Lord Entat raps sharply on his desk and a young priest comes in. “Arrest tonight: will I tell you in an hour it went well?”

“One moment, sir.” 

“Do you have backup you like to work with or should I call in some of ours?”

"I've worked well with Iomedae and her people, but she usually calls me in for wizard backup rather than the other way around. I don't know if she's busy at the moment."

“Does she have a secretary?” Entat asks his own secretary.

         “Yes, sir. I can go check if she’s available.”

                   “Goes well,” the priest reports.

“Love to hear it. - we should still get you good backup,” he tells Alfirin, because sometimes wizards try to be too clever for their own good about prophecy. “If you do stupid things in response to the omens then it’s much less useful checking them.”

Iomedae is available. “I heard we might be arresting a seventh circle lich?”

"We're arresting the maybe-spy from last month, who turns out to be quite scry-resistant and is hopefully not a seventh-circle lich but we should plan for the worst."

A seventh circle lich is not, in fact, the worst possibility that jumps to mind to plan for, though it is very difficult to imagine why anyone more dangerous than that would be here in person a week after inviting their suspicions.  She reaches for her unfathomably expensive new sword."Do we know if he's living?" 

"No."

"I'd prefer to take him alive, if we can - I want to know who he reports to. But if I make the sword merciful then we'll be in a tight spot should it turn out it's centuries too late to take him alive. I suppose I could bring a backup sword." She saw a woodcut once of Cayden Cailean dual-wielding rapiers - one merciful, one vicious. It was probably intended as philosophical commentary of some kind but perhaps it was just good sense if you arrest a lot of people of uncertain deadness.

"Yes, I agree that we want him alive. I have a hold person but it might not stick even if he is one, so I think I should try to counterspell if it comes up and you should focus on the actual arrest."

"Have a second augury?"

         "No, sir, only the one."

“I carry a second circle pearl of power,” says Iomedae, and hands it over to him. “Do you know how to use it? It’s hard to get wrong.”

It takes him a minute but he can recall the augury and try again. “No result, sorry.”

“I’m going to save the holy avenger for the worst-case scenario here and go in with a borrowed merciful sword,” Iomedae decides. “I know someone who has one I can borrow.”

"Get it and let's go, then."

The barracks are quiet; their inhabitants are mostly sleeping. Their target doesn’t seem (to an arcane eye) to be asleep, but he’s stopped playing with cantrips. He doesn’t visibly have any magic items, or any spells up. 

"I'll cast a haste and then we’ll go through the door, I don't have a dimension door to drop us on top of him. Everyone ready?"

They’re ready. Iomedae, with a haste up, is terrifyingly fast; in the time it takes anyone else to blink she can knock a door down, cross a room, and hit a moving target with a sword several times, though this target is not moving and, in fact, is bleeding out on the mattress once she's hit him once. She pulls back suspiciously. There are alarmed and bemused cries from the other beds. “Security operation, this is Knight-Commander Iomedae, stay in your bunks.” Her expression for Alfirin is very legibly - you’re sure it’s this one?

"That's the person I saw when I scried him and the bed he was in. If he was only temporarily impersonating this soldier and - swapped them back at some point in the last half hour - that seems implausible, though. I assume Lord Entat will learn which."

So Iomedae will carry her captive out of the barracks, not-apologize at the front about the door which will need repairing, and accompany Alfirin back. “I suppose a third circle wizard might easily just not be very durable, compared to the things we’re accustomed to fighting.”

"You’ve seen me sparring with your junior knights, and I’m tougher than a third-circle wizard."

“I fret over you dreadfully. - when you’re actually fighting, not when you’re sparring with the junior knights.” The Crusade would raise Alfirin if she died but it's still disturbing that a single blow can do it.

She sets the prisoner down gently on the floor of Lord Entat’s office.

“If it’s all the same for you you could keep carrying him,” Entat says. “We have antimagic cells, and it's a great deal easier to interrogate wizards if one can let them speak.”

“In truth, sir, I’m terribly curious about the whole business now and will stay as long as you allow us,” Iomedae says, picking him up again.