"Oh, you are most welcome." Alexandre shrugs. "But no, it will do nothing. There are people who can learn when they are told, but I do not think Delegate Wain is one of them. Some children will heed their elders, and some will touch the fire."

"I had hoped that she would listen to her church, but they seem to be too busy to correct her. Perhaps they will conclude that their prioritization was in error. I hope that it turns out not to be."

"Iomedae and Asmodeus have both spent each other to exhaustion, like a pair of wizards fighting for the arena now down to cantrips. One hears rumors about the Battle at the Pit." At least one does if one pays careful attention to obscure rumors, which Pedra does, and also regularly ask Norgorber pointed questions, which Mira does. "The goddess may have triumphed, but I think she has little attention to pay to us mortals, here and now."

What??

"The battle where?" he asks, visibly stunned. Although Cansellarion did tell him about an event involving multiple Spawn active on the same day. "Did someone try to release Rovagug? I wouldn't actually have expected Iomedae and Asmodeus to be fighting against each other, in that case." Unless of course Asmodeus was the one doing the attempted releasing, as has always been prophesized.

"According to rumor," he says drily, "Asmodeus attempted to release Rovagug and either Iomedae or Sarenrae struck him down with a flaming sword. According to more reliable reports, Barbatos is dead. There's tavern gossip about a battle at the Pit of Gormuz, the same day the Spawn attacked."

He's seen the pamphlets claiming that Asmodeus was dead. They also claimed that the Queen was Iomedae incarnate. (He really, really wants to see Alfirin's reaction to that except for how she can obviously conceal all her reactions perfectly.) So yeah, he's not putting much stock in these rumors. "Forgive me if I prefer not to indulge in such speculation," he says. "I trust that you received a visit from my staff wizard last night?"

"I did. And did he pass the content of the conversation on to you?"

"He did. Do note that it would be the Queen's decision, not mine, if you were to get a title, though my recommendation ought to carry significant weight."

"Indeed," he says. "There are some astonishingly clever solutions to this program out there devised by Abadarans, though they may not have been intending them for precisely this situation."

"Are you asking what I want in exchange?"

"No, Your Grace, I suspect that what you want in exchange is loyal service, a prosperous county, dead monsters, a competent heir and occasional teleporting. But there are a number of valuable techniques invented by Abadarans for helping two people who don't particularly trust each other make mutually beneficial deals anyway, and they are available for us to avail ourselves of under the circumstances."

"I was hoping that you would agree to stop using your position in this convention to advocate for further violence or for weakening the post-Asmodean Chelish state, as a show of good faith, and then when we are both less busy and I've had a chance to speak to the Queen, the three of us could negotiate the rest of the conditions. If you do not trust me even that far, I suppose I'm amenable to an arrangement that could fix that; what did you have in mind, exactly?"

"I'm not certain we will ever be less busy, Your Grace," he says, "and I doubt the Queen is particularly interested in negotiating with me." She has three archmages! People who have three archmages do not personally negotiate with fifth-circle wizards! "But I recognize your requests as legitimate and reasonable. I do think that you are still left with the genuine problem that we may disagree on how to make the Chelish state strong, since I genuinely do believe that removing all former Asmodeans from power is the best way to do this."

He shrugs. "The simplest solution the clerics of Abadar have is what they call a penalty clause, and that seems the obvious solution to arrange our differences. If you wish, Your Grace, your man in Absalom can call on mine, and they can sort precise terms out there."

"I am fine with removing all former Asmodeans from power as long as the definition of Asmodean is reasonably narrow, the removal is done by due process of law, and the policy is not phrased in such a way as to suggest that murdering people on the advice of a pamphleteer or demagogue is good, just, or will be punished less stringently than any other murder."

"It's not clear to me whether it's legal to sell titles, and the convention might clarify that it isn't, which might prohibit some of the more straightforward penalty clauses I could imagine, in spirit if not in letter. I think we could nonetheless arrange something that provided us with a bit more mutual trust than we presently have."

"On that subject, I confess that I am rather poorer in gold than my rank might suggest, but I have come into some of the Thrunes' magic items, and have had trouble finding an acceptable buyer for some. The most difficult of these are the pages of spell knowledge, useable only by a sorcerer of Hellish blood; I do not want them used for Evil, and finding a Hell-blooded sorcerer whose oath I would accept has proved challenging."