Cansellarion really is not happy about this situation, though not so much because he can't kill Lilia and more because he's obliged to act as though he doesn't know her mother is alive and Up To Something. She's shown into his office at the appointed time - that's what he has, an office, not a throne room. He's an administrator, and a hopefully interim one at that, not a king.

"What can I do for you?"

Lilia considers the office to reflect simultaneously two crippling vices on the part of Iomedaens. The first is just making it look incredibly unappealing to be one. You don’t have to be Abrogail - you probably should not be Abrogail, actually - but one is allowed to enjoy oneself after conquering a country. She knows the man has given himself over to Iomedae far enough he would not even enjoy being surrounded by pretty girls (Lilia is one, now, but she’s carefully downplaying it) or statued enemies or ostentatious displays of wealth, but it could be a demiplane styled as a command tent like the one that appeared in the visions of the Shining Crusade, filled with things the man actually likes if there are any, something people remember. 

The second is that Iomedaens think they should run everything, but realize that this is an embarrassing attitude and incorrect when most people hold it, so they try to run everything but are vaguely embarrassed about it. Lilia feels that they should have the courage of their convictions and take an honest try at unifying Avistan under the rule of their goddess. They might be good at it and if they were bad at it then future Iomedaens would have concrete reason not to try. Having a ‘Lord Marshal’ administering Cheliax and Isger and a “Supreme Elect’ in Andoran and a Lord Watcher in Lastwall is just the behavior of people without the nerve to figure out who they really are. 

(Cyprian looks to be contemplating pivoting to marry Eutropia, and that might properly unify the Iomedans. She’ll wait and see.)

Lilia has sixty years of practice in Cheliax and the only thing that shows on her face is vague appreciation about the office. She bows, but not too deeply, and then goes to the report without any particular pleasantries. The man doesn't like her. She won't get him to like her by obliging him to pretend to. "Sedalis is a Henderthane loyalist; he considers himself and they consider him to be holding the county for them until the occupation leaves or at least calms down a little. They're holding his family hostage in Absalom but very politely, and even if you retrieve them he won't flip. Axios is very wealthy, considers himself to have been waiting out the Thrunes, and isn't wrong to figure he can wait you out too, except unlike the Thrunes you don't desperately need him for weapons manufacturing. Yet. Give it five years and you will; he owns the new gunsmith industry in Ostenso, and he doesn't own Corentyn only because his cousin Jehenes does. Jehenes is going to come out ahead in that little family competition if he survives it, because he's got some crafting genius who has cracked placing weapon enchantments on firearms." 

It's a long report. She used to break her reports down and work hard on the pacing, because Abrogail didn't have an exceptional attention span. She hasn't made that effort here. That seems unlikely to be among Cansellarion's shortcomings. "I did not include any recommendations," she says when she's done, "because I am not sure we're on terms where you'd listen to them."

…This is, if all true, incredibly useful information to have. And it's going to be expensive and painful to check that it's all true. He's sure it's all true, this time, because they can check, and Montero knows he doesn't trust her. He's going to check anyways.

"I would take your recommendations under advisement but not necessarily follow them…probably it's for the best that you did not include them," Because if she did he'd waste a bunch of time trying to figure out what she's planning with each one.

Lilia nods politely. "Yes, Lord Marshal. I want you to pay my peoples' salaries. Their work conditions just got a lot worse, you see. It is difficult for spies to conduct themselves to the standards of paladins."

She's rich, but she had an enormous loose network of people in her debt, before the war, and a fairly large network of people actually working for her, and she does not have the resources to pay their salaries herself, and Cansellarion does. And it's not the kind of request he's inclined to refuse, as much as he expects her to benefit from it, it cuts at his sense of fair play. 

And perhaps more importantly, as a principle about human nature, once you're negotiating at all then it's easier to consider more negotiations. Paladins know that. They'll refuse to deal with devils at all, no matter how favorable the terms. But they can't refuse to deal with Chelish people, not if they want to rule her country. 

So he's going to ask -

His own and Lastwall's spies are not, for the most part, paladins for this exact reason. He suspects she means something different by that than he would. "How many people and how much?"

She has the accounting all done up very neatly. Ninety people, geographically dispersed across most of the important noble families and major cities, here are their ordinary salaries and here are their hazard-pay salaries for working through this unusual situation which she's told them will expire next month. (She has some others she's not giving Cansellarion). This is expensive, obviously. But rumor has it that the Glorious Reclamation is rich. 

The Reclamation is rich in money and in always in need of more information about Chelish politics. He can pay.

"Thank you," says Lilia. "They know the expectations of those they now report to and if I learn any of them have broken any laws I'll report that as well. …to be clear, I don't work for you. I'd be willing to consider it but you have not, actually, asked."

"I didn't think you would consider it. I am sure you could be very helpful to us if you chose to be… What would be your price, for a longer-term arrangement?"

The problem with material demands is that he'll grant some of them, grudgingly, and then watch her all the more closely. And she can outlive him; material things aren't really what he can offer her that she can't get some other way. The thing she wants is for him to trust her. It obviously can't directly be bargained for, but most things worth having can't.

The other problem with material demands is that Iomedaens don't make them. See exhibit one: this office. Some dialects of Taldane would offer her as intensifiers 'this bloody office' or 'this damned office' but the office is neither bloody nor damned and that's really half of what's wrong with it. Iomedaens eschew material possessions that aren't combat gear. 

Some delicacy, then.

"Hmm. Let's imagine that a few decades ago I had come to you and said that I wanted to sell my soul and join the Chelish intelligence service, so that when the time was right I could betray them. What would you have said?"

"That it would have been very noble but almost certainly doomed to fail. It's not like Cheliax had no other ways of checking the loyalty of its agents - are you suggesting that that is what you did? How?"

There was the option of starting over under the new identity and trying not to rise to Cansellarion's notice. But she's not as old as her mother, and doesn't want to spend decades watching her country in chaos to preserve her cover, and if she does anything interesting he'll guess, now that he's attuned to the fact some of his enemies don't die. 

So that leaves laying her cards on the table. Well. A couple of her cards on the table. But they're very flashy cards. 

"Suppose I had the help of a talented friend who'd been working on the puzzle of how to fool a Detect Thoughts, and had long experience with the puzzle of how to be hard for Asmodeus to get an informative look at."

Of course. Myrabelle figured out how to fool detect thoughts and probably all sorts of truth spells as well. Really, his problems in general are much less bad than they used to be, but his Myrabelle-specific problems just keep getting worse.

"Well. In that case - it's not something I'd ever order someone to do, but if you volunteered that would be very noble of you and something that few others could do and I would be very glad you were able and willing to do it."

