"Thanks.  I should - I definitely want to try my hand at wizard magic.  I just haven't thought hard about what priorities it trades off against.  Like breakfast.  Oh, and how do I figure out my cleric spells that aren't 'first-circle', if my brain's translating the feeling of that word right?"

"Do you ...have cleric spells that aren't first circle?"

"Keep in mind I do not actually know the word 'first-circle' except from context because it has no corresponding concept in my native language or prior experience.  Some of my spells feel - bigger, more complicated, than others."

"Wow. Uh, more complicated the way that, like - the most complicated one, how many holes does it have, structurally, if you imagine it was made of something stretchy but not weldable to itself, and you stretched it, would it look like this -"

Minor illusion: second circle spell.

Keltham tries to rapidly calculate in the back of his mind the chance that he should be keeping secret the max power level of the spells his patron is willing to grant him, if so, he should not appear overtly reticent because the most important part of any secret is the fact that the secret exists.

"Most complicated spell I have is more complicated than that, but not by a lot," Keltham specifies unfalsifiably.  Taldane is a great language to speak instead of Baseline if you don't want your words to narrow down possible realities.

She switches the illusion to a third-circle spell. "Like this?"

"I just got these and have not really spent a lot of time contemplating them yet but yeah, that looks like it could be a spell of mine."

Carissa casts Detect Magic. There aren't invisible people in the room right now, or if there are they're concealed against Detect Magic which would be a sensible precaution now that Keltham probably has it, but that's not really the point. Then she stands up and paces the length of the room, staring at things. 

Carissa who had just learned this information and wasn't hiding anything would be scared, because a god dropping five cleric levels on Keltham is communicating that He expects Keltham to need them. Carissa is also, separately, scared, but that's unrelated. Though maybe helps with her acting. 

Keltham had just been projecting this game ahead to where Carissa would show the next level up, forcing Keltham to choose between overt reticence and overt lying, and he's relieved on a couple of different levels when Carissa doesn't do that.  She looks disturbed and maybe in distress instead.  "Sorry if I messed up something.  May I ask you to say a word about what's wrong?"

" - sorry. Uh. Gods don't usually drop three cleric circles on people all at once. I didn't know they could, although, uh, with gods it's less that there's anything they actually can't do at all and more about tradeoffs, I think - but at minimum it's so expensive it typically doesn't happen, unless it'd - turn the tide of wars, or something -

- so your god thought it was really important you have three cleric circles. And maybe that's just because speeding up the industrial revolution by a couple of months is the most important thing that ever happened, which, I mean, had also occurred to me, and which will definitely be easier if you are a powerful cleric because you'll be able to do a lot of experimentation and healing and magic research yourself - 

- but it's - uh, if there were something really bad, like, someone were going to kidnap you or something, then, that would also be a reason -

- I was just checking that there's not anyone in the room, or any scrying sensors. I don't - even know how much that'd help, because it's possible to hide from a third-circle wizard and a third-circle cleric, if you planned for it. But. It'd be very expensive. There's no one spying on us except maybe very expensively."

Keltham would immediately reply that it's explained-away by the Industrial Revolution point, which is way more important than a 'war' if he's got that concept at all right.  But he doesn't want to just ignore the security flag.  People who just ignore security flags are for children's books, not grownup books.

"Huh.  What potentially stops my god from directly warning me, in that case?"

"...nothing I can think of? I would expect a warning to be a lot cheaper than three cleric circles. Gods....vary in their capacity to usefully communicate with mortals, maybe if yours was really bad at it?

...it's most likely just the 'speeding up the industrial revolution is very important' thing, now that I think about it, the other thing came to mind first but I'm used to people being in various kinds of danger and I am not used to people being positioned to speed up the industrial revolution. And there's good security, here. Unless they're the problem. They're - 

- frankly, if they are the problem, three cleric circles wouldn't solve it? But maybe it'd make some other solution possible...I don't think this is very likely, really, once I think it through. Uh. If your god gave you all fighting spells I'm going to be worried again, so maybe let's check that."

