He unfurls himself fully from the library table and follows her.

Lastwall is apprehensive about their diplomatic meeting with the adult Alfirin who is a probably-evil archmage, probably essential to the war effort, and probably Iomedae's notable mistake that got edited out of the history books. Also quite possibly a lich. Marit thought it was moderately unlikely that she was here to assassinate them all, but that if she was she'd probably succeed.

Cansellarion is additionally apprehensive. Mysterious evil archmage, around but operating secretly since the Shining Crusade, who the Goddess says is allied with them in this war but not in all of their concerns - the obvious thing to do is to look back through the history books and try to guess who she might have surfaced as, and the blindingly obvious candidate is Myrabelle. He can't imagine, if so, that she's not holding a grudge.

Alfirin is apprehensive about the meeting with Lastwall's leadership. She hasn't openly met with people - besides Lilia -  who know she's an evil archmage in decades, and she has to assume, having summoned Marit about it, that they know a great deal more than that. And she's going to have to keep a good working relationship with them for the remainder of this war because, while she'd love to be surprised, she really doesn't expect Asmodeus to stop at 'Arazni and a Duke of Hell'. She's also apprehensive about Cansellarion, who almost certainly suspects her prior identity now that she's acting openly.

"Alright," she says when she sees that everyone is assembled, "As I see it, there are a couple ways we could do this. I could keep spying on you, and on Cheliax, and intervening without warning you where I think I can do this without tipping my hand or putting myself at risk, and you can be constantly looking over your shoulders wondering if I'm lurking there, or we can do something less stupid than that. My price is my privacy. I want you to not dig into my affairs, to let me move on after the war without being monitored more than you'd monitor someone you don't know to be an archmage. If I use some secret magic I know to help you, I don't want you turning around and planning how to counter it if we come into conflict in the future. I don't want you telling other people about me. I want to not be worse-off for having revealed myself to you." Nevermind that she only did it thoughtlessly and accidentally.

This is sort of classically the kind of deal you are supposed to be able to make and hold to if you are Lastwall and only if you are Lastwall, the point of Lastwall being structured the way it is. It's complicated in practice, obviously. If you see someone running around leveraging holes in your security - if subordinates who don't have the whole picture see that - it takes a lot of skill to be attentive to how you had that information and not patch them. Iomedae did it routinely and warned that most people couldn't do it routinely. But they can do it for this. Probably.

...With an evil archmage you also of course have to worry that this is cover for an agreement which is wildly restrictive of them under circumstances she intends to bring about. It's not immediately obvious how it's that, but it's probably that. That worry is what you bring in lawyers for, though, and write something very very careful.

What an Iomedaen evil archmage. Probably she wouldn't appreciate being told that.

Well, at least it's better than Razmir.

"To get a better sense of your request," Cansellarion asks, "Are you intending to operate against us during the course of this war? I think it might be difficult for us to pretend we didn't notice, if during the course of this war we find you - abducting Lastwall's citizens and torturing them, or something -"

She doesn't roll her eyes because that would be rude, and she's trying to be diplomatic. It's not that ridiculous a question to ask if they don't know very much about her, except insofar as someone in her position less inclined toward sincere cooperation against their common enemies could just lie.

"While we are openly allied I will not start new operations or plots aimed at harming Lastwall's direct interests. To the extent feasible I will abort or pause any ongoing operations and plots aimed at harming Lastwall's direct interests. I will not use resources you have provided me with in order to do things I believe that you would disapprove of unrelated to this war. If I am engaged in activities unrelated to this war which I believe you would disapprove of, or if I start any such activities, I will attempt to deprioritize them to the same extent that I would if I were not allied with you. I am not as good at that as Iomedae was. I will not start any new espionage targeted at Lastwall or at the Glorious Reclamation. If I have any existing information-gathering operations targeted at Lastwall or the Glorious Reclamation I will not actively advance them, though I also will not order them stopped; if I have any such operations which report back to me regularly I will keep taking reports. Is that satisfactory?"

What an Iomedaen evil archmage.

"It sounds," Cansellarion says carefully, "like you intend not to start new operations targeting Lastwall's people and institutions, and like you don't intend to wind down ones that are ongoing without requiring maintenance. What about ongoing ones that require some maintenance - re-casting spells..." like dominate person, perhaps?

Probing, Alex?

"If I have spells ongoing which need to be recast regularly, I will do that. If they need maintenance because you dispelled them I won't."

Which means there will probably still be dominated people in Lastwall reporting to her against their will, though Cansellarion having license to try to find them all is not in fact worth one fewer allied archmage, so he won't push.

Marit's current read which he's not going to helpfully volunteer is that Alfirin is not in fact abducting and torturing anybody but absolutely refuses to admit this as relevant, or seek any kind of agreement of the sort that only exists between people who are mutually not doing any abducting and torturing. 

…that's not a surprising way for Alfirin to turn out, really.

"So I'm just an old cavalry general and I'm not always sure I'm following conversations like this, can you just confirm that I've got this right - you're offering to help us out in the war against Hell, and to stop any hypothetical abduction of our citizens that you're doing for the duration of the war, and in exchange you want us to not take the help you're offering and use it to stab you in the back."

"Approximately!"

"And that's it? You don't want to be the new Queen of Cheliax, you don't want an archduchy or a sack full of diamonds or anything? Amnesty for your past misdeeds? A free pass for future ones?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"...Pardon, do you mean to say it's ridiculous to imagine you might want any of those things or ridiculous to imagine you're not asking for them?"

"It's not ridiculous to imagine I might want some of those things, but I would not demand them as the price for working together against our common enemy. And though I'm sure you'd try to pay me in diamonds, if we came to terms on that, I can't imagine you'd agree to an amnesty for past evils when you don't even know what those past evils are."

"I think we want some lawyers," says Heliu, "To write this all up, in language we all agree on, and make sure there aren't any loopholes or tricks before we commit."

"Go ahead, having it all spelled out formally should help avoid misunderstandings. But I'm not trying to trick you here and I'll swear to it."

"You could lie."

Someone noticed. Besides Alex, that is.

"If I'm willing to break my oath, how will a contract save you?"