Lilia nods levelly.

"Does that mean you'll do it?" He sounds mildly surprised.

"I still don't know if it will work but as I understand it there is not much lost by attempting it and it does seem like it'd simplify trust if it does work."

"I would like to do the atonement in Heaven, followed by a truthspell to confirm key claims in Aktun. If you're ready I have a cleric with the necessary plane shifts."

Ah huh. Because most possible workarounds flatly won't work under the direct supervision of a god, and even if there are some that would she won't be given time to arrange them. Or to get permission from her mother, which she is sure is on Cansellarion's mind (though in fact she wanted to be truthfully able to say her mother didn't tell her to do this and that she's reported her intent to do it to no one, in case he asks that, and so hasn't reported this to her mother yet.) And if she agreed to an atonement before, but doesn't want to do it in Heaven - if she wanted her honesty verified, but not by Abadar Himself - well, that's the answer he needs.

It's delivered with the unfailing paladin courtesy but she's not less cornered than if he'd had eight heavily armored soldiers step out from behind the curtains. 

She appreciates that. She doesn't know how this will go - it depends heavily on the questions - but if it goes well she won't be working for idiots. 

"As you wish," she says, without missing a beat.

They plane shift to Heaven's Shore, where the priest asks Lilia to reflect on and repent of the evils she has done while he performs the ritual of the spell.

She doesn't really expect the evils she has done to be the sticking point. 

Yes, she has tortured and damned lots of people, including when it wasn't strictly necessary to maintain her cover, partially because ‘only hurt people when it's strictly necessary to maintain your cover' is much more complicated than ‘hurt people when it advantages you' and likely to get you caught eventually if you ever miscalculate, but also partially because she found them annoying and found it satisfying to see them destroyed for it. This is the kind of thing you repent of in the ordinary fashion, looking inside yourself and wishing you were better, seeing that the world made up of people with that mindset is an ugly one and that the world made up of people without it is a better one. Heaven's very beautiful. Lilia is aware that in the world she lives in now, it is a weakness, to be someone who tortures people when you're angry with them, and she doesn't like weaknesses, so she has set the habit aside, and can if called on actually regret it. Her mother didn't actually like it, that Lilia enjoyed hurting people. It was convenient but not actually preferred. It suits Lilia to move away from that; it feels like being a stronger person.

The sticking point is going to be the evils that she would, absolutely, do in a heartbeat in the future if so ordered. She probably won't be so ordered, is the thing. She's more useful in the paladin government than as her mother's assassin. Her mother has other, better, assassins. It would be stupid to get Lilia installed in a trusted position in the Chelish government and then risk her, and it won't be done. But the fact remains that if Lilia were ordered by her mother to break her word or murder someone or damn someone again, she would. 

Lilia has a better theological education than most people, because you can't lie to people if you don't speak their language, and she can recognize that this is obviously a situation where her mother might prefer that Lilia be limited or restricted in her uses in order to be much better at them, might be able to get more out of a loyal limited Lilia than an unlimited untrusted one. Lilia expects this is the case, even. But it still feels very dangerous to try to squeeze through Heaven's surveillance by being someone who'd disobey an order to torture someone, because - because she's never contemplated there being any order of her mothers' that she'd disobey. Because being a more limited tool feels like being a more easily discarded tool - more utility, sure, but utility across a narrower range of situations. And because she feels instinctively that her mother will be slightly disgusted. 

But if you think about it those are all selfish motivations. They're about not doing what she calculates to be in her mother's interests because she wants to retain personal flexibility or personal usefulness to her mother. She - shouldn't do that, actually. She should identify the shape that is most useful, and be it, and that probably is  "Lawful Good", because Myrabelle's going to have a much easier time hiring out things that aren't ‘the trust and respect of the most powerful faction in Avistan'. …and that means she should in fact intend to, at least for this lifetime, disobey orders to do Evil things, operating as she does in a context where this tendency is observable.

She closes her eyes and tries to imagine that until it feels like something she could actually do.

(That mortal has simultaneously an unusually good and an astoundingly bad comprehension of Lawful Good. Iomedae is genuinely unsure how to render a verdict on whether or not it counts.)

Lilia presumes that Iomedae will issue whatever verdict serves Her. Iomedae won. Anyone who isn't an idiot can see that Iomedae won. The way to get ahead in the world Iomedae conquered is to follow Iomedae's rules. She isn't, actually, sure if that's good enough, but it seems to her that it would in an important sense advantage Iomedae for that to be good enough. 

Which is why she is trying very sincerely to be someone who, if judged Lawful Good, will go around only using Lawful Good strategies to do her work, which admittedly is the service of an Evil archmage but the specific service she expects to be doing that Evil archmage is stitching Cheliax back together and making it robust against upcoming catastrophes.

Atonements take an hour. It doesn't feel like there is an hour of thoughts to have, but Lilia holds obediently still, waiting for a god to inspect her mind and determine if she takes the shape Iomedae demands.

...Iomedae does not, Her attention called to this mortal, certify that they are best predicted as a Lawful Good mortal.

(Lilia could fake it by changing her alignment aura anyway but that's a risky game when conducted literally in Heaven. She'll stick with the Lawful-only aura that's already kinda possibly dishonest.)

It didn't stick. Cansellarion's not very surprised. Aktun, then.

"Can this discussion be confidential? You can use it to determine if you want to work with me, but not for other aims of yours."

He pauses. "Yes. I will not use anything I learn from this for any purpose other than to evaluate whether I want to work with you…I intend to use information from this conversation in evaluating whether I want to keep working with you in the future and not just the choice of whether to start working with you in the first place, unless you ask me not to in which case I will be more reluctant to work with you in the first place."

"I'm fine with that use."

"Have you lied to me at all today?"

"No."

"Have you told me selectively chosen truths with intent to mislead me today?"

"Oh, certainly. It's a difficult habit to break." 

That, itself, sounds like a selectively chosen truth told with intent to mislead him. Hm. "Do you know of any such cases?"

Lilia pauses as if to consider the question. "I left 'it'll make my mother proud of me' off my list of motivations for fixing Cheliax, for the obvious reasons, and carefully didn't represent it as complete for that reason."

"Did she ask you to do this? Feel free to decline to answer that one."

And waste all her effort that went into arranging to be able to truthfully answer that one? "No, she didn't."

"Do you expect your position to advance her goals contrary to the interests of the new Chelish government? You may again decline to answer."

"I don't know her to have goals contrary to the interests of the new Chelish government except that you want to keep tabs on her and she wants to be left alone. I suppose I don't intend to help you spy on her. I'll tell her more than you'd probably prefer, but not more than I can and do tell her without being in your government, and not more than I expect you would prefer if you were better informed."