“No.”

"Did you lie to him at all about the offer to restore his youth?"

She is so good at lying that everything she says is true. “No.”

"No unmentioned side-effects? Evil rituals that this requires or enables? Nefarious plots?"

'Define 'nefarious'.' ...would be the worst possible answer. She can't be too clever, either, he'll be on guard about Asmodeans trying to get things past him. She tries to keep her sentences short and not too finessed while also in fact covering for what she's up to.

"I don't know it to have any side effects, don't have any reason to think it would, and haven't noticed any. It does not require any evil rituals. The payment plausibly enables some evildoing, I don't have a stable of secretive scrupulously Good friends, but I don't know of any specific evils that will happen because my friend is wealthier. Nor of course is it particularly hard for someone with this power to earn money. Nor would I expect to benefit from any evils he does conduct with the additional money. I expect to benefit from this in that I expect it to enhance my reputation for being a useful ally and a dangerous enemy, and to lead to future opportunities to arrange such transactions. And I expect to benefit from keeping people alive and young and active in the world who I want alive and young and active in the world. Nothing else was important to me in deciding to arrange this, and I don't think anything else would stand out to you as an important consequence. If I were up to any nefarious plots to undermine the government of Lastwall I think I'd really try to do it under a name other than my own, at this point. Most people you don't check anywhere near as closely for nefarious plotting."

"It's true, I don't. That's the important business, then. Anything else you feel like saying while we're here?" Montero seems to like talking about other matters when they have extra time in Aktun. Probably because she can tell he stops second-guessing everything she says as much. He's trying to do it less in general, since she keeps telling him under a reliable truthspell that she hasn't lied to him, but it's a hard habit to shake, apparently.

She likes it when he trusts her. No one has ever trusted her before, except her mother, who is sometimes reading her mind and definitely has a plan to dispose of her if necessary and owns her soul and so only sort of counts. 

"I can't help but notice you never did try to verify the claim that I was working against the Thrunes all along."

"I've been more interested in avoiding future betrayals than verifying past ones, I guess. Do you want to tell me now that it's true?"

"I was working against the Thrunes all along. Isarn was my tip-off."

"Well I guess since I only conditionally thanked you before… Thank you." He can't ask about Myrabelle, even if she'd answer.

"I did not do it for your gratitude and did not expect you to ever learn of it. But you're welcome, I suppose. 

How old were you, when you decided you wanted to take Cheliax back from Hell?"

"...I would say that I took it seriously as my life's ambition from the moment I was capable of taking anything seriously at all. Twelve, or fifteen, or twenty, or thirty-five, depending on where you decide to count everything before that as youthful idealism. If you count the youthful idealism… I'd have to go to Heaven and ask my mother. Six, maybe?

…You?"

"It's complicated, right …not because of youthful idealism, I don't recall having been a very idealistic youth, because I couldn't think anything secret until I'd learned how to beat a Detect Thoughts. …I first told my mother I was ready to sell my soul when I was twelve. I was not ready, obviously, and she didn't let me." True, but a very selective telling. Myrabelle was proud, and gave Lilia a rare smile and a rarer hug, and told her which things she'd have to master to be ready, and then set out a demanding schedule by which they would be mastered and expected adherence to it. This version of Lilia, the one she shows Alex, needed less manipulation and was subject to much less of it; it's an easy thing to not lie about, because it's all a matter of perspective anyway. 

He's trying not to be too disturbed by the thought of Myrabelle ever letting her own daughter sell her soul. He did, after all, agree that he would have allowed it, if Lilia were under his command, and the plan looked like it had a chance of working. Which it did.

"When did she let you?"

"Twenty two. …by which time she couldn't exactly have stopped me, though I'd have waited longer if she'd insisted."

She'd been proud. It is one of a handful of treasured memories of Lilia's mother being proud. This version of Lilia, of course, instead had a mother who loved her, and her memories of this event are more complicated. 

The thought of it is upsetting, though he supposes not really more so than any other soul-sold Chelish person. Somewhat less, perhaps, for how it was - at least somewhat voluntary. And she had a way out. "Did she tell you, before you did it, that she could get you out of Hell?" At least he assumes that was Myrabelle.

"Of course. - I hope I'd have done it anyway but it would've been a much more difficult decision."

Cansellarion nods. "I can't imagine it was easy, even so. You could already beat a detect thoughts at that age?"

"Not reliably. I was working on it. I'd had enough success I was confident I could master it, and - I didn't want to count on having my mother around to help me forever." There's a glint in her eye. She does not think it's to her advantage to repeatedly bring up the fact he killed her mother but she doesn't want it to be unspeakable either. So the thing to aim for is of course status as a shared inside joke. Though for the moment that's probably a stretch.

He would really really really like to ask if Lilia knows if it's true, that Myrabelle let him kill her. He absolutely cannot ask that. He's not sure how to respond to that given that he can't ask the question he very much wants to ask. "...Sensible."

Poor, poor paladin. "I had mastered it by twenty-eight," she continues conversationally. "I was worried that I'd missed my opportunity to become a powerful wizard but thankfully Infrexus was considerate enough to have a fairly lethal court, so I kept improving."

"Fortunate, that… Thank you a third time for Isarn, since that reminds me that I got my fourth circle there."

"Good for you! Dimension Door, scrying…oh, I forgot, the gods only give out the disappointing kind of magic." (The truth spell objects to the claim she forgot.)

"That's not very polite to our hosts. I can't really complain about chains of light or holy sword. Nor the immunity to mind-control, though that came a little later."

Lilia's eyes widen. "Why, this whole time you can't be subject to a truth spell either! And you give me such a hard time about it!"