“We’re working on it.”

A lantern archon appears at Heaven's desk, says something to the lawyers, and disappears.

“None of this matters anyway,” says one of the lawyers. “Hell's ownership of a soul begins only at death and does not justify intervention on the Material Plane to bring a living person into Hell's custody. In re Riudaure (premortem), forty-eight seconds ago.”

“I haven't read the transcript yet but I guarantee you that's not what it says.”

“Indeed not; that case turned on the specific wording of the” she can't say ‘decedent’ because he's not dead “individual's soul contract and is irrelevant to this one.”

Damn. Well, back to their original argument. “Your Honor, the plaintiff is equivocating between two nonstandard definitions of ‘soul’. We concede that Hell might legally ‘own’ a mortal soul which has been transformed into a genius loci. We deny that this would grant them any legal authority whatsoever over the place in which the genius loci has been invested. In fact, the law of Hell attests to this: the archdevil Mephistopheles is, by all accounts, the genius loci of Hell itself, yet it is Asmodeus, and not He—”

“Your Honor,” says the devil, “the counsel for Heaven risks intruding unknowingly on secret matters which it is not permissible for a mortal, nor indeed an angel, to know. I will explain in private, if Your Honor would permit me—”

“You may do so.” The devil and the judge vanish.

So Mephistopheles is up to something. Unfortunately, he's not allowed to act on this information in any way.

The devil and judge return after a few minutes.

“The court is inclined to rule that, as Cheliax does not presently have a genius loci, the definition of ‘soul’ to be used in the interpretation of the contract between Hell and the Queen of Cheliax is that given in Constantine. Further argument may proceed on questions of whether this contract was and is valid, meaningful, or enforceable.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. This case, then, turns upon four questions. First, was the soul of Cheliax Abrogail Thrune’s to sell? Second, was Hell capable of buying it? Third, was the sale itself legal? Fourth, what actual concrete rights does ownership of the soul of Cheliax grant to Hell?”

“The answer to the first question is obviously affirmative. Your Honor, Abrogail Thrune II is an absolute monarch. She possesses a total, unimpeachable, and tyrannical right of obedience unto death from each and every one of her subjects, save certain of Asmodeus' own clerics. Her rights over her subjects may even, in certain cases, supersede Hell's—she has been permitted, though Hell had no part in the decision, to destroy or sequester forever souls which had previously been sold to us, an act which would be forbidden even to most devils in Hell.”

“I quote, in part, from her contract with us, but these rights were not granted to her by that contract, merely recognized by it; if tomorrow she should betray Asmodeus in the depths of her own heart, and thereby shred all the rest of the contract, she would not thereby lose them. We could thereby try to kill her, and would certainly succeed, but the law of Hell does not recognize any right that cannot be denied by superior force. She possesses these rights because she is the Queen of Cheliax, and she was the Queen of Cheliax before she signed her contract with Hell.”

“We could not have bought the soul of Cheliax from Abrogail the first, because she did not possess such rights until we gave them to her. It was not then the case that the monarch of Cheliax possesses, as a matter of law and custom rather than a boon of Hell, such tyrannical power. It has been seventy years. It is now.”

“Absolute power accompanying an office does not make it Lawful to sell that office, in re Benedict, 1056.”

“Come on. The court held that it was a Chaotic act in that particular decedent’s circumstances, not that it’s illegal in a completely different jurisdiction.”

“Is not Abrogail Thrune required by her contract to maintain a Lawful Evil alignment? A contract that requires either party to violate it in the very act of signing is inherently null and void, in re Gödel.”

“She’s Lawful Evil, because trading in souls is an inherently Lawful Evil act, as literally millions of precedents affirm. Taking an office that entails a specific divine duty of stewardship and selling it to the highest bidder is a completely different thing. For one, the Queen of Cheliax doesn't have a duty of stewardship.”

“Order,” says the judge. “The counsel for the plaintiff may proceed to the second prong of his proposed test.”

“Very well. The next question at hand is whether Hell had the right to buy this soul, and can meaningfully own it. This specific situation is, I believe, unprecedented. However, for guidance we may look to Concerned Citizens of Axis v. Norgorber, 1899, in which it was held that an entity of the Outer Planes may legally hold property in a plane other than its native one.”

“Some may claim that the Material Plane, which is subject to treaties limiting intervention, is an exception to this. That question, however, was answered conclusively and negatively by Assorted Planes v. Aroden, 4606.”

“You guys invalidated that one when you murdered Him, I think,” says Cansellarion.

“The paladin might even have a point,” says the devil with a smile, “if we had murdered Aroden. But we didn’t; we just tell people that.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” says one of Heaven’s actual lawyers. “This is completely immaterial.”

The judge squints at Heaven’s table. This is not really how objections are supposed to work. “Sustained,” she says anyway.

(Hell most likely doesn’t know Who actually dealt the killing blow to Aroden, and it’s better that they not get the chance to ask.)

“It is true,” says Heaven’s advocate, “that the laws of the Outer Planes do not forbid Hell from owning property on the Material. The laws of Cheliax, however, do.”

“The advocate for Hell has made much of how the law and custom of Cheliax permit its Queen to sell her country’s soul. But in spite of what Hell would have the world believe, the law and custom of Cheliax are older than seventy years. Once, even, Cheliax was part of Taldor. And in the year 711 Absalom Reckoning, having defeated the lich-emperor Taldaris II in battle, the emperor Vitravian III promulgated a law to the entire Taldane Empire, which has since entered legal codes from Mendev to Osirion. It states that ‘only living humans, and not the dead, nor the devils of Hell, nor the angels of Heaven, nor any other kind of immortal outsider, nor fae nor wyrms nor elven-kin, nor the foul beasts of the Underdark, nor any other kind of creature whatsoever, nor the gods themselves, may hold property, title, or office in the Empire.’ It has never been repealed.”

“Objection,” says the devil. “The actual text of the edict is ‘the holy gods’. Asmodeus is an unholy god.”

“I would normally overrule that immediately but the counsel for Heaven does appear to have left that word out intentionally and I would like to hear why.”

“To be frank, Your Honor, we just wanted to avoid digressing into the minutiae of ancient Taldane legalese. This court has historically held that when it must needs interpret the statutes and agreements of mortals, a reasonable person’s interpretation of the author’s intent ought to supersede the literal text, as mortals are not presumed capable of the degree of care and precision to which the court is accustomed—Aroden v. Maelstrom, A.R. 8; Abadar v. Paizo, 2016. ‘Holy gods’ is a stock epithet in classical Taldane, and it is patently absurd to imagine that the Emperor intended to exclude the Good gods, but not the Evil ones, from owning property in Taldor.”