"Isarn was my tip." Two years ago, importantly. His reaction to that is going to be predictable - no reasonable person would believe her - so she keeps talking in case she can take the conversation somewhere else. " - so was the tip about the first effort to kidnap Freedom, but that one seems like weaker evidence of my intentions, coming as it did after you'd demonstrated you were up to something clever. I think by that point I'd have been looking to buy insurance even if I was an Asmodean, if I wasn't a stupid one."

"You've just convincingly made the case that I have no way of verifying your honesty." Or she's lying about that, though he can't imagine why, and in that case he still distrusts her about Isarn.

Well, it's out in the open where they can talk about it now. She appreciates the straightforwardness of paladins. She would be seriously torn if asked whether she'd rather burn in Hell or be one.

"You don't. I vaguely hope you may have more confidence in my competence. Isarn wasn't swallowed into Avernus, the girl wasn't kidnapped, Cheliax is free, and there you have the only evidence you may ever have about what I wanted to see happen."

"Someone tipped us off about those things. I just don't have much reason to believe it was you and not someone you caught after the fact and tortured the information out of."

"It's a real dilemma for you. I genuinely don't know if you have a way out of it or not. That's my price for working for you, though. Figure out whether I spent my life and soul to buy you Cheliax, so I can stop spending half my time figuring out how to spoon feed you everything in individually verifiable pieces."

"I'll take it under consideration. Is there anything else?"

"Is there someone else I should be taking these reports to?"

"Taking them directly to me is fine."

“Nothing else, then. I left your secretary instructions on how to reach me.”

"Goodbye. And…thank you. If it's all true."

She stands, and looks back at him, and the mask slips or she puts on a different one, and she looks like an old woman even though in this body she is a young one. "Just don't fuck it up," she says, and leaves.

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."

The first name to jump to his mind is De Luna, but that's probably because he knows what conclusions the man would reach. "That seems doable. Thank you for the suggestion."

"I also think you should press Montero on some of these things. Why she told you this, why she wants to work for you - it's not that she can't very easily lie, but conforming to any specific story is much more limiting than not needing to do that."

"I will also do that. Thank you for your advice."

Cansellarion asks Saiville for the names of some analysts who were in vigil at the time of the miracle, and pulls one for this. He briefs her on all of his interactions with Monetero, and says nothing about how he suspects Myrabelle lives.

He sends Montero to request that she set up another meeting with him.

But of course. She knows, consciously, that he actually in some sense means it about not being a king and doesn't consider it a summons and won't draw nearly as many inferences from how long it takes her to arrive when summoned, but those habits are hard ones to break. She sets the meeting up for the next day.

"I am more convinced of my ability to verify your intentions and willingness to hire you for approximately your old job, but I realized that you haven't actually told me what your intentions are. Why do you even want to work for a bunch of paladins?"

"Do you really find that confusing? I would like Cheliax to be a safe and prosperous and well-run place, ideally one that also keeps the world from being overrun by demons."

"Is that it?"

"I additionally find it galling when people make stupid mistakes I wouldn't have made in their place and would find it so to watch you blunder around trying to fix Cheliax. There are people who deserve to be removed from power and it'll be satisfying to prove they're still breaking the law? There are people who'd do a good job in government service trapped in the morass of some count's petty games and I'd like to have the power to pluck them out? I could keep going but I'd be scraping up extraordinarily minor contributions to my motives. I like knowing everything and this is easier when one has permission to do it. It turns out I'm not very temperamentally suited to retirement. I find politics invigorating, in general. You impressed me with the guns. …look, it sometimes feels like you'd have an easier time swallowing this if I demanded to be archduchess of the Longmarch and I considered it for that reason alone but I don't want to be archduchess of the Longmarch. I want this to go well."

"Are you planning to do anything that you think I would interpret as abusing your position?"

"No." Could her orders change, sure, but she doesn't actually expect them to. It's going to be a quiet well-behaved paladin friendly couple of decades. They'll outlive their enemies; they don't need to additionally aggravate them.

"You probably would have had an easier time of this if you hadn't told me you could fool mind reading."

"Obviously."

"So why tell me? It doesn't, I think, help me run the country better. It doesn't help you get the position you want. You volunteered the information, which is going above and beyond any newfound commitment to honesty and - It doesn't seem to me as though you've decided on a policy of volunteering any important applicable information."

"I haven't," she agrees, dryly. "How do you suppose it would've gone, if I'd failed to mention it, accepted my new position, run half your domestic politics, and then someone had tipped you off?"

"Quite badly. But I can't imagine many people knew."

"Your goddess picked a fight with Geb three months ago. Arazni's out and about too. It turns out it's possible to do Sendings without magic, and apparently soon Teleports too. Should I be assuming there's no such thing for truth spells? Why? I have no idea what's going to happen in the next decade and I don't think you do either. I'm not going to give our enemies a sure-fire way to throw the government into crisis at any time they choose just because I don't know any of them to know what true thing they'd have to say to you. Do you really think that would've been better?"

"No. But I didn't know if you would… Would you atone to Lawful Good, for this position?"

Her eyebrows raise slightly. "I'm not entirely sure if it'd work. I don't regret selling my soul, for instance, and understand this to be Evil."

"You don't regret it because of what it enabled you to do?"

"Yes. Obviously I would prefer it if I could have accomplished the same thing some less Evil way."

This is not really because she cares if things are Evil, but if she'd accomplished the same thing some less Evil way she'd have a soul, which is convenient for all kinds of things most notably eternal life in paradise, so it's not a hard sell.

"With that attitude an atonement may in fact stick."

"I'm willing to try it."

"If you'd rather not, it's not a requirement. It would make it easier to trust you, but it's not my main plan for verifying your intent."

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."

"Was that a complete list of cases where you know yourself to have tried to mislead me today?"

She thinks back through the conversation. There are a couple of things that are arguable either way but truth spells are usually generous about those. "Yes."

He sighs. "All right. I'm convinced. Will I be better served by monitoring you for signs of impending betrayal, or by not doing that?"

"By not doing that, unless you enjoy it."

That gets a laugh from him. He hands her a sheet of paper. "Okay. Here is your oath of office. It would be convenient if you could swear to it now while we still have the truthspell going."

Oh, so he does have a personality. Lilia genuinely wasn't sure. She won't conceal that she is pleasantly surprised. She'll take his oath of office.

He's… pleased, he thinks. de Montero will be a useful ally, and he's glad to not have her as an enemy and - having the chance to verify this much with her has made him somewhat less worried about her mother. And while he's still unsure that that's wise, it's not really harming his interests while he's unable to act on most things he knows about Myrabelle anyways.

"If you want to ask more questions out of pure curiosity I'll entertain them. For the sake of our working relationship and because it's a bit of a novelty, saying things and having them be believed."

"I'm afraid I'll need a moment. Most of the first questions that jump to mind concern your mother and I oughtn't ask them… You seem to enjoy your work, is it only your work or are there other things?"

