"I'd say that I'm going to go back to my room and sleep and when I wake up the world had better make sense again, except I truly don't wish for that."

"Why not?"

She probably shouldn't have said that.  But -

"In a sensible world, nobody cares about you," Asmodia settles on.

Pilar snorts.  "Don't get exaggerated ideas just because I had one stupid thought and stupidly said it out loud."

"If you didn't really care you wouldn't be holding a cookie right now with pink icing and letters spelling out 'Asmodia'."

Pilar looks down at her hand in absolute horror.

...it's actually an ordinary cookie with pink icing, but no letters.

"You bitch.  I'm going to see if my curse does poisoned cupcakes if I focus enough on how much I hate somebody."

"Well, there you have it, now the world makes sense again.  Night, Pilar."

Asmodia departs, taking the cookie with her over Pilar's brief and muted protest.

"People are talking too much about the project and my opinion is they should all stop, including you."  Or, failing that, be executed and then turned into paving stones in Hell.

      "You were on Project Lawful, right?  From the start.  If I can't tell you -"

"You'll what, talk at somebody else?  You know what, fine, if you absolutely have to blabber to somebody about whatever this is, I suppose it does less damage with me than anyone else."  It is his considered opinon that the average Security assigned to safe temple jobs inside the Imperial Palace are noticeably less elite than those assigned to top-secret projects started by divine intervention.  Which, in fact, makes sense, but.  But.

      "So I was the Security in Ferrer Maillol's office when Carissa Sevar walked in on him, and tried to hand him a new policy for the whole Project.  I probably shouldn't repeat the exact proposal, but it was six kinds of heretical, and to be clear, she wasn't phrasing it as a suggestion."

"...you have my attention," he says reluctantly.

      "And Maillol protests, obviously, how heretical this is, and Sevar stares him down coldly and says, yes, I know it's heretical, but Asmodeus doesn't give a shit about what condition our souls end up in afterwards, Asmodeus wants us to win.  So this is your new project directive."

"And how'd Maillol take that?"

      "Looks silently at Sevar for a while, then says he's not taking responsibility for implementing that directive when it's actually hers.  He offers to write her a note to Aspexia Rugatonn asking for an urgent conversation about whether Sevar's in charge of Project Lawful or he is.  He's happy to serve under her if ordered, but if she doesn't come back with orders saying she's in charge and holding responsibility on the project, he expects Sevar to shut up and obey him in the future."

"And Sevar?"

      "Just says 'understood', takes the note from him, and heads off, presumably to talk to the Grand High Priestess."

"Lovely.  I concede that makes a great story, and now you've told it to me and you never tell it to anyone again and it doesn't get added to the rumor firestorm, clear?"

      "You're not going to die if you admit out loud how badass that was."

"Yes, fine, it was badass, now, are we done?"

      "It was incredibly badass.  Not a lot of people would be willing to just completely stare down Carissa Sevar like that."

Paving stones.  Hell needs more paving stones.

Carissa heads back to wait in line outside Aspexia Rugatonn's office. She can use the time anyway, honestly, she knows perfectly well the tack she took with Maillol will not work with the Grand High Priestess and she should really kick herself with an Owl's Wisdom and think through what might.

People are still acting just about exactly as deferential and wary as before, proving that it was not, after all, the shirt.

Noted.

In some sense the entire aim of Project Lawful is to produce Aspexia Rugatonns reliably. She's Asmodean, obviously, can't get more Asmodean, and she's - admittedly Carissa has only heard her speak a few times, but she's heard people speak of her more than that -

she thinks Aspexia Rugatonn might be Evil dath ilani. Or at least much closer than anyone else. But, obviously, Aspexia Rugatonn is not competent to train Aspexia Rugatonns; she must herself have ended up like that halfway by accident, with felt insights she can't share. More fragments of the Law inside her than inside anyone else but still not rules-bound enough she could teach them. At minimum Aspexia Rugatonn is proof that it's possible to reason like Keltham and reason about how the gods reason and not end up a heretic. 

