That was not how he'd expected his morning to go. It's obviously been too many years since he's had a real conversation with a devil-worshipper; he used to be so much better at getting under their skin.The Chelish officer seems bright, and genuinely curious, which is always upsetting. He's never understood how people like that can be so loyal to a system  that's basically antithetical to rational thought. He's always privately suspected he was too stupid to ever be a good Asmodean, it requires a certain gift for holding two contradictory thoughts in your head at the same time that he's never been able to master. Maybe, if you could focus the critical part of your mind down to a point, use it to make enchanted swords and wardstones and nothing else, it wouldn't be such a bad way to live. He'll have to ask her tomorrow. He's never liked things he can't understand. 

It's easy to find the Temple of Iomedae once he knows where to look. They're a little skeptical of his intentions, but it helps when de Luna greets him as a friend. He arranges to spend a few hours, well, lobbing fireballs at demons, which leaves the rest of the afternoon free to get on with his research. 

Carissa goes back in and retrieves her books and puts them away. She's happy. Magic is interesting and you can get through to any wizard, really, once you convince them that you see it too. He's a heretic, but he's a heretic because he's a crazy person who considered murdering his own baby sister, that's not a really threatening kind to engage with. And it's a neat ring. You could do the same with an expensive pearl of power, sure, but she hasn't seen the spell effect added to a ring before and she didn't have quite enough time looking at it to see how it was done. As always the decision of whether to try to learn rods or rings or garments is agonizing...

Someone in a command uniform finds her after that. Not any of the unit commanders, but she's seen him before - it takes her a second to recall - when she's been reporting mindreading, right. 

"Sir?"

          "Elie Cotonnet."

"The Galtan, sir. We spoke ten minutes ago." They must know that but it's best not to seem like you think you have anything to hide.

         "He's of interest to us."

Darn, she thinks. And after she had that great line about how he thinks about Chelish intelligence much more than they think about him. They won't have him assassinated, not here; there's a treaty. But espionage is allowed. "We're meeting for lunch tomorrow."

"It'd be advantageous to sustain a relationship."

         "...he offered to help me defect to Absalom."

He studies her carefully. "Step into this room here, Sevar."

          She's not afraid. She does that. He casts Detect Thoughts and she lets it hit her. She was not tempted to defect to Absalom. She thinks Cheliax is better than Absalom. She doesn't think she can run from Asmodeus and she thinks it's pathetic to try. She wants to be useful, not far enough away she's not worth retrieving. They did talk about why he wasn't an Asmodean, and it seemed ridiculous to her.

"Do you think," he says after a moment, "you could convincingly imitate a defector."

          "...I don't know. Not - not if they're all like him."

"They aren't. Some of them are normal people, who spend too much time worrying about the next life. Some of them did a small crime and then it snowballed because they feared punishment for that, and committed greater crimes covering it up. Some of them have friends who left, who say reassuring things about how they're neutral now, and Axis is lovely. It is lovely. So is Dis, and Axis won't be independent for long, but you shouldn't be shocked, if it's lovely."

            She takes a deep breath. "I don't - see why women would leave. Even if men would."

The slightest bit of a smile. "They are less likely to."

           Carissa feels a flush of pride. "Maybe you should aim to have more women be wizards, then. - sorry. Sir."

"Cotonnet is of significant importance to us."

            "I'll figure it out, sir."

"Yes."

He leaves. Carissa stares contemplatively at her fingers for longer than anything about her fingers warrants. 

She's going to be so good at this.

The food at the Calistrian camp is actually pretty good. He's showed up early and told Felix to bite him if he starts talking about anything he shouldn't. 

Carissa deeply appreciates both the food and the fact that, the one time it came up that she wanted to go to Hell, the person she was talking with said 'huh, I don't think it'd suit me' and left it at that. She gets some chili. 

"What services were rendered for the ring? Not that I want to run off and render them but I'm at least considering it."

Okay, that's an obvious one. Well, it's not like he's trying to keep his identity a secret – there aren't a lot of sixth-circle Galtan wizards based in Absalom to begin with. 

"Did you hear about the time the Queen of Korvosa murdered the King of Korvosa?" 

"I did! Some of the Hellknight order involved in the whole mess got assigned up here afterwards, I think because they were in some trouble with their superiors, and they were very grouchy about the whole thing."

"Well, we got him resurrected. And then killed her. ...Not all on our own, we had help. Credit where credit is due, your Hellknights were really remarkably unobstructive about the whole thing." 

"The King can't have given presents this expensive to everyone who helped reinstate him, he'd go broke. I guess that's a better problem to have than being dead."