Sometimes she coped with stress by turning people into statues and then chiseling the statues into prettier statues, trying to develop a version of the spell that'd keep her cosmetic changes when she turned them back.

"I picked up - Egorian - hobbies. I will probably now pick up paladin hobbies but I haven't yet and I'm not entirely sure where to start."

"They vary. Endel and I hunt together and play cards. Jan Zima spends time with his family. Heliu paints… I suppose of all those people I'm the only paladin, but I don't think paladins have a distinct set of hobbies from other people in the church."

"I expect I won't always feel this way but right now it really does feel like Evil people have more fun. Maybe I will pursue my interest in exotic fabrics."

"We are commanded by the Goddess to have fun. It's a responsibility we all take very seriously… You may want to look outside Iomedae's church for more examples of how Good people have fun. I am sure someone has come up with something you'd find appealing."

"I am impressed by your diligent obedience to your goddess with respect to having fun," Lilia says dryly. "Unfortunately I find all the other Good churches kind of annoying." 

"Do you not find Iomedae's annoying?"

Oh, absolutely. She's not going to say that. She's trying to become someone it's not true of.

"You really did impress me, with the guns. Iomedae - claims that you can win playing by Her rules. When She's losing, that's not very compelling. But - if She's right, then it's of course extraordinarily compelling. And you claim that what I did isn't incompatible with playing by Her rules, which was a sticking point because I'm pretty sure I was right and don't have a lot of time for anyone who claims I shouldn't've done it."

"It would be hard to deny that you helped us immensely in the war and wouldn't have been able to if you'd not been in the position you were in… How much do you know about the guns? Where they came from and such?"

"No comment." Not much, but Lilia likes to be mysterious about what she knows and she bets she'll figure it out shortly, she has many of the pieces of the mystery.

"Of all the secrets to keep - that one is actually important, if that changes your willingness to answer. Parts of the story are public, but parts are not and it would be useful to me if I knew how much you learned and when."

"I know that Freedom is more than your propagandist and is, actually, as young as she looks though this is somewhat at odds with the conclusion I had also reached that she played a major role in the gun project. I know the goddess worked Her miracle through her." That one took a lot of figuring out, actually. "I don't know where she got it. Actually grew up in an Azlanti colony in what is technically now Cheliax, then got petrified for ten millennia? I'd say 'from one of the stars' but she's so insistent that she's Chelish."

He would've expected her to listen to the radio more.

"I'm not intending to give you the answer. I don't know how long the secret parts will remain secret, and you knowing would probably be no great disadvantage now that the war is over, but even if it were costless you strike me as someone who would rather discover it for yourself."

"I'll tell you if I figure it out. Anyway, maybe your goddess got rather lucky, but - if Asmodean Cheliax had stumbled on someone with knowledge out of Azlant they'd have immediately bungled it unless I saved them, and you didn't."

"Would you have saved them?"

"Of course not. I did save their projects quite frequently - it's a good way to get promoted - but not a game-breaking one."

If her mother had ordered her to save a project that let Asmodean Cheliax take over the world, she would have. But her mother would not, in Lilia's best estimation, have given that order, so it's not lying.

"Are you going to want our help, later, in evading Hell?"

"I assume you're not hiding a secret way out of soul contracts."

"We wouldn't hide that," he says very seriously. "But we could soul-trap you, or petrify you."

"I could do that myself. Then I never get to find out if it was worth it, though."

"Well, the benefit of having the Church soul-trap or petrify you is that we can bring you back later if you want. And we can provide security for your statue or soul-gem - mostly Heaven does that part."

"There is not an obvious point at which to say 'now's the time to get my soul trapped'. I'm aware if I never say it then at some point I will be sufficiently murdered. I don't know. It'll sound strange, but I'm not very afraid of Hell. I am not mistaken about what it entails but it just seems like - conceding all together too much to Asmodeus, to give up everything else avoiding it. …there are separately security concerns but I have a solution to those."

"Do you expect aging not to be a problem?" She looks young, now, but that doesn't mean anything.

"That's correct." In however many centuries Lilia's mother has been alive she's learned a lot of secrets and this is one of the less well-kept ones, in that hundreds of people in the world know it. Though nearly all of them are druids.

"Congratulations."

The assumptions he's almost certainly making are in fact, in this specific case, false. It's an expensive ritual, but absolutely none of the components are the hearts of innocent babies or anything. 

"I didn't do anything horrifying at all, I promise. Just have friends in - a lot of places."

He raises an eyebrow. "Did your - friends - do anything horrifying for this?"

"No! No horrifying things happened at any point. I cannot certify that you'd like how they spent their payment, I guess."

"Making someone younger without requiring any horrible sacrifices seems like something a lot of people would be interested in."

"Unfortunately I don't actually think the guns and radios have improved your bargaining position here specifically but I can put in an inquiry for you if you'd like."

"Oh, I'm happy to go to Heaven when my time comes. I meant it in the abstract. Kings and emperors and first consuls, though I don't know that I approve of them all getting it… I assume it's not scalable."

"It's not. You know, it seems rather unfortunate for the world if all the evil people are desperately trying to stick around and all the good ones happy to head off to Heaven. The moreso the more achievable it is to stick around."

"We call this 'the lich problem' and find that - the evil people who manage to stick around and keep doing things in the world tend to accumulate enemies and eventually be destroyed for good. The ones that stick around and go into retirement are not much of a problem. And… enough people and enough great heroes are born every generation that the number of immortal evildoers isn't an overwhelming factor in how the world turns out. Outside of Ustalav. I admit it's a bit of a convenient way for the world to be… You think it would be better for me to have my youth restored non-horribly and remain on the Material?"

"It seems obviously better for Iomedae. I guess I haven't yet pieced together when that's decisive for you and when it isn't."

"I have given my life to Her service but I had envisioned that as a somewhat time-bounded commitment and would want to re-evaluate if it didn't seem to be the case anymore… though I suspect, knowing the option is there, if it really is, that when I grow old I will feel that there is still more to be done."

"...huh. …when I met you the thing that stood out the most was" how thoroughly Iomedae could make Her people Her slaves...rephrase that... "how little you had - ordinary human impulses that Iomedae opposes." How little you wanted to torture me to death, as would be natural and proper for you to want... "I am very loyal to my own purposes but it feels like resisting the impulse to do something else, not like not having it.

But I guess it makes sense that Iomedaen culture would carve people in the shape of - not wanting to hurt people you have power over, things like that which are likely to come up - and not build in any impulses about unlikely distant hypotheticals that only apply to a few people."

"Does Lastwall carve that impulse out of people more, or does Cheliax carve it in? I don't think it's universally present or absent in Taldane peasants."

