She is assigned to the command of someone she’s never heard of, not that she’s read many Shining Crusade histories, and invited to swap spells if she pleases with the other Crusade wizards. She decides not to sell them all the improved spells she has; it sounds like the kind of thing that might get back to Arazni. Lilia has a healthy respect for Arazni and would prefer never to come to her attention in any way. 

She saves up for a scroll of Discern Location. Myrabelle has a crystal ball with Telepathy and a very impressive caster level, not of her own make, something she mentioned offhand she’d possessed a very long time. It’s not identifying. It also wouldn’t, in fact, be sure proof even if someone here possesses it; Myrabelle could’ve purchased it from someone. 

But she has nothing to do but try things. Lilia never bothered to figure out who she’d be without orders and she finds herself especially motivated now not to have to find out.

Nothing.

She saves up for another one, tries an ancient staff she once touched that burned her fingers off. 

Nothing.

That's all of them they have in Absalom, so she commissions one.  She witnesses one of Iomedae's sermons because it'd be more suspicious to decline to attend it. She handles it as she would a succubus; you just mustn't interact at all with the sounds they're making, even as much as to turn them into words, or you'll lose your mind entirely, probably. Lilia already has a purpose. 

The third Discern Location she tries a different staff, a smooth and beautiful wood one that you'd have taken for a peasant's walking-stick if it didn't radiate the most powerful magic she'd ever seen.

The fountain courtyard, Alfirin's Gardens, Alfirin's Garden Demiplane.

Alfirin’s one of the crusade wizards. Eighth circle, supposedly.

It’s far from definitive. It is - certainly enough reason to give Alfirin a closer look. Lilia knows her mother better than almost anyone - certainly better than anyone alive in her day. They worked closely together for twenty years, when Lilia was young and an idiot and required it, when they had to invent ways for Lilia to beat truth spells and Detect Thoughts, when they needed her to master Chelish court politics and to grow into her proper shape and harden in it and not require further instruction.

Myrabelle and Catherine de Litran present very differently from one another, and a lifetime spent in Iomedae and Arazni’s orbit would surely present differently still, but - Lilia thinks she’d recognize her. On enough exposure.

She asks if Alfirin takes apprentices.

She has ever taken apprentices before, but not recently. You'd be better off trying for Arazni, she's less picky. And nicer. And knows more to teach.

Lilia feels a prickle of defensiveness on her mother’s behalf at that - these idiots have no idea what studying under her mother can offer you - even though Alfirin may or may not actually be her mother and even though Arazni in fact knows a lot more than her mother, or at least wasn’t a fight her mother expected to win.

She writes Alfirin. The note reads, 

I’d like to apprentice to you. I have what I consider good reason which is secret and which I do not intend to tell you even if you agree. I think there’s a moderate chance this is very much in your interests and no plausible way it could harm you, aside from wasted time. 

I would consider it a favor if you did not convey this offer, or anything you learn about me as a consequence of it, to the leadership of the Shining Crusade. I do not believe myself to have acted against their interests in any way but would prefer not to have their attention. 

It is the kind of note that would work on her mother. Her mother would be curious, and would enjoy having something which was hers and not the Crown's, and would not discard it until she had determined whether it was worthwhile. 

With other people - well, it runs a serious risk of getting her handed over to Arazni, who will learn everything Lilia knows and then definitely execute her for having put anything on her agenda ahead of 'telling Arazni about a plot against her life'.

She agonizes for a while about whether to actually send it. 

Then she remembers that prophecy exists, and does some divinations instead of agonizing. Then she sends it. 

She checks that it's not an assassination attempt before replying. (It's not.)

I have not taken an apprentice in many years and did not expect to take another for the duration of the crusade. Time spent can be a not insignificant cost and I am reluctant to waste much on an apprentice, if waste it would be. I will evaluate you tomorrow at noon if you come by my quarters.

If all is as you have represented it I do not currently intend or expect to inform crusade leadership of this offer. In the event that I do take you on as an apprentice I will report that.

