"Oh, if there are spare copies, for sure."

"It's to be bound and distributed as a book. That's not done yet but I'm sure there's a spare copy."

And he'll go find it, and tell Charantis that the delegation has complaints about their accommodations.

      "I'll tell the Knight-Commander," she says, grudgingly. "You have to be very delicate with the delegates. Can't injure their pride by suggesting anything else is more important."

"Oh. I might have done that."

      "Oh. Well, don't."

"I don't see how it injures their pride to suggest that the world not ending is more important."

      "Don't ask me to explain humans to you," says Charantis.

Iomedae has a good comprehension of humans. 

We've got to get the delegates a mansion. Unless, of course, that's just an opportunity for them to declare the Empire's money spent frivolously - no, you know what, two can play that game.

About twenty minutes after Bardas gets back, Iomedaen sermons in tow, there'll be a handsome elderly man outside the diplomatic building, who knocks with a spell.

"What is your business?"

"I'm here about a request for improved accommodations."

"Ah. Of course. What is on offer?" If this is just some retired first-circle to prestidigitate things till they shine the Legate will have a quiet and polite fit.

 "I am a friend of the Knight-Commander, and retired a few years back. I live in Absalom, but the Knight-Commander asked as a personal favor that I come up here and do a mansion for you."

(Several points, Iomedae suspects, will be made. First, no, she's not spending Imperial money even slightly frivolously. Secondly, this is because she doesn't have to because she can call on extremely powerful wizards for personal favors anywhere on the planet on very short notice.)

The points are made. "I will inform the legate. I am sure here," he gestures between two of the existing real buildings "will do."

He gestures and speaks and puts up a shining extradimensional door, then smiles very blandly at whoever has assembled to witness this (and confirm that he didn't do it from a scroll, which is informative in the political game Iomedae is undoubtedly playing.)

Legate Angelus opens the door and pokes his head through for a moment. "Ah, much better." he says, "Please do convey my thanks to the knight-commander for her generosity."

He's slightly annoyed that they're not more impressed. This was very impressive, objectively. When one does mansions for the troops, they stomp their feet and cheer.  "Enjoy," he says, irritably, and Teleports out with a further flourish.

Everyone in the Shining Crusade who can do a Mage's Magnificent Mansion saw one of Arazni's before they could do it themselves. Arazni is not from Azlant or from Taldor, and was neither using Azlant's architectural style natively nor deliberately calling back to it nor building on a tradition of those things; some of her architecture could be identified as Xopatli, and some of it is probably inspired by those styles popular in the formerly-human-dominated parts of Nirvana, and some is just her own. 

Of course people adapted her style from there themselves, and generally in the Taldane direction. But it's still not an Imperial sort of mansion.

The mansion is taller than it is wide, with a spiral staircase down its centerline and no two rooms at the same height, each on a hallway curving off the staircase, staggered so from the ceiling they're all visible at once. The stone the floor is made of is thick with veins of gold and copper, and a reflecting pool at the far end of the entrance hall lights the whole thing with the light its borrowed from the ~sunbeams which reach the pool from the distant ceiling. The furnishings are all wood except that the gold and copper metal veins in the floor also wind through every furnishing on the ground floor. There are false windows, with thick and rich false curtains drawn across them. The Unseen Servants are in Iomedae's red and white. 

(This is not actually what Iomedae would have chosen, she'd have gone with the most blandly Opparan building imaginable, but she doesn't have an arbitrary number of retired seventh circle wizards she can call on for emergency favors.)

Bardas looks around the interior while lesser staff scurry about transferring all the audit's paper and equipment. "They're making a point"

"Do you think so? What point?"

"I'm sure. As to what point - Perhaps that they have a lot of barbarian support? Or maybe just flaunting the fact that they clearly don't consider themselves imperial subjects anymore..."

 "If they were inclined to flaunt that, they would have turned us away when we got here. Though - it could be both. This wizard is flaunting his independence, Iomedae is making a point about having access to wizards who aren't particularly attached to the empire. Fits with some things she said, in our meeting - they seem pretty convinced that the empire needs them, but they don't need us."