"I admittedly haven't asked any Taldane peasants. Taldane nobles always struck me as Chelish ones who were scared of Hell and had a similarly scared peer group. Ordinary city guards anywhere will beat their prisoners just because they can. Ordinary armies will rape and pillage. Cheliax was of course trying to exert a lot of pressure in that direction, but I think the way Asmodeus pushes against human nature is in trying to get people not to love their friends, not in trying to get them to be near-arbitrarily vicious to their enemies."

"Hm. I think most people have no impulse toward cruelty to those who are close to them, and so for many people avoiding being cruel to people in their power is just a matter of having compassion for them, treating them like they would someone they know and care for - would you be cruel to your sister, if she were in your power?"

The answer to that is 'yes, absolutely'. She wouldn't torture her, especially, but only because she wouldn't need to. She and Rose could always hurt each other plenty without lifting a finger.

She does not really want to give this answer, because she's trying to make Cansellarion less worried about her mother and she can see very clearly that that's the kind of answer that makes someone more worried about her mother. "I haven't seen her in forty years," she says, staring off at the Axis skyline. 

That…sounds like an evasive non-answer. Which is concerning, but not, in hindsight, shocking from someone raised… more Chelish than most Chelish children. "I'm sorry," he says.

"I'm not sure it works anyway. You love your family, but presumably you'd start to feel differently about them if they joined the Chelish government and started murdering your people. So how does loving them even help with impulses towards someone who you don't know who did that?"

"I think if a member of my family had joined the Chelish government and started murdering my people… I would have very complicated feelings about that. I imagine I would still love them, in a way. But I meant the example to point out how many people avoid the impulse toward cruelty to strangers in their power, not enemies. Far more people want to hurt their enemies, I'll concede. When they have them."

"But not Iomedaens. It's very impressive."

"That's not universal. But we try."

The truth spell expires. Over their head, glittering gondolae and skytrams carry people across Aktun. The part they are allowed to see is more technologically advanced than it was before Freedom brought guns and radio to Golarion, Lilia notices distantly. "Right," she says. "Was there anything else?"

"Not particularly. I'm glad you're working with us, now." And not against them.

"I always was. …I am admittedly looking forward to doing it in a way that involves less killing your people."

The truthspell is expired. He… thinks she isn't lying, but killing fewer of his people is probably not one of the parts she's looking forward to, particularly. She's still, as far as he knows, Evil. He calls over the Iomedan cleric to plane-shift them back home.

"I've joined the Reclamation government as head of domestic intelligence," Lilia tells the Duchess Catherine de Litran over tea.

That wins her a smile, but smiles from the Duchess de Litran are not particularly rare. "Under your own name and face? How in the world did you convince dear Alex to allow that?"

"Publicly it'll be a new name, but that's to distract other old enemies, Alex knows. He seemed surprisingly amenable to assurances of my good intentions. I was really expecting it to be more difficult."

"Well, he doesn't know how easily you can beat a truth spell…not that you'd have very much you need to lie about."

She smiles slightly. "I told him I could beat a truth spell. He fussed for a while and then got one in Aktun, which I probably can't beat and in any event did not have the nerve to try."

"Huh. Well, I suppose we never had to worry about Terthule trying that. Very well done."

Lilia was expecting to need to explain her reasoning for telling him she could beat a truth spell, but perhaps it's obvious if you've known her her whole life. A Lawful Good Lilia would’ve confessed to Alex, and one should diverge from what a Lawful Good Lilia would do only very carefully, if one hopes to convince Alex that’s who one is. "Cheliax would've had plenty of options if it'd ever occurred to them that I was getting around all their standard ones. I'm not very surprised it never did….Abrogail might've genuinely suspected, towards the end. Tragically I'll never get to ask her."

"You could ask Alex for the chance…it would be an indulgence but with some constraints on how you treat her I'm not sure that he wouldn't grant it eventually, once you've been of service to him."

"I don't think the face I'm showing him would care about that. It doesn't seem like a very Iomedaen thing to care about."

"As you say. You know the situation better than I." Another smile.

"I like Alex. I have decided my stretch goal here is to seduce him."

That catches her by surprise. "Really. I didn't realize he was your type."

"What would you have said was my type?" Lilia has had sex with people exclusively for work, for practice, or when it's the least annoying way to pay someone to pretend to care about her.

"I wouldn't have made confident predictions but given your life so far - I suppose it could have been either Chelish people or the least Chelish people imaginable. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised." Catherine smiles again, thin-lipped, more like Myrabelle than the last one. "I expect he'll make that difficult for you. Iomedans have rules about sleeping with people who work for them, now."

Lilia hasn't the faintest idea what to make of that 'now', but she doesn't miss it. "Well I should hope he doesn't make it easy. Seducing most men isn't a challenge and that's in hindsight probably why it's never been the slightest bit appealing."

"Why haven't you hired the girl who figured out how to enchant guns?" Lilia asks Cansellarion at their next meeting. She has quite a few items on the agenda and saved this one for last because it's the one they're most likely to actually have a fight over. Paladin hiring practices are a bit opaque to her and they seem to consider Chelish ones to be slavery.

"I am not in the business of gun manufacture… are you suggesting I hire her and send her to Vigil or Almas?"

"Cheliax is too big and too wealthy to stay out of the business of gun manufacture. You can decide whether you personally have any control over it or not. Hire a dozen people, send them to Vigil, bring them back in a year to start something here. But certainly hire her."

"Hm. It does seem better than having to buy from the Henderthanes," Though he was really expecting to be able to buy from Lastwall. Montero has a point that that can't last forever, though. "I'll ask Alfirin," first Alfirin, "whether she'd be willing to set up a factory here. And some steel mills and all the other things involved. And if not I'll send people to Vigil I suppose."

"Who's Alfirin," asks Lilia, straightfaced, "and what decides where she'll set up factories?"

"Are you really claiming not to know? She's one of Lastwall's best engineers, decided to go off to Almas and start some factories there after the war." Married to Freedom/Iomedae. Directly responsible for bringing over most of the American technology. Your mother, but nine hundred years younger and less Evil.

Lilia doesn't know all of her mother's old names. She has a rough transcript of the miracle events in Vigil but without knowing all of her mother's old names it's one of a hundred unfamiliar names rapidly spoken in archaic Taldane, spelled Alkarin(?) in the copy she's seen. She declined the invitation to Freedom's wedding. "What did Andoran do to pitch her?"

"I think she's Chaotic Good. Liked the thing where everybody votes… But she might build one here anyways, if it's important for keeping the new regime."

"If everyone is planning to pull all of the Iomedaen countries together into a defensive alliance or renewed empire then I think there is no urgent necessity for Cheliax to have its own weapons manufacturing," says Lilia, "so long as we're sure it won't fall through." Lilia does not for a second believe that everyone is planning that.

