"I worry about Sarusan. I don't think that we have a good way to monitor what's going on there... The best option might be to raise the possibility of an Asmodean state there to the Iomedans, and hope that their church on that continent will be able to handle it without regular contact with the rest of the world. Or that they'd be able to establish a church there if it didn't stick the first time."

"Or that if they can't, it's for reasons that'd also stop Asmodeus from doing it. If your Discern Locations start turning up Sarusan we can rethink that, I suppose. Queralt doesn't strike me as the type to try an elaborate gamble in Sarusan, absent a Commune result directing him to try it, and if - as Aspexia thought - they mostly want a presence to meet Asmodeus's Rovagug-related obligations, then it's hard to see how running Sarusan would even help."

Lilia usually has an enchantment take notes for her, but the privacy protections on her mother's tearoom prevent that, so she's taking them by hand. She has only a very limited intercontinental operation. It's going to be an undertaking, even if Alex will pay for it, and even if they restrict themselves to the continents which mortals return from when they visit them. 

"I agree that it's not the most likely candidate if Rugatonn was correct about why Asmodeus wanted a loyal state, and not an area where I'd invest a lot of resources given the inherent difficulties. Just keep in mind that it's a possibility, especially if Hell has developed effective practices for operating out of a region that erases the memories of those departing. Caina has a similar effect."

She knows. She's been there. She makes a note of it anyway.

"I had a question on another matter," she says. "You mentioned that - it would make you very happy, if I were to be your - friend and companion. Is this - a preference to have such a person, such that I could satisfy it by identifying or making one, or is it - sentimental - you want it to be me -"

What an incredibly characteristic way to approach the matter.

"I want it to be you."

"You know, I always assumed that you would kill me, once we'd won, because I know how you are immortal, and that is not a secret you have guarded this long by being - sentimental. Obviously being friends hardly precludes that but it does seem like making your life unnecessarily complicated.

Or maybe I would more precisely say - people speak of different things, when they speak of friends, and I do not know if you are proposing that I develop some interests to pursue against yours and you continually reevaluate if I am threatening enough to assassinate, or if you are proposing - the Lastwall thing, where we are open with each other and amiably part ways if we end up at odds -"

"I never planned to kill you just because we'd won... It would have been wasteful, even if I weren't sentimental. Which I am...I am proposing the Lastwall thing."

"When I obey you, do you feel - safe, happy, like there's ground beneath your feet, like you're not surrounded by enemies -"

"Yes. I would be grieved if you were someday my enemy."

"But it wouldn't feel like giving that up, if I was your - companion - and might sometimes disobey you?"

"It wouldn't feel like giving that up, if you were my ally and friend instead of my servant. It wouldn't shake my trust in you, for me to ask you for something and for you to say 'no'...It would if you told me you were obeying and then betrayed me."

Well, of course. "When you made me, did you get the thing you wanted most? Could I have been better?"

"For the way I used you… I don't think you could have been better. I got what I was trying to make."

"But now you want something different." 

"Now I want something different, because Asmodean Cheliax is overthrown and I could not bear to send you to Nidal or to Geb…and I am not foolish enough to take on Nidal or Geb."

"I am frightened that if I stop being yours I will find I am resentful of what you did to me."

"I expect you will be."

Okay now Lilia is confused.

Catherine can wait until Lilia has another question.

"Why does that seem like an acceptable cost."

"Because I love you and it is worth a lot to me for you to be safe and happy and free."

Lilia has not since she was a very small child entertained the delusion that her mother loves her. If anyone had raised the question, which they did not because she would murder them for it, she would have found the question as absurd as Aspexia Rugatonn would have found it to be asked whether Asmodeus loved her. She would disbelieve it, but she does not disbelieve her mother. She would be angry, but she is not angry with her mother. 

She is suddenly reminded, vividly, of the stupid argument with Carissa Sevar, of the impossibility of convincing people that they aren't in Asmodean Cheliax any more, that they were sculpted to be slaves but, in fact, aren't, of the contemptible tendency to remain a slave because anything else is too confusing -

It is not very pleasant. 

And then she does feel angry with her mother. She hadn't even known that was possible. 

"I would like it," she says, "if you would hurt me like you did when I was a child, so I know how much has grown in my imagination and how much has shrunk and how much I am lying about you."

"Okay. Would you like me to remove the enchantment?" Lilia knows about it, obviously. The fact that she's not asking for it to be removed... could be that she still doesn't want it gone, or it could be that she doesn't expect Catherine would ever remove it.

…Lilia blinks. "- that seems dangerous. I don't know what to expect if you do."

It seems unwise to comment on that. Better to let Lilia weigh that consideration as she will, without any input from Catherine.

"That didn't answer my question."