:I'm fine. I was in the gardens. The door wasn't locked. Is something wrong?:

:- No, well, only that Mhalir was fretting and wanted to check on you, and then you were not there. Can you come back in now, please: 

Is he just going to leave it at that - :yes, of course. Sorry. Didn't mean to worry you.:

He points at the Gate, waits until she's through and in their suite. 

Reads her mind. 

That was hardly disastrous but she's still slightly panicky about it, and if he'd looked ten minutes sooner maybe it'd have been worse. Or maybe they'd have been as nonchalant about 'I wanted to see the city' as 'I'm in the gardens'....

Probably it was a stupid thing to do at all but she felt so alive, and safe, and - like there was anything to her that didn't belong to other people.

"Can you tell Mhalir I'm fine and I'm sorry for worrying him?"

Leareth is so unconvinced that she's fine. 

"I do not believe you were planning anything hostile," he says, slowly, "but - I am somewhat concerned and I think I would sleep easier tonight if Mhalir were with you, or at least takes a turn in your head if you would prefer he not stay there." 

It would be - unnecessarily cruel and disrespectful, to ask for permission when he's not, actually, going to care whether she wants it or not, so he doesn't. 

This is probably unnecessary and he's just going to feel silly about it in a few minutes, but Leareth has a very uneasy feeling, and he doesn't have enough of a hold on it to even know what questions to ask. 

<...I do not want to do that> Mhalir objects to Leareth's Carissa, instantly. 

:That makes sense? But also I don't believe for a second she went for a walk in the gardens. I guess we can make Leareth interrogate her about it, I'm not sure that's less bad but it - leaves you out of it -:

<...I suppose I can ask her which of those is actually worse from her perspective, I do not want to - make myself feel better at the cost of harming her more...> 

He has an unhelpfully vague doomy feeling TOO and no idea what to do about it, but he turns to look at his Carissa. 

"I think something is wrong," he says. "And - Leareth wants to know what, to avoid it catching him by surprise later, because he is very paranoid. But - I want to give you space - and I do not think at all that you were just plotting to betray us, it feels like - something else is off... Could you - it would help if you could - just try to explain it, maybe, so we are not confused?" 

"I am sad. I am scared and I don't know what I want. I had a nice time leaving my room and I'm upset that now there is a whole big thing over it, if you want to chain me to the wall you can just do that. I didn't go get Asmodeus's attention. I - understand why it is so important to you that I not do that.

I... understand why it doesn't work for you, in general, to have me around not necessarily doing what I'm supposed to do, and I don't know what you should do about that, and I'm not going to be mad at you for doing something about that but it - might hurt me."

Nod. 

Leareth sighs. He's tired, and stressed, and he has a tension headache, and he is not currently having any emotions at all except for unease, (and somewhere behind that is a bottomless pit of anger and grief and frustration at the world, and cities turned to glass...)

And he feels like Carissa's explanation gives only a very vague pointer toward whatever it is that his instincts are yelling at him about.

But...plausibly this is the sort of problem where just having all the information in front of him would not, actually, even be that useful for fixing or mitigating it. 

He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. :- Help me figure out what to do here?: he sends to his Carissa. :Something feels - more wrong than what she is saying - and I am scared it is something that is not even in my hypothesis space and it will explode on us later, but - I do not want to damage our relations with her any more...: And he is really not in the kind of mood, right now, where he can predict easily what kinds of things will and won't harm relationships. 

:I don't know what to do either! She's definitely lying and it seems like a pretty bad idea to - ignore the whole situation because she's sad, but -:

"Did you meet up with anyone you'd prearranged meeting up with, to set up - some kind of system for Asmodeus to learn of this later if you ended up deciding it was a good idea -"

" - no." But of course it's easy to say 'no' to anything that specific. 

"Was it about - accumulating general-purpose resources for if you want to leave or contact people later -"

"...I guess everything is kind of about that, isn't it? 

I don't - if I think of some clever way to stop you all invading Hell I guess I'll have to do it but I don't want things to work out like that, I'm not going to point all of - everything - at trying to find it -"

"I know. But - you see why I am terrified that you still haven't given a straight answer about what you were doing."

"Yeah. It was stupid to leave without checking in with you and obviously it'd make you freak out and I'm sorry. I guess I am kind of in the background trying to map out my options all the time but I wasn't trying anything -" Deep breath. "I got my finger healed. I'd injured it and I didn't want to ask you."

She seems to find this if anything more baffling. "Oh."

"I'm sorry."

Leareth isn't sure that this actually decreases how confused he is, but - it does narrow it down a lot, he's still skimming Carissa's surface thoughts and she is very inconveniently not thinking about the circumstances of mysterious finger injury at all but she's not lying. And - it fits, he supposes, that she wouldn't want to ask her alt who is a cleric of Iomedae to heal it for her. 

"Thank you," he says, wearily. "I am not going to chain you to the wall. You have a compulsion not to leave the city and not to directly harm anyone here; it is not really tractable to compulsion you not to - consider schemes - and, I believe you that you are not angling toward that anyway, so I will not attempt it. Please do warn us if you need to leave the palace again, though, you frightened Mhalir." 

Mhalir is still SO WORRIED. 

She thinks of and discards half a dozen things to say all of which are mean and astoundingly stupid to say to the King of Cheliax. "I'm sorry," she settles on saying again.