"They? Do you know what we're up against?"

"A lilitu. Minagho. The one who engineered the fall of Drezen. I tried to lead the Watch into the garrison, and -"

"I've never heard of a lilitu. What team would you ideally have, to fight one?"

Irabeth laughs. It is a sharp terrible sound like she swallowed glass. "The Queen, I suppose, and whoever she travels with. Or - there's an emergency response team based at one of the southern forts. But we did a Sending for them, when Deskari arrived, and they didn't show. Or didn't matter."

Would you rather fight a lilitu or an ancient dragon, he wants to ask, but he increasingly suspects that Irabeth will fight either not expecting or even particularly hoping not to die of it. "I'll go scout the place. Who can you spare me?"

The man draws his dagger to slit her throat and then his head rolls off his shoulders and down the lane. 

"I don't think you needed to do that," she says. "He was scared, and confused."

"Everyone's scared and confused sometimes, kid. Good men don't become murderers over it. - the crow is yours?"

"That's Soot. He's my friend. My grandmother sent him to me." 

He glares suspiciously at the crow.

"Everybody's scared and confused," Ember says placidly, "but good men don't become murderers over it."

"It's not a very useful experimental result if you kill all my experimental subjects!"

"Indeed. You'll have to write it up as a complete failure. Who're you working for?"

From mindreading one of the guards in the Defender's Heart he caught that Irabeth was grieving a dead wife. He'd taken Irabeth for a woman but maybe he can't guess orc sex very well. He had Irabeth's permission to ransack his house; he grabs the clothes that aren't orc-sized and runs a scry. Look at that. Alive wife, huddled belowground with some other survivors. He makes a note to address that when Minagho is dead.

If you don't know how dangerous something is, and you really really cannot afford to lose a fight to it, one obvious strategy is to make a plan that would kill the most dangerous thing you know.

The most dangerous thing he knows is Tar Baphon. He doesn't kill Tar Baphon very often but he is in the not-very-large set of people who has done it. He'll be burning a Time Stop, a Bestow Grace of the Champion, and a scroll of a song-sorcerer spell that to his knowledge only Caseta can make and that has no name. But with those - he likes his chances.

"It was a miracle. When all was lost Iomedae must have seen how - hard we were trying - and - saved us."

"Praised be the goddess. ...how?"

"We were all exhausted, of course, and entirely out of spells, but several spells went off at once, around her escort, like fireballs but ice instead of fire, and from the floor at Minagho's feet the shards of ice picked themselves up off the ground and attacked her, every one of them glowing with divine power, and she screamed and tried to Teleport but it didn't work, and the daggers kept whirling all around her and then Aspex stabbed her through the heart, or where I suppose the heart would be, I don't know if she had a heart really, and that was that."

"I see." 

And then she turns around and sees something else and any doubts she had about the man flee her mind and heart forever.

"I figured you were -"

"I figured you were -"

"So you didn't send him for me, hmm? Stroke of luck, that."

Irabeth might have considered the implications of that sentence if she hadn't been far too full of joy to even hear it. 

The Teleport is cast, and an adventuring party worth of people appear in front of the temple of Iomedae in Kenabres, laden with Bags of Holding.

Ettore Castelloni (quiver in hand, first arrow already set to the string) Detects Evil as soon as he arrives. Is that brick evil? Is that empty patch of air? That scorch mark?