This is like a nightmare about final exams. "...I think I'd expect you'd most want to ask what the Queen is like? Or - who you can trust the most, of the people here? Or, uh, whether you can get other truth spells cast for you so you don't have to think of it right now?"

Oh, right, that does remind him.  "What's the Queen like?  And how would you defeat a truth spell, and how would you defeat the defeaters of a truth spell, and where does that chain end up?"

"...I don't actually know much about her. She took power young, she was only sixteen. It's said Asmodeus invested in her development as a person when she was even younger than that, because she had potential. I think she's a sorcerer, but that's not unusual. Uh, a normal truth spell like Zone of Truth you can beat with a will save but I think that'd be visible in this case because the symbol would vanish...you could beat this one with an illusion of that symbol, I guess... you could beat that with something for seeing through illusions...I think among sufficiently powerful wizards they'd just have demiplanes in which the laws of magic are very limited and they can be sure of what they're seeing, and among everyone else you can only be mostly sure not completely sure that someone didn't think of something you didn't think of a counter to."

"What cleric spells up to fifth circle do you know of that can be used to see through illusions, and what would it take to defeat those cleric spells?"

Shit. 

She can't really pretend she doesn't know what Detect Magic is. But - stall, right, that's the thing to do, buy time - "Probably there's a book here somewhere with all the cleric spells, can someone grab it while there's still time left on the spell - uh, I know there's True Seeing, which shows you the world exactly as it is without any illusions and with transmutations shown for what they really are, and that's sixth for wizards but it's fifth for clerics. There are also items of it, you could ask for one, though they're incredibly expensive. There's - Detect Magic will at least tell you that there's an illusion spell present, except I haven't seen this particular truth spell before so I don't know if it shows up as illusion magic already." Ha. "It'd be unusual, for it to be a cross-school spell like that, but it's an unusual spell anyway. There's - I don't know the cleric spell list all that well, I'm sorry -"

Someone shoves a book in her face with the relevant page open. "Oh, you could use Dispel Magic to dispel Silent Image, and then if that does anything you know someone was using Silent Image. You could use Greater Detect Magic to see all spells cast in the area recently - that wouldn't work here because we've all been spellcasting all day but you could do this again tomorrow somewhere which looks clean to start."

"Tell me that you haven't left out any obvious other tactics I could use."

"I haven't left out any obvious other tactics you could use."

He was planning to do this part anyway, but having her mention Detect Magic puts him on a timeline, if there's any defeaters they could use against Detect Magic, that they didn't already start planning for before he showed up in the library today.  "Wait twenty -"  Taldane doesn't have a word for the dath ilani time unit he wants, of course.  "Wait around ten times as long as this interval: Open........close.  Then say that everything you've said so far was the truth.  Oh, and then, everybody else who's got Detect Magic, please cast that, slowly and one at a time, that so I can watch you catching the cantrip, I'm still trying to figure out cantrip-catching."

And Keltham casts Greater Detect Magic.

The girl under the Truth Spell is pale and distracted. Counting in her head to twenty. 

Greater Detect Magic translates the vague sense of magic one can get from concentrating on trying to feel it into something visual. It's stunning. Humans are wildly better at interpreting information in this format. The room appears to be draped in glittering spiderwebs with half-familiar structures. Some of the spiderwebs are lively, tangible, looking almost strong enough to hold someone; some of them are made of dust, gradually drifting away but still retaining its rough structure. Some of them glow much brighter than others. The area at the door is glowing a lot. 

There is one enchantment on the girl. Its pattern is recognizable; it's the one he cast.

"Everything I've said so far was the truth," she says shakily when she has counted to twenty. 

Elias Abarco tucks a used scroll neatly away in the pocket dimension he's wearing as a belt and surveys the girls to see who was impressed enough by his ability to find a scroll of Greater Magic Aura in a magic shop in Absalom in under three minutes including both teleports, getting back with a minute to spare, that they might fuck him while Keltham's delaying for sperm negotiation reasons. 

Keltham tries to memorize what he can about the spell structure on the girl, to be checked later against what happens when he casts it on himself or when he has more ideas about magic.

Then Keltham turns to look at the other Research Hordettes so he can watch cantrip-casting.  He'll think later about what this all adds up to; right now he needs to maintain concentration on the spell before he tries, for example, to experiment with talking at the same time.

