Cansellarion is wildly out of his depth, dealing with de Montero. Espionage was never his strength, and even if it were - he doubts anyone alive today in Lastwall could keep up with her and her mother. Saiville considered himself outmatched back when they all thought de Montero was uncomplicatedly serving Cheliax and not secretly working against Cheliax while serving as the nation's spymaster.

There are some who aren't alive today who might, though. Or who at least might stand a better chance. He checks that it's a good use of Heaven's resources and then calls Marit for a consultation.

"Cheliax' former spymistress wants to work for me. Says she's been working against Cheliax all along, and she's Myrabelle's - Alfirin's - daughter, so in light of everything else we've learned it seems like she might be telling the truth. But she can fool a detect thoughts or a truthspell, and I'm completely at a loss as to how I might vet her or verify that she's not working against the Reclamation."

He considers that one for a while.

(Far more of spycraft is obsessiveness than genius. Sometimes you think of things no one else thought of, but far more often you just pay attention to all the things you thought of, and notice and are annoyed when something is unexpected, and bother checking things no one else bothered checking. He doesn't have genius insights. He has - confusions.

Also right now he has some grief about Alfirin.)

"She has a daughter, who was Cheliax's spymistress? What a - thing to do - what did you know about the daughter, before this -"

"That she worked for the Chelish intelligence services, and was highly positioned in them though we weren’t sure if she had superiors - We presumed her to be loyal to Cheliax because we did not imagine she could be anything else, being soul-sold and in such a monitored position and from what we thought was a family of loyalists. She was very good at her job, better than anyone we have. She - wound up in Hell, somehow, probably by being executed, partway through the war. And made it back out of Hell, somehow, presumably through her mother’s intervention. And then defected, implying but not outright stating that she was doing it out of revenge for her execution, told us all of Cheliax’ secrets in exchange for amnesty and a future favor, and disappeared. Technically, I suppose I don’t know the woman I spoke to yesterday is her. She was much younger and - had a family resemblance but I can’t say for sure that it was the same face de-aged."

"Confusions, maybe also confusing to you: why would she sell her soul? Presumably the answer has something to do with how she got out of Hell, but one can't imagine even Alfirin has that going spare. There are kinds of undeath that'd do it, are you sure she's alive? How'd you learn she can beat a truth spell? Why operate as herself, if you'd be a tenth as suspicious of anyone else? Is Alfirin known to have other children?"

"I hadn't noticed her soul-sale was confusing before… in the context of the Chelish government it was unsurprising, everyone in a position of power is. I am not sure she's alive. She told me she can beat a truth spell - which yes, is confusing in the same way that operating as herself is confusing. Myrabelle had one other daughter. Her current identity isn't known to have children."

He has a dozen more questions but none actually pin down the confusion. "All right. Two unknowns - really, sort of three unknowns. What does Alfirin want, what does Montero want, what is the Alfirin-Montero relationship. It's that last one that's bothering me, actually."

"Montero claims credit for one piece of intelligence that I received from Alfirin and - I think it's less surprising to imagine that Montero was working against Cheliax and with her mother, than that they both worked secretly against Cheliax independently. Or she could be lying. I can't ask Alfirin, even if I were sure it was wise to do so."

For a human it would be hard to set aside everything about Alfirin they learned once she started cooperating with them and make no inferences from it relevant to figuring Lilia out. Marit's an archon, and it's easy, even the part where you have to knowingly draw wrong inferences. Lilia defected probably after being executed; Lilia implied she was helping the Reclamation as revenge; Lilia now claims she was helping the Reclamation all along. The easy conclusion is that she's lying to worm her way back into the government. But it's just not a very good lie; if they don't have a way to check, they won't believe her, and if they do have a way to check, they'll disconfirm it. Maybe she thinks that even without a way to check, they'll be somewhat more trusting of her, trusting enough for some plan; maybe she thinks she can beat their method of checking, even having warned them she can beat all the traditional ones.

She - didn't actually appear to try very hard to bring that outcome about. She's helping Cansellarion for free as is. Possibly she thinks the pressure she applied will be sufficient; possibly it's not that important to her; possibly she wants them willing to go to some lengths and not others. 

(Marit can think of some methods she shouldn't be able to beat. But he wants to be oriented to what's going on before he starts proposing those.)

