Negotiations - Ted did not do that stuff. It was true that he occasionally pretended to make compromises of some kind, but in reality, there was nothing at all that could have stopped him from doing his own thing and chasing the goals he had set for himself. For this reason, he doubted his plan a lot, but then again, he had successfully pretended to be satisfied by big decisions in the past. Did Mrs. Madorn see through his facade? That was the question that he needed someone to answer. If there had been a witch or a fortune teller, he would have consulted such a person, but in the absence of psychics and their ilk, he had to consult his very own treacherous magical deck of cards.
The cards he pulled out while in a somewhat liminal state of mind were suggestive of drunkenness; intoxication derived solely from emotional sources, and while that was not enough to convince Ted, the Zealot came up as he was shuffling the cards back into the deck.