The girls all have Detect Magic and are happy to demonstrate cantrip-catching! They can do it while talking, while standing on one foot, two of them demonstrate that they can do it while kissing each other...

Under any other circumstances Keltham would let himself notice more his reactions to this, or wonder about the local prevalence of bisexuality because they wouldn't have sent him strictly homosexual women he doesn't think, but right now he's trying to watch how cantrips work and not lose concentration on his spell.  He's thought of one other test he can try, here, let's see if he can talk and maintain Greater Detect Magic at the same time.

When he's watched the way to catch the cantrip, however many times, Keltham turns back to the truth-spell-subject and says, "Try saying out loud:  'This sentence is false.'"  Did he manage to maintain concentration during that?

He's still holding on to his magic detection.

The girl nods.

Wait what should a truth spell stop her saying that or not? - she's going to guess yes? It's a good thing they did some attempts earlier so she knows what the spell feels like when it stops you. "This sentence is -"

"Repeat:  This sentence is true."

"This sentence is true." Maybe that one shouldn't have worked either but her first guess was that it would and she doesn't exactly have time for two.

It's not much of a test because it almost surely goes by whatever the girl believed the answer was supposed to be, but if Keltham later gets to try this spell on himself and it allows him to say 'This sentence is false' that will be an iota of evidence, anyways.  Or if he tries that query pattern on subjects outside of Cheliax and never gets that pattern of answers again.

(He still has concentration on Greater Detect Magic, apparently, though he was working hard on that.  Yay him.)

Can he think of anything else he should try while the truth spell is running, and they haven't had as much time to prepare against it as they will later?  Keltham is having trouble thinking of anything -

"I've been having trouble contacting whichever god clericed me.  What could be preventing my god from talking to me?"

"Uh, your god might be too alien to humans to successfully communicate with us. They might think you're on the right track and don't need additional guidance. They might have an agreement of some kind with other gods about limiting intervention. They might be trying but your mind is too weird or your soul is far away because you started in a different universe or something. I don't know that this really needs explanation because gods talk to one, maybe two, people in the whole world in a year..."

"Were any books conspicuously missing from this library?  Any book or class of books you'd expect to have seen in a library like this one, but they weren't here?"

"I don't think so? The Archduke doesn't have much of a wizardry collection but the likeliest explanation is that he's not a wizard, which is also publicly claimed about him, so I wasn't very surprised. The library at school is bigger but that's probably because it has several copies of books, and more wizardry books."

Keltham has already been feeling guilty about the level of stress he might be putting this girl under.  Unless she's the local equivalent of a Keeper trainee as part of a massive government confusion operation.  But if she's not, then he's not unaware of how this might be stressful for her.

Ironically enough, it's the question of 'How mean have I been to her, exactly, and how much of a favor do I owe her now?' that suggests his last query.  Maybe she doesn't think he owes her a favor at all.  "On a scale from 'way too little' to 'way too much', would you say that I'm currently being more suspicious than is appropriate for Golarion in general and Cheliax in particular, or not suspicious enough?"

"- uh, I -

- it's a little like you are charging off in a direction no one has ever travelled before, and asking whether you're going unusually fast or unusually slow? People go faster on ...roads...because there are roads....I don't - know if that -

- uh, I think if you are trying to make a lot of money and not get cheated you are probably being more suspicious than is appropriate and if you were trying to, uh, assassinate the Queen and overthrow the government and become ruler of southern Avistan then you are not being suspicious enough for that."

"That's all I can think of for now, then.  I'll leave the spell up in case I think of anything in another minute, but for now you don't need to say anything.  I'm sorry about all the fuss, and in the event that my interrogation there represented an undue imposition of stress, relative to the amount you have been paid or are being paid for this, I consider myself to owe you a favor in repayment for it."

She - nods. Doesn't say anything, because he said she didn't need to.

"I expect the spell has less than a minute left," Carissa says. "You must be fourth circle, not third, or it'd have run out already." Or would, if it were still in effect, instead of it being a spell of Abarco's that he's going to dismiss at the right time. But Keltham didn't know they knew he was fourth circle so it running out at the right time should be mildly persuasive to Keltham, if Keltham knows enough to know how spell durations are linked to spell circles. ...she has a headache and she hasn't even been doing anything. That poor girl. Perhaps they should have something like this in standard classes at that age, teach the kids to handle themselves under pressure.