Okay. He can have an actual paladin. He looks through his personnel for a paladin he might have kind of wanted to move anyway who has not exhibited open concern about the concept of financial audits.

He can find a paladin like that! It's not hard to find a paladin who's merely indifferent to the concept of financial audits. This one was really good at working with some other people in his unit who have since died, and is probably being less well-utilized with them gone.

The Abadaran will adjust the hazard fees he's charging accordingly to reflect the value he's deriving from the bodyguard.

Blai likes Abadarans so much. He hopes nobody kills this one.

Anything interesting happen before he can arrange a new Zone?

His scouts have some more updates on the demon 'army' they think is planning to ambush the Crusade, but they aren't attacked that day or anything.

They can make appropriate preparations for a demon army ambush, fighting demons being the main operation from which all these embezzlers are embezzling here and may the Judge have mercy on their souls.

The advisor who might or might not have cast the spell asserts prior to the Zone that he did not do any mind control or financial malfeasance, but under the Zone he can only repeat the mind-control-related claims, he can't claim not to have lied about anything. Wal denies everything under the Zone, which would be more reassuring if some of the financial malfeasance he was denying wasn't strongly indicated by the records the Abadaran had been reviewing in the first place.

Would he like to try to explain those records or just be scheduled for another Zone?

He wants to know what the point even was of putting him through the Zone if he's just going to treat him like a criminal anyway.

Blai has explained this before but will patiently explain again that a Zone can implicate but not reliably exonerate. They can do a Truthtelling, ironic though it might be, if he thinks he can pass one.

He would be happy to testify to non-involvement in the mind control plot under an Abadar's Truthtelling!

He doesn't want to also deny the financial malfeasance under the Truthtelling?

...Well, you know, it seems like it would be a bad idea to mix together a serious accusation like mind-controlling an ally and a minor one about paperwork issues, right?

It may matter for divining the methods and motives of the mind-controller, whether they dug up real issues as ammunition or just made a guess, and also two spells are twice as expensive as one. But if he'd rather skip it Blai can just assume he did the financial malfeasance at no extra cost.

Ugh, fine, the Knight-Commander can assume whatever he wants about his paperwork.

Uh-huh.

Once the details of that are all sorted out insofar as they can while the investigation pends, anything else exciting afoot?

One of his subordinates has apparently decided to handle the general situation by getting him to authorize every single purchase individually, even the completely routine ones. The quantities are different from last time, see, because the number of people under him has slightly decreased.

Does this person have no intermediate layers of command he could be bringing these thorny and complicated decisions to?

As it happens he doesn't! Though of course he wants to be sure his underlings are compliant with the new rules, so he's been encouraging them to apply a similar standard with regards to what they bring to his attention.

All right, nobody's going to be doing their shopping while they're mid-pitched-battle and there's no other pressing emergency happening too often for acceptable turnaround time, so for the time being Blai's going to bet that this guy will get bored before he does. He signs off on the appropriate purchases.

He thanks Blai with a straight face.

In the evening, his scouts have some updates on the composition of the demonic forces they think are plotting to ambush them, and what that implies about the spells people should be preparing beyond the obvious army staples.

Great, they can get everybody their prep advice in plenty of time, thank you scouts, you're doing great.

Nothing else incredibly urgent comes up before it's time for him to get his two hours of sleep (though as always, there's an endless supply of minor administrative tasks).

Well, if he goes to sleep now he will get to wake up to a nice pile of minor administrative tasks, let's do that. Are there fuckty dreams again?

There are not! His dreams are perfectly normal!

Hooray. Minor administrative tasks ahoy.