"Understood."

"There's been a suggestion to have a third party tell Keltham useful things about your sexuality, preferably true ones, that he might be hesitant to believe from you directly.  Such as that you are attracted to him in part because of the actual power he holds over you, in the sense that you know Cheliax would let him do anything to you if he made that a condition of cooperating with us, and that if he never exercises any power over you, you may lose some interest.  Supposedly we know how you work because people with lots of experience with submissives can guess that by looking closely at you and how you behave around Keltham, as some people in our 'Governance' are of course doing in the background.  That Cheliax would let him do anything he wanted would be true in every sane country in the world and Taldor specifically and therefore, goes the argument, passes your condition on how we tell him Cheliax works."

"I do think it'll be important progress for him to understand that we're not pretending and that I don't even wish we were. I am not sure who he'd trust to hear it from - maybe Ione, if she recovers, maybe Pilar - I do predict that most possible ways of saying to him 'you know, you can actually not-for-pretend do whatever you want' result in a freakout like the one he had over the idea that you get executed for trying to overthrow the government, but there might be something -

- if I were trying to broach it to him, which has the disadvantage that I'm not going to say I'll get bored if he doesn't keep up, what I'd say is that I disliked it in the sex shop how it seemed like it was set up for mostly people who wanted to - pretend - and that if I wanted that I'd have said to him 'act like you can do whatever you'd like to me, until I tell you to stop', or something, and I didn't, and that a consequence of what I said instead, as far as Cheliax is concerned, is that he is, actually, entitled to do whatever he'd like, and if he wanted to chain me up again and I was being difficult about it he could call in Security and no one'd blink at that, and even though I expect he's nowhere near the point where he'd enjoy my being defiant I like knowing it's real.

But that of course - even in Taldor it wouldn't matter at all what I had to say about it and we do have to introduce that at some point, as I understand it?"

"I believe the central concept is that we lie that 'Governance' would be unhappy and then go along with it, but tell the truth that the actual power this gives him is important to your sexuality.  'Governance' is not telling him this to encourage him, of course, but because it's an important fact for somebody like him to know about somebody like you.  He should not suggest that you have any power to restrain him from doing whatever he wants, because in fact you don't have that power and that fact is very important to you."

" - yes. Okay, I think that's a good idea, I'm not sure who can pull it off, I'm authorizing the lie that Governance would be unhappy though even in Taldor I'm not, actually, convinced they would."

"Cheliax was Taldor and mostly still is Taldor, but is in the process of being reformed by a newly ascendant Queen who has negotiated a pact with the wise and benevolent Asmodeus.  Asmodeus's Church would be displeased by that sort of thing happening without good reason, but would, in this case, weigh the many problems in this country and decide that keeping Keltham happy was far more than enough good reason."

"Palace has plenty of dignified-looking people with very high Splendour who could pull it off, I think the main delay is going to be waiting on somebody who can cast Detect Thoughts so we can ask about his Nidal infiltrator theory too."

"All right. Another option, because I think he's going to want to talk about exclusivity in a little while, is to have someone drop in and ask him if they can rent me, and give a justification along these lines." Carissa has a hard time pinning down a lot of her intuitions about Keltham but she expects that he will have some kind of feelings about 'look, she's into stuff that's much more serious than you are prepared to offer', and if that take is given by someone with an obvious self-interest then it's also easier if it's disastrous for him to reject it without reaching any far-reaching conclusions about Cheliax. Also, whether he ends up agreeing or not he'll end up wanting to learn the skills he doesn't have, and also it seems like fertile territory for 'things he might turn out to be into'. 

"My read on Keltham is that there are some kinds of people to whom he'll show some tiny fraction of what we consider elementary deference, Contessa Lrilatha being the most obvious.  His interactions with senior Security also seem promising.  If the person trying to rent you isn't wearing a visible +6 headband, it seems less likely that Keltham will process them as - whoever he thinks he's supposed to listen to.  And if we send in somebody like that, why are they trying to rent you and not a hundred other women they could afford?"

This is a fantastic question someone should ask the Queen.

She doesn't say that, not that not saying it much limits the damage of thinking it. "Fair enough. I guess it can wait on someone who can manage the Detect Thoughts."

"That's it.  If you've got nothing else, go prepare spells."

Maillol is in fact concerned about the degree to which Sevar seems to be developing genuine attachment for Keltham, but the last time she spoke out of that attachment she made tremendous progress on Keltham, because it fit into whatever mysterious theories he uses.  Maillol still thinks, on the whole, that in the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law he would not correct her yet.  Of course, that would be because he was regarding her as a disposable pawn, but if that's what Sevar proves to be, so be it.

