Aritha's head is still full of confusion and dizziness and gratitude and terror and half the things Altarrin is saying make no sense but her face and voice have settled into a practiced configuration by now. "Thank you, Archmage-General. I am grateful, Archmage-General."

"You'll want a restoration, probably, for the resurrection sickness. Someone else will confirm, when we are back on Golarion, that you'll only need the one, stronger people need two but I think everyone from your planet is in the relevant sense quite weak. But that won't be conditional on you agreeing to work with us. We should go, Altarrin, and finish this conversation elsewhere."

- he'll raise a Gate.

(He's running mostly on learned patterns, right now, his thoughts are a thousand miles away. As far away as Bastran is, to be more specific. He's upset about how the conversation went, even though being upset about it is really not at all helping with anything.) 

He returns them to the mansion, exactly where they left, minus paladins and most of the gold they had brought, plus diamonds. A lot of diamonds. 

She'll dispatch a page to request Iomedae's presence "at her convenience," which shouldn't take very long.

Yeah Iomedae will happen to find it convenient to drop by almost immediately. 

Altarrin is tired and would sort of rather slip away and lie down in his bedroom, but he's the only person here who Aritha knows. And he probably should tell one of them what he spoke about with Bastran, while it's fresh on his mind. He stays. 

Aritha is being pretty uninteresting decor. She's very good at it.

"It all went approximately according to plan, though the Empire is a bit more prepared for a powerful wizard than I expected. Aritha died, I raised her, unless you have questions for her I'm going to get her set up in one of the rooms here before the rest of the debrief.

...The fact that I can raise the dead is a secret, by the way," she adds to Pereza's accountant, "And we'd be very disappointed to hear it from the rumor mill."

(Saying it here makes it clear that it's not a secret she's from Iomedae for nefarious purposes. Any more.)

- Pereza's accountant will nod anxiously. 

It definitely was a secret from Iomedae until now (well, until yesterday's claim she could cast Reincarnate, of which this was a plausible but not inevitable implication). Iomedae of course does not look at all surprised.

She looks at Aritha thoughtfully for a moment. "Do you have objections to being Alfirin's prisoner for the time being? I have confidence she will abide by your, and our, laws of war, and there are no hands I know of in which you'd be safer." A lot of people would nonetheless rather be Iomedae's prisoner, but this seems less likely to be true of Velgarth people for whom 'paladin' doesn't mean anything. 

Alfirin raised her from the dead. "I have no objections, your" shoot how is Iomedae titled -

"You're not in my chain of command and can address me as you please. I am the Knight-Commander of the Shining Crusade."

Aritha isn't really processing the strange social games these people are playing, but she is taking notes so she can process later once she's safe and alone. "Knight-Commander."

She is safe though most people in her position would probably notice that being left apparently alone in an archmage's conjured mansion does not particularly increase her safety level, relative to the archmage being visible in the same room. Here is her room, it's hers, nobody is going to bother her here unless it's an emergency. Alfirin would be grateful if Aritha does not cause any emergencies. There is food, the uniforms can bring it at her request though they've gone through most of the variety that came with the mansion so she probably will not get any very particular requests made. She has free rein of the rest of the mansion, except for doors that are locked. There are baths. There's a library but it doesn't have that many books in it, they can get more on request. She will not be able to leave the mansion or attempt to open locked doors, nor use magic, (other than mage-sight) nor try to harm any person other than herself. Does she have any questions?

How do you speak my language. Why are you toying with the Empire instead of just taking it. Why are there uniformed force-spheres staffing this place. Can I learn to cast spells like you do. Can I learn to raise the dead. What did you offer Altarrin. Are you and Iomedae the most powerful people in your country and - are countries better, with women running them -

"No questions, Archmage."

"...It looks like you in fact have questions. I am not going to make your life worse for having asked them, but I'm also not going to push you. If you change your mind later, you can ask one of the servants to get me if you want to talk and I will come by when it is convenient for me. If you'd rather talk to someone less intimidating you can also ask for Curiosity, he's my fox and can probably answer most of your questions that you're allowed to know the answers to."

And she'll go back to her own debrief.

Altarrin will join them at the debrief. He lets Alfirin speak first, though. 

