"You're more boring than I'd hoped, Carissa, for someone who made such fascinating inroads into our new pet outsider.  I hope you can exchange a more seductive banter than this on those occasions when your new profession calls for it.  Come, come, I know you think this a test, but they'll hardly hold it against you if you try not to bore me, so you could survive and report as you ought to, if this is not a test.  Or you could even try a little honesty with me, if you'd really never raise a hand against the Queen, and tell me honestly why not.  I'm hardly going to kill Asmodeus's own favored, if I am as I've presented myself."

She tries quietly to trigger a ward at the door with a Mage Hand; nothing evidently happens.

Sure, fine, she'll do the five year old thing; she doesn't, actually, see how to do better, and it's a way to keep talking. "They teach different shards of Asmodeanism, I think, to nobles. I haven't learned them. I don't know how the Queen justifies herself, or if she needs to; perhaps she acted only directed by the advisors Asmodeus sent her, more loyal and obedient than she cares to have anyone guess. But I know what's going on here. A lot is going on here, and it's very important; more important to Asmodeus, I think, than how mortals He owns conceive of their loyalty to Him, even mortals who are the Queen. He intervened here, so that our pathetic inadequate efforts to represent Him and our country here might stand a chance of success they otherwise wouldn't. I'm supposed to be here. And if I invent a way to correct the flaws in human nature and make us His worthy servants, then perhaps I'll get some titles out of that, as it pleases the Queen, but if I merely learn for Cheliax how the exact same bit of metal is manufactured three thousand times over to a precision so high they will all interlock then I will still have wisely spent the resources that Crown and Church have allocated here. And I would have to be an idiot to risk any of that to correct some flaw in Cheliax that is in the slightest less time sensitive.

Also, you know, it would be treason, and treason is wrong."

A little laugh, as if sharing a joke.  "Funny!  But what if the Queen is not so content to leave you be, as you are to leave her to her unimportant temporal throne?  Abrogail Thrune is very nearly the only person in Cheliax who would slay you out of hand, with Asmodeus having made His own interest in you clear.  The slaves of Church and Queen have been instructed not to punish you more than you earn.  Abrogail Thrune is not one of those slaves.  She is Asmodeus's very junior partner, or so she presumes to see it.  If Abrogail slays you to keep Cheliax all for herself, and protect her own interests, her pact with Asmodeus prohibits her punishment in Hell for that.  It does not even contradict the wording of Hell's instructions.  Are you really sure it serves your own interests, however selflessly Asmodean they may be, for Abrogail or some other non-slave like her to sit on Cheliax's throne?"

"The slaves of Church and Queen have been instructed, also, not to be proactive in my education, but to leave it to me to seek; you claim to have seen the transcript, so you must be aware of this, and no slave of Church and Queen yourself." ....which is accusing the stunningly beautiful woman of being the Queen, which Carissa did not intend to do at the start of that sentence but it does seem to be the logical place where it logically went. Not that she believes the words; she merely said them.

An appearance changes.

"My, my.  Shouldn't you be kneeling, then?"

This, too, might be a test. 

- but might not. It's true, that Aspexia Rugatonn didn't want people being proactive with Carissa. And that there's very few people who would defy her, on that. 

And once again there is the infernal difficulty that if it's a test it is not always obvious what is being tested. And that it being a test doesn't at all mean you can't die of failing it. 

     "Should I, your Majesty? I was taught to kneel if your entourage passed down a street I was walking on, but my school omitted any lessons for how to comport myself should you appear in my bedroom. Perhaps in bedrooms one prostrates oneself as for a pharaoh."

"Mm.  You saw the possibility, but you don't believe it's me.  I suppose I should credit you for having thought of it at all.  You might be surprised, how many people don't."

"I'm reading your mind right now, of course.  Would you slay me if Aspexia Rugatonn told you that I'd outlived my usefulness to Lord Asmodeus?"

The obvious reflexive 'no' would not be useful information, to the genuine Queen of Cheliax; the thought process might be, but she'll have to let it play out, and she doesn't actually know its exact contents until it plays out, which -

- it would be so irritating, to mostly have peoples' minds full of thoughts about whether you're going to kill them. Carissa will strive to avoid that. The other obvious not-reassuring answer is that this is not guidance Aspexia Rugatonn would give -

- because Asmodeus doesn't overthrow Pharasma -

- because even if you wanted the Queen of Cheliax taken out you would not involve any third circle wizards in your plans, they are weak enough to actively be far more of a liability than an aid -

- because Asmodeus's directions to Carissa are narrow, and Aspexia Rugatonn wants to interpret them narrowly, do the obvious things and not other things that cloud Asmodeus's vision with noise and confusion -

- but it is true that Chelish monarchs get assassinated a lot, presumably with the Church's implicit support, so maybe Carissa is the one misunderstanding, believing that Asmodeanism does actually say you shouldn't murder your Queen. 

- some part of Carissa's brain chimes up that she shouldn't murder the Queen because the Queen is really pretty. Thank you that part of Carissa's brain for reminding her that humans are fundamentally contemptible beings. 

