"This evening? I can't train the men in the dark."

"Sure. I'll see you after dinner."

There isn't really so much daylight anyway, in Drezen in the dead of winter.

She could spend a day with Zara. She's not going to do that. She could head out into the wound - it's been too long, really, since she killed anything - but she doesn't have any plans ready to go and wouldn't really be accomplishing anything.

She rounds up Nenio and heads over to Dorgelinda, instead. She still wants to save the mansion itself for a moment when it'll be remembered as attached to something, but they can at least put some people to work unloading food into the crusade's supply warehouse. Dorgelinda only has a preliminary version of the supply lists she needs, but it's good enough that Korva can get some people together, hit everyone with tongues, teleport into Kalsgard - which she could have been doing all along, really, and only didn't because she was afraid - and buy some supplies out of Sunhammer's money. She keeps records, of how much she spends and how much she buys, at least half out of spite.

She misses Woljif. She'd have brought him along, if he were here.

In the evening she goes to meet Marit again.

Marit isn't going to be able to write in Hallit at all and his written Taldane is notably archaic but he's happy to read through everything and propose draft language. 

"This doesn't even have your contract with Galfrey," he says frustratedly. "I have no idea what anyone involved expects happens if you resign or die irretrievably or if Galfrey changes her mind about anything."

"Sorry. I, uh, don't know if anything like that exists."

" - who pays you."

" - I don't get paid, I'm the Knight Commander. I steal stuff off of demons."

"How was that negotiated?"

"Well, mostly when you hit the killing and looting step you're past negotiations. - sorry. Uh, no one's ever discussed paying me. I'm assuming this isn't the kind of thing you get formally paid for."

" - in my last role, the Knight-Commander was paid, though it was a fairly nominal salary. ...and also it was negotiated that the territory she conquered beyond certain borders would be hers, which is - not at all nominal."

"Well, good for her. I don't think anyone was really thinking about that when we set off for Drezen. I'm pretty good at taking demons' stuff, by now, so it's not really one of my top ten problems."

"All right. I think, at a minimum, you need the authority to set up military courts, which it's not obvious you have, and the authority to hire and pay for a civilian administration out of Crusade funds, which it's also not obvious you have, and the authority to fundraise internationally, and clarity on who has the power to remove you and whether they need any grounds, and clarity on who appoints your successor, if anything happens to you, and acknowledgement that you have ultimate jurisdiction over and responsibility for administration outside Mendev's borders or else a claim that Mendev moves with you and is itself prepared to administer that territory."

"That all sounds good."

She thinks she is maybe getting a failing grade in Knight-Commander-ing today.

"Now how to say that without it sounding to Nerosyan like you're getting concerningly independent," he muses aloud, taking notes for himself in archaic Taldane they can't send. "I can't really imagine they did it by accident - I mean, I can. They might have. But this really seems more like someone taking advantage of the fact they had appointed a commander who was inexperienced, and that means they probably think they still have a commander who is inexperienced, and they may not have realized that war is a diligent teacher. And we don't in fact want a fight with Mendev - or, next year would be a better time for it, when I think the Church of Iomedae may be more interventionist. Gods, I hate politics. 

Probably the best angle is that you have all these helpful azatas and bards and so on, and you want to send them out fundraising, but when you first took steps towards that all these questions were asked about funding your crusade, and you need them clarified so you have something to show prospective funders. Presuming that to be true, I am not proposing we lie in communications with Nerosyan."

"I - have talked to Aranka about it, she wasn't sure whether she wanted to. Aranka doesn't work for me, as a matter of principle and not by accident. I'm sure I can scare up someone who will do fundraising if I ask them to."

"I think 'potential funders want to hear this' will go over better than 'I have decided I want this' because they'll wonder why you decided that. But you could also make the principled decision you don't want to be misleading about things like that, which would be completely reasonable, or the principled decision to go argue this with the Queen of Mendev in person which I also wouldn't argue with."

"I don't think I extremely want to do that."

"The way I would personally handle this is to scare up potential funders who will want to know these extremely straightforward things, and then write Galfrey a misleadingly apologetic letter asking about those so as to simplify fundraising. The way my previous commander would handle this is to write her own version of all of those things, the way she wanted them, and show up with that and convince everyone relevant to sign it. There are probably other ways to handle it but I am not sure what your highest priorities here are or if you are just doing this because I said to and don't care specifically, which would also be reasonable."

She stares miserably at the useless charter. It's hard to come up with adequately deflective and reasonable-sounding things to say that aren't secret bids for sympathy. It's even harder to try to strip away the layers of acting and think about the actual problem. But she has to do it, to aim every piece of herself that she can rally to stand and fight and think, or bad decisions will be made, and they will be on her head, because she was the officer in command.

"I want to know what the crusade needs to win. And then I want to figure out how to make those things happen, and to be paying enough attention that I notice if someone is doing something egregiously wrong. I - don't think I have the experience necessary to come up with the best possible version of a charter, and will need help doing that, but - if I have one I can probably find some donors, and convince them to help if we get our act cleaned up, and then suggest the version that will make that help possible to Nerosyan."

"I don't know whether I can convince Galfrey of anything. I can try."

"I haven't really heard many good things about her," he says neutrally.

Korva feels maybe a little bit sick and is trying not to give any indication of this.

"I haven't really spoken with her much. Probably she's lovely if you do. Most of the people of Mendev love her, I think."

"Knight-Commander, you've been wronged here. I won't say it outside this room. I won't say it in this room, if you forbid that. But this - this is putting the world on your shoulders without giving you the right to lift it. One of the rules my former commander proposed, for assigning me under your command, was that I would not be obliged to take prisoners or conduct trials without the authority to do it justly, because - because there are things you cannot conscionably make a person's duty without extending them the power to do it well."

"Well, I'm not going to argue strenuously that the situation here is conscionable," she says. "But I don't see anyone else around who I trust to do this right. Or - less wrong than I know that I will get it. So we are going to have to figure out how to get me the right to at least try to lift the world. I guess."

"All right." And he'll start writing down a charter proposal. "Galfrey initially offered you the role in person and not in writing, I take it?"

"Galfrey announced it to the troops in a speech," she says, because she's so tired and pathetic and humiliated and apparently she is awful and weak enough that she can't think about hiding it all and writing a charter at the same time.