Huh, does he. (Charantis is mildly surprised. She had mostly assumed that this expedition was fishing for bribes or something.) That should do, then.

She asked Vigil last night about documentation on Crusade salaries and supply purchases and magical reagents budget and so on. That has the same problem as the magic items, only moreso; they don't want Tar-Baphon to know how many seventh circle wizards the Crusade employs. But probably something similar can be worked out, where the priest confirms that all the salaries are reasonable and goes into hiding for a while until what he knows is out of date.

Oh, this isn't his first army audit. He fully expects the reported salaries to be reasonable; If there's graft here, it'll be the number of soldiers not quite matching up to the number of salaries. He and his people will try to verify troop counts later.

Does he need anything else from her office at this time? They're quite busy. (She approves in principle of someone double checking their work but suspects it'll quickly get annoying in practice.)

No, not at the moment. He'll just take his copies of the documents and return to his residence. He appreciates the level of organization on this crusade, it makes his job a lot easier.

The Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade finds the time that afternoon to drop by Vellumis. She'd have come sooner, if she could have - it shouldn't be urgent, of course, but as a practical matter they will take the delay as information about how deferentially inclined she is towards the Empire, and that's not lower stakes than the front. But Tar-Baphon, quite plausibly having seen the arriving bunch of emissaries - quite plausibly having arranged it - also picked this day to press them pretty hard on both fronts, and it's a long time before she is no longer quite as badly needed at the front.

She arrives in her dwarf-made armor and the stole Arazni made her and the shirt Arazni made her and the crown of Taldor and Heart's Edge and the chalice of Ozem, with a Greater Angelic Aspect up. For other people the spell lasts about twenty minutes at a go but she really likes having the wings and so for her it lasts all day. 

Charantis bows deeply. "Knight-Commander. - They're at the diplomatic residences. They seem all right. Kovets says no one's obviously working for the enemy."

Well, they wouldn't be obviously working for the enemy, would they.

"Did he say anything else." Is the Emperor playing this or just letting it play out.

"No."

"Well, let them know I'm here. Do you have anything for me in the meantime?"

She keeps a stack of things for if the Knight-Commander happens to have time. Mostly land grants to former soldiers and awkward legal cases the Knight-Commander tends to want to personally review. 

And someone can go trot over to the diplomatic residences to tell them that the Knight-Commander is available.

Excellent. He and a couple of secretaries will go to meet with her.

"Knight-Commander. Domnicus Angelus, I'm honored to make your acquaintance." He means it.

Iomedae is at this point honored to meet very few people and titles in Taldor don't particularly predict it, an inconvenient fact for her when doing diplomacy. She's found some workarounds. "Legate. I hope your journey here was pleasant and that you find Vellumis both comfortable and interesting. I leave the front less often than one might prefer, these days. How fares civilization?"

"It continues much as it has for both our lifetimes. The empire is a little richer than it was five years ago. There was some flooding in the heartland but the harvest came in better than expected, given that."

Iomedae does, actually, care about that, and suspects it's a point of common ground, but unfortunately it's also an easy thing to make protestations about caring about, and it's usually a bad strategy, with people from Oppara, to try the Crusade's own pattern of candid speech. "I'm glad," she says anyway. 

" - and the Empire wonders if its greatest endeavor is making wise use of its money? Or is there some other complication?"

"That is the principal matter, yes. There are some other concerns but ultimately they all come to 'is the empire paying more than this crusade is worth' or 'is the empire paying more than it needs to'."

Iomedae is a good judge of character and would ordinarily decide at this point that she liked the man but in Oppara one simply can't trust first impressions, at all, especially if they're positive.  It's the second most annoying thing about Oppara.

"A wise question to ask," she says wryly. "One that arguably some might've wanted to ask years ago. At some point I expect you'll find yourself wondering why they didn't.

I believe, of course - if you'll forgive me for speaking very plainly, as I've no other custom - that if the Shining Crusade is to lose then the Empire will be destroyed within a century. I believe this mostly because Aroden says it but also because I've fought the Tyrant long enough to understand him and long enough that I now only sometimes underestimate him. Very near to all the Empire's money that is sent to us is being spent on the war, and spent however we think will best win the war. Some is probably being spent otherwise, but not by my orders or with my knowledge or with anyone's expectation I'd countenance it, and I expect much less than you'd find misdirected from any other endeavor of this size. 

That's not the same question as whether the Empire could buy what it wants for less; we'd be likelier to lose, but perhaps still not all that likely, and differently indebted if we win, but maybe we look insufficiently indebted already. 