Lastwall has its commitments. So does Mendev. Andoran is unreliable. Cyprian…may still want the Chelish throne. "Alright. Local factories it is, enough to match Galt at least." He does not look happy about that.

"Who's in charge of it," says Lilia who is planning to end up herself in charge of it.

"I think I'll have to go to Vigil for some recruiting. Most of the engineers stayed there when the war started, for obvious reasons."

Perfect. An engineer will be in charge of it and then only tracking engineering sorts of constraints. 

"Do you know of any reason to locate it somewhere besides Westcrown?"

"A massive favor to any noble you owe one," offers Lilia. "Or a bribe to this Alfirin, who will probably like Kintargo better culturally."

"Doing our arms manufacture in Kintargo seems like it might create some difficulties in the event of another war." Unless he can count on two archmages again, and he doesn't think he can rely on any of the three for a future war that's not against Hell.

"Not my department but the reason your military is low on Teleporters is that they all defected, and I can get half of them back if you're feeling the pinch, and at ordinary capacity they on a daily basis move sixty thousand pounds of materiel out of Kintargo. You should still probably do the guns here if Alfirin will agree."

"Ser Cansellarion! Is this a social visit or are you here to ruin someone's retirement?"

Alfirin does not look retired. She's covered in grease and directing a number of workmen assembling some big thing with an engine and a collection of giant axe-blades. "Aren't you a bit young for retirement?" he shouts over the din instead of pointing that out.

"I own Industry, Like All of It, or at least a solid third of that, depending on what counts! I can retire whenever and however often I please! Do you want to go somewhere quieter?"

He does very much want to go somewhere quieter.

Alfirin prestidigitates herself clean and transforms her clothes into her best recollection of a 21st-century pant suit and leads Cansellarion to the top floor of her not-a-wizard's-tower. There's an elevator and big plate glass windows.

"So, what brings you here? Me or my wife?" She grins the kind of stupid grin of someone who's not yet gotten used to saying 'my wife'.

"You. I want you to open some factories in Westcrown."

"Planes, trains, and automobiles? Or guns?"

He doesn't know what a train or an automobile is. He wants planes but he's willing to wait until they're better than the early models that he's seen so far. "Guns."

"It's going to be very bad, you know."

"What is?"

"The war you're all gearing up for."

"I'm not - gearing up -" ...maybe he is gearing up. He's not sure what 'gearing up' is. "I mean, I don't have a war planned. It just wouldn't be wise to have no weapons for the army if a war did start."

"Mhm. So you want at least as many as Cyprian, who's the one who you think is going to start the next war, right? And Cyprian sees an Iomedean theocracy to the north, making guns for the worldwound, and an Iomedean theocracy in Lastwall making guns for Ustalav, and an Iomedean theocracy in Andoran making guns to shoot slavers, and an Iomedean theocracy in Cheliax making guns just for the heck of it and maybe he's worried that he's got to have just as many guns as you lot… or at least enough guns to fully equip his army, which he can't downsize too much because of all the people with guns surrounding him."

"That's - we're not going to declare war on Cyprian!"

"Not even if he invades the rest of the river kingdoms? Brevoy? Druma? Mendev? Molthune?"

"...Maybe then."

"So either he gives up on war entirely - which I don't expect - or he has to be ready to fight you, and you have to be ready to fight him - and you're all going to have machine guns, and airplanes, and dynamite, and - artillery guns aren't complicated, I'm sure you'll all have those too even if I refuse to make any. And then - I don't know. Ten million people will die? Maybe more? Maybe less, just because there's not as many people around to die. It's going to be very bad."

"How sure are you? Do you know if there's a way to stop it, or make it - less bad...?"

"I don't know! I'm not a general! I'm not a politician! I'm just someone who half-remembers her American world history classes and brought this world all the weapons of World War One because we thought there was a horrible necromancer taking over the planet who needed to be stopped! And - Infernal Cheliax was also very bad and also needed to be stopped. I'm glad we did it. But I don't actually know how to build a peace or stop a world war or even whether that war is as inevitable as it feels… don't have a bunch of secret alliances. And don't blow up any Australian Archdukes. And no… unrestricted underwater warfare, wow, I bet Golarion has that already even though there's no underwater ships - that's - really all I've got and I don't know if any of it will even help."

"...Are you okay?"

"I might be the worst mass-murderer since - well probably there's someone else between now and Earthfall but not someone I've heard of."

"I think that's judging yourself too harshly."

"Say that again after the war… This is really giving me a visceral appreciation for the Nobel Peace Prize."

"I'm hoping there will be no war. What's a Nobel Peace Prize?"

"It's - the man who invented dynamite felt really guilty about it and set up a fund to give a bunch of money and prestige to whoever does the most to…make the world peaceful, I guess - each year. According to a committee…There was a big fuss about them giving it to Obama when he hadn't done anything yet... I don't think eternal peace tends to last but I sincerely wish you the best with that. But today you're not here for peace, you're here to ask me to build you guns."

"Yes."

"When are the first elections?"

"Hm?"

"The first elections. In Cheliax. When are they?"

"I don't know. We haven't decided what form the Chelish government will take, in the long run, and even if we were sure we wanted a republic the Chelish people aren't ready for that..."

"Well that's my price. Plan for a republic. Set a date. It can be a few years out, it can even be a couple decades out, but plan for a republic, set a date for elections, and make an announcement."

"I think you want me to move faster than is wise, on that -"

"I think democracies don't usually start wars with each other. So that's my price for handing out guns."

"Cheliax has guns already. The government doesn't, but there's private arms manufacturers who are learning… It's not just about Cheliax being armed, it's also about the Reclamation being armed and not having all the gun manufacture in the hands of the old nobility."

"Uh huh. The Henderthanes don't have steel at scale, they don't have smokeless powder, yet - I know they'll get there eventually, but for now - building you the factories you want would be giving the new Cheliax significant capabilities. Set a date."

Alfirin is being a stubborn child who has no idea how thoroughly unsuited the people of Cheliax are to rule over anything right now. She probably doesn't have the leverage to actually force Cheliax to be a democracy  "I'll think on it…will you help us set up some non-military factories, in the meantime?"

"Well, there's the problem, isn't it? I give you good steel mills and fertilizer and that's everything the Henderthanes are missing."

"...fertilizer?"

"Yeah it turns out the same things that help plants grow make all the best explosives. A factory that makes fertilizer is very easy to turn into a factory that makes smokeless powder and bombs."

That seems very odd to him but he's not the expert. And he trusts this Alfirin not to be making it up just to have an excuse to not give Cheliax fertilizer. "I see. The Henderthanes are probably going to get themselves established if I can't get your help or enough people from Vigil. I really don't think this is the best way to advance your interests."