"Think they'll try something to get us out of the way?"

"They're not stupid. I'd be raised."

How much do you give away about the composition of your forces if you publish your pay scale and your overall monthly expenses by division?

A lot of people would say 'approximately nothing'. After all, the same monthly expenses could be the product of three eighth-circle spellcasters on contract or two seventh-circle on contract and two in uniform at seventh, or just of eight hundred men with no spellcasting power, and there's no way from merely the published numbers to guess which, so it's probably fine.

To be clear, Marit isn't sure it isn't fine. He just does not remotely trust the line of reasoning 'well, I can't think how I'd figure it out just from that, so it's probably fine'. In his experience people end up sort of mentally handicapping themselves, when they try to answer a question like that, asking 'why wouldn't I be able to figure out the answer' and coming up with all kinds of reasons instead of 'what other pieces of information which I might be separately able to learn would be necessary for me to figure out the answer' and therefore conveniently not noticing that the relevant other information is available, or at minimum that no one has been treating the other information as secret and so next month someone might make it available for some unrelated reason.

Marit has tried to teach a lot of people to notice this sort of thing, mostly without success. He has at least succeeded in teaching them that he'll yell at them if they share a lot of information because they couldn't think of a good reason not to, which is perhaps the most he can ask. He spends the rest of the day and the night combing with Pereza through the Shining Crusade's budgets trying to figure out what you'd need to know in order for these numbers to be useful to you. It's inferrable, probably, in which months they pay the High Priest of Pharasma, and approximately how their men are divided across the war's present fronts; it's probably not inferrable precisely how many seventh circle wizards they have, even less so if they report the numbers to the nearest thousand solidi.

Eventually he approves a plan where they'll report their pay schedule and the overall spending on salary, precisely, and salaries and expenses by division imprecisely, with assurances that the budgets across all divisions add up correctly while they may not within any individual division. He refuses to certify that this doesn't tell Tar-Baphon a lot of valuable information; he can't think how it would, but Tar-Baphon's smarter than him, isn't he. 

"Does it have fair character - do you think you're as likely to be high as to be low, in the overall estimate this produces -"

"- I wasn't trying for that and I'm not sure it would possess that character incidentally." That is, he wasn't trying to bias it, obviously, but he's not sure that if one doesn't try to bias one's estimates one should expect them to end up evenly spread across the truth. 

"How long would it take you to try for that, I'd rather documents try for that but not if it's going to be enormously more difficult -"

"I have no idea how to do it at all, sir. It's not as if we have a true answer I can reference against. If you'd asked at the start I'd have proposed we have an axiomite hover and object in the middle of the process. I'll certify that I'm aware of no corruption, that I was given and proceeded with no objectives other than providing information adequate for an audit without betraying information useful to our enemy, and that there are no respects in which I specifically anticipate an auditor would be mislead by the aggregate figures."

"Right. Attest to that, then, and we'll send it over."

A few things are unusual about the pay schedule of the Shining Crusade, aside from the numbers meticulously provided only in the aggregate, which does make them less useful to Tar-Baphon but also makes them dramatically more difficult to check against the actual number of troops in the field, and aside from the attached statement of intent from a minor Crusade commander with no position relevant to accounting or counterintelligence at all.

The first is just that these are eye-popping numbers. Taldor knew it was paying a great deal for the Shining Crusade, but so has been the Church of Aroden and the Church of Pharasma and the Church of Abadar and the sky-citadel of Kraggodan and some parties preferring to remain anonymous, and the result is by far the most powerful organized military force ever assembled, maybe excluding the one it's opposing. There is a dragon in the Crusade's employ and he's a minor note on page 5.

The second is that the Crusade is contracted with an archmage for nearly all of her high-level spells for 100 solidi a month plus expenses and captured magic items. Those captured magic items and expenses must really be something; you couldn't hire a self-respecting fifth-circle wizard for that. 

The listed salaries other than that are mostly reasonable, for however much that's worth.