"Yep. And it's less risk to Deskari to poke his head out himself, that close to home. I'd want to do it as a two-moment raid, except it'll probably be years before we have the means. What's Morgethai's deal, do you trust her at all?"

"If she has dark secrets I don't know them. She is not secretly working for Hell or Cheliax. She is going to be reluctant to involve herself in anything where Cheliax might notice that she's busy - She's the reason Andoran is independent instead of being Cyprian and Abrogail's latest battleground, and she cares to keep it that way. I trust that if you ask her if she'll help us with this she won't sabotage our efforts, but I think I don't want her looking closely at you or your companions and - she might."

He makes a disgruntled noise. "- your impression of Razmir's deal?"

"You don't have to keep Morgethai away for my sake.

...Razmir is either some not-exceptionally-bright wizard who stumbled into a Runelord's secret vault, or a returned Runelord who wants everyone to think he's an idiot, or someone genuinely clever who wants the observant people of the world to think he's a returned Runelord playing dumb. I don't know which. His spells look Thassilonian at a second glance."

The Runelords are not notorious for it being a good idea to come to their attention. He sighs even more disgruntledly. "I'm inclined to keep Morgethai away for my sake, I have secrets I don't care to have poked at too. And this isn't the important fight and I don't really want to draw people off the important one for this one. In principle I am aware that people sometimes conduct raids without Time Stop. Maybe we can hit up some of the old Sarkorin temple sites for practice until I either think we can pull it off or I get a better wizard." Nenio's been the fastest to grow but she's not his only bet. 

"I assume - it's not that the fight itself is unwinnable, but even if we had a way to win it we can't afford any of the consequences." He did not signpost the change of conversation topics to Arazni but there's no way it wasn't on her mind as much as on his.

"With what we have now - yes, the fight is winnable in theory. If we call in a lot of help and plan well and don't run into any big surprises we might not even need to get lucky. But - I think it only annoys her, doesn't save her. They say she's a lich, and I wouldn't be shocked if Geb carries the phylactery himself - and we can't win that fight."

They really, really can't. He shreds a sheet of paper (as a way to distract his hands; he doesn't shred sheets of paper as a security measure). "Is the situation with Catherine tenable for you? I think I'd find it upsetting."

"...I do not see how my finding it upsetting would be relevant to anything important."

"- you can't think of.... any way... that having an upsetting body-sharing situation would be relevant to anything important?"

"I remain functional and I brought it on myself."

"I guess to the extent I was worried about whether the universe is meting out cosmic justice correctly it's great that you brought it upon yourself but the extent to which I was worried about that was in fact 'none'."

"I find it upsetting. I am wronging someone immensely and I am not going to stop. I have done this to a dozen other people and if I get my way I will do it to hundreds more. This time I find it more upsetting than usual because circumstances have arranged for my victim to actually be aware of what's being done to them and I made the decision not to murder her on the spot for it."

Well, all right then. Marit is not sure what to do when your only friend confesses to intent to commit hundreds of murders. It seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't say if you didn't want to hear what the other person thinks, and also Alfirin cannot possibly want to hear that most people think murder is immoral. 

"I appreciate that you didn't murder her on the spot for it," he says mildly. If Iomedae was unable to convince Alfirin not to murder people then he doesn't really have any chance of it himself, and he cannot in fact pretend that his cooperation with her is presently conditional on her not murdering people. Also even if he did plan to try to stop her he wouldn't express this to her face. "I have a law against that here, and I'd probably have decided to ignore it but I really appreciate not having to. As well as appreciating the general capacity to do the less bad thing rather than the less upsetting thing.

I'd....really have expected that an archmage with a thousand years to work on it could've come up with something that involved less murder. It's a bit discouraging if that's not so."

"It was never a priority."

" - and do you think that was correct prioritization?"

- That brings her up short because she was honestly expecting more condemnation.

"...Yes in the last hundred years. Yes in the 4500s. No in the 4400s and the 4300s. I think yes from 4000 to 4300, yes for the 3800s, no for the 3900s."

"Why didn't you figure out something better in the 3900s?"

"I am not sure what answer you could possibly be hoping for. Because I thought it didn't matter very much, I suppose."

" - you brought this up. If you want to say 'you're not going to refuse to work with me, stop criticizing me', you'll be right and I will. I tend to figure that when people make prioritization mistakes that cause a dozen people to die and them to be miserable with no prospects of fixing it any time soon they are interested in correcting whatever - actually, no, I don't tend to figure that. I tend to figure that people who make mistakes they feel bad about want to never be reminded of them again and not change their behavior at all. However, I find that tendency in people annoying. ...also to some degree I'm checking if you have some kind of mental inflexibility problem from the immortality."

"Please do check that, I've checked myself but obviously some problems would make it hard to notice that they're there..." She sighs.

"You asked if the situation is tenable - As long as Catherine is not inclined to go run to Cansellarion and tell him everything the situation is tenable. I find it upsetting but I think correctly so and not expect being upset to impair me significantly. You are right that I...prioritized badly... in not seeking something better, and that I should be able to achieve something better now than what I could before. That's not a mistake I can fix now but - when we are done with Cheliax I can stop making it. We'll need to look into other ways anyways, for you."

"All right. When we're done with Cheliax I mean to hold you to that."

"Thank you." She doesn't have anything else to say, to that. She'll just sit here being a piece of paper as long as she can manage.

Daeran is pretty sure he knows exactly what happened here. He is pretty sure about this because he did, in fact, himself, do a lot of selfish and incidentally awful things to a lot of girls who weren't about to turn him down, and he can recognize the symptoms. 

Is it hypocritical of him to be blazingly angry with the Knight-Commander? Probably, but he's evil, so he gets to be hypocritical. The Knight-Commander purports to be Good. Daeran has known for a long time that Good people are just normal people who are blazingly self-righteous about how Iomedae picked their side, but that doesn't mean it has stopped pissing him off. 

He holds Catherine for a long time without saying anything but eventually his self-control wears out. "I hate them all," he says reflectively. "It'd have served them right if they did all kill each other. I suppose you and I might've had a hard time dancing clear of it."

That is really not what she needed to hear right now.

"I don't want the world to be devoured by demons. I might have some grievances with your cousin - " and with the knight-commander, she stops herself from saying, because Daeran doesn't know about those and she shouldn't tell him - oh, but if he thinks - "...but that's not - I wouldn't want the knight-commander to kill her. That doesn't accomplish anything."