Obviously they have favorite books.  Only the Lost Dead have no favorite books.

"They'll handle that. I mentioned plumbing and hot water because that is not at all considered a thing you just have everywhere by default and probably restricts the number of places they can put us severely, but most places have kitchens and dining rooms and, you know, servants and security and sunlight and so on."

"If you can't add plumbing to something that didn't previously have plumbing then how does anything ever end up with plumbing?  Also, 'servant' doesn't Baseline well?"

"People with job responsibilities of keeping the place clean and cooking the food and running messages and going to the market for food. I think mostly plumbing gets...added to new buildings, or when a building is majorly renovated in a way that involves knocking down most of the walls. Maybe for something this important they'll get a high-level cleric in to add plumbing with Stone Shape."

"If it's a 4th-circle cleric spell or lower then I will do it, I do not want to fight the lingering Good parts of my brain every day about whether I should be lending other people my bathroom."

She's been taking down his requests on paper. "I will note that it is a major cost to you for anyone to not have plumbing even if none of us mind that much. It's a third circle cleric spell, but getting good results with it also takes practice - though I guess maybe a kind of practice that's useful for you to get."

"I don't currently know about any 3rd circle spells worth a spellslot and have been spending them on Truthspells and Auguries and so on instead to save my god resources.  And, yeah, it is not implausible that I should get any practice with detailed magical work, at all.  But not urgently, so if somebody else can do that exact part, great."

"Quarters for outside experts, short-term and longer-term.  Somebody who knows how to take care of mice, for example.  Or a place to put up somebody for three days while we talk to them about metallurgy."

"Meeting room suitable for the Chelish equivalent of Very Serious... for if Isidre and five of her friends decide that they need to come in and talk to us.  Suite suitable for somebody like Isidre to stay in overnight if that's necessary.  The fact that we're being moved out of the palace this fast is suggestive of them not wanting us here for any number of good or bad reasons, meaning that they'd come to us instead of us going to them, presumably... or do we just get a meeting room with a big two-way mirror that connects to the palace?"  He's got to remember that this is not actually a low-tech world, it's a magitech world, they may have videoconferencing.

"Guest room for visiting royalty, meeting room for visiting royalty, paired mirrors exist, I'll note that's another option, no idea which is cheaper in wartime -"

"I mean, not royalty, people who are important.  Like in Governance and so on."  Relatives-of-important-people, what, why.

Ah, Keltham.

" - yep, people who are important in general, not just royalty, but high enough quality they can host royalty."

Keltham is confused about why relatives of important people require higher hosting requisites than important people themselves!  But he is not going to ask because it is probably not the most key question right now.

After some further brainstorming, which is not going that fast anymore, and currently consists of Keltham sitting with his eyes closed trying to think of another thing, Sevar gets inaudibly poked about whether she's ready for her 'Security review'.

Yep, ready.

There's a knock upon the door!  This time there's three sober-looking Securities outside it.

"A security review has been required for Carissa Sevar," one of them says.  "You have up to one minute to finish up any current tasks, do not cast any new spells."

"Everyone on this project is being rescreened," one of the other Securities says, more politely, to Keltham.  "Except for you, I suppose.  Protocol says that as soon as Sevar knows that's going to happen, she needs to come with us immediately and not cast any more spells along the way."

Separately:  Sevar, it's been pointed out that this project needs a new codename, we can't keep calling it 'this project' in front of him, he may eventually ask us what we're calling it.  It'd be good practice to have something internally that we can also use in front of Keltham, reduces the prospect of him somehow overhearing the real name.

(The current actual codename is Project Pet Outsider, with the form of 'pet' implying that somebody, such as Asmodeus, owns that pet.)

Part of him wants to object that obviously Carissa is not the traitor, but that is not how real life works and also it is not how tropes work.

"Understood," Keltham says, wondering why part of his brain just went all queasy... well, no, it's pretty obvious, it's because that's Carissa they're security-reviewing.

