"They're the same kind as the last time," she says, since she confounded the woman with the alcohol concentration last time. "How's Chelam?"

"In a bit of a state, actually. We removed and executed the duke and all but one of the counts and are trying to provide security in their place but there's really quite a lot of catastrophes. That's - what I wanted to talk to you about. May we speak confidentially?"

" - oh. Uh, quite probably, but I don't grant that request with fewer than twenty hours to think about it. I'm sorry, I should've mentioned when we picked a date."

" - huh. No, don't apologize, that's reasonable. I cannot reasonably get back and then visit again in that time but I am sure I can find a way to entertain myself for a day. Do you have recommendations for restaurants? Can I visit that museum you worked at?"

"- yes, we can speak confidentially."

"Thank you. 

I told you that I work for the new Queen who overthrew the Thrunes. That's true. It's incomplete. The whole story is - I was an undercover agent in Egorian. I spent my whole life preparing to do it. They have frequent mind-reading, to determine the loyalty of their agents. My mother had a theory of how she could teach someone to project false thoughts and fool mind reading, to beat truth spells like some song-sorcerers can. I was able to master it. 

You could not rise to any prominence in Egorian without selling your soul to Hell, so I did, while intending to betray them. I made arrangements to keep passing information to my mother. I helped make the Galtan revolution and the Andoren revolution go well in a way that incidentally discredited the people whose job I wanted. I helped assassinate Infrexus. I was appointed Abrogail's spymaster. I betrayed their secrets to the forces of Good until I was discovered."

"Gods. - thank you. I - what are you planning to do, then?"

"Live forever? - not by lichdom, there are better ways." She generally hates it when people pity her but she wants Carlota's cooperation here and the pity is probably the route to it. "I - it was worth it, of course. I didn't really expect to survive the war - well, I didn't, but my mother retrieved me - so it's a bit odd making any plans past that, but I don't regret it."

" - there are better routes than lichdom? Known to you? - sorry, that just has rather startling implications all by itself -"

"You meet a lot of people as Cheliax's spymaster. There is a secret druidic technique for restoring an aged person to their youth, and I'm planning to get it done shortly. That'll get me another sixty years. 

I want to spend them as the Duchess of Chelam. I - don't want to leave Cheliax. It is the place I have devoted my whole life to. I know it like a child, and I'm invested in it, and I want to keep fighting for it. But it would wholly discredit the Queen's reign, to keep me on as her spymaster, and invite questions we don't want people digging into, and - and also she doesn't want me. She feels - badly about what she did to me, right -"

"About raising you to do this?"

"Yes. It doesn't bother me, but it bothers her. And I find it fairly unbearable to work closely with her rather than reporting in a secret dreamscape once a month.

So - I want to start over. I want another chance at life. I want a name that people don't think of as among the worst monsters in their history. I asked for a duchy. 

I would like to use your name, when I start over."

"If what you have said is true I do consider myself extraordinarily indebted to you but that is a - very substantial ask."

"I know. We can go to some part of Axis that has truth magic, if you'd like. - I can beat a lot of kinds of truth magic but haven't specifically tried on any in Axis and would expect that it doesn't work just like if I undetectably mindread people here an inevitable shows up to yell at me."

" - I feel badly about asking you to leave and let me think again, when I know that it's extremely expensive for mortals to stay in Axis for any length of time, but I want to take at least a day to think about whether I might want to do that and what things I want to worry about if so."

"I found somewhere it was legal to sleep in a Rope Trick. I spent a lot on food but - for the experience, it's not as if I need to eat."

"Then come back tomorrow. Also I would appreciate your permission to discuss the request with my husband and will at some point require that if I'm going to agree."

"If he is willing to agree to confidentiality you can discuss the request with him confidentially. If he needs a day to think about it then maybe we should meet in two."

"No, that's me. I have - complicated internal injury around having been embedded in a culture that strongly expected promises of me that I wasn't really qualified to make or keep. Lots of people take ten minutes to think, but trying to take ten minutes to think is very stressful to me, and things come to mind hours later. Many people are like that, but a minority of people."

"I don't think I have that problem but possibly I only don't have it because I plan for adversarial negotiations in advance and don't agree to anything I didn't have a longstanding intention to."

"Seems practical in an environment with a lot of mind control - mind control is illegal in Axis and if you attempt to employ any I will not be angry like I was about the divinations, I will be angry like I'll ask my company to track you down for prosecution."

"Breaking laws in Axis would be very stupid and I haven't done it. The Detect Thoughts was legal - though also it was wrong and I should not have done it and apologize for it - I think I just tripped some kind of rule about learning things I'm not supposed to know."

"Anyway. Confirming explicitly that I have your permission to ask my husband for confidentiality about our conversation and, if he agrees, to tell him its contents?"

