"Yes, I think so. It feels a bit arrogant or something to realize I've been probably not treating Lastwall the way I'd like to and try to address this by making more awkward demands of them but I think you're still right."

"I don't think it's an awkward demand, asking them to explain how they see the relationship with you… also aren't you literally one of their soldiers now? Isn't that just - a whole different way of relating to them?"

"...yes in principle, but I don't …know what it means to them? I mean, I'm clear on my vows. I was annoyed with myself for not getting better orders from Cansellarion, once I realized I'd failed at not pausing about the Wish, but I wasn't going to disobey them, and I think he knew that, and that's - important - I am very glad of the vows, actually, I think I'd feel much worse about today if not for that - but I don't know if, say, they as a principled matter try to treat with their soldiers less adversarially because of having more duties to them, or more adversarially because they - signed up for it -

Also my father said that if the army would take me at all they'd beat the being stubborn and rebellious out of me and they have not done that and I'm not sure if it's because they're not really counting me as theirs or what."

"Have you been stubborn and rebellious…OK yes, you've been stubborn and rebellious. Maybe they don't do beatings, or maybe they don't beat paladins, or maybe they just don't do beatings in the war room. Do you want me to try to find out some of the answers, I can't imagine you're looking forward to asking Cansellarion 'sir, why haven't you beaten me senseless for insubordination?'"

"It does seem like an awkward question to pose someone."

"Okay. I'll ask some of the people on the work crews. You're still going to have to ask Jan about - what sort of good faith he's treating you with and expects back - I don't think the enlisteds will know anything about that."

"Mmm. Tomorrow."

Tomorrow the latest episode of Freedom Radio is somewhat the talk of the secret project. Some people have made the obvious guess that the radios are another division of this secret project, but Iomedae doesn't know if any of them have made the connection between their supervisor and the radio host (she tries to use a different voice for radio). This means she gets all their opinions about her, said in front of her, which is a lot of fun. 

They only know about this at all because she screwed up but it's still very satisfying. 

In the afternoon there's a strategy meeting. Iomedae enters quietly and goes to her seat and is not particularly stubborn or rebellious.

"Alright Alex," opens Jan, "Was yesterday a costly victory or an outstanding one?"

"I don't know yet."

"When do you expect to know?"

"I don't know that either."

"...Okay. Let's all put it down in our hearts as a moderately costly victory until we know more. There won't be an incident report until we know what, if anything, it cost us or could have cost us - Iomedae, how many guns of each kind can you have ready by the end of Calistril? And how much ammunition?"

Is that going to be all of the discussion. Well, it makes sense that the most important question is whether their spies in Cheliax got caught for this and they don't know yet. Iomedae has current estimates on guns and ammunition by type, as of this morning. She'll read them off. "- and eight thousand of the centerfire bolt-action rifles. We could do more but can't scale the ammunition as easily. Same deal with the crank guns. I could make you a hundred of them but only about four thousand shells, and they go through two hundred a minute, that's the whole point of them."

"How much would it cut into regular ammunition stockpiling if Cansellarion starts soldiers drilling with the new weapons over the winter? We have twelve months in which Cheliax is without their usual reserve wish, and with that I'm inclined to - advise - that it's not worth another year to stockpile and train more."

"- for that we wouldn't need the batch 3 ammunition, which is designed for the Worldwound. Batch 2 we can produce a thousand a day. You could …probably design a halfway adequate training regime where every soldier learning the weapon fired forty shots? Less than that I’d worry they wouldn’t have experienced any problems while reloading and wouldn’t know what to do with it, or that under pressure they'll just forget how to do it at all.” She is suddenly aware of how she really doesn’t treat the President as a President at all, and generally does not behave at all like she acknowledges any authority whatsoever, and how possibly this is part of the error she identified yesterday. “Sir."

"I'm not actually in your chain of command."

"- understood." She's not sure if that resolves any of her confusions about how Lastwall's treating her but it sure does introduce another potential angle by which it'll predictably be complicated.

"Cansellarion is, and anyone he's assigned you under. But as for the rest of us in this room - we're your allies, not your superiors. So, who wants to make the case for Cansellarion not starting the war next spring?"

"Well, that's simple. How many guns would we have by the end of next Calistril?"

"- I don't actually know. I expect more than implied by 'production is four dozen a day' but less than implied by ‘production is doubling every month’ - at some point we're going to run into supply bottlenecks we haven't even thought of, or your druids will rebel about what you're doing to the groundwater. Or - see, I didn't know you could use Wishes to kidnap people, and I don't know how many more things like that there are and how often you will learn in advance of them."

"Well, there's the case, at any rate. Wait another year and we can at least triple the size of the army, and we have whatever new weapons the little geniuses come up with. Downside is passing up the initiative, if Cheliax decides to move before then."

"And they get their wish back."

"That too."

"Do you two have anything planned, down the line, that wouldn't be ready by next spring but would with one more year?"