brought in on the other planet."

"You know, you could - "

"No."

"OK, what changed, you were looking forward to meeting her and now...?"

"I do not want an apprentice who has sworn loyalty, first and foremost, to someone else. And I do not want an oathbreaker."

It's a gorgeous sunny morning in the Empire, and Arbas apparently gets to comprehensively interrogate some Aroden-worshippers today! He doesn't even have to be subtle about it. This is going to be fun. 

(Not fun enough that he was willing to do it in the middle of the night and skip his beauty sleep. He got the message, informed the messenger that the Office of Inquiry staff could have a go first and he'd be there a candlemark after dawn to take over, and then went back to bed. He thinks it'll work out well, the cultists will have been kept awake most of the night and already be tired.) 

What have they said to the Office of Inquiry interrogators (or thought in a Thoughtsenser's presence) so far, about the Events that just happened? 

They were unsurprised, when new people stormed in to incapacitate them and end the polite conversation they'd previously been having. Iomedae had said they'd be invasively interrogated with mind control, made exhausted and incoherent, and Iomedae is never wrong about anything so of course she wouldn't have been wrong about this.

They were not afraid, either, because they're paladins. That's not to say they aren't suffering, but it's entirely the suffering of the present moment, no particular suffering associated with anticipating that the next moments will be just as bad or get much worse.

They knew, and told the Empire from the beginning, that Altarrin and Alfirin and an accountant had come over, and that they didn't know what they were planning. There isn't more to be dragged out of them about that. Of course Alfirin can do approximately anything she pleases, she's a ninth circle wizard. No, there's not really a way to stop her. A Forbiddance would help make it harder for her to get into places but she could just fly in as an invisible gaseous air elemental or something. Iomedae could stop her, not because they have a specific mechanism in mind but because Iomedae can do anything.

Well isn't that interesting. It seems like one of the 'miracles' that Aroden grants His followers is...a literal compulsion against feeling afraid? 

He basically buys that the delegates don't know any more specifics about what Alfirin - or Iomedae's random accountant - might have been here to do. But they have a lot more of the background necessary to make informed guesses on what sorts of things 'Alfirin and an accountant' (plus or minus a Velgarth mage of Altarrin's skill) could have gotten up to. Because 'anything she pleases' isn't an answer, and even for absurdly powerful mages, some things are more or less convenient. 

Alfirin isn't a follower of Aroden, isn't officially a member of Iomedae's militant temple order. Just hangs out with them, for reasons that Arbas doesn't know but that are presumably consistent to her. Alfirin is...too powerful for anyone to control, powerful in a way he's not sure anyone in Velgarth is, that implication came across clearly enough. 

What does she want, is the key question. 

He heads into the room where the paladins are being held, and sits. 

:So what we've already heard from you, is that Alfirin doesn't work for Iomedae, or consider herself particularly bound by Iomedae's promises - but likes to do her favors, sometimes, when it suits her whims. How long does that go back? And would you say Alfirin is friendly to your church, or really just to Iomedae personally?: 

Oh, Alfirin is probably a sincere Arodenite, no one's heard otherwise. She doesn't have much time for mere mortals, the way archmages usually don't....but Aroden was an archmage himself, and Alfirin respects Him. They think. 

Tiaves knows that Alfirin's been involved in the crusade, on and off, for at least thirty years. She wasn't ninth circle back then, of course. Alfirin like Iomedae does not want the world to be conquered by Tar Baphon. That would be bad for everybody. 

:Is getting one of the Empire's top mage-researchers killed something that Iomedae - and your church - would consider a favor done? ...It might've been a botched kidnapping and not an assassination, but either way the question stands: 

It doesn’t sound like it? Iomedae is not big on either kidnapping or assassination, though obviously under sufficiently extreme circumstances it might be the least bad option. 

Tiaves, thinking about it, thinks Iomedae would have favored that if the mage researcher was looking likely to contact Tar Baphon? But presumably the Empire wouldn’t be that reckless.