"He must have been feeling generous." 

Personally Élie thinks she could stand to be a little more impressed, but if all the details aren't widely known inside Cheliax that's probably for the best. 

"Why'd you do it?"

"Well, we arrived in Korvosa just at the wrong time. The Queen had been poisoning her husband for months, nothing helped, and then my wife showed up and actually managed to heal him, so of course Iliosa had to finish the job and pin the blame on her. She – the Queen – was claiming that resurrection attempts had failed, but we managed to secure some of the body and get a higher-circle cleric in from Lastwall, since we'd figured she'd used  Hasten Judgement, which she had, and that did work but at that point we were in the middle of an all-out civil war. My companions and I – ah – didn't like the idea of Korvosa becoming even more of a Chelish protectorate than it already is, so we went in for the King. Turned out for the best, since the late Queen was planning a blood ritual to sacrifice the whole city in exchange for immortality." 

"No way. I didn't even know you could do that with a blood ritual! But then she must've been a very powerful wizard..."

"Actually, I think she was some kind of spontaneous caster – maybe a sorcerer, but if so, an awfully strange one. Of course, I doubt the ritual itself was entirely enabled by her intrinsic ability – " 

"Oh, were there other players? I suppose usually one does not murder a king without allies."

"Oh, no – sorry, I've been reading too much theory lately – Azlanti magic users didn't distinguish between spontaneous and prepared casters like we do. Rather, they saw a fundamental difference between intrinsic and patroned casters. In this schema, wizards and sorcerers are both intrinsic, clerics are patroned – I meant that I think Ileosa was an intrinsic caster, but the ritual might have been drawing on extraplanar aid. It's unfortunate, most of her notes were lost with her – " 

He catches himself. 

" – I mean, of course nobody should have the tools to recreate it, just – " 

"- well, you'd want it personally, even if you didn't want anyone else using it. Maybe you could use old people or something, anyway."

Well that sure is an awkward silence. 

"...she was certainly the equivalent of a 9th circle caster, in whatever it is that she was. If I get that far, I think 9th circle wizards have better options." 

"Do they? Obviously some wizards are immortal but some are ninth circle and aren't immortal. If I found a method of pursuing immortality I wouldn't pass it up - and not because I think it's all right to murder a whole city of people, I don't," it'd depend obviously but probably prospective defectors have Good-friendly opinions like that, "but - maybe there's a more efficient way, maybe there's - I take it from a Good perspective there's something wrong with the old people idea but there's got to be some variant that's allowed, maybe with animals..."

"I do wish you'd stop talking about the Good perspective on things. It's not a framing I've ever found particularly useful." 

"Huh, how do you think of it?"

"Interesting as this conversation is, we're not very likely to reach 9th circle or discover a new method of immortality, so of course it's important to think about where one might spend one's afterlife, but I don't like to confuse that with moral reasoning. I am generally speaking in favor of freedom and self-determination of sapient beings. That's why I'm against murdering the elderly, among other things, and if Pharasma changed her mind about it tomorrow I'd hope I'd still have the courage of my convictions." 

"...I do wonder why you think it isn't alright to murder a whole city of people. I mean, I know why I don't, but surely the orthodox Asmodean response is that eventually everyone goes to Hell, which is anyway more efficiently designed for the forming of souls than the material plane. So unless I've misjudged you, you can't have a fully general principled objection." 

She knows her actual answer, it's something about how Cheliax is richer than other places, a better place to live, and that's part of how a human can know that Hell is a place where they will be formed well. It doesn't seem like what a defector would say. What would a defector say to that. 

"...well, eventually everyone goes to Hell, but it's not really clear what happens if some of them get there via other afterlives, I think probably a lot is lost - in getting compressed first into whatever Heaven wants of you and then secondly whatever Hell does, right -"

"Maybe? I suppose it depends on how much value you place on the raw material. And there, I know, there are different schools of thought – personally, I worry that all the afterlives lose something important, just by virtue of squeezing mortal souls into accordance with their fundamental nature. But it's not like I'm in a position to do anything about it." 

"That seems right to me. That all the afterlives lose something. And I think I can make myself a shape where Hell doesn't lose the important stuff, but if I went to Heaven first and then to Hell - well, I worry that a lot of important stuff would be lost. So even if everyone goes to Hell eventually that doesn't make killing them wantonly a good idea. I notice Asmodeus doesn't do it."

"Reasonable enough. Personally I tend to think that whatever my condition when I arrive in hell – hypothetically, of course – the thing left after they were through with me wouldn't be worth keeping. But we're getting away from the subject."