She wishes she had proposed to Alexaera that they put up a Telepathic Bond. Nefreti could probably eavesdrop but at least she'd be eavesdropping. 

"My highest priority question," she says to him levelly all the same, "was whether Alfirin is still around and is anyone we've heard of."

...

"...How does us knowing make it go worse? Unless knowing how also makes it go worse. Also what the hell is happening in this conversation?"

" - we're talking about how to make your war go well! Obviously! If I tell you the answer to your question, then you will break things you needn't have broken, that you handed her in a bag of diamonds, and lose one of Iomedae's greatest strengths, which is the fact she refused to join any paladin orders....and then you will have a harder time achieving your military objectives." She says this last bit effortfully, as if it's a much much harder feature of the situation to observe than the others but she's trying to do them a great favor and notice it anyway. 

"Please don't tell us, then, though really it seems like it ought to be possible to do better than that. 

My second most important question was whether you know how to - transit between times." If anyone could do that it'd be a High Priest of Nethys.

"Oh, sure, though usually I do it at the same pace as the rest of you."

He is so confused. It's not just that Clepati is mad, it's that Iomedae is treating her madness incredibly seriously, which means it's probably not just madness, but knowing that doesn't help him understand it any better.

Iomedae has by necessity had more interactions with High Priests of Nethys than Alexeara. It helps to play along. 

"All right, all right, but when you do it at a different pace from the rest of us what circle does it stabilize at."

"Ninth! Like interplanetary teleport. For complicated reasons, they're actually the same thing - not the same spell, just the same thing."

"So we are not going to get an intertimeline teleportation circle that lets me move troops between worlds?"

"Sure you can!"

"Ah, just as soon as I can cast eleventh circle spells."

"That's actually Nethys' favorite kind of Miracle to give out!"

"Thank you, Eminence. Will you help Alfirin and Felandriel invent this spell, or is that no fun if you already know the answer."

"It's just going to be Alfirin and Felandriel Morgethai and the baby havoc dragon working on it together and it's going to be hilarious. ...because Alfirin's kind of Chaotic Good, is why it's going to be hilarious."

" - that is usable to infer a secret I have sworn to keep," she says quietly to Alexaera, because she's pretty sure that one, he'll now figure it out, and two, he's the kind of person who will not be more inclined to go digging for the inference once it's been brought to his attention that this digging would work. "I would appreciate it if you do not act on it, should you infer it."

"...Acknowledged." He will not dig into the implications of Alfirin being chaotic good, though that does rule out a lot of the ways he was expecting it might go badly for him to find her - no, stop that.

Between things that make things go worse if he knows them and secrets he should not try to learn and Clepati's entire manner of carrying on a conversation he doesn't think he's going to get anything useful out of this, but he's glad Iomedae seems to be doing so in his stead.

"My last question was whether, if you joined the Shining Crusade, it would make the Shining Crusade go better or not."

"What would I do all day? Kill things? Counterspell Tar-Baphon? Go to bed every noon with every spell slot spent and only horror ahead? Alfirin only puts up with it because she loves you, darling, it's not objectively very fun compared to other things one can do with magic."

Iomedae is done being giggly and fun, if this means Nefreti's going to make conversations personal. Not that she's confident there's any correlation. "I didn't ask if you'd like it. I asked if you'd make it go better. I was only going to ask how to make it fun for you after I learned whether having you would make it go better."

"'after'," says Nefreti, exasperated. "The Shining Crusade goes exactly the same no matter what unless you find something important enough to burn it for. If you have more there, you take more out and put it somewhere else."

"If you want to be of assistance to the Shining Crusade and not my other projects I can put you in the Shining Crusade and do allocations as if you weren't there, and I don't err in a predictable direction, doing that."

"I know! It's very impressive! It just means the forces doing the reallocating are external to you!"

"Thank you, Eminence," she says tiredly. "Those were all my questions."

"I don't suppose that the fact that I've found someone older, younger, wiser, and more foolish than you means you'll help us with the teleportation circles?"

"Oh, sure!"