"Yes."

"Then same time in a Golarion day, I guess."

"All right. I have a ...long list of questions and clarifications. Firstly, uh, why do you want to do this instead of just making up a fake name and history and going with that?"

"I would like to not inspire suspicion. If I'm an obscure claimant that someone tracked down in the River Kingdoms, as they are doing with many obscure claimants, I'd have - friends, right, some kind of history. If I had a reasonably good command of Iomedaen theology I learned it from someone. If I speak modern Chelish Taldane that demands an explanation. I'm planning to be prominent, you understand. I like politics and I think if you came back you'd be good at it and have some important perspectives to bring to it. People will wonder, at that, and they'll go looking, and once they go looking it's much likelier they figure something out. And it would be limiting to try to pretend to have - the set of interests and commitments that would be consistent with not having come to anyone's attention before this."

"Whereas if you pretend to be me then you expect that to hold up to serious inspection? Are none of the people who knew me going to be alive?"

"No. You never met Morgethai, right? And the rest of the resurrected nobles - I went through and checked every single one of them. I am reasonably confident you were never face to face with anyone returned, and if you were it'd have been an incidental interaction. Most people don't remember what other people looked like eighty years ago."

"The other thing someone could do if they were suspicious is follow up in Axis, are you asking me to avoid those inquiries?"

"Yes. I'm aware that it's a costly request, but - there are parts of Axis that can't be scried from the Material. I am requesting that you live in one of those and don't take correspondence from the Material, and ask your friends to forward any that reach them and are about you to you."

"What if the Church tries to contact me?"

" - including if the Church tries to contact you. I am in fact planning to deceive them. Because - right now they hate me. If they encountered me outside negotiations or the Worldwound they would take me prisoner, interrogate me about everything I'm up to, and then trap my soul. I would like to be an ally to the Church. One of the things I found appealing about being you is that you have reason to have a good working relationship with the Church, and I'd like to. But - only if they don't think of me as the person they despise and fear and hate."

"It's the Church. You could - contact them to arrange negotiations, and then explain that actually you made enormous sacrifices on their behalf and are their ally."

"That is a very inspiring amount of faith you have in the Church. I do not think I could do that and in any event it would be - more people who know the secret. As a professional obtainer of secrets, it really is so much easier to get them if more people know them."

"I'm fine with living somewhere I'm unscryable and telling my friends that I do not want them to answer inquiries about my whereabouts or whether I returned to the Material except by forwarding me those inquiries. I won't lie to the Church for you, including by omission, without a lot more of an explanation of why I should do that. If they write to me or a friend of mine requesting to know whether I returned to the Material I'll write you and notify you and you can have a month to give me a better explanation, or I'll tell them everything."

"That is very reasonable."

"Next line of inquiry, what kind of ruler of Chelam you would be. I admire you as a person but also I am not confident in your - not being evil."

"I'm Evil. But I am not planning to do Evil as you. You said you wanted to be a good person, so being you is being someone who is trying to get it right this time and be a good person. I don't expect to be perfect at it but I mean to follow the Queen's existing quite limited and merciful code of law, and free the household's slaves, and get the people priests and teach them Iomedaen theology and keep the roads safe and kill the monsters and do all the things where Goodness is just about execution. I'm very good at execution. I'm probably less good at - some other parts of Goodness - but I am not going to commit atrocities in your name."

"Petitioner comes to the castle, young pregnant woman, wants you to do something about her lover, who said he was going to marry her but it turns out he was already married a village over."

"That wouldn't - happen in Asmodean Cheliax. The woman would not expect it to be a productive thing to do, and wouldn't come up with the idea. I can guess that the correct answer is to fine the man and oblige him in support of the child since Iomedaens don't like infanticide and his lie is the cause of the woman's plight, but - I think it is perhaps important to the test questions you generate that their world isn't the one you remember."

"Slavery."

"Lastwall doesn't allow it. It should probably be phased out in some kind of reasoned and careful manner so that the slaves can start new lives and so that you don't undermine all confidence in contract law, and there are complicated cases like species of not exactly human intelligence, but the most standard kinds of it should be phased out."

"You'll need to marry."

"I should find an honorable and decent" archduke "man who I'd be pleased to have my sons turn out like, and I should work quite hard to make that relationship valuable to him, and to show him the" extremely precisely calculated "vulnerability that inspires men to decency, and I should work diligently to raise our children to be good Lawful Good rulers of Chelam who'll go to Heaven."

" - so, normally that'd probably be close enough, but I'm actually extremely worried about the described situation where the nobility are a mix of returning exiles from several different countries, random distant claimants, and resurrected people. I am worried this produces a situation where the usual structures that enforce decency and expectations aren't present. You should figure out what you and your to-be-husband mean by marriage, in lots of detail. Do you expect him to be faithful? Do you expect him to support you? Does he expect to make decisions about the children's education? What's a dueling insult in his culture? How much is he willing to spend to cure the children if they're sick?"