Given the stakes as I perceive them - I hope that you'll ask questions where you have them, and ask for whatever promises will leave you freest to do your work, and treat the question you've been assigned as one with fairly extraordinary import. My people have orders to assist you wherever it doesn't compromise military secrets." Which is an assurance no one would trust - whether there's corruption is arguably a military secret - but she in fact can't hand him a list of all her resources, when they've gone to such lengths to keep that from their enemy.

"I appreciate that immensely. I know military necessity may make some aspects of my task more difficult, and given that I am glad to otherwise have your full cooperation."

And now to see how much she means it. "When you say the empire could possibly buy what it wants here for less - is there a specific alternative you're envisioning?"

Well, that's a question with which one has to be excruciatingly careful. The appearance of relaxed candor, while in fact selecting her words with agonizing caution so none of them constitute treason in themselves, or an admission of it -

"The Grand Prince is a wise man and one of a very few who I think appreciates what is at stake here, and we've spent little time worrying he'll tire of this war, which he knows the world cannot afford for him to lose. We have spent more time fearing that he might die before the war is over, and be replaced by someone with less foresight and less context on this situation. That's an outcome Tar-Baphon has of course tried many times to bring about, and an outcome we - and Aroden, I strongly suspect - have been opposing. Nowhere do they pray more fervently for the health and long life of the Grand Prince than here. Without the long peace of his reign all may well have been lost long ago.

But after the first few times Tar-Baphon tried it we began to plan for the possibility he might succeed, and succeed thereby in turning Oppara against the war. A few years ago, it would've been a death sentence for this world. My plans for that situation read, at the time, 'go find Nex?'.

Now - we control more of Ustalav, we have an archmage again, we've taken out some of the enemy's most useful lieutenants. If we have less money, we raise the threshold for who we raise when they die on the field. You'll see in the budgets that's the big flexible expense, less of a hit to morale than cutting pay, and it has big effects in the long run but smaller effects in the short run. So we'd try to make it a short run. Reach Gallowspire this year, instead of next. We don't have a plan we are confident will succeed, but we have dozens that might. And we'd consult with Aroden and we'd consult with some other sources and we'd see if there are other powers in this world that might be tempted to step in particularly given Taldor's stepping out.

I like those other powers less, to be clear. I was born in the empire. I know of nothing else that has achieved what the empire has. It would be substantially in its service that I would turn to others to win the war, because Taldor won't survive my losing it. But the Shining Crusade has never been solely funded by Taldor and there are other parties with an interest in Avistan not being overrun by the undead, and gods who can confirm to them their empires would follow.

We'd keep fighting. We might win, and we wouldn't march on the Empire afterwards. I'm not in fact temperamentally much of a conquerer. Aroden who has fought these decades to position us to win this war has made His purposes clear to me, and they aren't for me to rule here afterwards. - I imagine He'd have picked a man, frankly, were those His intentions.

It'd be - the kind of geopolitical strategy I associate with hard-pressed but clever weaker kings, trading off credit for their achievements and surety in them and the appearance of great strength and inevitability for reliance on luck and on fate and on the competing interests of one's enemies. The Grand Prince need make no such compromises. I would like very much to hand him a victory which I believe will resound to Taldor's credit for a very long time, and be eventually understood as one of the Empire's greatest achievements. 

But should the war fall to the hands of fate, fate may be on our side. Aroden at least is. And I cannot deny that doing that would be much cheaper."

"Well, let us pray it does not come to that. The Empire is rich enough, if this crusade is buying safety for civilization from the depredations of Tar-Baphon I expect the Emperor will continue to be happy to pay for it."

"The Emperor has always struck me as a wise man and a sensible one, and as one who" is allowed to observe the Empire's weaknesses and is therefore capable of noticing Tar-Baphon could crush it "understands the situation here better than nearly anyone who hasn't seen it firsthand.

I have confidence that you'll find that the threat is legitimate and the Empire's resources efficiently directed towards combating it." Wildly less confidence that he'll say as much in Oppara, but so it goes.

And then there's the thing that there's absolutely no way to say without it coming across as a threat, though it isn't one. You might think saying 'I do not mean this as a threat' would work but it absolutely never does, in Oppara. 

"It seems likely to me that the enemy knows already of your presence here, and has his own aims. I imagine he'd be delighted were you to return with a critical report, but - also reasonably happy if you didn't return at all." She shrugs the angel wings, frustratedly. "Because everyone, including you, would presume that to be my fault. There is nothing I could learn about what you're returning to Oppara to report that would inspire me to assassinate you, and no one who works for me who'd imagine I would be served by that. But - be careful. More than you typically are; I expect your adversaries are usually wildly worse-resourced. Tar-Baphon probably knows every word spoken since you arrived here outside a Sanctum, and plausibly some spoken in one."

