"My country and my city for have as long as I can remember be run by deranged power-hungry lunatics who see enemies every time they open their eyes, lauded by everyone around them as heroes and draped in the colors of the greatest such power-hungry asshole, who told us to sell Her our country, and then failed to save it, probably because She's busy, not very virtuous to ask too many questions. Every member of my family obediently died for Her except Galfrey, who'd like you to believe that her not doing that is truly the greater sacrifice. 

I'm not, actually, angry about the power grab. Lots of people would do it. You want to wave your swords around and get to Heaven in the middle of everything turning to ash, that's your fucking right. You have hurt feelings that I'm not grateful. 

I'm angry that you sincerely think you're entitled to have us gratefully thank you for not saving our country, not saving our families, not saving our homes, not even really dying at our side all too often, I hear you're busy elsewhere.

I'm angry that when you stab us in the back in the dead of the fucking night, everyone made mistakes we can all learn from together. I'm angry that the only way out of the Fane was for the Knight-Commander to grovel for your goddess to declare him good enough to die for Her, and I'm angry that he did it. I am angry about every time anyone has ever said to me 'I don't like it either, but it's the only way to save the world from demons', and then gone on to sure not save the world from demons. 

Is that enough for your notes?"

Expressing sympathies for what Daeran has lost really does not seem likely to go over well.

"Yes, that's enough. Thank you."

"Knight-Commander, having seen what you have to work with I apologize for telling you to delegate more."

- he contains his facial expression, but only barely. 

"I've been promoting some of the archons," he says dryly. 

"They're not all bad, but - I'm impressed that you've managed to put together an effective team out of them. I assume they work together better than one would naively expect from talking to them separately?"

"Interpersonal dynamics are a constraint on how I've set up the strike teams but at this point we rarely have problems in the field. I do also have - people who are more capable of operating independently and also not Hellknights - but since they're scarce on the ground they're mostly busy. We've got a fifth circle priest of your goddess, and he has the command of the non-wardstone fort immediately south of here, and a fourth-circle one who is second-in-command immediately north; we've got a fifth circle wizard who's spending the winter running the Teleport route to Tian Xia for funding for the Crusade, and another who's spending the off-season at the Arcanimirium to try to pick up rod crafting, my request. ...the people who are here are mostly those it wouldn't make sense to have doing something else in their offseason, for various reasons."

"My read is that Derenge is competent to run an independent command and you're keeping him here for the obvious reasons, Lann could probably lead his people but isn't suited to authority over anyone else, Litran is - comparatively well-adjusted, so I assume just not command material?"

...would Catherine have a command at this point if he didn't know about Alfirin? Probably not; he'd thought she was young for it. His internal predictor of her is now wondering out loud if that's because of his Osirian attitudes.

Regardless he's not going to cover for himself by slandering her. "It's important to her to have close relationships with - probably most importantly Nenio and Sosiel and Daeran, but the rest of the team here as well. Probably also important to get her command experience at some point, but - if she leaves here with one of an archmage or command experience, I'll take the archmage, I imagine from there the command experience can be got."

"That's much better than her having some personal flaw that left her unfit for command. It wasn't clear from talking with her that Nenio had personal relationships of any kind."

"Nenio claims not to remember our names. I have asked a wizard friend to look into what's going on with her; it's not the ordinary arrogance."

"Ah. I thought she was just - unusually blunt. We didn't talk much at all, she just called me irrelevant twice and went back to her book and - I took the hint."

"Well, if it helps, it's not personal. 

- I heard you and Sosiel didn't get along."

"I managed to get out of it without writing another report."

"He's Galfrey's appointment. Last time he was disciplined for getting into a fistfight with a civilian Lady Konomi gave me a long talking-to about how I couldn't go around making myself look like I'm taking issue with everyone the Queen sends, and I think she was in a sense absolutely correct about what I could and could not do, but it's inconvenient.

Anevia's been trying to find me Shelynites who'll - not fight, not even necessarily spellcast as priests, but be present in Drezen, give him people to talk to and learn from. Unfortunately 'come live at a Worldwound fort' is a hard sell, maybe especially for Shelynites. 

If you're worried about Ember you can ask your goddess but I think her patron is the empyreal lord Andoletta."

That is mostly not the sense in which he'd been worried about Ember. "She's a very sweet child," he says, trying to be nonjudgemental.

“Did anything else come up that I should know about or can answer questions about?”

"No, Knight-Commander.

...You should still delegate more, though. My comment earlier was a joke."

"If you want high compliance with your recommendations ask Irabeth what you can take off her desk so I can put more on it."

That is, unofficially, a key part of the job of being an ambassador from Lastwall.

"Yes, sir."

I had a question. Do you want an independent command?

How independent? And are you just asking because -

Because of Alfirin? No, the opposite; when I thought you were Alfirin I figured you'd tell me if you wanted one. I'm asking because the ambassador asked why you didn't have one and it hadn't occurred to me that anyone might parse it as an omission but of course they're all - watching you very closely.

Well in that case yes, sir, I would. How much of a command and how independent are we talking?

My first idea is that you take over the command of B team, I have some objectives to put the Hellknights on and you're the obvious person to promote if we take Regill off. I'll move Lann over to B team and promote someone, not sure who yet. However - as I told the ambassador - Daeran Sosiel and Nenio are the ones you want, so maybe it makes more sense to hand you A team aside from looking slightly odd.

It would look pretty odd, sir, but - I'd be proud to have them...Since we're talking about it I was wondering if you had advice for exactly how to get Nenio to follow me when the time comes. I don't think she likes me very much - mostly just calls me irrelevant when I try to talk to her. I know she does that to most people but I need better than 'most people' here.