"Leareth says you're carrying his child."

" - yes sir. I thought I'd wait for orders on that, in case we want the sorcerous bloodline. Do you have orders to convey to me."

"Not at this time. You were willing?"

"It was my idea, sir, we were prisoners in Valdemar and I was planning an escape attempt involving the King's bastard daughter and Leareth said Valdemar doesn't execute women if they're pregnant. And I thought I wouldn't get Hell, if I died, because the Star-Eyed has a claim."

"What do you know of the Star-Eyed's claim?"

She's not going to say Vkandis spoke to her, that makes her sound important. "Her representatives claimed that, by a negotiation between Vkandis and her, the prisoners were her property. They mostly cared about Leareth but took me along because they thought it applied to me as well. I - think I can fix it when I get home, I can sell my soul." Slightly plaintive, carrying the implications that she's a true believer and that she hasn't noticed at all that he's lying about whether she's going home. 

"Leareth doesn't want to give you up," Laborda says. He's satisfied; this really isn't any of Cheliax's business. They'd take the girl if she were on offer but she's not worth picking a fight over. 

Shocked. Off-balance. Trying to hide it but not a very good liar " - he doesn't even like me, sir. I - I want to go home."

And she sees the contempt flare in Laborda's eyes - he's not trying to hide it - and feels a flash of profound satisfaction - and some other more complicated things that can wait for later. 

He leaves. 

Malduoni leaves with him.

He can piece together some of what just happened - it was clearly planned, and very carefully, and all along with the goal of keeping Carissa here with Leareth.

Which is something both of them want, apparently. It makes sense to him why Leareth wants that; keeping a resource for himself, and denying it to Asmodeus, is plenty of reason. He's less sure what Carissa wants, here. Maybe just to avoid punishment? Except, if she didn't in fact screw up as badly as they were hinting at - 

- that doesn't matter at all, he reminds himself. He knows how Cheliax handles punishment. 

If he had to guess, the pregnancy is entirely a lie. He's not sure of that; Leareth might just have found it distasteful to misrepresent his captive wizard's judgement and competence. 

It was impressive. And - didn't feel like the sort of plan Leareth would natively come up with. Which means he must have asked Carissa Sevar for advice, and taken it. That's...interesting. Malduoni isn't sure what to make of it. 

For now, he's got access to Laborda's thoughts, and intends to ride that until Detect Thoughts expires, he should have a little over fifteen more minutes. And, of course, he wants to know what Leareth is thinking. 

Leareth is relieved and satisfied the moment he sees Laborda leave the room. He only allows the latter to leak at all, and faintly. 

"So?" 

"You wanted to discuss trade in magic items?" Laborda is too professional to comment on the girl's looks and there's really not much else to say about her.

"Yes." Leareth smiles, brief and satisfied. "How about we return to the meeting-room to continue with that." 

This will probably be less interesting but Malduoni follows as a gas anyway. 

Carissa is absurdly tempted to put her hair back to normal. This is stupid, because putting her hair back to normal would take as long as crimping it did in the first place, and there's always the possibility someone else will want to see her for a second. She'll just - pace. Open the door a crack and peek out to see what the guard is doing. Stay in character until she has confirmation everything is good.

Leareth is more relaxed now that that part is dealt with. He's also slightly impatient to be done with this - he wants to check in on Carissa - but they can discuss some initial, small-scale trade in magic items; Leareth explains the common artifacts made in Velgarth, and his best understanding of the upsides and downsides compared to Golarion magic items. 

They can also talk about plans for having more Chelish negotiators visit, though Leareth wants to set a date for that in a week's time, now that they've worked through the most time-sensitive agreement about Cheliax; he explains this mainly by saying that he's rather behind on a lot of routine matters after having been a prisoner of two different other factions and thus incommunicado for multiple days.

He would, in the short run, be willing to trade a collection of shield-talismans for a demonstration of a Teleport spell, or ideally a Plane Shift, since that will give him some research avenues on scalable transport to and from Golarion using Velgarth magic. He's sure this would be of value to Cheliax and its neighbours in future, for trade purposes, especially if Iftel refuses to agree on a truce that allows other countries access to the rift. 

"I can demonstrate a Plane Shift when we're ready for me to depart," Laborda says, once they've hammered that out. "And perhaps that should be soon, so that you can return to your work?"

"Indeed. I appreciate the offer of a Plane Shift. Should we set up a method of written correspondence first, to make any future arrangements?" 

(Malduoni has, at this point, peeled off and gone back to hide in his Rope Trick, which should stay up another six hours or so. He's not sure what he needs to do, yet, but in any case he doesn't want Asmodeus to have a direct line on it, so it should wait for the Chelish cleric's departure.) 

Cheliax has magic items for distance communications: paired quill-pens that write whatever is written with the companion quill-pen. And then they can collect their prisoners and their Velgarth-magic items for a Plane Shift home. 

(Carvajal is surprised that Carissa isn't coming back with them. Valverde isn't.)

Leareth removes all the compulsions on the prisoners, since Nayoki is still in Haven; she's passed a few updates via his other staff, but finds it productive to stick around as a liaison and - incidentally - spy on the Heralds. They're of course trying to keep everything sensitive away from her but they're terrible at it. 

He also reads the other prisoners' minds, mostly to make sure they aren't going to say something ill-advised that will compromise his plan to keep Carissa. 

He summons half a dozen of his best mages to watch the Plane Shift alongside him. 

All the commotion of getting ready to leave is hard to miss. Malduoni is back to hovering nearby. 

Their thoughts about Carissa don't exactly contradict the story Leareth gave. Valverde feels that she's hot but thinks too highly of herself. Carvajal thinks that it sucks to be her but the blame for this mess was going to fall on someone and he's glad it's not him.

They both take Laborda's arm and he nods to Leareth and Plane Shifts back to Cheliax. It's - a little like a Velgarth Gate? It's certainly interacting with extraplanar space the way a Gate would, though almost everything else about it is alien.

Leareth's first action is to spend the next fifteen minutes in huddled discussion with his mages, hastily taking notes on everything they picked up. He delegates some initial research directions. The way the Plane Shift looked, leaves him fairly sure that something vaguely Gate-like could be adapted to also work between worlds. 

After he's done that, he leaves his researchers to it, and heads for Carissa's guest room. 

Malduoni follows, still thinking hard about what to do next.