The odds are that he will in fact still just take this as a threat. Trying to communicate "you're likely to be assassinated, and I sure have incentive, but I'm not the person who is likely to do it" is impossible in the language and set of assumptions of Oppara; people learn to not believe anyone whose words dance like that.

She hates it.

"I... see. I will be careful, then.

I understand the need for keeping some information secret, but - what information can your people make available about Tar-Baphon's capabilities? Both for the purposes of assessing the crusade's need for resources and for ensuring my own safety."

"We've observed him to cast twelve ninth circle spells a day. He has spell resistance that only Arazni could ever penetrate. Anyone who is not immune to terror and who comes within thirty paces of him is paralyzed in terror, no documented exceptions again except Arazni. He controls tens of thousands of undead, directly, and is believed not to have a limit on how many can be under his immediate control, in defiance of how necromancy was previously understood to function. He has developed something that functions equivalently to the Clone spell for the undead and can restore his favored lieutenants which aren't themselves liches or vampires from destruction. He is in possession of dozens of minor artifacts and a few major ones, most of which we believe he created. Last time we killed him we got three ioun stones, a minor artifact that lets the bearer, if undead, transpose himself with other undead anywhere within a Fireball's range, and a greater metamagic rod that allowed him to bypass Death Ward. 

Personally notable among his lieutenants are Taldaris, Magallentis, and Quarnium Ix, eighth circle wizards or sorcerers and liches. Ix is also a sixth circle cleric and a Blood Lord of Geb.  Kritasheere is a ghoul, ninth circle high priest of Urgathoa, enchantment specialist, taken down and turned more of our people than anyone else routinely on the field. Kavasa's an incorporeal banshee sixth-circle song-sorcerer. Naraga and Istravek are undead ancient black dragons and Jolanara is a nightwing - a creature from the Shadow Plane about as dangerous as a dragon in its own right that travels accompanied by dozens to hundreds of hungry shadows. Malyas is a vampire lord and an antipaladin, sometimes accompanied by graveknights in his power, appointed by Tar-Baphon ruler of the vampires in Ustalav, of which there are hundreds. 

They don't all congregate for the same fights as they don't like each other and not all of them are under his direct power.

The list used to be much longer, we've been finding ways to put most of them down for good. We believe him to still have more than ten seventh circle spellcasters and more than forty at sixth. We believe Gallowspire to be held by tens of thousands of skeleton archers, thousands of shadows, and the great powers at need, with the lands around it infested with ghouls and ghosts and the sun permanently blocked. 

To destroy Arazni we believe he allied with Urgathoa. He used the specialized archmage Time Stop that lets the caster, take others along with it, opened a Gate behind her, and positioned Naraga, enhanced with dozens of spells some of which I've never seen before, to push her through it as the Time Stop expired. Urgathoa was then able to prevent her from escaping while he had the army he'd stationed there kill her inside the three moments it took us to Wish her out. Obviously we have contingencies against that now for our most essential people, but they're expensive ones."

Iomedae is aware that this summary, while probably instructive in some respects, is not particularly useful for 'how do I protect myself'. He can't. She's stationing her own security for him and it will still only stand up to a moderately spirited attempt.

"How many of those lieutenants you mentioned are under Tar-Baphon's direct power? And how loyal are the others, are they allies of convenience or genuinely loyal or somewhere in between?"

At least he isn't giving her a hard time over mentioning Taldaris. It's one of those things that is ambiguously legal in Oppara, admitting that he exists. 

"Hard to know for sure in many cases. The dragons are directly controlled. The vast hordes are directly controlled. The graveknights are directly controlled. Most of his commanders are either directly controlled or their phylacteries held hostage. Otherwise they'd be at each others' throats constantly. Jalamara's got a deal with him, plausibly a magically enforced one. - Ix is likely independent, doing this in exchange for help with his political interests in Geb. One assumes Tar-Baphon didn't have direct control of Malyas at the point where he appointed him lord of the vampires, or he wouldn't have needed to bother, and it's possible he still doesn't, though if I had to bet I bet there's something. Kritasheere's merely very firmly allied.

All of the people I mentioned have appeared on the battlefield or in raids working towards an objective of his this season or last; I didn't bother telling you about anyone who he doesn't control and who hasn't been seen for a few years. If you ask around whose his most frightening lieutenant is, people will mention Erum-Hel, but he wasn't under Tar-Baphon's direct control and hasn't been seen in six years and we believe we've successfully broken that alliance down."