"The short version is that we have thirty-seven more wishes or miracles, two Imperial casualties if you count Aritha, and they were treating your delegates well as of when I checked shortly before Aritha's abduction and our departure. The other casualty was the person they had trying to scry us, I think they killed him after I dominated him. The mindscape conversation happened but I don't know its contents, Altarrin will have to describe that."

Nod. Sigh. 

"He believes me about the immortality. I was able to give him - evidence he could check independently - but I think he was not even very skeptical. He is unsurprisingly very suspicious about Aroden - I tried to explain it as coherently as possible, and convey my reasoning at every step, but I cannot blame him for being dubious. It sounds implausible even to me. ...It really does not help that the true explanation of what happened as soon as I arrived in your world is that Alfirin cut my compulsions and placed her own mind control, I was not going to lie to him but he will draw the obvious conclusions. I am not sure it will - end up helping - I did warn him about Aritha, before the dream ended, which might make it seem less like a ploy to distract him while we arranged that. 

- It could have gone worse, I suppose, he - the first thing he asked was whether I was all right. And at the end he - asked what it would take to get me back, told me to write to him, if I could. And he thanked me for everything I had taught him. I think he may have been - assuming I was in danger and he might never see me again, and did not want to leave anything unsaid." 

She nods. "That's - better than I'd have expected, under the circumstances? I think I'm less worried the current Emperor will do something stupid, more worried he'll lose power to someone who will. I'd be interested in the results if you scry later to see how they're taking it. It matters less, because they can't take it by allying with Tar-Baphon, but it'll be - informative. I don't think you want to keep doing dream-talks, eventually they might figure out how to counter Alfirin if you give them enough chances.

We could also drop a letter offering to Raise the dead scrier, if that apparently works smoothly - I guess it might only work if it's immediate, before the local gods pull the soul out of the river -"

"No, I agree, I think it was worth it the one time but - mostly to tell him the things I was less comfortable putting in writing. We can send a letter offering to try raising the mage who did the scrying - I am not sure how that would work, I am a little surprised it worked with Aritha. I can scry them now and find out what is going on - I would appreciate if you have more of the healing that fixes exhaustion, I will manage either way but it is not pleasant to cast when already tired." 

And once he's had another Lesser Restoration, Altarrin will get set up to scry the palace. He aims a scry at Kastil, first. 

Kastil is, of course, warded against scrying! Altarrin can, of course, get through it! It looks like he's writing cyphered orders. He looks tired and stressed and as if he's had too little sleep, that is to say, normal.

And it's not even necessarily out of the ordinary for Kastil to be up and working at this hour of the night. 

Watching over his shoulder and copying out his cipher as he writes it is not a good use of limited and tiring scry-time. Altarrin drops it, and starts a scry-rotation on all the people who might have been yanked out of bed for an emergency, and all the offices where they're likely to be meeting. He has to rest after every two or three scries, so it's going to take him a while. 

It takes a great deal to snap politics in the Eastern Empire out of its comfortable old rut. (“Why” is, of course, obvious: If it didn’t, it would have been snapped out of the rut before.) If you are an ambitious imperial politician, and you trade “what helps your career” off against “the good of the Empire,” the person who did not make that tradeoff and instead optimized his actions for career advancement more single-mindedly will get promoted instead of you. It is, in a hereditary monarchy, theoretically possible for the Emperor to pick from among his six sons the most virtuous to pass the throne onto; it won’t actually happen, but it's possible. In the ruthless political games of the Eastern Empire, where all high officers have advanced through layer after layer of ruthless, desperate challenges against those only barely less skilled than they to reach their present position, the only possible way to reach the top without sacrificing everything about your ethics is to be Altarrin and have seven hundred years of experience' unfair advantage over your rivals - or, like Bastran, to be his carefully-trained protege. What it takes to snap the Eastern Empire out of its rut is not a foreign war, or a civil war, or an attempted coup; the Empire has very good life extension, and anyone near the top has seen these things before. What it takes is, oh - 

- A single Adept mind controlling the Empire’s top mage who is also incidentally the Emperor’s mentor and top troubleshooter, breaking into the imperial palace, enchanting the Emperor, kidnapping a top mage-researcher, and fighting off an elite assassination squad who are equipped dedicated weapons for the purpose that absolutely everyone knows could have killed them in under half a second.

That’s what will snap politics in the Eastern Empire out of its comfortable old rut!

It will, to Emperor Bastran, look sort of like this: