Galfrey's face flickers slightly at the refusal, like she's surprised and disappointed. "Knight-Commander, we have no choice."

Whose benefit are they speaking for at this point, Seelah's and Cansellarion's? Galfrey's own paladins, who have to have a rationalization good enough they won't fall? Galfrey herself, who probably also needs that unless she's actually been faking being a paladin the whole time? 

"We have quite a few choices, which we can discuss at some length once we've returned to Drezen. We can send a better equipped team that has done some advance scouting, interrogated some demons, and understands what to expect. We can seal the rifts as they come. We can spend another two years here in which time I think I can have an archmage, and then try it. I look forward to discussing our options -"

"Do you think I'm an idiot, Knight-Commander? Do you think you can execute my loyal men and assuage me with parades? It's fascinating, how many people turn out to be traitors who had to die, when you're around. You meticulously conceal all your plans and your origins, you surround yourself with Our enemies, you all but make it known you have no love for Mendev or for Our goddess, and now you want to have this conversation in your stronghold. No. I'm not an idiot, Aspex, and whatever you want to say you'll say it here."

Oh, this is the part where her allies decide to kill each other over insufficient zeal and imagined betrayals to the cause.

OK this is clearly getting out of hand, but the problem is, Cansellarion has no context on local politics and does not want to jump to conclusions about who's right, and it's all moving so fast -

"Don't do this, Your Majesty." First, Dust of Disappearance, then he can spellcast. If the Fireball lands there it shouldn't hit his own people. He wants there, instead, if he's also trying to get Cansellarion.

"You and I have both sent many people on dangerous missions that needed doing. And from all I hear of your management of the crusade, I cannot imagine you take it well if they decide to refuse to go."

"I don't send my people on unnecessarily dangerous missions. I don't deny them time to prepare. I don't send them badly injured and low on spells straight into the Abyss without warning. This is an assassination and you're going to have to do it with your own damned sword."

"I hoped it wouldn't come to this," says Galfrey, "but if you're refusing your orders, then you're under arrest."

She does not want to get into a fight where she uses magic in front of Cansellarion, but dying and coming back in a clone might be worse - there are lots of reasons for someone aiming to take the Chelish throne to hide their spellcasting abilities -

"Majesty," interjects Catherine, or perhaps Alfirin, "I don't believe anyone on this side of the door - possibly excepting your cousin - is actually sworn to obey you. Rather than all the good - or at least lawful -" she glances at Regill "- people in this room drawing swords on each other, could we not turn to some outside party for arbitration? ...Sir Cansellarion, if this is too urgent to wait for the church of Abadar?"

Cansellarion counts as an outside party, right? She hopes he counts.

...Oh thank the Goddess.

"I would rather wait for the Abadarans myself," says Cansellarion, "but am willing to act as judge if necessary. And willing to help enforce the Abadaran judgement, if the concern is that commander Aspex would attempt to resist it."

The thing is that he is not, actually, going to lose this fight. He'll expend some resources he'd rather have saved for his actual enemies, the resulting geopolitical mess will be a nightmare, but Galfrey planned this on the wrong assumption they'd be low on spells and actually the two most powerful spellcasters in his command haven't spellcast at all today. 

And he has the Wish scroll. He could, right now, put his people in Drezen and Galfrey's on the Moon. 

The only way he dies here is if he agrees to the arbitration and it goes against him. He has to promise, now, to obey a process that is probably as stupid and corrupt as everything else in the modern world.

This is how everyone feels when they're starting a war. The entire point of Lawful Good - a point deeper and older than Iomedae - is that you can step away. This is the only way out, and you have to be looking, for ways out -

He doesn't actually know anything bad about the Church of Abadar in this world. Arsinoe and Rathimus were both completely ordinary Abadarans. 

"I will abide by the decision made by Abadaran arbitration," he says.

"You could drop the sword, then."

"You have not actually assented to arbitration, your majesty, but if you do agree, then I will gladly drop the sword."

"The matter strikes me as urgent," she says, "and I am reluctant to divert from this location those people required to go find a qualified priest of Abadar and hire them. Sir Cansellarion is right here, and his judgment I'd abide by."

"Ah, yes," says Daeran. "If the justice and judgment of the paladins is called into question, we can simply call in more paladins who can speak to whether the original paladins were questioned wrongly. Eventually there'll be enough paladins in the room that only justice could possibly result."

Yeah, no kidding, Galfrey thinks Cansellarion will side with a fellow member of the Church and the reigning monarch of an important geopolitical ally over an outsider.

He thinks she's probably wrong. Cansellarion wants to win in Cheliax. He's had the chance to see what 'Aspex' is doing here. He expects Cansellarion'd be quite reluctant to have him killed. And on the merits Galfrey's in the wrong. The Worldwound treaty does not permit this; if she's really still a paladin she'll probably fall for it. But it's of course his life he's staking on it. He cannot agree to arbitration and then resist the judgment because it is manifestly unjust; he has to make a choice, now, that he is willing to die by in ten minutes if he sized the man up wrong. 

Alfirin vouches for Cansellarion. Marit acknowledges that it is in an objective sense silly to count the fact the man is a paladin of Iomedae against him. 

The first time Alfirin saved his life, he was nineteen, and -

- the problem was partially caused by the fact that he gave his allies no reason whatsoever to trust him -

He wants Galfrey to die in a fury of Fireballs. It feels righteous and just, for her to have underestimated him and planned this betrayal and for it to fail because for once she tried to stab in the back someone whose back was armored. 

The world has no righteousness and no justice in it. It's just broken, and some of it is ruled by Hell. 

"I will abide by the decision made by Sir Cansellarion," he says. And drops the sword. 

"Very well," says Cansellarion, seeming pleased but perhaps not entirely pleased by this development, "To begin with, your Majesty, do you contest the claim that nobody in Aspex' company is sworn to your service?"

Daeran is having a coughing fit. It's dusty here in the Abyss.

"Count Arendae is," she says. 

…Marit realizes, belatedly though admittedly ten seconds ago he had a lot on his mind, that ‘Daeran's passenger gets nervous' is probably lethal to everyone in this room.

"Count Arendae was assigned to my service for as long as I had need of him," he says.

"What were the terms of Count Arendae's oath, and of the transfer of authority to Commander Aspex?"

Galfrey can give that; Daeran doesn't contest it.