"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?"

"Artillery guns?" Alfirin adds, somewhat uncertainly. "Same basic principle, but bigger. Pulled around by a horse or a team of horses, usually used as siege weapons - might be useful against adventurers, if you can aim them fast enough. Or dragons. They're very good on ships or armored vehicles. But it'd mean setting up a whole extra production line and that would cut into the rest of production pretty sharply if you want them by spring."

"Artillery guns are very important in Earth warfare of this time period but - mostly in wars between major powers, they're not as important when a single industrial power is fighting some backwater. And I don't know enough about fireballs to say if they're a lot better than fireballs. ...I want airplanes but I think I could only have them in fifteen months if I did nothing else and it's not a good trade. …airplanes can do most of what dragons can do, and are only a little less scary, and also they can do overland logistics. But they're ill suited to these secrecy conditions and quite challenging even if you're cheating in various ways I expect we will to start out."

"I don't think you can build an airplane that runs off a coal boiler. On top of the plane development itself, which I agree would be hard to fit into fifteen months, we'd need to develop petrochemical refinement…and find some crude oil."

"Spring, then, with guns and no artillery or airplanes?"

"I think so."

Cheliax learns that their enemies knew of the Wish attempt because they have Manohar run some Discern Locations from a scroll at the right time. They fail, as they would if everyone were Mind Blanked, and Codwin and Cansellarion usually aren't. 

Lilia frames a subordinate, obviously, modifying his memory to include going out to dinner with a friend the night before the operation and then waking up in his own bed with no memories of the rest of the dinner at all. She gets tortured anyway, because Abrogail Thrune is very upset and can't take it out on Gorthoklek, but she can beat a Detect Thoughts and a Dominate and she is ultimately not under wildly more suspicion that she was before, as far as she can tell. 

She is nonetheless irritated that Myrabelle presumably intervened to save the girl. Lilia finds the girl very annoying. She's aware this is mostly just because her own life is a lot worse when Abrogail Thrune is having a bad day, and doesn't reflect much on the girl's actual value as an ally, but she would have enjoyed interrogating her and she has not enjoyed the last few days of her life at all. 

"So I talked to some of the workmen. They mostly get beaten for breaking regulations. Officers get beaten less often, paladins not at all - probably because the paladins never break the rules."

"It seems incorrect to have the paladins exempt," Iomedae says thoughtfully, "but not very surprising if they're just much better at rule-following.

I'm still confused about something but I really don't want to have to ask Cansellarion a question I've only halfway articulated in my own head when he's got a war to plan."

"Are you confused about why they're not beating you, or just the rest of it?"

"...I assume that I haven't actually broken any rules because they don't actually have a rule against being stubborn and rebellious? But that just relocates the confusion to why I haven't been ordered to be less stubborn and rebellious... I think I am worried I'm being extended a degree of indulgence no one else is because of the god Iomedae."

"Are you confused about the way they're treating me?"

"No! You are a ludicrously valuable ally they are very glad of and don't especially trust or want to ask too much of because you're also a foreigner and a teenage girl and too weak to read alignment off, and they treat you in a way that makes perfect sense given that. But I would like them to be able to ask more than that of me, if there's more to ask, because - because I ask more of them, when I have more to ask."

"What have you asked of them, that you're thinking of here?"

"To run Freedom Radio out of their basement, when they disagree with it. For them to appear on it, when I was going to pick a bunch of fights and propose overthrowing their government. For them to risk their people in Cheliax to bail me out from the consequences, apparently, though I didn't know I was asking that. But the radio was my idea, for my aims, and - probably not the best thing you could do if you're Lastwall, and I'm grateful they gave me latitude to do it anyway, and - I don't know. 

I just don't want to be - making them pay costs they don't have to because they think otherwise I won't do what needs to be done -"

"Hmmm. I think a lot of those things are - things that I could ask of them too. I'm not sure you're in fact asking more of them than you could as just a foreign teenage girl who wasn't also complicatedly related to their god. Maybe I don't understand what you mean, exactly?"

"....the thing where I'd be stubborn and rebellious to Evelyn until she got overwhelmed and unhappy, but she still wouldn't order me to cut it out? I respect that, a lot, but I don't like it, because I'd rather people be able to order me to cut it out because then I'm not just guessing when and how I should - but it only works if they will -"

"Mmmm - I see. You want to know where the limits are, you want to know how much - how much you're paying, in goodwill and tolerance -?"

"Yes. And if I'm currently taking a lot of my pay in goodwill and tolerance, then that's probably a bad trade for everyone involved, because I'm in fact capable of playing by the rules, I just …well, I need to know what they are, and also Freedom doesn't really come across like someone who'll do what she's told without making an enormous fuss about it and I want to make sure that people correctly predict how I'll behave if told to change my behavior."