"It sounds very complicated and expensive to negotiate being resurrected when one has sold one's soul to Hell and compacted controlling rights over it to Heaven."

"I can see how that might pose some difficulties."

"I bet I can figure out better immortality in the next century, anyway. I know it is classically considered a very hard problem but I have good advisors, a lot more time than most sixth circle wizards have left, and the world's about to be astoundingly rich….I'm very worried none of us will make it through the next decade but old age in this body doesn't scare me much."

"Possibly excepting you, I do not know of anyone who has achieved immortality in a way which is not ultimately Evil, and I don't think that's entirely a result of who's trying harder…"

"Aroden?"

"Nobody living knows how he did it - or Nex - but neither of them was Good and you would really expect Aroden at least to be Good."

"Galfrey?" says Lilia, but this time she's mostly teasing him.

"Is she actually immortal? It's possible to live as long as she has with ordinary magic."

"I don't actually know what she did but it's not ordinary magic…this is a bit of a digression. I'll look into my options, but my mother knows that if she starts making demands on the grounds she owns my soul I'll just ask you to trap it."

He nods. "I think that's all the questions I have now. Is there anything you need from me?"

"To be relentlessly Lawful Good all the time. Fortunately you seem unable to help it."

"I'm unclear on how in particular that helps with your situation but you're right that I don't know any other way to be."

"Oh, I just find it cheering. ...I told you already that when we met, during the war, and you worried over whether I was - negotiating carelessly and not in my interests - you were the first person not related to me ever to care about that. The qualifier - wasn't actually necessary. And we were enemies! You had more reason to hate me and mistrust me than almost anyone alive! It was one of the strangest experiences of my life."

"Well, I did at the time mistrust you more than anyone else alive…and apparently less than I should have.  I am glad we stopped being enemies."

Lilia looks smug about being a better liar than past Alex anticipated. "Yes. I am too."

She goes back to work. There's lots of work, more of it if she's going to be taking some time away soon to go scour the other continents for the remaining Church of Asmodeus. She picks one of the Reclamation's wizards who isn't unusually annoying and starts taking him on evening trips to every barony in Cheliax, one two three four five back to Westcrown, pausing just long enough he can study the place and scribble quick notes on it and sketch it. Half of spycraft is hearing things faster than other people; half of hearing things faster than other people is being able to get places when they are abruptly important to get to, and leaving people wondering if there is anything you won't hear. She doesn't speak to him and he doesn't try to speak to her, this being one of the respects in which he isn't unusually annoying.

She does not feel safe and happy and free. Or maybe she does feel free, maybe this is what freedom is, a miserable unending lurch in your gut, a deep and intimate knowledge of how stupid all your own reasons are for everything you do. If it's so she is rather with Asmodeus, who claims He objected to Ihys giving mortals free will. 

She buys a pampered lapdog from a vendor in Absalom, with silky fur and soft ears and wide, trusting brown eyes. The dog is named Sabandi. She nuzzles Lilia and settles herself comfortably on the hem of Lilia's coat and purrs even though Lilia's pretty sure dogs aren't supposed to purr. Lilia takes her to the Whisperwood. "You're free," she tells her, and watches until a hawk eats her.  

A year ago she'd have done it with a slave, were she in this kind of mood, but she's a good person now. 

She still loves her mother. She just no longer likes this fact about herself. She still wants her mother's approval. It just seems, now, like an absurd and contemptible thing to want. She can still see all the careful contours of how she was manipulated, because it wasn't mostly the magic, but instead of appreciating the craftsmanship of the artisan she resents the material for being so yielding. 

Safe and happy and free, her mother said, but she is not safe, because she is a damned woman. Maybe now, maybe a century from now, maybe ten centuries from now, Hell will catch up with her, like it does with everyone. The way to evade that is to throw herself onto the pity of the forces of Good, beg them to lock her soul away in Heaven, give up everything for the likelihood - but only a likelihood - that if she does that she will never wake at all. It is the most she can hope for. She does not want to do it. A week ago, she knew what that said about her - it said that she was her mother's and her mother still had uses for her. What does it say about her now?

She does not talk to Alex about personal matters further. Everyone knows that when seducing men you only tell them about hurts they can heal.

Lilia has a scheduled teatime, byweekly, with the Duchess Catherine de Litran.

She does not contact her mother, in the next two weeks, but she does show up for it, as if nothing particularly of note had happened at their last one. 

Catherine is there, but doesn't seem to have been expecting her. She blinks in surprise. "Lilia."

"Am I early?" asks Lilia innocently. She's not early.

"By - at least a month, relative to my expectations. It's fine, I just -"

"I could have called ahead. I am being petty and childish because I didn't get to when I was a teenager." She sits down. 

"I was prepared to come here every two weeks and drink tea alone for… well right now it feels like I'd do it for a century. Probably I would not in fact keep doing it for a century. You'd have had other ways to find me if you wanted to. I don't mind being surprised this way."

Oh. Lilia doesn't have trouble maintaining her composure because Lilia never has trouble maintaining her composure but something inside her hurts very badly and very suddenly.

It is contemptible to love her mother but it'd be more contemptible to love her mother and pretend not to; there's never anything gained by disliking yourself so much you don't pursue your goals.

…she stands up, again, and opens her arms wordlessly.

Catherine stands and hugs her. "You…" she trails off. She doesn't know what she meant to say.

Her mother is warm and strong and clinging to her like she fears Lilia will let go. A year ago Lilia would have sold her soul for this. Twenty five years ago she did. 

She does not want to attempt to explain to her mother what it feels like to be the same person you were but without there being any reasons for anything. "It affected less than I expected, really. …the first few hours were rough."