It could just be Pharasma having a broader objection than the suffering of the affected souls.

It's not the way to bet.

He continues on to his meeting.

The palace is as shiny and ostentatious as yesterday.

Does he want to detect the staff? 

The King?

He definitely wants to Detect the King but not before they've spoken about what that even means. "Your Majesty."

"Select. Do you have the spells you need to make your decision?"

"The spells will help, Your Majesty, but arguably more important is your reaction to what I learn from them. May I explain alignments as they are understood on Golarion?"

"You may."

He gestures a three-by-three chart in the air as he speaks. "There's Good, and Evil; Law, and Chaos; combinations of each; neutrality on either or both. My patron, Iomedae, is Lawful Good. The Creator and Judge Whose opinions power alignment detection spells and sort the souls of the deceased into their alignment-corresponding afterlives, called Pharasma, is true neutral. Pharasma does not claim to, Herself, be either of Lawful or Good, and Iomedae disagreed in her mortal life with many of the details of Pharasma's judgment...

"...but that judgment is, in almost every ordinary case, reliable to match what thoughtful and Good philosophers and ethicists conclude, at least in the broad strokes, at least in terms of their moral beliefs about the character of the judged individual and not in terms of what they think should happen to individuals with such characters.

"On Golarion, the creation and use of undead is Evil.

"It would be very easy to assume this was a parochialism of Pharasma, Whose interests are known to extend to ensuring that souls eventually reach Her for Judgment and are not kept beyond their natural spans on the material plane, and assume She declares it so to punish it because She does not like it. This is as I understand it only part of the story. The principal reason that creating undead, especially mindless undead who cannot produce ongoing opinions about their situation, is Evil, is that the souls entrapped in such creatures are suffering.

"I wasn't sure if this plane might have some other kind of undead. I had hoped that perhaps they were something more like golems, constructs that happen to be made out of bones as a convenient material but harming no one in their creation...

"...but, your majesty, the skeletons are Evil."

Setting aside that first preface for the moment—

"If the skeletons are Evil—by which we understand you to mean that you cast an alignment detection spell on them, and it detected them as Evil—would that not mean that the skeletons themselves are evil, that they are cruel or destructive or sadistic? By your description, to determine the valence of the act of creation of undead, would you not need to cast such a spell on the necromancer?

"Undead by nature desire death and carnage, as much as they can be said to have desires. It would not surprise us that their minds have evil character to a spell that detects character. That their creation is evil is a very different claim. The undead of Khelt do not suffer. There are forms of undead that do, and it is simple to one learned in the powers of death to discern so."

"Alignment detection does not always reflect precisely the alignment of the thing detected. For example, I would have a Lawful Good aura, but it's Iomedae's, not mine; I believe that I am most likely Lawful Neutral though through dedicated service over a long enough time I may achieve Good in my own right. An extremely wicked ordinary person will not be detectable as Evil at all until they have come by enough personal power to no longer be ordinary. In the case of undead, even those that are completely mindless, far below the power level a living person would need to be detectable, or both, detect as Evil, and it's because of the - taint of the process of their creation. Though if you wish me to observe a casting of the spell that creates them, I have more Detect Evil prepared and it can register the alignments of spells."

"It is strange to us that a single instrument may be used to measure multiple disparate properties of the world. The patronage of a god; the character of a person; the process by which an object is created; the object which has been created by such a process—this is indicative to me of an overaggregate measure, easily confounded. But I am willing to raise a skeleton for you, although I am disinclined to trust the result; it is simple, but cannot be done in this room. There is a courtyard appropriate within the palace."

"...in case it is genuinely Evil I'd rather it be a skeleton you were going to raise anyway, timed but not added to the schedule for my viewing."

"We raise hundreds to thousands of undead a day across the realm of Khelt, and return nearly as many to the ground. The scheduled reanimations take place in designated sites, however, and spurious changes to the process introduce procedural complications.

"The practice graveyards of the palace are frequented by court [Necromancers] seeking to perfect their craft. We may wait for one to do so for you to observe.

"However, would casting your detection on our most powerful [Necromancers] not be indicative in itself? We would volunteer our own person, but as we are ourself an undead revenant, which may occlude the result, as with the skeletons."

"I will be able to distinguish between you and the spell you cast."

"I do not ordinarily raise undead in the palace graveyards, so we will go and wait for another [Necromancer] to independently come to it, if you wish."

"Thank you, your majesty."

The palace graveyards, contrary to the name, do not contain graves. What they arrive at is a field of sand in the middle of a large courtyard, decorated with palm trees at the sides and nice benches to rest on. The King, Blai and Guy Who Stands To The Left Of The King (a different Guy than yesterday, if he's keeping track of that) take an observation deck overlooking it.

It's fifteen minutes before someone shows up, during which the King chooses not to speak. It's a woman in practical wizard robes. She sees King Fetohep standing on the observation deck and startles, but the King gestures for her to ignore him and continue.

Is Blai Detecting?

He is now.

She gestures, and a swirl of negative-looking stuff forms around her hands. The sand shifts—bones draw out of it, rattling together into tall, multi-jointed nonhumanoid creature.

The spell is Evil. The caster is not. The created creature is strongly Evil.

"The spell is evil. She isn't. Is she in a position to be confident that there's no suffering soul attached, or would it be possible for her to not be sure?"

And what about the king himself?

"It would be impossible for her to be unsure."

Not Evil, actually.

Well, he could be blocked from detection, that's unlikely since they don't really have that as a phenomenon locally but belt and suspenders - Detect Law.

Strongly Lawful.

"Your majesty, my spells identify you as not Evil in spite of the fact that you are yourself undead, and they also mark you Lawful, so I believe I can in good conscience take your assurances and your offer."

That is... at the same time surprising and not. It is consistent with his judgment of his own character, but he has learned that to the forces of the world, such things do not always matter.

He inclines his head in acknowledgment.

"Then it is decided. Welcome to Khelt, for however long you shall stay. You may ask Ernes now, whom you came with, for assistance with your messages and instructions to meet with the royal [Alchemists], which we shall order to assist you with all possible haste. I shall draft a proper contract in the meantime."

"Yes, your majesty." He'll follow Ernes's lead.