But this, too, is not an objection that grownups make, and Keltham does not make it.

"Carissa, do you just give the list to Security to run to Acquisitions, do I take it down to Acquisitions."

The project can be...Project Keltham, or Project Lawful, or Project dath ilan, she doesn't know how Keltham's translation even handles 'pet'. "Tasks finished," she says to Security. "They can probably take it down to Acquisitions for you. I should see you in a couple hours." Snort. "You know, unless I'm secretly a Kuthite traitor."

Not actually funny.

Keltham doesn't say it.

He really hopes his life doesn't run on tropes.

Two of the Securities peel off as soon as they're out of sight of Keltham's door and get on with their real jobs.  The remaining one escorts Carissa to a room where she can review her notes, and hands her a sealed packet that contain the Queen's slightly censored transcript of Keltham's thoughts.

The Security also recounts recent events at somewhat greater length.

Rather a lot of diamonds suddenly materialized around Otolmens's oracle.

There's an obvious thought about where those diamonds might have come from, and their best hopes there seem to be actually coming true.  Nidal shifted to a more tightly defensive, conservative, and dare one hope, worried posture afterwards.  It's not the same kind of game-over as if Zon-Kuthon had been destroyed and his clerics depowered, but the remaining timeline is looking like months, not years.

Nobody has any good idea of how Nidal managed to piss off Otolmens this much, except, obviously, that it had something to do with Nidal's intentions for Keltham.  It nonetheless implies that people should tread even more carefully, which shouldn't, in fact, be possible in the first place when you are dealing with an Otolmens event, but nonetheless, do consider, this is what happens when Otolmens gets pissed.  If anybody manages to piss Otolmens off at Cheliax instead, then perhaps all the diamonds in Cheliax will be teleported to Lastwall!  It is the considered belief of Grand High Priestess Aspexia Rugatonn that this would be a bad idea, and people should not do it!  Or come close to doing it.  Or think too much about doing it.  Or do anything that is 'not technically doing it'.  Or do something that really shouldn't piss Otolmens off that much if Otolmens is being reasonable.  Just don't, fucking, mess, with Otolmens.  If anybody thinks that Rugatonn is trying to tell them anything especially complicated here, they should come to Rugatonn for clarification about how she is really, in fact, saying something very simple.  Or they can just kill themselves directly.  Rugatonn is happy with either outcome.

Maillol, who received Asmodeus's vision while being personally tortured by Gorthoklek, briefly and barely pulled himself together to communicate the bones of their Lord's vision:  Asmodeus communicated a complex attitude about Otolmens's sudden gift, which suggests that Otolmens has well overpaid for the new project to have adequate security precautions; and while they shouldn't even remotely try to spend as much as Otolmens actually paid, they're not supposed to just take the money and run, either.

The new project location will have actual fucking security this time, and any complaints about the budget should be considered in the light of Otolmens's apparent concern and corresponding generosity.

Asmodeus's sent vision requires very strongly that Keltham needs to be not too far from Ostenso.  Asmodeus's vision implies that Keltham should be within the designated region the moment it's safe; so as soon as a new Forbiddance can be put up, somewhere Nidal hopefully won't know about; hence, shortly after dawn tomorrow when Rugatonn can request a Forbiddance spell.

They're currently thinking of renovating an old coastal fortress.

Wow. 

Carissa's preferred thing to tell Keltham about this is the truth, that Cheliax is acting on orders from Otolmens; she thinks that Keltham is more likely to break rules in a way that offends Otolmens accidentally than he is to do so deliberately, and if he were doing it deliberately he'd likely at least take cautionary measures like running it by Carissa first or maybe talking to Broom. Otolmens intervention seems like the sort of thing that might be clearer from Keltham's perspective than theirs and which is therefore going to end up being even harder to hide. She assumes Aspexia Rugatonn will veto this, so she wants to give a story that isn't incompatible with telling him that later, which probably means just telling him that the relocation is for Security reasons they can't disclose at this time. 