"Yeah, let's.  Fair warning, under these circumstances, I may choose to publicly reveal fewer spells than all of the ones I have."  He suspects, for a start, that he has the spell that Carissa used to check for invisibles, as one of his least complicated ones, going on the spoken component.  Which is already not a very encouraging sign at all.  Hopefully it's a more general spell than Test For Invisible, and has some perfectly innocuous civilian use that he obviously-to-a-god needed to deploy today anyways.

"Yeah, of course. Shall we go bother the priests for the book?"

"I have no better options to offer."  Keltham will follow where she leads, with slightly more alertness than usual in case Carissa works for the criminal mastermind who is about to stage Keltham's kidnapping.

(Dath ilan has a... complicated... relationship with its criminal masterminds.  They really, really don't collectively want to admire the clever successful ones, and yet.)

Carissa goes to the temple and asks a priest for a book of spells for new clerics, and gets one. There are no kidnapping attempts. 

The book has diagrams for cantrips, of which Keltham's god has given him Detect Magic, Read Magic, Guidance, and Resistance, and first-circle spells, of which Keltham's god has given him Comprehend Languages, Sanctuary, and some things not in the book.

Oh that's not even slightly good.

Keltham keeps his face neutral through all presented spells.

Detect Magic - maybe useful for learning wizard spells, not just noticing invisibility magic, which, maybe.

Read Magic - weakly confirms that his patron might have been giving him useful boosts for learning wizard things.

Guidance - super useful generally, why does anybody ever not do this.

Resistance - there are not that many cantrips so maybe Keltham should not be too alarmed that Resistance was included, it could be useful for learning wizardry without hurting yourself.  It could've been worse, could've been Detect Poison.

Comprehend Languages - Keltham will see if he runs into anybody important who doesn't speak Taldane, later today; if not, it could be a hint that he should find somebody who doesn't speak Taldane.  Or a hint not to rely on Carissa's Share Language.

Sanctuary is unambiguously a huge fucking warning.

And it would have been really nice if the book had included all of Keltham's spells, which would make it that much less likely that he was being shown books on which Selectively Omit Pages had been cast.

Keltham thinks about this, but not for very long.  He's already withholding identifications of all his spells; that already tells them that Keltham is not just wandering around in blind unsuspecting innocence.  And if his hosts are not the primary problem, letting them go in blind innocence themselves is foolish, and ungrateful.

"Unfortunately.  My god seems to think I might need Sanctuary."

"...well, I can, uh, tell your security to be more careful, if you want, though it seems possible it's more communication than intended as literal protection, because the set of situations it'd help with is pretty small. If it's communication - people can request sanctuary of churches or of countries? Usually if a different one is trying to kill them. Or it could just mean 'danger is a thing to think about', which, well, mission accomplished, or..." Shrug. "If He had something complicated to say I would really have expected Him to talk to you."

"As would I.  New priorities:  Tell security that I asked my god to choose my spells and Sanctuary was one of them.  Get more complete cleric spellbooks so I can identify my remaining spells - ideally, books at all circles, I don't know whether my god granted me the highest circles I can actually get.  And - basic instructions for casting without blowing yourself up, if those are required?  How do I learn to do the thing where I recover the energy from a cantrip, if I haven't done that before?  That'll give me the ability to practice casting... say with Read Magic, that's the least valuable one if I accidentally lose it."

"Also breakfast."

"Can you get us Keltham's security, and more books about cleric magic," she asks the priest. "Let's go to breakfast next and I'll try to explain catching cantrips there. Most people do not pick it up on the first try or the first day of trying but most people also aren't already third circle clerics, and maybe we can throw additional resources at you picking it up faster - like, someone can give you a Wisdom enhancement and plausibly your security can enhance your reflexes and reaction time."

"I have no better plans.  I mildly apologize for the short-term inconvenience that my existence has imposed on your collective existence; it shall be compensated for if the future goes as I hope."

"I, uh, mildly apologize for my world not having enough Law yet that you don't have to worry about this."

A tall man of the local ethnicity walks in. He is Atanasio Torres, though there's no way for Keltham to know that. 

"I'm on Keltham's security detail," he says in a bored voice. 

"His god gave him Sanctuary."