- Carissa notes that the only people ever to have been acknowledged as killing a King or Queen of Cheliax is another of House Thrune, presumably because for everyone else Asmodeus's law does apply and does ban regicide and if you succeed they still put you to death, they don't make you a deal. That might even be part of the pact, that House Thrune can play among themselves but needn't fear their entire country made weapons pointed at them, needn't fear the chaos of being Taldor or of the civil wars before Hell rose to power in Cheliax -

- there are rules here and she doesn't know them -

"Only if you command it, your Majesty," she says, and at this point indeed kneels.

"Not the new playmate I'd hoped for, not the potential inconvenience I thought worth a personal visit.  Understand, Sevar, I will not lightly break one of my senior partner's toys, but if I need do so, I will petrify you, ward the statue against detection, and bury your trapped soul deep enough that ages would not expose it again.  Perhaps in time Asmodeus will see you in His embrace at last, or perhaps some little inconvenience will end all Pharasma's works before then, for all Otolmens's pains."

"Ferrer Maillol is a competent administrator, as Asmodean priests go, but he lacks vision."  Abrogail's voice is not at all seductive, now, it commands, demands.  "We are not satisfied with Cheliax being taught the outsider's secrets of metalworking.  We do not expect Lord Asmodeus will be satisfied with it either.  Not if other countries also come to possess those secrets.  We desire that Cheliax gain advantage from this, Carissa Sevar.  Why our Lord has instructed that we do not simply keep the outsider for our own, I do not know for certain, but it is not an instruction I intend to defy."

"This being so, we particularly desire that Cheliax not be left in an unfortunate position by an outsider propagating a powerful Lawful Neutral philosophy which enables its masters to unravel secrets of the magicless and perhaps the magical world; but which, introduced to Chelish students, inevitably casts them into heresy, so that only priests and the soul-sold slaves of Asmodeus can safely be taught it.  We do not have enough of those to compete with Osirion and Lastwall if all their wizards and clerics and tinkerers are being taught those new ways.  If the outsider teaches widely elsewhere it will be a trivial matter to steal his teachings, but we must be able to use what we copy."

"Maillol's previous instructions to you are revoked.  His understanding of Asmodeus's will failed.  You have no priority higher than learning the core source of power of Keltham's world, and transforming it into a form that Asmodean students can learn and remain Asmodeans.  Better yet, burn and refine their iron to steel, show what their philosophy can become when it embraces power and pain, and wield that to raise a force that could crush dath ilan under our heel.  Do that, and I, as Asmodeus's designate here, will say that you served Him well, and raise you high within this world."

Is it completely ridiculous and contemptible to feel disappointed she lacks the deftness or ambition or whatever to be a new playmate to the Queen of Cheliax? Yes. Are humans completely ridiculous and contemptible? Also yes. 

But she gets an assignment for her project, for the one she - yes, sensed they were going to need, in a world that had Keltham in it at all -

" - yes, your Majesty."

Abrogail tosses a small bag down by where Carissa kneels.  "Your crafting allowance, Sevar.  A little gold, a little spellsilver.  It will only open to your own hand, left or right, either one.  You didn't earn it, but Hell's instructions do not say that I may not reward you a little more than you have earned."

"As for what that bag does to the hand that opens it, you're allowed to have it healed once it's over."

"If someday you change your opinions on the importance of mortal thrones and become a worthy playmate after all, do remember how early I started planning for that.  Just because I like to play doesn't mean I'll entertain a serious possibility of losing."

Abrogail leans over to blow out the black candle, and the moment the crimson flame goes out, it appears that she and the candle are gone.

Some kind of illusion?  The Forbiddance is still up, isn't it?  The bag remains by Carissa Sevar's hand.

...she stands. 

"....security?" she says weakly. "I have, uh, the experience of having spent the last ten minutes talking with an intruder who represented herself as the Queen."

No immediate reply.

Then Carissa's going to get dressed, take her ....agonizing Bag of Holding? and step out into the hallway.

Well, there's nobody in the hallway, so far as that goes.

- Keltham. The first priority when there's any suggestion that security has been compromised. Carissa runs.

She's intercepted before she gets far, by somebody who looks like Atanasio Torres.

"I no longer envy you the attention you get," the person who looks like Atanasio Torres observes.  "Zero-one-nine-four-eight, yes that was the Queen.  Need a sleep spell or will you be able to manage on your own?"

- any illusions show up to Detect Magic?

Not at her caster circle.

"I don't need a sleep spell, but I need to report first. Is Maillol in the temple?"

Torres didn't think she'd fall for that trap, but trying is a habit he doesn't think much about.  "Just back from his four-hour meeting in Egorian," Torres says dryly.

Carissa wants to come up with some kind of wisecrack about that but she's having her adrenaline crash now and she's too tired. "Mmmm," she says, because she does appreciate the warning, and goes off to the temple. To knock on Maillol's door. Hopefully someone else has already told him the news so she at least won't be breaking it to him.