Carissa would appreciate a further briefing on known things about Otolmens, at some point.

Coastal fortress seems fine. Keltham seems plenty attached to luxury, even knowing how desperately poor everyone in the world is; she isn't sure if it'll actually hit him for Evil if they fund his luxuries with brutal taxation of some distant village but it seems worth exploring. Plumbing is a must. 

She assumes from the fact the packet is sealed that she is intended to read it alone.

On usual policy they could, in principle, tell Keltham that they're doing it on orders from Broom's god, so long as they don't tell him that Broom's god is specifically about world-destroying or multiverse-destroying threats and allow him to go on thinking that She's mostly about preventing giant flaming Wish craters.  Rugatonn would have to review the disclosure that this move was on Broom's god's request, but she wouldn't necessarily say no.

Security also notes that Cheliax, of course, acts on only Asmodeus's orders, even if Asmodeus perhaps bargains with other gods as part of His business; even Otolmens surely would not dare to instruct Him so, or give Him orders to pass along, and the generosity of Her payment suggests that She bargained with Asmodeus from a position of weakness.  To suggest that Cheliax is in any way acting on Otolmens's orders would be a lie, which Sevar is welcome to authorize explicitly.  (Weirdly, Security does not hurt her about this.)

Her assumption is correct, Security will depart as soon as Sevar wants to read the transcript.

Hmm. With approval from the Grand High Priestess, she wants them to tell Keltham that their present understanding is that Broom's god of messes requested the move and heightened security generally, and that Asmodeus instructed it, and maybe even that the instruction was specifically to go somewhere near Ostenso. The most obviously useful thing here is Keltham being reluctant to leave the area, though mostly Carissa's operating on the assumption that this has weird correlates she can't see.

And she'll take a look at the transcript now. She does not ask if that means her mind won't be read while she reads it; it might instead just mean her mind is being read directly by Abrogail or something, and anyway 'my mind isn't presently being read' is a bad starting point for thought.

Abrogail's transcript contains a censored section right at the most exciting part about the Second Law, with notes saying that Keltham thought things about other people's knowledge of these truths driving them insane and possibly collapsing the universe, that most of his thoughts were incomprehensible ideas with no remote conceptual neighbors in any language that Abrogail knows, and that the parts that did make it through were incredibly fucking disturbing.  Abrogail is obviously saying this because she knows how terribly curious it will make Sevar about the one part she most wanted to know, but it is also true, and Rugatonn requires further thought on whether Sevar gets to see this.

Abrogail has included a more detailed explanation of why Sevar is being tortured, with particular torture codes from her sheet being noted at particular points that all sum up exactly to the total amount of torture she received in her original note.

The most severe torture code is annotated on the section where Keltham thought about his secret plan to establish a fully legible meta-level signal via the no-verbal-objections order.  This looks like a huge setback for their corruption plans.  If Sevar noticed this at all, which was her job, then she didn't think about it in words and it didn't show up in her thought transcript, meaning Abrogail got blindsided here.  Abrogail isn't sure how to recover, Sevar didn't say anything to the effect of how most masochists wouldn't go along with it even if Sevar herself is fine, or how she could do it for a month no problem but after any longer of not being allowed to scream and beg she would probably start to feel sad.  Maybe when Keltham gets to the appropriate point Sevar can confess that she's starting to feel sad.  Keltham is unfortunately explicitly suspicious that Cheliax is trying to lure him into rape.  But even if Sevar's opinion is that any objection to Keltham's plan would have made him too suspicious, Sevar didn't apparently notice, and definitely didn't report it explicitly.  Bad Sevar, go to your torture room.

