“ - no bloody way we can make peace with Oris, that’s Iomedae’s bloody headquarters -” 

“ - plan for financial reconstruction, guarantee us twenty years but there will be riots over the tax increases -”

“- We’ll handle riots, requesting permission to invoke martial law in - ” 

“ - I bloody hate this but we’ll have to pardon the Taymyrr traitors if they yield, a double traitor will be a triple soon enough but it’ll settle the matter faster -”

“ - decree for the purchase of every diamond in the Empire at yesterday’s prices -”

“ - a list of the Hardornen cities favored trade concessions, there’s no question but that they’ll pay now for -"

" - under the circumstances no immediate warning to officials regarding the dangers can hardly be too strong -"

“ - Bastran, the mage-research department has sixteen urgent tasks of vital importance. I’m reassigning men over, but everyone good who isn't already with us is doing something else or has a price I can't pay or can't pass the loyalty checks, I need a blank check to meet their prices whatever it is, draft whoever I need to whatever their job is, and issue whatever pardons I have to to recruit anyone who isn't so absolutely devoted to the Empire's destruction they'd rather we all be Iomedae's slaves."

This is really not what Bastran needed to wake up to after the conversation he just had with Altarrin, which was already coming on the heels of an incredibly eventful previous day that he hasn't even begun to make time to process. He got about two candlemarks of sleep before being shaken awake - by panicked guards who had apparently already burst into his room and been trying to wake him for thirty seconds after he failed to respond to the communication-spell alerting him of an emergency.

He has a headache. 

He lifts a hand. "Everyone please slow down. ...Thank you. Declane, get me an actual proposal for the tax increases and I'll sign off on it. Diamond requisition approved but put it in writing for me. Trade with Hardorn's a good idea, approved. Lady Voltha, same, get me a list of where you want martial law imposed and I'll probably sign off on it but I think it's overreacting to impose it everywhere. I'll issue pardons, we can't afford to send any more of our people over to their side. Baron Pierson, write a draft announcement to go with the emergency alert. Count Harleth - yes, approved, anything you need, talk to Declane about the money and put together a proposal." 

Are they going to be quiet for two minutes now so he can think? 

Insofar as them all pushing their very-quickly-written-in-advance proposals across the table at once counts as silence, yes!

Well, he's intending to actually read through everything, carefully, before signing it. In several cases he instead scribbles some corrections and hands the proposals back to be rewritten. 

Other reports he wants: have they actually picked up on any unusual movements in Oris? He...doesn't think they currently have much reason to expect that Iomedae is actively using Oris as a base, given that they've seen no sign of her world's magic being used in Oris' favor. It's a problem that she almost certainly would be granted shelter and aid there, if she sought it, but - honestly he almost think that makes it more in the Empire's interest to offer the rebels some more generous concessions in exchange for their agreement not to provide Iomedae with a base if she decides to move her operations back to Velgarth. And as a route for letting the Empire have 'diplomats' on site, in a position to notice and report any suspicious activity. 

He wants an update on the scrying-specialist's condition, if the man survived the evening at all. And an update on Iomedae's delegates. Have they been questioned about what just happened. 

Well, no, they haven't, but you can't actually trust rebels. They're rebels. They don't keep their oaths! Trading away actual resources on the ground for promises is what gets you killed! KILL THEM ALL AND LET THEIR GODS HAVE THEM IF THEY DARE!

They're being questioned. One of the orders Duke Elnore (and Inquisitor-General Siman) want signed is to switch from polite questioning to intense interrogation; a diplomatic mission used as cover for an assassination is a Serious Problem but not something you'd torture the diplomats over but these people are not registered diplomats they're surrendered soldiers of a power that breaks oaths.

(The Ministry of Progress's request is, literally, for an unlimited budget, that is, a budget that does not have spending limits, which one might call 'not actually a budget'. What Count Harleth wants is a blank check.)

The scrying-specialist did not survive the evening, unfortunately.

No they cannot torture the not-diplomats. Bastran will sign off on orders that they can do a Serious Interrogation with active use of compulsions, they don't have to be polite about it, but - just because Iomedae's people are uncivilized doesn't mean the Empire has to stoop to their level, and they really shouldn't have any issue getting information out of the diplomats. They can have Arbas for it if their own compulsion-specialists and Thoughtsensers  aren't up to the task. 