"Well then you'd better get started planning those elections… if it makes you feel any better I'll see about buying the Henderthanes out."

"That might make the situation stable a little longer.  Thank you." Working with chaotic good people is such a hassle.

"Yep, that's me, selflessly consolidating a monopoly on arms manufacture for the good of the world. The hypothetical Marxists are going to love it."

"If you hold elections I will resign," Lilia tells Cansellarion. She cares about Cheliax, after a fashion, and has no desire to stick around watching it turn into Galt except without anyone involved being idealistic at any point.

"If I hold elections, so will I… Maybe some day it would be wise to try democracy here, but certainly not now."

She is enormously relieved to hear that. "What, you wouldn't even try to win them? …I don't really see the merit of holding elections at any point but there's probably some point where it wouldn't do much damage."

"Well, I'd resign first. And then… maybe run, depending on who else was. Probably run. Unless I was done running countries and ready for Heaven. But while I'm still the best person to be running the country I really don't see what's gained by holding elections and trying to win them, instead of just...running the country. So for now I'm not holding them and I'm not stepping down and I hope you aren't either."

"I intend to be here long after you've run off to Heaven. We'll find some other way to get your allies' cooperation."

"Or we try to assemble a team from Vigil who can do it without her help."

Lilia assembles her team in Westcrown mostly from people who had the sense to flee during the war but can be lured back with amnesty and assurances the new government is not going to fold like a house of cards nor start executing everyone with an Evil aura. She prefers working with Chelish people to working with paladins and anyway she knows who the most impressive and competent Chelish people are and not who the most impressive and competent Reclamation people are. And the latter are mostly spoken for, while Cheliax's best and brightest are all presently underutilized. 

She adapts her leadership style. Barely. When people under Lilia's command made stupid mistakes under the old regime, she would direct them to kneel, and then she would hurt them, and assuming they possessed the competence to not resist or cry and be disruptive, she'd let the spell wear off a few minutes later and let them return to their business. Everyone who worked for her knew you'd only be dragged off to a torture chamber for willful misconduct or for being totally unable to take a punishment like an adult. 

When people make mistakes under her new leadership, she directs them to kneel, and she says to them, "Iomedae believes that Her people are capable of learning competence without being punished for incompetence. Do you think She's right?"

They invariably profess a conviction that Iomedae is right. She permits them to return to their business. It seems to work about as well as the old method did. The only downside is that once she does hire some Reclamation people they make such faces.

"I've been getting some… interesting reports about how you treat the people under you."

In old Cheliax no one in Lilia's employ would ever dare go complain about her to her superiors. Unless they were suicidal - even if they were suicidal, really. Lilia suppresses the flare of fury because Lawful Good people do not shove their subordinates into a demiplane through which they'll fall infinitely until they starve for complaining about them to their superiors. Lawful Good people probably don't even have that demiplane.

She blinks patiently at the Lord Marshal. "I've reviewed all relevant laws and had my employees do so as well."

"If what you were doing was actually illegal we'd be having a different conversation. Or if it were definitely evil. What I'm hearing is that you are responding to mistakes by having your subordinates kneel before you and tell you that Iomedae holds that people can become competent without being tortured for incompetence, which is… in other circumstances I would just call it strange and confused but it also seems very reminiscent of the old regime." And he would like the new regime to not be reminiscent of the old one.

"Yes, it's about how I used to handle people without the part where Iomedae objects before I hurt them. …have you had a lot of luck, employing Chelish people in the new government?"

"Some. A lot of problems where people stop working and have to be fired, most Chelish people hired into positions like yours with people working under them punish their subordinates more harshly than we allow… Your approach is more…creative…"

"In Infernal Cheliax the kind of employer who didn't punish mistakes was not nice. He was incompetent, or he was keeping tabs silently and going to explode unpredictably in the future, or he cared about something entirely unrelated to results. By default if you are nice, you cannot thereby communicate that your motives are niceness. You will instead communicate that you do not care about results or cannot distinguish good ones from bad ones or are powerless to elicit good ones rather than bad ones or are keeping people on their toes and will blow up and murder three of them any day now.

...there are multiple options stylistically but you have to convey - yes, I care about the quality of your work, yes I can tell the difference between good work and bad work, and you're not getting hurt because I do not believe hurting you to be the best way to get what I want. Ideally you also want to do something they can imitate with their own subordinates without feeling like they are being obliged to embarrass themselves."

"We have elsewhere been considering an explicit policy of reducing pay for poor results, but there are concerns that giving supervisors discretion over their subordinates' pay would be a temptation to corruption."

"What's wrong with corruption?" asks Lilia, straightfaced. She is joking but she's going to get a facial expression out of Cansellarion before she actually answers him. 

" - I think you have two problems. One is that very few people in Cheliax know how to get any useful work out of anyone who isn't frightened of them. The other is that they're all frightened of you, and not in a productive way where they'll try to figure out how to accomplish your goals, in the annoying way where they'll try to figure out how not to do anything you can reasonably blame them for unless they have a plan to flee the country before being discovered. It's not that docking pay is an unreasonable policy in principle but I don't think it solves either of those.

You don't like my solution. Just - aesthetically, or do you think it's going to create problems in the future, if it spreads?"

"I think it's effective mostly because it fits in with people's expectations from the old Cheliax, and is not very effective with people who did not grow up in the old Cheliax… which means if it becomes widespread it's going to be more out of place and less effective as time goes by. I'm not confident it will cause problems later but I wouldn't be surprised."

"Once I have established a precedent I will have the option to take them aside in private and talk about their mistake the way I take it this is done in Lastwall. If I take people aside in private right now everyone else will assume they are being horribly tortured."

"I appreciate your efforts to make it clear you are not going to torture the people under you… Is the kneeling necessary?"

She honestly never contemplated not requiring the kneeling. "A little motivation to hate your boss and want to take her job is healthy for productivity!"

"...Is it?"

"Served me well for a long time."

"Hating your boss or having your subordinates hate you?"

"More the former. I was actually a popular person to work for. The competition had some distinct deficits of character." She - ought to let him talk her around on this, though. He will be pleased to have done so, and feel a little less suspicious that she's wiggling out of all his attempts to corral her, and in fact she doesn't know if the kneeling is necessary because she never considered not doing it. 

" …does it not feel to you - I suppose it wouldn't feel frightening, to you, you're a paladin… if I imagine adopting a policy where I never, even as punishment, oblige my subordinates to acknowledge my power over them, it feels like it will swiftly stop being true that I have that power, and that feels very frightening, because being wrong about who will obey you is a mistake you cannot afford to make even once…"

"Hmm. I don't feel that way, and I think it's not just being fearless… I expect this is a product of us having experience in different environments, that for me most people following me wouldn't have their loyalty reinforced by being forced to acknowledge their subordination like that, and also that having a disloyal subordinate is a survivable mistake and not even necessarily a catastrophic one."

