Cansellarion really is not happy about this situation, though not so much because he can't kill Lilia and more because he's obliged to act as though he doesn't know her mother is alive and Up To Something. She's shown into his office at the appointed time - that's what he has, an office, not a throne room. He's an administrator, and a hopefully interim one at that, not a king.

"What can I do for you?"

Lilia considers the office to reflect simultaneously two crippling vices on the part of Iomedaens. The first is just making it look incredibly unappealing to be one. You don’t have to be Abrogail - you probably should not be Abrogail, actually - but one is allowed to enjoy oneself after conquering a country. She knows the man has given himself over to Iomedae far enough he would not even enjoy being surrounded by pretty girls (Lilia is one, now, but she’s carefully downplaying it) or statued enemies or ostentatious displays of wealth, but it could be a demiplane styled as a command tent like the one that appeared in the visions of the Shining Crusade, filled with things the man actually likes if there are any, something people remember. 

The second is that Iomedaens think they should run everything, but realize that this is an embarrassing attitude and incorrect when most people hold it, so they try to run everything but are vaguely embarrassed about it. Lilia feels that they should have the courage of their convictions and take an honest try at unifying Avistan under the rule of their goddess. They might be good at it and if they were bad at it then future Iomedaens would have concrete reason not to try. Having a ‘Lord Marshal’ administering Cheliax and Isger and a “Supreme Elect’ in Andoran and a Lord Watcher in Lastwall is just the behavior of people without the nerve to figure out who they really are. 

(Cyprian looks to be contemplating pivoting to marry Eutropia, and that might properly unify the Iomedans. She’ll wait and see.)

Lilia has sixty years of practice in Cheliax and the only thing that shows on her face is vague appreciation about the office. She bows, but not too deeply, and then goes to the report without any particular pleasantries. The man doesn't like her. She won't get him to like her by obliging him to pretend to. "Sedalis is a Henderthane loyalist; he considers himself and they consider him to be holding the county for them until the occupation leaves or at least calms down a little. They're holding his family hostage in Absalom but very politely, and even if you retrieve them he won't flip. Axios is very wealthy, considers himself to have been waiting out the Thrunes, and isn't wrong to figure he can wait you out too, except unlike the Thrunes you don't desperately need him for weapons manufacturing. Yet. Give it five years and you will; he owns the new gunsmith industry in Ostenso, and he doesn't own Corentyn only because his cousin Jehenes does. Jehenes is going to come out ahead in that little family competition if he survives it, because he's got some crafting genius who has cracked placing weapon enchantments on firearms." 

It's a long report. She used to break her reports down and work hard on the pacing, because Abrogail didn't have an exceptional attention span. She hasn't made that effort here. That seems unlikely to be among Cansellarion's shortcomings. "I did not include any recommendations," she says when she's done, "because I am not sure we're on terms where you'd listen to them."

…This is, if all true, incredibly useful information to have. And it's going to be expensive and painful to check that it's all true. He's sure it's all true, this time, because they can check, and Montero knows he doesn't trust her. He's going to check anyways.

"I would take your recommendations under advisement but not necessarily follow them…probably it's for the best that you did not include them," Because if she did he'd waste a bunch of time trying to figure out what she's planning with each one.

Lilia nods politely. "Yes, Lord Marshal. I want you to pay my peoples' salaries. Their work conditions just got a lot worse, you see. It is difficult for spies to conduct themselves to the standards of paladins."

She's rich, but she had an enormous loose network of people in her debt, before the war, and a fairly large network of people actually working for her, and she does not have the resources to pay their salaries herself, and Cansellarion does. And it's not the kind of request he's inclined to refuse, as much as he expects her to benefit from it, it cuts at his sense of fair play. 

And perhaps more importantly, as a principle about human nature, once you're negotiating at all then it's easier to consider more negotiations. Paladins know that. They'll refuse to deal with devils at all, no matter how favorable the terms. But they can't refuse to deal with Chelish people, not if they want to rule her country. 

So he's going to ask -

His own and Lastwall's spies are not, for the most part, paladins for this exact reason. He suspects she means something different by that than he would. "How many people and how much?"

