She looks faintly baffled, at that. "I don’t prefer it be done by someone else. I agree it’s not urgent, though. …it doesn’t bother you, conducting interrogations?"

"It’s a way that we’re not really doing right by the people working for the Reclamation, that when they have ethical objections to how we are doing things they can usually at most not participate themselves rather than cause us to do less of what they object to. I think it’s unavoidable and not somewhere we could do much better than we are doing, but it’s still a way we’re wronging our people and I’m sorry about that.

It does bother me, somewhat, mostly for the reason that it’s wronging people to use them against their interests. And it’s something that I’m reluctant to do unnecessarily, for that reason. But - never using our enemies against their own purposes is conceding too much of an advantage to the forces of evil, just as it would be conceding too much to never send anyone to Hell."

"Huh. …you should watch me work, if you ever have the time. I’m - not sure if we’re thinking of the same problem, exactly, but I’ve no idea how to point at it if we aren’t."

"That might be wise. Maybe when this business with Alfirin and the factories is done my schedule will not immediately fill with new obligations."

Whenever in infernal Cheliax someone said that they would certainly be wrong. But maybe the forces of Good are different.

"- so she gave up on 'schedule elections' but told Alex she'd try to poach Sevar, which she has. Her explanation was that she thinks it'll be good if she personally maintains an arms monopoly, which - who knows, maybe, but it makes the insistence we hold 'elections' really irritate me. She's not putting her arms monopoly up for a vote."

Catherine is privately amused and lets it show a little bit.

"She doesn't seem the type to do that, no. It would be a bit out of character."

She doesn't miss the amusement, but she tucks it away to contemplate later. "It would be stupid, just like holding elections in Cheliax would be stupid." Alfirin, when contemplating her own interests, realizes that letting other people make the decisions will result in decisions she doesn't like. She just hasn't extended her reasoning to the entire concept of democracy, and probably won't until a few democracies crash and burn. Lilia doesn't want Cheliax to be one of them. She likes Cheliax.

"I notice that elections in Cheliax are not in fact being held."

She doesn't know if the younger Alfirin was deliberately making impossible demands for leverage or genuinely idealistic.  She wouldn't put either one past her.

"Alex agreed it would be stupid and we ended up trading her our weapons enchanter, which is less stupid ...and I suppose means the whole thing was just good negotiation on her part." Lilia scowls. "You know, when I was that age, if you were annoying someone assassinated you."

Catherine does not need to tell Lilia not to, since Lilia has stopped playing the role of Lawful Evil Chelish spymistress and started playing the role of Lawful Good Chelish spymistress. "The youth these days have it so much easier than when we were young." She keeps "quietly amused" on her face instead of "bitter".

Lilia is genuinely having a nice time despite the not being able to assassinate annoying people anymore, and has never been bitter about her childhood; it seems obviously the sort of thing that is contemptible and doesn't serve her mother.

"Half of making friends with Alex is trying to find him bits of backstory that are sympathetic but not depressing. He makes such faces if I have slightly misestimated."

"Mm? I think your life before the Reclamation was pretty troubling. It seems like it would be easier to tell him that things are looking up now than to pretend there was nothing to concern him before."

"I have not endeavored to persuade him that, say, I never really tortured people to death and was just pretending. But - some people have happy childhoods and decide they are going to take Cheliax back from Hell when they are six. Alex did." Lilia thought about this for a while and eventually decided she finds it charming. 

"And some people have much more complicated childhoods and decide it only because that is what their mothers want from them? I'm sorry. I do sometimes wish I could have given you and Rose more normal childhoods, at least insofar as one can have one when one's mother is an archmage."

Lilia blinks at her in astonishment. She'd wanted to - be candid about the rewriting-history she was doing, because it felt almost disloyal to do secretly - but she had not been fishing for and had not expected an apology. She can't think what her mother thinks Lilia is doing such that an apology would be the way to get Lilia to stop it. "Nonsense," she says lightly. "Tiny Lilia wanted to take Cheliax back from Hell because Hell was mean and bad, and badgered her mother for help at every opportunity, or at least I can think of half a dozen stories that give that impression." 

"If that's the story you want to tell him, I have no objection. Though I think he's not quite going to buy it if you are too careful to make me look good. I did go to some lengths to provoke the man into killing me and he's apparently spent the last thirty years expecting me to jump out from behind a tapestry and take my revenge."

"Luckily I think he finds the most generous possible gloss on my childhood still somewhat damning of your parenting. You know how paladins are. He could've kept Sevar by telling her to stay but no, wouldn't dream of it.

I can't actually think of anything I wish you'd done differently.

...to me."

"To Rose?"

"That seems between you and Rose. …Lawful Good Lilia has opinions but she's a bit of a busybody, you know, it can't be helped."

"Well, I'll hear them… Was there someone else you were thinking of when you added that 'to me'?"

"I was thinking of Rose. But not because I have some clever thing in mind that would've worked better, or because I think you ought to have done it if there was. I don't - I'm not going to start second-guessing you. We won."

"Please do second-guess me. I might have children again someday and if there's a way I could get more of what I want - which includes my children being safe and happy - by raising them differently I want to know. I do make mistakes, sometimes."

Something inside Lilia recoils. 

It's not that it's untrue. It is of course true. Anyone can observe that powerful people often have difficulty in encountering honest criticism, or distinguishing it from manipulative criticism. Lilia is loyal and this makes her criticism more useful like it makes everything else about her more useful. It still seems absurd and repellant, to propose changes to her mother's parenting.

Lilia does not actually know too much about what her mother wants, who her mother is. Anything she knew could have been forced out of her by the forces of Hell. Or Heaven, for that matter. It is better that she doesn't.

That's not the most important thing, she doesn't think.

She feels, sometimes, that she was sculpted towards a very narrow target. Anyone too Asmodean would have betrayed her mother. Anyone not Asmodean enough would've been incapable of rising inside Cheliax. Most people would have stopped leaking information when it became apparent that her mother would spend it and spend it until ultimately Lilia was tortured to death. Trying to reorient towards her mother feels like - wandering around in the dark when she knows full well she's standing on a very narrow pedestal.

"You built something beautiful, in me, and it wasn't a critic…have you asked Rose?"

"I have not asked Rose. I am sure she will have more to complain of, I was in many ways a worse mother to her."