- well, okay, that's at least a plan for not just getting pointlessly tortured until you can't remember why you had whatever principled stand you're claiming. Not a very good plan but something that isn't 'hope things work out'. 

She sort of respects the attempt, even if the manipulation is very very transparent. "I am sure that random intelligent girls where you are from get more resources, education, opportunity and autonomy. Or - actually, I hear that there's no kind of magic they can be taught, and no afterlife unless they're very loyal and lucky."

"Would you like to help me change that? Your kind of magic is teachable, apparently, and I do, in fact, have the resources to set up a school for wizards. ...Also, while mage-work is not teachable to anyone, literacy and mathematics is, and as of a couple of years ago, Valdemar provides schooling for all children, everywhere in the kingdom, and is opening a merit-based scholarship program for any child who exhibits exceptional cleverness. Male or female. It is - a rather long story - but I was quite involved in that coming to exist. Rethwellan has had something similar for centuries." 

Leareth hesitates, but - why not. If he doesn't succeed at this, they're going to drag all his secrets out of him soon enough anyway. 

"- And, in fact, I was involved in setting that up as well. Which is an even longer story. But - it seems we may share at least some goals and values." 

"Then maybe you working with Cheliax won't be so terrible after all." She's still not clear on what his issue with them is. 

"I do not disagree that Cheliax is doing many things very competently. I believe you, that Asmodeus is not stupid. I take issue with the torture - and particularly with torturing people until they break and can be made to do whatever Asmodeus wants - and I have even more of a grievance with His desire to do this to all of the other souls as well. I would have thought 'torture is bad' would not be a controversial ethical position to hold." 

"I think it's very popular among people who go around holding ethical positions. I'm just not one of them." And defecting to some place full of them would end disastrously.

"- You think it is good when women have equal opportunities to men, including the opportunity to learn magic if they are intelligent - that they have access to 'resources, education, opportunity and autonomy' as you put it. You think other countries that do this less than Cheliax are worse. I am not sure how that is less an ethical position than thinking torture is worse than an absence of torture." 

"I think it makes Cheliax a nicer place for people to live in than places here, which is relevant to me if I'm deciding where I want to live. ...it makes sense to have preferences about what happens to you personally, those aren't ethical positions."

"So you have no preference about whether girls in, say, Valdemar, have the chance to learn your kind of magic?" 

"Why would I have preferences about people I'll never meet in a place I'll probably never go? I guess there are geopolitical considerations, if we're holding Iftel? And it'd affect prices for spellsilver?"

“Then why did you bring up the prospects of random girls, when I invited you to join my organization? That is almost completely irrelevant to your own prospects, as a decidedly non-random trained wizard - the first wizard in Velgarth, in fact, which would give you incredible leverage. But I have the impression that you would, in fact, be bothered if you had every opportunity but the random intelligent girls did not.”

"It tells you something about what places are like. And, you know, how much you're relying on someone's personal patronage rather than being generally embedded in a society in which people like you are allowed to do the things that you are interested in doing. But I don't really see what it gets you even if I concede the point. Maybe, being weak and stupid and human, I have a stupid preference about people I haven't met. I have other shortcomings as a person too. I'll grow out of them." In Hell, if not sooner.

"I have to say, that is deeply alien to how I think about - what it means to be a conscious being with traits. You...value your continued existence, yes? It seemed to bother you, that our world's afterlife system is so...minimally preserving of an individual's personhood, when they are reincarnated as an infant." 

"...yes? I don't want to repeatedly re-cycle through being a human, learning nothing from it."

"If you imagine dying and going to Hell, and learning that actually you are the most useful shape to Asmodeus already and no torture is needed, and you could just go on studying magic and creating new kinds of artifacts, how would you feel about that?" 

She would try to figure out how to pass the test, obviously. "...depends why they were telling me that and what my options to respond were?"

...This conversation is so odd and baffling. It's making Leareth's head hurt even worse. 

"If they gave you a difficult research project and said 'please have this done in one week', and completing it - required all of your current skills and capacity to work autonomously." 

This conversation is so baffling! She's not even sure what he's hoping to convince her of! "Then I would ...do that?"

"Would you be happier about it, compared to a scenario where Asmodeus wanted to - torture some of your sense of personal capability and autonomy out of you, in order to use you?" 

"....depends on the end result? I've - met devils who - that's what I want to be when I grow up. I'd be happier about being that than about remaining the same. Obviously if I am most useful to Asmodeus as a gibbering lump of flesh that cries a lot, then that's a really bad outcome for me, which is why I am trying to angle for being more useful to Asmodeus in other formats."

...Huh. That's - very interesting, actually. 

"Can you tell me about those devils you have met? What was so admirable about them? Which traits of theirs do you wish you could acquire?" 

"They're ...better? They don't get confused, they don't get scared, they can actually focus on their goals, they don't fuck up in the ways - humans do - it's really like the difference between a child and an adult. Even a very bright ten year old is - confused, they do things that don't serve their long-term interests, they don't notice all the parts of a situation that ought to matter to them..."

"I do not disagree with you that those traits are highly valuable for one's ability to achieve one's goals! I would - very much not expect torture to be an efficient method of shaping humans toward that, though!" He frowns, thoughtful. "Do you happen to know how long it generally takes, to be - shaped to be a devil with that level of competence and maturity?" 

"Oh, I think centuries. I don't know what it means to declare it inefficient if there's no other way to do it."

"I expect anyone high-up in my organization to have those traits at least to some extent? And I would say that, as someone who has set up a reincarnation method such that I have had time to mature as a person, I possess those traits more than almost anyone else on this planet - though I must say it is much harder when I am physically in poor condition. I suppose devils do not need to eat or sleep anyway and so would not ever face the relevant impairments?" 

"Devils don't need to eat or sleep, no. And sometimes practicing a skill when it's hard is the best way to improve at it."