"Let's go together."

Carlota collects a sheaf of transcripts from one of her servants on the way out of the Mansion and then they can head into the palace. She contemplates saying something to Alexeara to the effect of “I am sorry I assumed that the Church had unreasonable priorities instead of just deeply unreasonable problems” and decides that they do not have that kind of relationship. They can have that kind of relationship once they’ve taken Razmiran.

Even the Queen’s paladin friend and adventuring companion doesn’t get a meeting instantly so they’re shown to a lovely sitting room. Carlota reads the transcripts. Her assistant has underlined the important bits. 

“I understand that you probably cannot compromise on torture but I think you should on the less important matters be willing to let Fraga and Cerdanya buy your nonparticipation on Urban Order’s measures that are probably a bad idea but not actually very important. You’re going to need the rural nobility for the antiwar fights, and there’s a lot more at stake in those.”

"...I would be willing, if they’d tried to negotiate something. You’re going to tell me that I should have started negotiations instead of waiting for them."

“Actually I have no criticisms right now of how you’ve been spending your time and attention. I was missing some context on what else you had to worry about. But I think it’d be a good idea to speak to them about it tomorrow. They would like to have you as an ally. If we play it right we can make sure they find it reassuring rather than concerning that you are marrying me, and tomorrow’s the right time to set the tone there. And - if their mayor is no good, the Queen can fire him. Public executions - I’ll vote with the Church but I’m genuinely not sure it’s a bad idea, with trust in the state where it presently stands.”

"You think public executions would be…reassuring? Do you expect people won’t trust that executions are actually being performed, or that they are imagining the executions far worse than they are?"

“Both, I imagine. Mostly I think they just don’t trust a word that anyone - I had a man on my staff who handled a report of ghost activity very stupidly and caused me several weeks of headaches, so I reassigned him to a different position, and learned two months later that everyone else had been assuming I’d had him killed.”

“Yes. It is absolutely true that some people will - watch it to indulge in watching others die - but also people will watch it and know what actually happened. And unless we lose the torturous executions fight they won’t be watching others suffer….if I convince you too effectively then you will be unwilling to trade with the conservative nobles for their support on antiwar measures. The Lord Mayor does seem like an actually bad idea, if that helps.”

"I’ll talk to them in the morning."

She considers an appreciative smile and then decides that would be manipulative and she should separate the interactions where she tries to project adoring happiness at Alexeara and the ones where she tries to get him to do politically sensible things. This is the latter kind, obviously. “Fraga thinks of you as a natural ally and feels frustrated that you end up arguing in committee. Cerdanya I think has less of a desire to think of himself as an ally to the Church but is quite sincerely anti-war.” She shuffles through the other transcripts. “And if you’re going to try to get the constitution to require the Church’s approval for war Requena’s going to be very passionately opposed and Fraga’s coalition contains most of the nobles willing to openly go against him.”

“Her majesty will see you now.” They are issued into another sitting room, not very different from the one they were in except that this one contains the queen of Cheliax.

Why is Carlota wearing a sword - Oh. “Congratulations.” Lilia, we are going to talk about this later. “Though I gather you are not here merely to give me the good news?”

Lilia is very pleased with herself about this. Carlota of course graciously accepts the Queen’s congratulations and doesn’t even notice the Queen noticing anything. She is planning to allow Alexeara to speak because he’s the one who is friends with the Queen.

"That is correct." He'd really rather not inform her of his engagement at all. "We wished to inform you that our dinner tonight, with Count Ardiaca, the Archdukes Reqena, Narikopolus, and Bainilus, and others, was interrupted by Felandriel Morgethai, who told us that Mephistopheles is ruling Razmiran and that while she had offered to help, His Majesty the King-Consort declined to forswear invading Andoran in exchange. Following this revelation, many of those present thought to take what actions they could to reassure and support Andoran, with your permission."

She does not very much like the idea of Chelish foreign policy being set by foreign wizards showing up and making demands of convention delegates, especially if it keeps happening tomorrow. As for Morgethai and Andoran - "We would ask that our lords and citizens refrain from taking any significant actions on this matter, for at least a day or two while we consult with our advisors and decide on a course of action. You and they may of course take any private action which would not normally require our approval, but - nothing where, should we decide against action anyone might feel that a commitment was violated. In any related matter in which our lords and citizens would be expected to be acting with our permission, they should not act before Fireday."

It would be rather difficult to have enough in place before then anyway. Carlota wants to know whether the Queen is constrained from fighting Mephistopheles and if she meant to constrain her lords by that as well. She is not going to ask. …she probably would, if she were here alone. But she does not want to give Alexeara any headaches and it’s not as if arguing with the Queen about a secret Mephistopheles related deal could possibly be productive. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Obviously if she were constrained from fighting Mephistopheles she wouldn’t be able to say so and people would just have to infer it from the fact that she’s not fighting Mephistopheles. 

Yes but Carlota’s not used to thinking about the implications of people making deals with Mephistopheles! It’s going to take her a bit to rederive them!

"If we have further advice or directives for our lords and citizens, we will make them known before Fireday. Were there other matters, or anything else which arose from Morgethai’s visit which you wish to bring to my attention?"

"Only that she also told us that you and the archmages were aware of Mephistopheles’ presence in Razmiran, but unable to intervene yourselves." She of course knows, and probably knows that Morgethai knows, but may not know that Morgethai is going around telling other people.

"We imagine that if that were the case we would have made it known already unless somehow prevented."

Lilia cares quite a lot, actually, about whether her mother has a deal with Mephistopheles, as it’s one of those cases where serving her mother and serving her mother’s interests would diverge quite a lot - or not, depending how the deal is specified. 