She nods, and listens intently, and tries to let it filter back through her to produce the person who would have worried about that.

"I find myself slightly upset about the children. If a child bearing our family name has the seat of Chelam it feels like they should be genuinely related to me. I am not sure this resolves to an objection but it does bother me."

"If it helps, we are related. Only in the manner that all the Chelish aristocracy are related, but my father was Gervasi Nicolau Ricard Sanc de Montero, and his mother was your second cousin, and there are other connections but more distant ones."

"That does actually make me feel notably better about it. ...the Church of Erastil."

"We should get as many of them as we can for the Plant Growths and I guess they're also good for everyone's souls but I can't say that I have a deep understanding of the emotional appeal."

"Family is - almost all of the high-stakes decisions most people make are made at home, actually. But I cannot say I have a personal affinity for him. Abadar."

"Is going to have to loan me an enormous amount of money to repair the duchy but I negotiated a very good interest rate."

"Did you." It is the first time she has sounded actually impressed with Lilia including on learning that she sold her soul to serve the forces of Good.

"I'm a Lawful sixty-year-old sixth circle wizard with a clone just in case and probably soon a duchy, I'm not that much of a credit risk. But yes, I did. There are a lot of infrastructure improvements that need to be made - the castle was looted by its fleeing nobility and then looted again several more times after that -"

"What is even a good interest rate on Golarion?"

"I got fifty five thousand Absalom pounds at seven percent annually. It's twice what Lastwall pays but it's much better than an individual can usually get."

"- luxury. Restaurant meals, things like that."

"- I like nice things but if I liked them more than fixing Cheliax I'd have stayed in Axis instead of fixing Cheliax. They can wait, though there's no reason to avoid them on principle."

" - okay that one is actually almost exactly what I was going to say. With the caveat that it seemed possible I'd actually find no longer being in Axis quite bad for me and I didn't want to - fail to notice the possibility because it didn't sit well with my self-image."

It is immensely satisfying to be told by Carlota that she got Carlota right. It is a satisfaction she last experienced when she was a little girl and her mother was giving her a test.

"Alcohol."

"...what about it?"

"it's actually - oh, damn it, I don't think I can afford to tell you that. Never mind."

"Of course."

"Privileges of the nobility."

"Nobles should not be allowed to murder people with impunity. Or rape people with impunity, or rob people with impunity, or terrorize people with impunity. They should be selected for being good people who won't abuse their powers and then should have the power to run their duchies well, which requires the ability to enforce the law and make arrests and go after monsters and maintain a private military in good order and collect taxes. Iomedae was suspicious of the whole institution but no one's ever successfully built Lastwall outside Lastwall, so."

"Well, no one's tried that hard. I don't know if it would work but if there was a real credible attempt at it I certainly wouldn't want to be a barrier to it. ....your little girl, four years old, tells you that she wants to wear boy's clothes and learn riding and swordfighting."

".....maybe she can have those things as a reward once she's done her assigned tasks, only I have no specific recollection of what appropriate assigned tasks for a four year old are."

"They can learn their letters. ....your little girl, thirteen years old, tells you that she hates you and wants you to die because you won't let her marry the boy she's pining over."

....'torture her for insubordination' is going to be the wrong answer. Realizing this does not get her the right answer. Whip her for insubordination? They whip people for insubordination in Lastwall, right? Probably it is better to err on the side of being too lenient, here, except if you have a thirteen year old who speaks disrespectfully to you you've clearly been being too lenient for a very long time. 

There is nothing wrong with torturing your thirteen year old daughters for insubordination. They'll thank you in the long run. 

"- I guess I'd ask her how her problems would be solved if I died, as her father also wouldn't let her marry at that age?"

Carlota beams at her. 

Lilia loves getting the right answer to Carlota problems. It feels like being valuable again. All the happiest memories of her life are of being valuable.

"You know, that's actually kind of strikingly good parenting for the Material. That is how my mother handled it but a lot of mothers wouldn't."

"It is not how my mother would have handled it. But - I can see the - environment that you are a product of. And it seems like it was good for you."

"You can do this. I would like annual project reports and I reserve the right to at any time with a month's notice decide I'm not going to live in secure parts of Axis anymore, though I don't think I'll do it without a very good reason."

She passed the test. She is an acceptable Carlota. Carlota has accepted her. "Thank you," she says, very sincerely. Carlota says thank you a lot. Lilia has incorporated the habit. 

"Take good care of Chelam. And - I really hope you figure out the soul thing. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

"Thank you. I will."