...He's not counting on the rebels being trustworthy to make promises, he's counting on them not being idiots. Or at least on there being some chance that they'll decide not to be idiots, if the Empire lays out their options clearly enough. Maybe they will just be idiots about it, in which case the Empire can go back on a war footing at that point, but they're realistically not going to be able to crush the rebel forces for at least a couple of weeks anyway, and in the meantime they have almost no visibility into Oris. 

No the Ministry of progress cannot have a literally unlimited budget. Count Harleth should name an actual number. It can be a ridiculously high number but you can't make resource-allocation tradeoffs without putting numbers in them. 

...Also. He has a report of his own to make. In private, to whoever is around and seems like the best person to take a report on his dream-spell conversation with maybe-Altarrin-or-maybe-an-imposter. 

Grumble grumble grumble understood.

... If we make concessions now in exchange for gains in the future, they can just lie! If the Empire lays out our options and they say 'sure, we'll agree not to let Iomedae in' and then they let Iomedae in after our armies have all left and all our loyalists have died or fled, we're going to be in a way worse position than we are now, where there's lots of supporters of the Empire even if they're intimidated into silence.

Look, the Ministry of Progress wants the ability to say to people who, themselves, just name a big number, "done," so it can get these people out of retirement/irrelevant jobs. Count Harleth will name a ridiculously high number if he has to.

(It will be Ridiculously Huge.)

That should probably be Kastil.

Macalay is really frustrating right now even if it's, you know, a pretty understandable reaction and might not even be the wrong call. 

...Bastran deeply doesn't want to roll back the ceasefire offer in Oris. He worked hard on it. The Empire really can't afford four wars. He...doesn't, actually, think that Iomedae is operating there right now; he at least strongly suspects that Iomedae doesn't have interworld travel of her own, yet, and it's all routing through Altarrin. 

(There are flickers of other thoughts, there; there continues to be quite a strong thread of spite-based motivation, that his Empire should be civilized and secure enough to be generous, and should keep its agreements, and not sink to the level of Iomedae's people.) 

He's tired of arguing so he's going to do the rude thing, and avoid having to talk about it any longer by telling Macalay firmly that the ceasefire order stands for now, they can talk about it later again but right now he has another important competing engagement. 

And he'll present himself to meet with Kastil and relate his memory of the weird dream-magic conversation and die of embarrassment in the process.

Macalay will take a straight imperial order and live with it. The Emperor is the person who gets to give him orders; that's how it works.

"Allow me to personally apologize for my failure to stop the intruder." He thought he was Sufficiently Paranoid. He will endeavor to be more so in the future.

He wants to say something reassuring but…there isn’t really anything, is there, whether or not it’s at all reasonable for anyone to expect Kastil to have caught this and stopped it, it is Kastil’s job. 

“The enchantment my guards detected was cast by Alfirin, or - at least that’s what Altarrin - probably it was really Altarrin - claimed. He said there were - things he hadn’t wanted to put openly in a letter.”

And now the part where Kastil is going to wonder if he’s insane. Aaaaaaah.

“…He claimed to be immortal. Not his body, but that he can - get new ones, somehow, he didn’t really go into it. He claimed to be about 700 years old. That he lived before the Cataclysm — that, uh, his first identity was Ma’ar, the - one who fought the archmage Urtho. And then he claims he was Arvad, and - that the Empire was his project, that he was - trying to rebuild the civilization that was destroyed by the Mage Wars…”

and he didn’t want the history books to remember him kindly, because he didn’t think he deserved it 

“He - seemed to think he had failed. That if he had - done better - the Empire wouldn’t be a place that Iomedae wanted to fight. He was sad about it.”

Shrug. “Or, you know, he wanted me to think that. Or whoever was impersonating him wanted me to think it. …I believe him about the immortality, though, he offers a lot of…pieces we could check.. and, I mean, it sort of explains a lot about him.”

"It does," says Kastil softly.

(This is the third time in twenty-four hours he has just discovered he is NOT PARANOID ENOUGH. Clearly he needs to be much, much more paranoid than he had previously been being, if he ever wants to be good instead of lucky.)