"Well, yes. It would be surprising to learn you had no goals, and confusing to learn I could not advance them. If noble crusaders may not give orders then I find Iomedae's life choices very confusing, but also - you don't have to give orders, if you prefer not to. I just need to not be wholly ignorant of what ought to be done."

"I... do not have goals which I would have you take as your own merely because they are mine."

Alfirin does not value Lilia, and does not want to find a use for her.

Lilia does not visibly react. She should have made the inference sooner, really. She was careless because she did not want that to be the answer. But of course, to presume any answer better than any other is itself to be imperfect. For Alfirin to value Lilia not at all is just as satisfactory a state as for Alfirin to value Lilia highly; worlds are not made satisfactory by what Alfirin wants but by whether Lilia fulfills it.

"Understood. Would you like, then, for me to quit my apprenticeship?"

That does not sound like someone who is correctly understanding that she is free to make her own choices. "Do you wish to quit your apprenticeship?"

"If it is not valuable to you to have me as an apprentice, then yes."

"You were, even before this revelation, the best apprentice I've had since signing on to the crusade. You may continue or not as you please."

Yes, she knows that her mother has high standards that other people don't meet, but it's pointedly not an answer as to whether Lilia herself meets them. And the lack of an answer is an answer, of course, in the most important sense. 

"In that case I resign my apprenticeship. I will explore strategies to ensure that on my death I do not betray your secrets to Hell. I do not expect it to be difficult to find one that is satisfactory, and will notify you of my arrangements once I have made them."

"I wish you the best in that endeavor." Please do let me know - no, that won't do. I would be happy to help - no, not that either. I hope - still no. "You may call upon me for any assistance you desire."

Ah, so her mother just thinks she's very incompetent. (She is a sixth circle wizard and should not really require assistance to trap her soul. It would probably work just to go to Heaven and sit there until someone felt badly for her, though she's going to aim higher than that and try to make arrangements which, should her mother ever value her again, are reversible by her mother.)

The fact that her mother thinks she's very incompetent makes it feel like - an error, that her mother does not value her, one which could perhaps be corrected, one worth correcting - but that's stupid. If she's not incompetent, she'll figure out a satisfactory arrangement, it won't take her very long, and she'll contact her mother to notify her of it, which will incidentally correct her mother's misapprehension. If that is decision relevant it will be known when decisions are made. She will not beg her mother to reconsider anything. 

....in fact, since her mother has simply invited her to see 'any assistance you desire' and not just soul-trapped Lilia herself on the spot, quite possibly this is a test. I'll dispose of you if I need to, but prove to me that I don't need to. 

"I understand," she says, and leaves.

Well, that could have gone worse.

Lilia goes to Vudra and murders about ten people in a series of fits of random grief and spite. This usually makes her feel better, but this time it seems to be making her feel worse, so she stops after ten. Ish. She wasn't particularly counting.

After that she kidnaps a woman with ten children and asks which one she loves most, and whether she would kill all the other nine to save that one, and makes her do it. 

That doesn't really make her feel better either but it takes long enough that she's sort of calmed down by the point where it's over. 

She does not wish to take a long time at her assigned task, so once she is too tired to keep feeling upset, she gets to work on it. 

She could feed herself to an agnoia, the activities of which she now remembers; this is high on assurance that Hell won't learn her mother's secrets, and low on reversibility. She could pay someone to trap her soul - an Abadaran would do it; this is expensive but high on both assurance that Hell won't learn her mother's secrets and on reversibility. She could (much more cheaply) acquire one of those critters whose bite petrifies, and arrange for it to turn her to stone in a demiplane her mother possesses the tuning fork to; this is mildly lower on assurance, but only mildly. 

The question is how her mother'd weight these tradeoffs, and how substantial they really are -

-

Lilia Ramona de Montero is an idiot.

No wonder the universe would be better if she weren't in it.

The manner in which a sixth circle wizard settles the question of which soul-trapping method provides adequate assurance that they will not be released to damnation....

Is that they cast the spell for determining what will happen in the future. And then go off what it says.

This is not a test because there are no circumstances under which running a test is necessary.

Well. 

To Isfahel to pick up some Teleport routes and (when she has the money) the prophecy spells, and then she'll just check which method is the most reliable over the time horizon checked by the longest-looking spell. It's worth trading cost for reliability, but maybe not worth a more reliable method at the cost of the involvement of third parties, but consequences downstream of the involvement of third parties probably almost all happen in the first century of imprisonment, which should be the most visible....

Her mother presumably knows what Lilia will do already, and knows that it is satisfactory (in that Lilia will not flee her mother or shirk her duties), and that's not nothing.

Seldeg Bhedlis finds Alfirin in her quarters two days after her apprentice vanished. He’d been planning to speak to her at the officers’ meeting that morning, but she hadn’t been there. He is relieved to see that she is, to all appearances, alive, not that it proves much. 

“Is your apprentice absent without leave, or did she give some excuse?” he asks.

Alfirin pauses for an instant to consider the question. "No."

He blinks, slightly confounded, then barrels determinedly ahead all the same. “She’s a Qadiran spy.”

"Unlikely. She'd be a very impressive one if so."

“She’s in Isfahel, staying in the Grand Marrah and running teleport errands for the Shah. Wearing a different face, but I’m no fool. What did she want to learn, while she was here?”

"If she is a spy she’s spying on the Padishah Emperor at least as much as she was spying on us. She wished to study magic, and also tactics particular to battles between many powerful wizards. She was not here on a mission for Kelesh or any other power outside the crusade."

“We’ll make that determination when she returns. If she returns.”