Carissa asks after, and receives, a room next to Keltham's, smaller than his and less 'doom-punk', clearly meant for the entourage of the person in the main room but not meant for their slaves. She prepares spells.

Maillol files a request for someone at eighth circle who can cast Detect Thoughts, and/or somebody with very high Splendour who can talk to Keltham about the mystery of where he's getting his deductions and also talk with him about Carissa Sevar's sexuality, specifically about her need to be in somebody else's power, and possibly also (he's not sure how the details of this could look but he's not the one with the Splendour) manage to introduce the topic of (somebody else?) wanting to rent Sevar from Keltham in a way that won't set him off or look wildly implausible.

Maillol isn't going to realize for a while the incredible depth and thoroughness of the blunder he's just committed, and by the time he does, it will be far too late.

Keltham tries to recollect what he can of the items in Ione's list that seemed at all interesting, as now seen from a somewhat different standpoint - he can't recollect much of it, though, that visibly helps a lot under the new conditions - spends some time figuring stuff out, spends more time trying to figure out if he can do any better, and then prays.

He does receive his spells this time, though with no sense of his own god looking back.

Keltham now has:

0th:  Detect Magic, Guidance, what should be Detect Poison, what should be Create Water.

(Create Water seems like the most munchkinable thing that's a cantrip.  Which isn't very munchkinable, but at 4 gallons per caster circle, maybe he can do something with repeatably suddenly 16 gallons of water, in an emergency situation.)

1st:  Truthspell x3, Fairness x2, Sanctuary, Protection, Comprehend Languages.

2nd:  Augury x3, Owl's Wisdom, Early Judgment.

Taking the Early Judgment spell seems a little unsafe, like they'd only sell that magic in a Shop of Ill-Advised Consumer Goods because it's too potentially addictive.  But it also seems important to have around at least for today in case he needs to make a mental recovery.

3rd:  (used on 2 1sts and a 2nd)

4th:  Enchantment Foil, what should be Sending.

That leaves him with some time left while Carissa preps spells, which he'll first use to Prestidigitate his clothing clean over the sink in the ensuite bathroom (not that Keltham is remembering to be appreciative of this incredible luxury).

Then Keltham attempts to think for a bit, his thoughts tentatively trying out a review of recent events, before he concludes that in fact he shouldn't do that and should try to decompress more instead, while he's alone by himself in the quiet but for the sound of rain outside.

He'll poke through the fourteen-volume history on 'Absalom', which becomes more interesting after it becomes clear that Absalom is where the Starstone resides.  The quality of the reasoning in the history books is something like six times better than those of the books in the villa library, more like 1 reasoning error per 2 sentences instead of 3 reasoning errors per 1 sentence.

...is that because the palace can afford better books than - but why - why would - books, information, you should just be able to reprint the best versions of things if the information exists - do more intelligent authors demand incredibly high book royalties to the point where most people can't afford good information about basic subjects?  Golarion why.

The book's contents seem to be dated to before Aroden died, which, if Keltham is recalling correctly, was a century ago.  Maybe that's at least how long it took for the slightly smarter and better-reasoned book to have its copyright decay to where it could sell enough copies to be worth printing?  Golarion, again, why?  Information is very easy to copy once it exists; information on core topics is among the most blatant possible cases where Civilization has an interest in everybody being able to afford it.

All the altruistic smart people are off being wizards at the Worldwound, maybe.

Carissa knocks on his door an hour later.

"Enter."

Carissa finds it encouraging how quickly he is warming up to this! She'll enter. ...and kneel at his side over in the reading nook, if that's what he's doing. She has never done this before and feels faintly ridiculous but what's important is whether Keltham is into it.

('Enter' would actually be among the things you'd say in Baseline, if somebody knocked, and it wouldn't especially be a command.  It's just that 'it's okay by me if you want to come in' would be more syllables than Civilization would choose to encode into a query-response pattern that gets used like over a billion times a day.)

And now Carissa is on her knees on the pillow beside the reading nook.  Obviously no such custom exists in Civilization and kneeling itself wouldn't mean anything there, but it's clearly a standard thing given the pillow beside the reading nook.

He doesn't ask what this clearly standard thing standardly encodes, because part of him seems to feel that the meaning is, somehow, obvious.  Not all of it, and maybe he's completely wrong; it just obviously seems like something that you wouldn't do, unless you are to him what Carissa is to him, so it means, at least, that.