The second-worst torture code is for Sevar thinking about how the Queen of Cheliax was being stupid for saying a 'worse version' than the one Sevar suggested.  When, in fact, the Queen of Cheliax has higher Perception than Sevar can fucking dream of and it was warning her off Sevar's version verbatim, possibly because Keltham would've been able to identify it as coming from Sevar.  Sevar's failure to imagine that the Queen of Cheliax could have any good reason for presuming to not do exactly what Sevar said reveals an actual problem of subordination here and that's why this punishment is severe.  Thinking about lighting Abrogail on fire despite knowing you might get punished for thinking that was not the problem, that's just flirting and will be dealt with separately.

The third-severest torture code, also appearing in the original sum of codes Carissa was given, is the fee for making the fucking Queen of Cheliax spell all this out for Sevar in the annotations because Sevar apparently cannot imagine her Queen ever being professional about anything.

- okay, you know what, that's actually completely reasonable. And it's true that Carissa has been having a hard time imagining her Queen being professional about anything, though in her defense, that's because -

- well, the thing Keltham said, about how a pragmatic person in the Queen's position would simply have sex with someone other than Carissa.

But. The Queen is who she is, and wants what she wants, and is clearly quite good at her job while wanting some things that offer constraints on how she does her job, and Carissa was in fact underrating that, internally, assuming the Queen was less capable than she was, and the punishment is warranted, and she should have assumed the punishment would be warranted. She'll get it done before she leaves for a coastal fortress in Ostenso.

She's extremely annoyed about the part she really wants being censored, but she thinks nonetheless she understands the Second Law stuff well enough to be working around, now, and well enough to be considering some strategies like saying dramatically ironic things that have no payoff at all because reality doesn't actually pay attention to dramatic irony. (Keltham made a face, when she asserted she wasn't a Kuthite spy.)

She has several ideas for working around the no-order thing, though she didn't see what Keltham was playing at until the transcript and isn't delighted by it. Firstly, she's not actually sure that it wouldn't ding a person for Evil, if they are in the habit of ordering their slaves not to refuse them and vaguely intend that, if ever disobeyed about that, they'd stop the game and let the slave go. In Carissa's particular case it's going to be more complicated but as a general order Keltham's in the habit of giving it seems in some ways advantageous; maybe they can arrange for him to give that order to someone else who 1) will understand Keltham's intent as the obvious 'you are not entitled to refuse me, so don't', 2) has adequate self-control and won't in fact trigger it and 3) (this one might be inconvenient) will react with arousal to treatment they desperately wish they weren't subject to. And then make it gradually clearer to Keltham over time that the reason he's being obeyed is because he's entitled to obedience, not because it's sexy per se. Secondly, Carissa's planning to eventually raise with Keltham that always following orders is in fact less sexy than sometimes breaking orders and being suitably punished for that, so hopefully he can just not-update the orders about 'no' as they gradually transition to a model where he doesn't have her obedience so much as the right and means to compel it. 

Can someone alert Carissa please when Maillol's competent to take over project duties, and in the mean time hand her any project related work that's been sitting, so she can hand it off to him in relatively good shape while she goes for her punishment?

(She's not scared, even though she's definitely never had half an hour before and knows this kind of thing is not linear in effects. That would be pathetic, and she's not that pathetic.)

Project stuff!  They're only giving her the things that other stuff is urgently waiting on, but that's still some work, and she's not going to be as fast at it as Maillol.

Keltham's requests to Requisitions are all things that would be routed to Sevar anyways because Keltham requested them and who knows what he's thinking or how he'll react if anyone says no to anything.  The requests now have budget line items attached to them, but are otherwise the same as they submitted, basically.  Sevar needs to decide whether to sign off on each of them.

If she signs off on absolutely everything, including the 2-way mirrors, the total cost will be somewhere around the vicinity of a +6 intelligence headband.

She's going to reject the mirrors for now both because they're a big chunk of the budget and because the mirrors are a sense in which Keltham would be less contained and she gets the sense that what Otolmens wants is Keltham maximally contained. She approves most of the other things. She is definitely not experienced at this but still within an hour she can hand things off to Maillol in reasonably decent shape - "if he's ready for a handoff, is he?"