I also thought it was bird lol

The last sentence of your second paragraph hit the nail on the head, regarding Lism. He could maybe get himself elected… and then would completely and utterly fail on all his promises, because there just wouldn’t be money. Having civic pride is all well and good, but it doesn’t help if you can’t follow through.

The one thing I’d disagree on is being in debt to the Antinium, which would be something Krshia could capitalize on: the money the Antinium are giving isn’t a loan, or a debt of any kind. At worst it would be an exchange, and realistically, not even much of that. The hive is already much bigger than it’s supposed to be, so expanding it isn’t much of an issue other than a formality. Zevara has already started allowing more Antinium on patrols and on the walls, so again, having them be part of the City Watch is almost just a formality. Unless they deliberately screw up building the walls – which could be a genuine fear, though the Free Antinium actually do want to avoid war, so they wouldn’t do this – they are already relied upon to build various things in the city, so having them build new walls wouldn’t be all that different.

Krshia is right in that Lism is basically just rejecting free money. Plus, nothing says the Antinium have to build all the new walls entirely by themselves. There would be plenty of work to share around for a project like that – especially since it needs to be concluded before the next rains.

As for Zevara agreeing quickly, I’d say this is actually beneficial more than detrimental. Having the emissaries from the other hives would be an opportunity to sway them away from war. Even the possibility of them spying on and sabotaging Liscor would be massively outweighed by potentially allying with another hive or two against all the rest, if war were to occur. At worst, they lose one city by doing so, but the possible gains would be enormous. Especially since, if the Free Antinium decide to stick with the other hives during a third war, Liscor is basically lost regardless – the Antinium are already inside the walls, and Zevara knows they have considerably more workers and soldiers than they are supposed to have, even if she doesn’t know the full extent.

At least towards the Antinium. Which makes sense. To him, the Antinium are probably just more demons.

What this really tells us is that perhaps the demons aren’t so demonic and terrible as the Blighted Kingdom makes them out to be.

It’s not necessarily a retcon. Belgrade and Anand can command some Antinium, and we’ve seen others such as Yellow Splatters have a very limited amount of similar control. Klbkch can also give orders and hear thoughts of the others. So there is at least some sort of connection they can use.

The big difference seems to be that the Free Antinium require effort to do these things, and they are very limited in how many they can command at once. True Antinium should be able to talk and think that way all the time, basically as their default state, and they shouldn’t have nearly the limits of how many can be connected together at once.

He’s truly good at pissing everyone off, in-universe and readers alike.

But the six remaining Queens of the Antinium remember. Xrn. Ksmvr. Wrymvr. The last of the Centenium
You mean Xrn, Klbkch and Wrymvr?

This was talked over like dozens of times. Klbkch wanted to kill him, but after confirmation he didn’t pray to any god, but the Antinium themself he was ok with it. He prass for a heaven for Antinium. That isn’t related to the waking God in any way