"Not if you wished him to take the throne." If Daeran Arendae walks out of there covered in the blood of his entire adventuring party and half a dozen paladins, he wouldn't inherit without a civil war. The Worldwound defenses would collapse, and if Aspex isn't working for a demon lord (or if he wants to be in position to betray that demon lord), he wouldn't want that. They might be thinking that they could claim the demons got Galfrey, but she doubts they could say the same for everyone else in the room.

And also not if he thought he could talk his way out, as he is presently attempting to do.

"The Fane is strewn with the bodies of appropriate hundreds of terrifying enhanced demons. You noticed it was a good place to lay an ambush; the demons could have noticed too. I think if only a few of us had walked out of the Fane, gravely injured and calling at once for a priest to raise everyone else - but most of the bodies were too damaged - it would be an advantageous position to be in....unless you have a clone, which now that I say that I suppose you might. I would have looked into that in advance, if I'd been plotting to overthrow you. 

All right, I'm persuaded I probably couldn't've gotten Mendev out of it. I still think it would evidently have been in my interests in that I could have left, with all my resources and then some. Surrendering is a very foolish thing for a guilty man to do. He would need assurance that there is no powerful wizard you trust, and no powerful cleric, and that you can't cast from a scroll, and that he can beat a truth spell without any preparation, and that Arendae will evade capture, and that you won't just decide to kill him anyway."

She nods soberly. (There are powerful wizards she trusts sufficiently to Dominate him, but not to not be impersonated by his wizard.) "Is there anything else you wish to say?"

"The elementals and archons in Drezen will all report to Anevia, in my absence, or if you bring the archons here I can convey instructions to work with whoever the fort commander is. Or banish them, if you'd like, but they are all of them people who are risking their final death for Mendev and it's not because the pay is good.

This month's loan payment is six thousand Absalom pounds, due on the first, and this month's payroll is nine thousand; the treasury should contain enough silver for both. If you kill me I'll at that point terminate the loan and the Church of Abadar will reclaim the magical armor and weapons purchased under it, all of which are clearly marked and numbered. I might be able to make one more payment so there's more time for Mendev to figure out an alternative, depending if my insurance pays out and if my will is respected. 

The mongrels are Mendevians, and many of them are children, and they won't be able to make it alive back to Kenabres if you kick them out of Drezen this time of year.

Sosiel has a drinking problem and should be followed by a man whose job is to lose some money to him and hustle him off to bed when he's had enough. 

The bridge is out to Fort Heinri and I've been supplying it by Teleport; I was planning to repair it when the ground thaws, but you could maybe do it midwinter with a bunch of elementals.

There's no password for the Forbiddance to the treasury and my private rooms, but the password for the rest of the command floor is 'turnpike graves engagement'. Almost everything in my rooms is trapped. 

Sunhammer is in his private demiplane, crafting magic items for sale to support the Crusade according to a list of commissions I got from the Church of Abadar. You will probably just need to execute him, if you don't have a way to hold him securely, he's seventh circle. I can arrange for someone to return him to the Material, or I can give you the tuning fork but you won't take it." Only an idiot plane shifts with a tuning fork they haven't vetted. "I was also using his spell slots to supplement the food in Drezen. Without it I don't know an adequate supplier for fruit, vegetables, or hardtack men get strong off instead of just not starving, but I didn't look very thoroughly."

This is too many things this is a perfectly reasonable number of things to be done as part of the handoff.

"Understood."

Right. 

Interview his party members, get Lastwall to authorize an urgent Commune with half-a-dozen near-synonymous questions, scream at Liotr more, get Aspex paper, investigate the people who were summarizing his reports to her to see if they're Baphomet cultists, organize scries to see if he got too-tricky-by-half and had his victims Maledicted...

How much of this can she delegate? (Not much, since the people she was delegating spying on Aspex for her were apparently doing a bad job.) The Queen doesn't have time for this. She's going to have to deal with it anyway. Just not while she might be under a Suggestion.

Well, she's not under a Suggestion, at least. She'll get started drafting the letter to Lastwall.

"All conduct I have witnessed from Aspex has been lawful, a quality rare among the so-called forces of Good."

" - it occurred to me that he might be Minagho. I don't think she'd have the patience, though, or the head for numbers, or the - have you heard demons try to be Iomedaeans?"

"Is the Crusade over? How disappointing. It will barely even merit a page in my encyclopedia, in that case."

"Is the Crusade over? But - why? We haven't accomplished anything yet, not anything important, not - closing the Wound, or killing the demon lords -"

"If you're saying Count Arendae's up to something, sure, everyone knows that - and knows not to look into it too close, if they have anything else they're doing with their head still attached to their neck. But he and Aspex didn't get along."

"Hmm? Well, 'didn't get along' is putting it a bit strongly, but if you told me they liked the same girl and weren't speaking to each other about it I'd say I believed you."

"I like the Knight-Commander. He's a good man. I like Daeran, too, but he's not a good man, and is mostly only kind if he can think of some other reason for it. He can still be kind, though."

"I told you already, you're wrong about this."

"The Knight-Commander's a traitor? Oh. ...do you need a priest for him, before you kill him? Or did he make that rule up because of being a traitor?"

"He didn't have them Dominated for trials. ...I guess I couldn't tell the difference between having the spell up but no orders and having the spell gone entirely, but I could tell if someone was fighting it."

"That would be bad scientific practice! Their testimony might only reflect the will of the wizard controlling them! There is no mention in my notes of any such practices."

"Oh, I don't usually attend the trials and executions, they're so horribly depressing. I don't know how a man's soul can endure when his enemies are other mortals. In Andoran at least they always repent."

"I don't think the dead men deserved to die. But they had all made very bad mistakes, that hurt other people."

"I don't know how trials are supposed to be run but the Crusade's took longer than they used to in Kenabres, and everyone got a truth spell, which was nice. I've never seen a Dominated person, I don't think, I'm not sure I could tell, but the Knight Commander taught me how to watch a truth spell with Detect Magic to see if it really took and there wasn't another enchantment on them, I'd've seen that."

"- a pentagram, an Undetectable Alignment up, and Evil under it, yes. If I'd caught someone in Kenabres, on the same evidence, I'd've killed them. You could walk the whole length of the Wound and not find a single commander who wouldn't."

"Of course the defendants were not enchanted during their final testimony. That would violate the Crusade's and any sensible rules of criminal procedure. I would have notified the Knight-Commander if any such violation were observed."

- "Your Majesty's virtue is without a doubt," Hanselin Bech says. He is one of the realm's six assessors, which does not sound like an important title. He is no more corrupt than average. "But, Your Majesty, he has been lying to you."

"Apparently not," she says, in a tone which invites the listener to share the joke.

(Hanselin is not a noble, will lose most of his income if he is dismissed due to selling her secrets and has not visibly turned out to be a Baphomet cultist yet. Therefore she distrusts him somewhat less than average.)