Carissa Sevar is a third circle wizard now, which permits her extra ribbons on her uniform, entitles her to hurt enlisted men if they strike her from across the room as standing there disrespectfully, and otherwise entitles her mostly to more work. She does Detect Thoughts surveillance with all of her second circle spells and Endure Elements with all of her first circle spells and is commanded in preparing Dispel Magics at third should they be needed, and she spends most of her time crafting.

Carissa Sevar is, unknown to her, really remarkably good at crafting. It's not just that she's faster than other people; she can also do things that weren't in the assignment, and she can duplicate anything she's seen, which means that she should be permitted to see any really good gear possessed by anyone coming through Fort #11, and then told to make it. Carissa Sevar's last commander sized her up as someone who might think too highly of herself, if she learned that this was not a particularly usual ability, and so left a note in her personnel folder to the effect that she should be set impossible deadlines and punished for not meeting them, with complaints to the effect that most crafting wizards can handle the pace fine, and that she ought to be systematically lied to about the expectations and expected performance in her role, and that if handled appropriately she'll generate a lot of excess revenue for her superiors. Also they should make some excuse to not let her out at the end of her third term of service.

Commander Artigas thinks it's kind of stupid to station crafters at the Wound at all, though being able to duplicate things she's seen is a good excuse; but that's not really the angle from which it is commanded that he criticize this situation. She can be assigned a number of training exercises that theoretically leave her eight hours to craft in and another eight to sleep. He can assume aloud when presented with a finished item to issue somebody that she would probably have wrecked half the spellsilver if she'd tried to be on time. This one is sluggish about resizing, is he supposed to find a unit where everyone has the exact same size hands in case they need to pass the sword around in a live combat situation? Marqués got the commander's personal chainmail done in three-quarters the time it took her to make this set.

He doesn't actually have her tortured though so he can't be that dissatisfied. She does fine with eight hours of duties on top of crafting. She reads everybody's minds and reports them for thinking disallowed things including that the fort commander is soft. She only has the enlisted soldiers punished for disrespect if they're particularly annoying. She churns out a great many magic items; her superiors will indeed grow rich by her efforts. She knows she isn't going to make fourth circle; third was a stroke of lucky, really, a week-long siege of her last fort during which all her spells went to actual fighting. Usually things don't go badly enough for her to need to use her Dispel Magics, and crafting's only dangerous if you're even more careless than she is.

"If by my purported softness I encourage actual misbehavior I will punish that. If instead I save time and Cure spells then I improve the margin on our collective survival, at least until a misplaced workshop wizard who can't read the list of meaningfully disloyal thoughts insists on wasting the time saved. Or this is an attempt to determine by personal investigation what I do when provoked, Sevar?"

"No, sir."

"I am sure you can eke out some fraction of the progress you should have made on that bow today if you run along."

(He is soft, though. And apparently you're allowed to think so.)

He doesn't have many more troublemakers than most forts, but maybe he's accomplishing this by swapping people around, which he does slightly more frequently than her last commander. He writes and sends a lot of letters, sometimes goes on patrols himself, shows up to training exercises on occasion to supervise or practice. At one point he has questions about what she could get Selective Alarm to do if he requisitioned her a scroll to copy.

Magic experiments!

...she is a responsible person and will find the time to look into it if the scroll becomes available.

(The point of torturing people isn't deterrence from wrongdoing, or at least that's only one point of torture. The other point is that it makes people stronger, like how fighting and getting hurt makes people stronger, like how Hell makes people stronger. But he's a priest of Asmodeus, so presumably knows that, and just doesn't want them to be stronger.)

No one has ever actually evinced to him the opinion that torturing people makes them stronger except in the sense that if you do it just right you can make them into priests of Asmodeus.

He will get her the scroll if she thinks she can make it twig to demons even if those demons are in disguise.

She has never in her life said 'no I can't do that with magic' and doesn't intend to start now.




She can, it happens, make it twig to demons. 

They get another reassignment; the new senior wizard for the fort is a terrifically cruel man who goes after her at once, as the only woman on the staff that he's entitled to and that no one else is, and her quality of work suffers, though not all that noticeably.