Lilia considers it. "Do you find anything comforting in obedience, outside that it implies that whatever was ordered will in fact get done?"

Alex pauses, thoughtfully. "No, I don't know that I do."

"Huh. I'll try it your way but if it gets me murdered I'll stop trying it your way."

"I appreciate that, though if you suspect you're about to be murdered please let me know… will we be able to raise you straightforwardly if you are murdered?" Or can only your mother do that?

Only her mother can do that. "I've made my own arrangements."

Yeah that sounds like only her mother can do it. "Understood."

Being a paladin about punishing people is easy: don't punish people. Being a paladin about sex is easy: don't have any. Being a paladin about hiring is genuinely annoying. Lilia is accustomed to hiring people within Cheliax by informing them that they now work for her, and hiring people outside Cheliax by blackmailing them, or finding someone they would choose to work for and impersonating that person.

Carissa Sevar technically has a free choice as to whether she wishes to come work for the Crown, but she's not going to believe that and there are not really any contortions Lilia could go through which would make her believe that. She's pretty sure that the Iomedaen thing to do here is to try as hard as possible in that direction nonetheless, but she can't get over her innate distaste for groveling for things she won't get thereby. So she has someone find Sevar in Corentyn and invite her to a meeting; the girl will either flee the country or take the job, and the kind of people who flee the country did it already. 

"Sevar," she says, "I wanted to congratulate you. A good many brilliant people have been working without success on figuring out how to lay the standard enchantments on firearms. As I understand it some of them had nearly a year's head start."

She is trying to keep her face steady but it's easy to read that she did not know they knew that.

"You are well-informed, ma'am," she says neutrally.

"And you are underpaid. Have you considered working for the Reclamation government?" Insisting any more vehemently than that that it's a voluntary choice would just be insulting and distracting.

She indeed looks impatient at the supposition that she came to this meeting intending to perhaps decide not to work for the Reclamation government. 

"It would be an honor to serve."

"We're working to establish a gun industry in Westcrown. One plan that has been floated is to send you and some other brilliant Chelish people to Vigil or Almas for the next year, to trade what you've discovered for tutelage in gunmaking so that we can build the industry at home. Explain the implications, please."

" - Cheliax would have its own weapons and not be relying on Lastwall and Andoran? ...you'll get wildly ahead of Jehanes? …you may as well give me a Teleport scroll because if I want to defect I'll have the opportunity?"

"None of those are false. The implication which I would personally be attending to in your position is that what you figured out, yourself, in a few months of work, is something that Cheliax thinks it could trade for the secret of firearms itself. - with plenty of other wrangling behind the scenes, to be clear, but - how much are you currently being paid?"

"Forty Absalom pounds a week, in spellsilver," says Carissa, whose file indicates she has never been this rich in her life and who is navigating the currency crisis through mostly refusing to use currency.

"Let's make it four hundred. And you'll get to learn all of the secrets about how guns are really made, and you're vastly less likely to die in intra-Henderthane infighting."

"Yes, ma'am."

Someone who was a blithering idiot might presume this was a paladin-approved, consensual sort of hiring process. Lilia smiles warmly at her.

"As someone trying to improve recruiting for the Reclamation government, I am curious if there's anything that kept you from applying to us in the first place aside from your low self-esteem."

"Jehanes is a loyal servant of the Reclamation government and I assumed would tell me if I would better be of service here," she says. 

Jehanes is like everyone else in Cheliax frightened of and resentful of the Reclamation government and would be at war with it in a heartbeat if he thought he might win. Lilia does not resent being told blatant lies because if she did she'd have gotten tired of her job forty years ago. "I don't think he'll dare retaliate," she says as if Carissa had said something entirely different and more sensible, "but is there anyone we should protect on your behalf?"

"No."

Carissa's mother and sister died when Corentyn was sacked. Her father was smuggled out of the country safely. Beyond retaliation, at least the kind Jehanes is capable of. Not beyond being used as leverage, if it's Lilia using them.

"It would take you about five months to save up for your mother's resurrection."

At that Carissa does actually just fail at controlling her face. The resulting expression is mostly - angry. 

"I don't care if you do," the woman continues, casually. "But their trials will be delayed, if they have a shockingly wealthy relative who might, so it's not too late. Personally I do not love my sister but I would save her from Hell if it were convenient."

"I don't have the bodies."

"We do. It's too late for a Raise Dead, which is why it'll take you five months."

"I try to be thorough about hiring people."

"Yes, ma'am. When - and, uh, where - do I start?"

The anniversary of Iomedae's miraculous appearance in Vigil is looking liable to become a minor holiday there. Lilia decides that she'd like to attend it, not at all in her capacity as a spy except in the sense that she never really stops being a spy. She wants to have the set of shared experiences with Lawful Good people that make people automatically at ease around one another, that make them feel like they are not foreigners. She wants to know all of the Iomedaen jokes, even if they are not very funny; she is already with appropriate gradualness and casualness adopting their quirks of speech. None of this is actually cause to trust her, of course, but it reaches past the conscious mind to the place where trust actually grows. They will have to consciously remind themselves they don't trust her, if she feels like one of them.

Getting permission to visit Vigil is always a bit of an ordeal especially if you cannot truthfully answer no to all of the questions about a history of service to Asmodeus. She ends up appealing to Cansellarion for help. "I'm sure you've told whoever you see fit about me but I don't particularly want to attempt to explain myself to whoever grants entrance permits. I promise to be on my best behavior."

"Your best behavior? I will see what I can do."

He mentions it to Endel on their next social visit. "Montero wants to visit Vigil for the festival. Promises to be on, quote, her best behavior, end quote."

"And she can't go through the normal process because of her history? I really oughtn't just write her one without interviewing her first… but I don't know if an interview will help with any of the concerns that's meant to deal with, given who we're dealing with."

"You could do it in Axis. As far as I know that still works."

"Seems a bit excessive, no? As long as you're checking her general honesty regularly."

"Of course I am."

"So you're the great and terrifying Lila de Montero? Alex told me you were younger but I was expecting less younger than you in fact seem to be. I'm gonna guess you won't tell me how you did it?"

"It didn't involve anything that's illegal in Lastwall."

"Well now I'm even more interested - if you can't or don't want to tell me that's hardly going to be counted against your passport application."

"I know a guy. If Lastwall's people are not in such a hurry to get to Heaven as my current impression I can ask him his price."

"Ma'am, when I joined the expeditionary cavalry I did it in the expectation that I'd never have to endure being fifty, and I passed that road post a while ago. Heaven aside, I could stand to be young again."

She finds that oddly soothing. It's her least favorite thing about Cansellarion, the being in a hurry to get to Heaven. And the disinterest in having a better time in this world. "Youth is wasted on the young, as they say. I'll get back to you."