Is that her mother’s answer? In Cheliax, obviously not, because in Cheliax people don’t behave this way, and wouldn’t have sent a note like Lilia’s. On the Shining Crusade, where they’re all pretending to be Good - or maybe legitimately Good, who knows, fighting Tar-Baphon has to count for a lot -

Maybe? It is more like her mother than most possible answers. It is enough like her mother that she finds herself yearning desperately to be found a promising apprentice, though she is fifty-five and even with magic restraining old age is far too old for such nonsense.

Alfirin’s face will tell her nothing at all but she can’t help searching it, when they meet, for her mother’s peculiar focus and ruthlessness. She dips her head. “Alfirin. I’m Lilia.”

"You're older than I expected. Disinterested in botany?"

Botany? - oh. Arazni, when living, specialized in arcane plant magic. Lilia learned this a month ago, repeated as something everybody knows. Vigil is full of living things. Vigil, in Lilia's day, is not full of living things.

 “They say Arazni is a god,” she says, neutrally.

"More than some and less than others. This is disagreeable?"

Her mother hated all the gods. Hating all the gods is probably illegal.

"I find it terrifying. And -  if the gods wished known the things I want to know, then the world would look very different.”

"You are unlikely to learn from me any secrets which the gods wish hidden... Most people particularly terrified of demigod archmages would be somewhere else."

“If left to his own devices I think Tar-Baphon will not courteously leave some continents aside for those who fear him.” Nor will Iomedae, but that's a much more provocative thing to say.

"How pragmatic. What are you hoping to get out of an apprenticeship that is not a secret?"

“I don’t have any high-magic tactical sense at all. People say you do.”

"Many wizards do. One typically picks it up before one can teleport."

"I got here off court politics."

"Did you, now? On which plane?"

"The Material."

That is not a satisfactory answer to her question!

"I do not know of any mortal court which could produce such a result. A number of possible explanations occur to me - you may be from another planet within this plane, or from Sarusan, or I may have wildly misjudged Isfahel - maybe you are a long-preserved survivor of Azlant or another buried empire. Or perhaps the people of the first world consider 'The Material' to be a perfectly honest label for their realm." Or she's lying about one thing or the other. Sometimes people do that. "Would you confirm my guess if I happened to chance across the right one?"

"I am happy to confirm that I am mortal, and of your species, and that the place I am from is I believe ruled by the same laws of magic as this place. I do not want its name known; I made a lot of enemies. None can follow me here, unless someone goes looking for them. Perhaps when we are better acquainted that is a risk I will be more confident is minimal or worth taking. 

I could, were I inclined to open our acquaintance with a lie, tell you that I attained my powers in a more ordinary way, adventuring. I could say so under a truth spell, even. Court politics would be a great deal less exciting if no manner of evading those was known to us."

"I see. You are dismissed."

Is it her mother?

The woman could have turned out to be someone who definitely wasn't Lilia's mother; someone forthright and communicative, or someone devoted to the gods, or someone stupid (probably not, as an eighth circle wizard, but you never know). Someone warm and affectionate, someone trusting, someone kind. The woman did not turn out to be that. 

But most people aren't Lilia's mother. Even most intelligent dangerous powerful archmages who keep their own counsel and are not devoted to the gods and trust no one and have little time to waste on the tedious foolishness of ordinary human beings - even most of those aren't Lilia's mother. A resemblance can rule it out, but it would take a far more granular resemblance to rule it in. And it is easy to deceive oneself in an important matter. If it felt like Lilia's mother, in a few moments, Lilia's mother's specific impatience - well, that simply doesn't mean very much. 

If it's Lilia's mother she might follow up on her own, do some investigation, run a Legend Lore which (Lilia checked) is almost wholly uninformative, the deeds to which Lilia is attached being ones outside history here (but also, for a fifth circle wizard a Legend Lore wouldn't be expected to turn up anything in particular). If it's not Lilia's mother she also might do that. Knowing things is hard. Only Lilia's mother will have the means to read Lilia's mind in her sleep from a distance - unless Lilia's mother hasn't yet invented the means to do that. Only Lilia's mother will see in prophecy that it would go well to reveal more to Lilia about herself - but why would she even think to check that?

And yet it is the only question that matters, so she must keep chiseling away at it. She starts saving up for another Discern Location. She is almost but only almost out of ancient weapons she knows her mother to have possessed.