She has the accounting all done up very neatly. Ninety people, geographically dispersed across most of the important noble families and major cities, here are their ordinary salaries and here are their hazard-pay salaries for working through this unusual situation which she's told them will expire next month. (She has some others she's not giving Cansellarion). This is expensive, obviously. But rumor has it that the Glorious Reclamation is rich. 

The Reclamation is rich in money and in always in need of more information about Chelish politics. He can pay.

"Thank you," says Lilia. "They know the expectations of those they now report to and if I learn any of them have broken any laws I'll report that as well. …to be clear, I don't work for you. I'd be willing to consider it but you have not, actually, asked."

"I didn't think you would consider it. I am sure you could be very helpful to us if you chose to be… What would be your price, for a longer-term arrangement?"

The problem with material demands is that he'll grant some of them, grudgingly, and then watch her all the more closely. And she can outlive him; material things aren't really what he can offer her that she can't get some other way. The thing she wants is for him to trust her. It obviously can't directly be bargained for, but most things worth having can't.

The other problem with material demands is that Iomedaens don't make them. See exhibit one: this office. Some dialects of Taldane would offer her as intensifiers 'this bloody office' or 'this damned office' but the office is neither bloody nor damned and that's really half of what's wrong with it. Iomedaens eschew material possessions that aren't combat gear. 

Some delicacy, then.

"Hmm. Let's imagine that a few decades ago I had come to you and said that I wanted to sell my soul and join the Chelish intelligence service, so that when the time was right I could betray them. What would you have said?"

"That it would have been very noble but almost certainly doomed to fail. It's not like Cheliax had no other ways of checking the loyalty of its agents - are you suggesting that that is what you did? How?"

There was the option of starting over under the new identity and trying not to rise to Cansellarion's notice. But she's not as old as her mother, and doesn't want to spend decades watching her country in chaos to preserve her cover, and if she does anything interesting he'll guess, now that he's attuned to the fact some of his enemies don't die. 

So that leaves laying her cards on the table. Well. A couple of her cards on the table. But they're very flashy cards. 

"Suppose I had the help of a talented friend who'd been working on the puzzle of how to fool a Detect Thoughts, and had long experience with the puzzle of how to be hard for Asmodeus to get an informative look at."

Of course. Myrabelle figured out how to fool detect thoughts and probably all sorts of truth spells as well. Really, his problems in general are much less bad than they used to be, but his Myrabelle-specific problems just keep getting worse.

"Well. In that case - it's not something I'd ever order someone to do, but if you volunteered that would be very noble of you and something that few others could do and I would be very glad you were able and willing to do it."

"Isarn was my tip." Two years ago, importantly. His reaction to that is going to be predictable - no reasonable person would believe her - so she keeps talking in case she can take the conversation somewhere else. " - so was the tip about the first effort to kidnap Freedom, but that one seems like weaker evidence of my intentions, coming as it did after you'd demonstrated you were up to something clever. I think by that point I'd have been looking to buy insurance even if I was an Asmodean, if I wasn't a stupid one."

"You've just convincingly made the case that I have no way of verifying your honesty." Or she's lying about that, though he can't imagine why, and in that case he still distrusts her about Isarn.

Well, it's out in the open where they can talk about it now. She appreciates the straightforwardness of paladins. She would be seriously torn if asked whether she'd rather burn in Hell or be one.

"You don't. I vaguely hope you may have more confidence in my competence. Isarn wasn't swallowed into Avernus, the girl wasn't kidnapped, Cheliax is free, and there you have the only evidence you may ever have about what I wanted to see happen."

"Someone tipped us off about those things. I just don't have much reason to believe it was you and not someone you caught after the fact and tortured the information out of."

"It's a real dilemma for you. I genuinely don't know if you have a way out of it or not. That's my price for working for you, though. Figure out whether I spent my life and soul to buy you Cheliax, so I can stop spending half my time figuring out how to spoon feed you everything in individually verifiable pieces."

"I'll take it under consideration. Is there anything else?"

"Is there someone else I should be taking these reports to?"

"Taking them directly to me is fine."

“Nothing else, then. I left your secretary instructions on how to reach me.”

"Goodbye. And…thank you. If it's all true."

She stands, and looks back at him, and the mask slips or she puts on a different one, and she looks like an old woman even though in this body she is a young one. "Just don't fuck it up," she says, and leaves.