"Thank you. Why do you want to come to Vigil?"

"I heard you're having a party and had to investigate whether you know how."

"Well, some of us do. Are you planning to investigate anything else while you're at it?"

"I am not planning to try to learn anything secret and can't actually think of anything secret that it would make any sense for me to try to learn."

"Are you planning to do anything else nefarious while you're there?"

"No."

"If granted a passport will you leave Lastwall before it expires?"

"Yes."

"Alright, great. That's it. Enjoy the festival." He signs and stamps a passport and hands it to her.

"My, how straightforward. If I'd known it'd be that straightforward I'd have come ten years ago."

"Well, I'm relying on Alex' good word. And this is the first year."

She waves her hand airily. "I'd have applied to come for Arnasse or something. Had a lovely time, if you let me in."

"Well, I don't expect we would've. Unless you came under a false name and swore to all sorts of things under a truth spell."

"That would be absurdly irresponsible! I would have never! Anyway it would only be fun if I was being perfectly law-abiding myself and trusting everybody's Law and making no pretenses whatsoever."

"Well, then I don't think you would've gotten in, because normally we ask people if they are evil or Chelish spies."

Lilia smiles pleasantly at him. "Well, I'm very grateful for your willingness to overlook such matters in this case."

"Well, thank you very much for all of your help. We'd have had a much harder time of it without you." He's very confused by the elder Alfirin's preferences but he thinks she doesn't want him to acknowledge her role in things at all, so he doesn't, even though it was probably decisive and involved dragging him personally out of Hell, or at least Cheliax' next best attempt.

They'd have lost without her. She's very smug about it. 

She goes to Vigil for the festival and finds it only all right. 

Lilia tells the Lord Marshal that Carissa Sevar works for them now and he should see if Alfirin will accept technological and magical information exchange as a substitute for democracy. Alfirin seems like the kind of person who is probably possible to distract with a really interesting technical problem.

"Ser Cansellarion. Given that I haven't heard any elections announced yet I'm going to guess you are here to ask me nicely to set up your factories anyways in exchange for the secrets of enchanting guns."

"...How in the world did you guess that?" Enough of his conversations lately have been with Montero or Clepati, who he expects to be frustratingly informed about things he thought were secret. Alfirin is neither Cheliax' spymaster nor omniscient and should really know only a normal amount of things about his plans.

"I told you, I looked into buying out the Henderthanes. And then learned Jehanes' weapon enchanter got stolen by the new king… I assume you did not actually abduct her."

"I did not. We offered her a better salary. And I'm not a king -"

"I know, I know, military dictator. Jehanes doesn't, though. Or doesn't know the difference. What deal is it, exactly, that you want to offer me?"

"We send Sevar and some of our other people here. They teach your people how to enchant guns and learn how you're laying out and running factories. You help us build a steel mill and a chemicals plant and a weapons factory, you and the Chelish government split the costs evenly and you get three-quarters ownership. In broad strokes. We're open to negotiating any of the details."

"Hmmm. I'll take the deal, but I'm going to try to hire Sevar away from you. You can have the same split of funding and ownership in the factories if it means you'll forgive me for it."

"...I don't think that's going to change whether or not I forgive you. Why?"

"Because it is in my interests to have Sevar working for me? Probably in her interests too, I can pay better."

"But not mine."

"Well, it's probably worse for Cheliax. And for you personally. But your interests are pretty broad."

"...You think it's better for the world?"

"I have a preemptive guilty conscience that can only be salved by preventing the worst war Avistan's seen in at least a lifetime and probably more."

"And Sevar will help with that?"

"Well, maybe. It'll give me more power and influence, and in particular strengthen my pseudo-monopoly on the most powerful weapons in the world, which really seems like a good if unorthodox lever for working towards world peace.

...I realize this is probably also how my evil maybe-lich self got started, and I'm hoping to avoid her fate through a combination of self-awareness, listening to Iomedae, and the fact that powerful magic seems to present a lot more opportunities to gain power at horrible non-metaphorical soul-destroying costs than capitalism or steam engines do."

He doesn't believe Alfirin that this is good for the world. It sounds like she's already thought of his objections though.

"Sevar is free to work for whoever she pleases though I really hope you won't hire her away from me and don't think that it will improve the world if you do."

"No forgiveness then? More's the pity. The broad strokes are agreeable. Let's see the detailed proposal and work out the size of these factories."

“It would not be very hard to nail Sevar down but I think it wouldn’t be very Lawful Good,” is Lilia’s analysis. “And if you don’t make any effort she might stay or she might see who has the biggest mountain of spellsilver, which isn’t us.”

"Sevar - deserves to get the chance to hear Alfirin's offer. Not that I expect to do it, with that lead-in, but how would you nail her down?

“Call her in, explain the situation, and ask her if you can count on her to choose her country over a mountain of spellsilver. She’s less disloyal than most people. She’s not going to decide to defect while you ask, and she’s not going to make a liar of herself later either.”

"And she won't decide to defect while I ask because she's easily moved by invoking her patriotism, or because she thinks I'll kill her if she does, or something else?"

"Oh, I don't know if she'd consciously think you'll kill her. But they work hard on the most promising wizards. It has never in her life been a good idea to have disloyal thoughts in the presence of her superiors, and she never has."

He sighs, heavily. "Thank you. I would not have imagined that sort of problem was so - deep-rooted... Send someone to call her in?"

She sends someone. 

            "The Lord Marshal wants to see you," the messenger says, and she drops what she was working on as if it's been electrified and stands and follows him.

She enters the throne room that has a desk for some reason, and kneels.

"You may sit." he gestures at the chair on the other side of his desk.

She will do that.

"Please don't make any promises about what I'm about to say - We're going to send you to Almas, to teach some of our allies how to enchant guns and to learn from them how to run a factory to make guns in large numbers. Our ally is probably going to make you an offer to stay there in Almas and work directly with her instead of here in Westcrown. You're allowed to accept that offer. You won't be punished for accepting that offer. But I'd be glad if, before you do, you tell your supervisor on the trip to Almas what the offer was and give us the chance to match it. If you decide not to tell your supervisor you won't be punished for that either. Do you understand?"

There is a long pause. 

 "I hear you, your majesty, but it pains me to imagine that my loyalty is in such question."

He puts a hand to his forehead. "Montero, do you -" know what that answer means? Have anything to say to Sevar that will make her less scared and confused? Actually - "Sevar, would you prefer to be less afraid?"

"It's not a trick question," says Lilia, irritably. 

"Yes, your majesty."

Then he'll push out his aura of courage to include her. "Your loyalty isn't in question. I understand this - probably seems to you like some bizarre test. I swear it's not a test at all. I am a paladin, do you know what that means?"