The scaffold doesn't look the same as it did when he started; it's changed shape on him, in Security's illusion, curled and folded as he's laid spells into it. The place where he would've started building Read Magic, before, visibly isn't shaped like that right now.

Keltham will mentally review whatever he's presumably already been told about how the scaffold knows how many cantrips he's prepared and why people don't just get another spellbook, unless nobody has explained this to Keltham at all, in which case Keltham will ask.

The scaffold changes shape as the spells are built on it, because magic affects the stable-shapes for nearby magic. It was changing shape all along, it was just less notable because there was still some available spell-building space. You can get better at scaffolding so you have space for more (and more powerful) spells. You can get another spellbook and build another scaffold, which will come out identical to the one you've currently got because the interactions that are shaping it are part of you not part of the spellbook.

Hmmm.  Well, Keltham doesn't see anything promising to ask about that at the moment.  Obviously he has unboundedly many questions like 'Do the Very Short People get fewer cantrips, by way of checking that it's nothing to do with spatial volume of the caster?' or 'Even if the limit ends up being 4 for almost everyone, can you detect subtle changes in how fast and how much the scaffold collapses which vary by say somebody's cranial volume?'  But not actually anything that's, like, important.  Well, unless -

"No such thing as a magic reset, where you hit me with a powerful dispel that blows away all my current wizard spells and whatever sort of internal magical changes correspond to my having already prepared spells?  Don't actually do that now unless you're sure it doesn't get my cleric spells too."

"There are spells that can do that, but that take a couple hours to do so; they don't work on the same person repeatedly in short succession. They wouldn't hit cleric spells. They mostly intensely compress the process that happens naturally in deep sleep that relaxes those internal magical charges."

"Worth trying to prepare a first-circle wizard spell, or don't even bother until I've prepared cantrips for a few days?"

"You have to learn a bigger scaffold. Probably not worth it today."

A tall woman garbed in casual-dress for low nobility politely knocks on the library door, and then steps inside.  "Sevar.  If you'll follow me outside the Forbiddance, I'm your teleport for your afternoon appointment."

Carissa gave this a bit of thought and decided she's just going to be truthful with Keltham that she's also spending some of her money on becoming prettier, probably with a playful 'if you like that'. 

She's not going to explain herself yet, though. She follows.

Keltham is slightly confused about what sort of scheduling gap this implies - he can neither teach anything for which all students should be present, nor snuggle Carissa until she gets back - but gets tangled up in uncertainties about local interrogating-someone-you're-also-fucking relationship norms for long enough that he doesn't want to yell the question loud enough for it to reach Carissa.  And then he doesn't remember the Message cantrip for longer than that.

Well, he has his own mounds of reading and learning to do.

"I'm also to retrieve a cursed bag of holding," the low noble says curtly once they're out of library earshot.

She hands it over. "How long will this be?"

The noble shrugs.  "Hour or two.  Been a while since I had mine."  She examines the bag.  "Used once, emptied, not recharged.  Confirm or deny."

"Confirm." With a slight pang of regret but she is NOT going to flirt with the Queen.

The noble tucks the bag away without comment, and then strides swiftly in the direction of the nearest exit from the villa.  Sevar will need to half-jog herself to keep up, the noble's legs are longer and she's apparently stronger.

Once they're outside the bounds of the physical villa and heading towards the edge of the Forbiddance, the noble speaks again.  "Not interested in the Queen's affections, I take it?  Understandable."

That doesn't seem like a question with a safe answer. "It's no flaw in the bag, which was lovely, or the Queen, who was much lovelier."

"But terrifying to be around to the point where the prudent, wise, safe course of action seems to be ignoring her and hoping she stops paying attention to you.  As I said, understandable."

"And yet one gets the sense the Queen finds it annoying when people try to do the prudent, wise, safe course of action at her. It's a bit of a dilemma. I am hoping I can just make her powerful beyond all our imaginings and then be forgiven my confusion about how to handle it."

This wins a snort of amused laughter from the low-noble.  "A difficult tactic, but I would expect it to work if you can do it."

The noblewoman puts her hand on Sevar's shoulder and casts a two-person Teleport, sorcerously, not as a wizard spell.

They're in Ostenso, outside a discreet but very upscale-looking shop.  There's a sign in gold leaf over steel that reads 'Guillem & Arnau', and no other hint of what the shop does; if you don't already know, you're not supposed to be here.

The noblewoman drops her hand.  "Different transport will be provided when you're done.  I'm too busy to stick around here.  Free advice, Sevar, though I may suspect it may come too late.  The Queen may choose to request transcripts of your thoughts.  If you thought about how the Queen was very pretty but too scary for you to want to be around her, or if you considered using her bag again but decided against that only because you didn't want any more of her attention, she is liable to take that as flirting back."

Of course she is. 

"The Queen should of course have whatever information she likes in determining how to do exactly as she wishes," she says.

"It's not as bad as it sounds.  She only does the statue thing very rarely, and not to lovers who disappoint her in bed.  In your personal case I think you'd have to piss off the Church and Asmodeus first before she'd go ahead with it."

Carissa has absolutely no context with which to interpret any of the sounds coming out of this person's mouth at this point. Is she being reassured because she's ....thought to be an unhelpful amount of scared? But telling her the Queen might come for her wouldn't seem to help with that! Is she being mocked? Probably; she's out of place here, in her Worldwound uniform, and well aware that nobles tend to think that kind of thing is funny. Is there a deeper, secret message? Why would it matter what Carissa thinks about what the Queen thinks of her? Is she being told that if she's a shape that the Queen will think of as flirting-back like it or not she should actually just flirt back? But it's too late! The woman acknowledged it was too late! Is it a test of whether she internalized Maillol's lesson about it not mattering what she wants? But even before that lesson she was very clear on the fact that if the Queen wants something you say yes, no matter what it is and no matter how you feel about it. What's this person's angle?

"I have learned recently that apparently a lot of people have trouble looking forward to, with genuine delight, the process by which in Hell they will be perfected. While I have many human deficiencies that make me an inadequate servant of our God I don't have that one, and my problem, here, is not that it sounds bad, it's that I'm sure there are lots of equally interesting girls who are slightly less busy."

Under no reasonable models of this person's goals was that a very good thing to say, the headband helps Carissa observe with perfect clarity.

- she'll just go inside. To her appointment.

She didn't catch on, this time.  That's disappointing but also kind of adorable.

Abrogail did have other things to do with her time today, it's just, when Sevar's thought transcripts show her thinking every five minutes about how terrified she is of you, it's hard to help yourself.