"Trying to dislodge Asmodeus thirty years ago wouldn't have gone well," Marit says.

"A fine reason to be patient. A terrible reason to help Him."

"It was necessarily the case that any deception good enough to convince the Asmodeans I was on their side would also convince you. I don't particularly regret it. It was clearly the right choice with the information I had available at the time, and even if I'd been much more careful I could not have predicted that you would acquire functional guns."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well, it's a reason to work with you."

Alfirin makes sense to Marit, as a person. In this position he too would be irritated about being expected to actually say out loud "I was not really serving Asmodeus, I was really trying to stop Him", this being a sound you can make whether it's true or not; examining the incentives is a better argument. He nonetheless suspects that from a strategic perspective Alfirin would get more of what she wanted if she said "I wasn't working for Asmodeus, I was trying to take House Thrune down from the inside". "There's not a good angle on the inside?" he asks her quietly, rather than try giving her advice she doesn't want.

"Not enough of one. Obviously having worked it from the inside helps with taking it apart from the outside, but I couldn't find a way that would work to topple the Thrunes from the inside without making a pact with Asmodeus myself, which would rather defeat the point."

Which is what you'd expect, really, but not necessarily obvious when the first Thrune came to power, when it must've been even more unclear how hard Asmodeus was clinging to his country.

"Well, she's obviously betraying one of us or house Thrune. And good enough at lying that I can't say how I'd know which one of us it is."

"I think if that were ambiguous, the Goddess would not have said she was an ally in this."

"She could have fooled Her too… though it does seem unlikely."

"If I were serving Asmodeus then instead of warning you about the attack on Almas and helping kill Lorthact I would have left you to be surprised and helped kill Morgethai." A fact which should be obvious without her saying it, really.

"We have only your word that Lorthact was even involved, nobody saw him -"

"Ask Clepati, and if you imagine she's in on my plot too then your war is absolutely hopeless and you may as well give up. I assume you won't take it as proof of anything if I pull his corpse out of my pocket."

"Not particularly."

"Is this going anywhere, other than to establish that you don't trust her?" Jan asks. "Because I think we do not need to trust each other perfectly to make this deal."

"Very well. I don't think my suspicions should be the determining factor here either, but I don't want us neglecting the possibility."

There are more details to be clarified but not really anything else to be decided. They're all very busy right now; they wrap it up in a few more minutes. They have an outline to take to the lawyers.

"Do you have any further matters for us?" Jan asks Alfirin.

"No, none. I'll be back tomorrow to sign." She leaves the room.

Marit's here to provide history advice, not to lecture people. But. "What is achieved by telling her you're suspicious of her? Check if Clepati confirms the Lorthact story, by all means, but why tell her you intend to?"

"I wanted to bring it to the Lord-Watcher's attention, and she might have had some reassurance or proof… It was an error, though. I'm sorry, sir."

They don't work for him. He does not really want to hang around scolding them for everything he can possibly notice, and not noticing she might be lying is objectively more of a vice than noticing it and then immediately saying to her that you noticed it. "That's approximately the person I knew. I'd be surprised if she's undead because I'd expect it to have changed her more."

"Thank you for the analysis. Do you think the Goddess may have been wrong in advising us to treat her as an ally in this?"

"There's enough at stake it's worth even expensively checking. But no. I expect she wants to fight Hell, or she'd be doing something else. Iomedae knew her better than anyone, and was right there, with something like a tenth of Her attention. I don't think She missed anything."

They've passed Nefreti's deadline and all is not lost; far from it, they now have three archmages instead of two. Cansellarion's army reaches the Tomarsulk with the main Chelish army too far east to contest the crossing or get between him and Egorain. According to his plans last week, he would've crossed the river and tried to lure the Chelish army into a fight on the plains of Chelam. He thinks he can do better, now. How does Morgethai feel about doing another teleportation circle to move his army north of Ostenso and clear out the Eastern army engaged on the border with Andoran?