If she's telling the truth, then her motives are obvious; she wants to be trusted, still quite possibly because she wants to pull a coup and take over Cheliax. (Enemies of Hell aren't necessarily friends of Heaven.) She hopes they'll go to appropriately expensive lengths and then trust her. 

It would be a deeply unusual person who worked for Asmodean Cheliax for thirty years while secretly intending all along to betray them at the right moment. There are certainly, in Asmodean Cheliax, far more people who are now inventing reasons they served their new masters all along. But it's still when he's thought on it a long time hard to think of why, if Lilia's lying, this plan served her better than staying under the radar in her new body and never indicating she was still involved in Cheliax at all, or than working for Cansellarion without pretending to have been doing so all along, which he was obviously willing to enable.

Montero is succeeding at making it really hard to think of a goal she might have other than the one she's claiming to have. This is of course not remotely the same thing as 'Montero is telling the truth'.

Alexeara doesn't have any evidence about what other motivations she might have, just a thirty-year unfriendly history with the family. His best guess for what she might be planning is the obvious one, that she's maneuvering to try to get into a similar position in the new Cheliax as in the old, either for her own security and enrichment or in order to betray the new government like she claims to have betrayed the Thrunes.

"Is that - a powerful position in government - something you'd be inclined to give her, if you end up concluding she's telling the truth?"

"If I confidently believed her to be telling the truth and not otherwise scheming against the Reclamation - yes. She'd be invaluable for keeping track of the various factions forming and what the old nobility are up to and the like."

"And you wouldn't have been willing to offer that to her if she were an Asmodean who'd defected only once they were losing?" Marit is trying to track which goals this approach would've been Montero's best option to achieve. 

"I'd have been more reluctant to. But I think I still would have, if I were still sure she wasn't scheming against the new government…and I think I'd suspect her of that less, with that story, than with this one."

Well, he doesn't like that at all. …as a state of knowledge, it's fine as a hiring policy. "So what, if anything, does she get only because she convinces us she's been working for us all along?"

"Maybe, eventually, a greater degree of trust? Being thought of as instrumental in our victory? If it were someone else I might imagine public accolades."

His wings rustle unhappily. "Well. I think the closest thing to a way to be sure is to ask her for an Atonement, because if she's in fact been working for the forces of Good all along that shouldn't be very difficult and I think it'd be impossible to have one to Lawful Good go through while planning to elaborately deceive one's allies by it. If you're worried she can beat that you can just bring her to Heaven for it - it's more expensive, but it's ten times more expensive not a hundred, and atonement isn't an outrageous cost to begin with - the church is a little too reluctant to spend Heaven, sometimes, if you'll predictably verify things the cheapest possible way that's a weakness -

- anyway. I think I expect her to decline, you?"

"...I think so, too. She didn't appear Evil, when we spoke, but it's easy enough not to appear Evil. And for her I think we want to do it in Heaven, yes, with someone present who can detect Good and not just the absence of Evil… The problem is that I would still want to hire her, if I could trust her on other matters, even if she only would or could atone to Lawful Netural."

"You could offer to alternatively take her to Aktun but I am less sure that one couldn't sincerely atone to Lawful Neutral and also be planning to elaborately betray you."

"Hmmm…knowing that she can beat a truthtelling, would you expect she can beat a truthtelling in Aktun?"

"...I would expect not. Or, not undetectably." Abadar would notice, and He would not approve.

"Thank you, that should suffice for my employment concerns… Separately, as a matter of Law, I'm not sure what - mental position - to take on this information. I think, if not for the things I learned from Alfirin's cooperation, I would take this as suggesting that Myrabelle was still alive and had possibly worked against Cheliax - It would be less surprising than Montero doing this on her own - and I'd suspect the elder Alfirin of being the same person. I'm unsure how to act, though, because it's not enough information to be certain of that and I'm pledged to act as though I don't know Alfirin is Myrabelle until and unless I learn it through other means."

"- I think the cleanest way to approach that as a mortal is to brief someone else on what you non-secretly know about this, and ask them to prioritize it among their other concerns based on how likely it seems to them to be a real problem."

"It seems like if I briefed someone on all the relevant facts and only the relevant facts it would call their attention to the possibility that Myrabelle is Alfirin, which seems arguably contrary to my pledge."

"The way I'd try to do it - even if I'd made no commitments, if I just wanted another pair of eyes on the problem and not conditioned to notice the same things about it I'd noticed - would be to find someone who was present for the miracle, and brief them on Montero without any reference to it."