"Sevar, your already dismal timeliness has deteriorated. Have the kitchens confused you with someone who isn't allowed to eat this week?"

Damn it if she's also going to be punished for being late by the fort commander then she's going to be more behind tomorrow - no excuses. This wouldn't even be a problem if she'd been good at her job in the first place. "No, sir."

"Enchantment by lurking cultists? Sheer laziness? A morbid fascination with what I'm doing to people in my quarters? I do not give you assignments because I am indifferent to their completion."

We are all worthless before Asmodeus but he exerts himself to claim us anyway. We are all worthless before Asmodeus but he exerts himself to claim us anyway. 

He could let her drop the hour she's obliged to spend jogging up the stairs and back down, if he wants her work done faster, but she likes all of her limbs and will not mention it. "There is no excuse for the delay, sir."

"Then get back to work at best speed, or at least your top speed that doesn't spend lost materials in addition to patience."

The problem is that Carissa's new boyfriend thinks it's funny if she doesn't have enough time to complete her work and is accordingly in the poor graces of their commander, so getting faster doesn't even help. Also she's sneaking a second-circle spell which is supposed to be for duties for Alter Self once a week (just pretending she did the mindreading and not doing it), and is definitely going to get in trouble for that at some point.

She finishes an incredibly elaborate sword which bites demons with both holy fire and demon-specific hostility that she saw on a paladin once. 

"Congratulations, Sevar, it's only two weeks behind schedule. In the event that the man it's meant for hasn't been eaten in the intervening time for lack of his weapon I'm sure he'll be delighted that eventually you found it within yourself to do your job and contribute in some small way to the containment of the demon hordes.

"Now that you are between projects I require your presence in my office. You are excused from Common Taldane review on the grounds that the instructor has earned a favor from me and will probably accept it in the form of not having to listen to you attempt to say 'treaty obligation' today."

We are all worthless before Asmodeus but he exerts himself to claim us anyway.

He doesn't sound anywhere near angry enough to have noticed that nodon'tthinkaboutthathere.

 "Yes, sir." 

His office is on the second-highest landing on the lookout tower, under the spot where people go with spyglasses. The office itself doesn't have a view because windows would lose heat to the outside for no useful purpose. He's got a glass ornament that throws light within itself when he lights it up, casting a more useful illumination than most opaque objects manage; he's got a bookshelf with copies of non-sensitive letters and a small handful of actual books.

"When I was in seminary," he remarks, "- Prestidigitation. When I was in seminary I received a tidbit of wisdom about the nature of tyranny which I will relate to you now. It is not quite correct for Asmodeus's servants to exert authority over one another purely because it is pleasing to Him, though of course it is; were that all we were doing -" He's making something on the desk now between two of the four chairs present in the room. "- then the hierarchy would be flatter than He desires, with some power flowing downward but no benefit flowing upward except insofar as it accrued directly to Him by being a weak attempt at play-acting the requisite structure. In a truly pyramidal organization, those who command others under His gaze must achieve things for themselves thereby in the process. We pray to be raised high in His service not only because it is in the prayer book but because it is a way to get things we desire."

It's a chessboard.

"Do you know the rules?"

Her mind is racing trying to make sure she committed all that to memory exactly properly. She blinks at the chessboard. She has vaguely encountered the concept of chess. She has never played it.

"No, sir."

"Well, then. I hear wizards are all terribly clever, and it is a Cunning sort of game. You'll figure it out."

He advances a pawn.

"I do not tolerate gambling for stakes of the kind that might lead someone to Lawless behavior in my fort. It will have to be something more ephemeral. So when you make an illegal move or lose a piece, you will instead provide me with an attempted explanation of how you somehow got even worse at turning spellsilver into items in recent weeks. And - Sevar - 'no excuse' is not an explanation. It is in fact the most blatant and disgraceful lack of an explanation it is possible to give."

She has absolutely no idea what a legal move is. What if she just mirrors him, is that a legal move?