Carlota is of course horrified at the idea the Queen would make any kind of deal with Mephistopheles and is concealing it to the best of her abilities by reminding herself that the important thing is to win the war and they have barely started thinking about how they can help make that happen. She’s also finding it abruptly frightening to be in the presence of the Queen now that she has feelings about the Queen more complicated than gratitude and loyalty. Her hand is trembling slightly. You’d have to be supernaturally perceptive to pick up on it but awkwardly everyone present is.

 “Thank you, your Majesty," she manages after a moment.

"We are always glad to have lords who will come to us at once with such matters. I hope the rest of your evening is less eventful."

“I’ll go back to the Mansion and pass the Queen’s instructions along. …should I assume the church has spoken to all the ninth circle priests -”

"All the ones we know of - Maron is casting some spells for us, Clepati won’t help, Ahnkamen won’t help, al-Khurrat is recently dead…"

Lilia knows of a couple more. Carlota doesn’t, and nods. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. …I am much much happier to be engaged to you than I would have expected to be. If it had been anyone else in the world I think one of my first thoughts on learning news like this would’ve been - how to make sure he did the right thing -”

"I am glad that’s not a worry you have, with me."

Carlota works with her guests late into the evening. She’s worried they’ll lose the torturous executions fight and wants to, if they do, at least win the 'who comes out of the torturous executions fight looking good' fight, and she wants to have some Andoran work getting done even if they’re not to act on it until Fireday.

Also she has a wedding to plan! Well, first an engagement party, but then a wedding. She will need a lawyer to draft some nice clear reasonable trend-setting vows, and a theory of illegal orders in marriage, and a venue, and a guest list, and a dress, and otherworldly catering... She should make lunch plans with Isidonia tomorrow to ask for marital advice and backchannel about how the conservative nobles should interpret her marriage. 

She also needs to check if Andira Marusek has any more disruptive idiocy planned and if Megane has any more disruptive idiocy planned, and then she needs to have an intermediary reach out to the Lord Protector to offer him somewhere to flee to. He has his own secret demiplanes whose locations are known to no one, of course. But if he's been watching closely he may have inferred (correctly) that the Queen has some demiplane-targeting that isn't defeated by Mind Blank, and Lilia Ramona de Montero has unique credibility as someone that the archmages would absolutely have looked for and who would absolutely not be alive if they'd found her. She can offer him help evading them in exchange for an outlandishly large bribe.

He probably won't take her up on it - she should really have been laying the groundwork a while ago, to pull it off - but it's worth a shot. Naturally if he takes her up on it she will collect the bribe, split it with Norgorber for the false Commune answer that she'll probably need for this plan to work, and betray him to her mother.

Then - and this was not on the original schedule - she spends an hour having a quiet fight with herself.

You know some Gate-capable people the Church doesn't know about?

There is a ninth circle cleric of Gorum who goes around trophy-hunting in the most dangerous reaches of Arcadia. The Church probably doesn't know about her because Avistan doesn't have anything interesting for her to punch; she's never tried the Worldwound because she dislikes cold weather. Lilia only knows about her because she spent some of Asmodeus's Communes tracking every ninth circle spellcaster in the world.

So pick up the mirror and tell Riudare about her. I bet she'd be persuadable to help fight Mephistopheles.

All right, let's make a couple of things clear here. You do not know about the ninth circle cleric of Gorum. Inasmuch as you have formed opinions about the ninth circle cleric of Gorum that's - carelessness, because I was distracted and infected my Carlota persona with information she did not have. 

You also don't know about me. 'you petitioning me to talk to Riudare' is utterly incoherent. 

It's not that implausible for Montero, on receiving this report from the Queen, to decide to do the Iomedaens a favor and tell them about a cleric they missed. 

Yes! It is! She doesn't do the Iomedaeans favors!

They're the people fighting to stop Mephistopheles from controlling a country on the Material! That's absolutely the sort of plan she might have betrayed to them in order to stop it, when she was working for the Thrunes! And under these circumstances they can't trust that Lilia's mother has it handled, because she and her allies cut some kind of complicated deal with Mephistopheles probably related to the coup in Hell -

Carlota doesn't know anything about a coup in Hell. It is sometimes helpful to get Carlota's commentary on things that Lilia is working on, because she comes at things from a different angle, but Lilia's going to have to make it stop if Carlota can't keep the lines straight between the things Lilia knows and the things Carlota knows.

Carlota observes that Lilia is trying to relate to one of her own patterns of thought as an enemy she might need to enslave or intimidate or kill, and this seems like an insane thing to do. 

But also - Carlota observes that she would like to do useful things that matter, with her life, rather than achieve a perfect imitation of the life that Carlota would have led if she returned. If hypothetically that Carlota would have failed to stop Mephistopheles she would still like to stop him. It feels like this is in an important sense truer to who Carlota is, and truer to who Lilia is. When she was the spymaster of Cheliax she made trades, probability of getting caught for changes in the world. She worked quite hard to minimize those trades, to have a second route by which she learned the things she learned, to launder everything she knew, not to unknowingly make any trades. But she was not trying to perfectly emulate a loyal Asmodean including on the inside. She was trying to keep her cover as long as she could while doing things with it. 

Ugh. She'll see if the cleric of Gorum still has the retinue of weaker fighters or if they've all gotten themselves killed (their mortality rate is really shocking) and if any of them are still around they'll get a divine vision telling them to go fight Mephistopheles in Razmiran.

Your initial thought was 'Lilia knows of a couple more'.

Don't push your luck.