If Aspexia Rugatonn thinks this specific policy is bad, Carissa will drop it. If Aspexia Rugatonn thinks Carissa is thinking about this all wrong, she'll listen. She doesn't think she's magically the best person around for the project, she knows that many people are better than her, she knows that the Grand High Priestess would be better than her, but the Grand High Priestess doesn't have time. They don't have ten of her, yet.

I can give you ten.

She isn't sure it's true, but she's sure it'd be a winning argument, if she could, in fact, do it.

Sevar's turn still hasn't come up when Aspexia Rugatonn happens to take a step out of her office, between appointments.  Same doompunk outfit as the last time Carissa saw her; but on any occasion where Aspexia Rugatonn is not smiling cheerfully at an outworlder, and bending all her Splendour to the goal of apparent amiability, she does not come across as a grandmother-gendertroped kindly old lady.

Rugatonn glances around, spots Sevar, and frowns.

"When were you planning to tell me Carissa Sevar was waiting on me?" she says to her emotionless-appearing secretary.

      "I was not informed that I should interrupt -"

"Whether you interrupt me depends on who I'm with, but if Sevar shows up in my office I at least expect to be notified between appointments."

Rugatonn turns to Sevar.  "Step inside," she says, her voice no less stern and harsh than would be expected of the Grand High Priestess, even when talking to Carissa Sevar.

- okay this has gone beyond 'there's an energetic palace rumor mill', because Aspexia Rugatonn would not care if there was an energetic palace rumor mill.

And it's not the shirt, which she's no longer wearing. 

????????????

This confusion is probably (hopefully) not visible to anyone other than Aspexia Rugatonn. She stands, and follows her in.

Aspexia Rugatonn's office is not a throne room, and was clearly designed with the constraint in mind that it needed to not be a throne room. It's shaped as a perfect pentagon, with high pillars at each of the vertices, supporting a ceiling high enough that Carissa can't see it without more gawking than she's really willing to do. The floor and walls are reflective, glossy black stone; Aspexia's side of her desk has a thick carpet and cheerfully blazing braziers and looks almost comfortable, but the other side does not.

She kneels.

When the door is shut, all noise outside stops.

Rugatonn sits.

"You tell me," says Rugatonn.  "Why did I do that?"

It is of course an open question whether she's reading Carissa's mind, or even Carissa's face, given that it's such an obvious question to be thinking about.

"...people think I'm important. They're - mostly wrong - or, I'm important because of things they aren't permitted to know about, and less important than they think, not actually important enough to disrupt your schedule. Is it - bad for the Church, if it looks like I'm being prioritized below my assumed station -"

Her thoughts match this exactly. She is not going to attempt to get something past the Grand High Priestess.

"It is in fact bad for the Church that you are being prioritized above your written place in the system.  Other considerations dominate.  Try again."

She wouldn't have done this for a fourth-circle cleric of Asmodeus. She doesn't know what to think about that. Last time they met the Grand High Priestess was very keen on doing exactly what Asmodeus said to do with Carissa. 

"Am I actually that important."

"If you were that would be irrelevant to the question of what they should believe."

"These rumors exploded faster than I anticipated, and it is likely that they will at some point reach Lastwall.  Some leak of that form became inevitable when we ordered emergency military response on the villa.  The true hidden nature of Carissa Sevar is one of the less productive avenues they can investigate."

"Asmodeus's blessings to you on this evening, Sevar.  I expected the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law would bring you to my chamber in time, but not this quickly."

"Sit."

There are comfortable chairs on this side of the desk, but one kneels until ordered otherwise. 

She sits. 

The rumors make her uneasy. Maillol said they were inevitable, that you couldn't just order nobles to shut up, but she doesn't actually see why not, though she expects he'd know. If they're being directed, in order to achieve actual political goals, that's much better.