"But for the dying you'd pick me."

"Well there you go. Delegation. My bookkeeping responsibilities are fulfilled."

He wonders when Iomedans lost their sense of humor and gained the concept of a modern general staff. 

"Curiosity's your familiar?"

"Yes, a fox, I leave him at the Diobel tower when we're on the march so I suppose you haven't met him yet."

"He might have good advice for my Félix, who's hopeless with accounts. Better he's home, though, I need him to supervise things there while I'm away." 

"Will you even be away for more than an instant? Is there some reason that you couldn't return to the moment of your departure? I suppose you might not know..."

"I have no idea how this works and feel I ought to assume it'll be maximally inconvenient. ....I suppose if it's too long I might have to invent time travel." 

"A famously solvable problem! Hopefully it won't come to that."

"If we're hitting Marian Leigh before winter I want - two weeks to try to scrounge diamonds out of people and figure out the Teleport logistics, which I think will succeed with you either on diamonds or on holding down the fort," she says to Alfirin, "but be difficult without one of those. I assume you have already written down or otherwise transmitted all Elie's important knowledge of progress and also of the Church of Asmodeus's shit so that, should he die here and turn out to wake up in his Clone back home, we don't lose everything?"

"We're definitely responsible archmages who did that instead of spending two days figuring out how to use an ancient artifact made to channel the powers of entities too strange for mortal minds to comprehend." 

"Uh huh. Okay. Please, in the name of progress and knowledge and humanity, tell Alfirin whatever the world would be most impoverished by not knowing."

"Right. That seems important.

...About those diamonds, Tilbun traded us one for a promise of a teleportation circle in a couple months and I suspect this trade is repeatable."

"Get me four, and I think we can end this next year."

"We'll see what we can do!"

"If we're not hiding that I exist, I'm confident I can make it happen." 

"The advantage of the plan where we take Marian Leigh in two weeks is that we probably show our hand that day, but in the course of beating Tar-Baphon quite badly, and if we don't then we can keep it under wraps until spring and give him not all that much time to actually respond."

"Perhaps we should see what Tilbun can loan us, then we don't have to show Élie's presence just to get the diamonds."

"You might ask him how he feels about a permanent teleportation circle between Absalom and the largest city in Tian Xia." 

"Somehow I doubt his willingness to loan us wish diamonds is going to be limited by our ability to pay if we survive."

"Well, of course you will be able to truthfully tell him you are sensible archmages who have taken all reasonable precautions against assassination and absolutely didn't go into a demiplane of the Pharaohs of the Ascension to meddle with things beyond mortal comprehension."

"Of course we will! The things were perfectly comprehensible. Eventually. Mostly."

"It's perfectly safe! I've probably spent over a year in there all told and I'm just as sane as I was when I started – as much comfort as that might be." 

"Huh. Maybe I should pick up this 'wizardry' thing. I looked into it once but they told me I might have to wear lighter armor and that was the end of that."

"I'm going to make it easier. One of my projects back home." 

"Incredible."