He reaches over and ruffles her hair, because that feels right.  "Hey," he says.

"Hey. I have reported to Security and prepared my spells and been assigned a room, though yours is fancier. I think they like you better, probably because of how you're going to bring about the technological revolution and make the world a place Zon-Kuthon won't consent to permitting to exist."

"Well, if your room isn't fancy at all, maybe I'll go complain.  Your room being fancy and my room being fancier seems like a reasonable premise for a relationship like this one."

"Any updates from Security on Ione, Pilar, Asmodia, gods, or timelines on project resume?"

Lean. "Ione's not awake yet, they threw some fancier healing at her in case that helps, this isn't very much of a bad sign though if it's still true this evening it will be. Pilar's back. She ended up in Elysium - the Chaotic Good afterlife - for some reason! I didn't ask more questions because that sort of thing can be personal but I bet she'd tell you about it, if you ask. Asmodia's not back yet - Pilar ended up elevated priority because they wanted to ask her questions about how she ended up in our mission out of the villa -- but it sounds like she doesn't know any more than we do. Asmodia's going to require a seventh circle spell - Regenerate - because of her legs, so she might be a week or so, in wartime like this. 

I asked if I could help with the war effort but was told to stay focused on this.

I think they're ready to resume once you are - they could set up a room here for classes - but don't want to push you, if you're not ready."

Keltham is a bit startled that Carissa would just tell him that Pilar ended up in Elysium.  That should've been something he had to figure out on his own by talking to Pilar, or investigating her, or something.  Pilar should've been left more mysterious than that until their first date, or until he did something to appeal to her, if those tropes were governing here.  Call it maybe 6 times as likely on the theory 'Chelish Governance asked Pilar "what" and found out a weird thing and promptly and sensibly told Carissa so she could tell me' as on the theory 'this is an ero-LARP'.  With possible amendments if the Chaotic Good thing turns out to be itself much more mysterious; but still, Keltham making the first discovery that starts the mystery trail should require that he start Pilar's route, like, at all?  Or maybe that happened when she took a +3 vicious nasty bigsword for him.

But still a surprise, not advance-predicted, not the main thing the theory obviously says.  You don't want to rationalize those out the window.  Maybe call it 3:1 instead of 6:1, though.

"Well, huh," Keltham says, "the details there would be a bit hard to explain, but that's some small evidence against the reasoning system I was using to infer that one of the girls is a secret Zon-Kuthon cleric, or that one of the more unusual girls in class will have the 'being-forced' fetish.  Not decisive or anything, but noticeable jolt.  The key is knowing how to keep track of that sort of thing over time, which is what I'd otherwise have planned to lecture on next, the Law for accumulating pieces of evidence that aren't individually decisive, until they add up to something."

"Asmodia's going to - end up pretty behind, in a week, at the rate we were going.  I'm not sure how much you can recover from that sort of thing by reading notes, in a situation like this one... well, maybe somebody else could teach Asmodia, to help solidify the material in their own minds by teaching it, that's a big part of the reason why older kids teach younger ones in dath ilan.  Still, that'd be a big chunk of someone's time.  Depending on how expensive a seventh-circle Regenerate is... well, except that they are going to do it at all, eventually, so we're not paying from zero.  I probably want to expend some political capital on it happening earlier, if the project is considered competitive with war demands at all."

"I could teach a class today, for sure.  Whether I should... maybe not so much, if the view-from-above says that somebody in my position is supposed to take one day off, and it probably does."

- telling Keltham about Pilar was a correct move in the Second Law game. Okay. Carissa doesn't understand why and would REALLY LIKE someone to read Keltham's thoughts and try to get more but it's - information, and as Keltham says, you can use a little of that at a time. "It might literally be cheaper to pass Asmodia a two-way mirror in Hell so she can keep up," she says. "But I think it's reasonable to press them on getting her back sooner."

...they can do that?  Neat.  "I've got no objection to that if it's cheaper, key thing is Asmodia can ask questions from where she is and get them answered.  Pass it to them next time you see them? - ahem."

"Pass it to them the next time you see them, unless I tell you that I've passed it on first."

(Or is this not a giving-orders occasion?!  One thing is for sure, he needs to not just ask Carissa what he's allowed to do!  Brain registers a desire to scream internally:  Approved:  AAAAHHHHHHH WHY CAN'T ANYONE LEGIBLE IN GOLARION!?  Thank you brain now shut up, if that was an error it wasn't a critical error, and eventually things will be fine.)

"Will do." (Carissa would kill quite a large number of people to be able to read Keltham's mind right now.)