What?

That doesn't make any sense. She's no longer doing any very complicated sensemaking, hasn't been for a while, but that -

- but she exists -

- what if it's a mistake and soon someone will catch it no that doesn't make any sense -

- did someone find her? Eventually, somewhere, someday -

"The Suggestion was:  Don't think about anything else that might be happening, you better believe that if we fuck this up the Queen will turn all of us into statues."

It takes her a while. 

Keltham was behaving weirdly. Security was behaving - weirdly incompetently. The Osirians were behaving weirdly, she's met dozens and all of them had no idea at what point abortion became murder and were pretty sure it was gravely immoral from the second you had sex and have actual Law against polymorphing pregnant people. 

Abrogail.

" - you - "

- it turns out that having lots of feelings and a deep sense you have nothing to lose is inconvenient for things such as addressing your Queen! Or existing!!! Now she has burst into tears! What the fuck! She didn't expect that and is terrified by it, it feels almost like having been changed into a different person, the kind of person who bursts into tears - she knows what she has to do, she knows what she has to pull herself together into, but the pieces are - too far apart, or something, or she forgot how they fit together, or maybe she's missing some -

no don't ask about Keltham Abrogail will be so mad

no don't ask about Aspexia Abrogail will be so mad

"...Nidal?" asks a sobbing curled up Carissa in a tone that is strangled and would be nearly incomprehensible if her mind weren't being read.

"Still in slow retreat.  Should the Black Triune come forth, our alliances have been laid in advance.  Rugatonn is alive and there is no actual reason to believe the Black Triune could do that to her, more so with their god sealed and ours in unopposed glory.  Keltham has been paid his agreed-on fee and is safely ensconced in his newly Forbidden fortress, and no Sendings may come to his section there."

"All you need to do, for a time, is rest.  I hope we've been intimate enough that I can say that it's not a threat to fear, and not an order from your Queen to drop everything and follow, when I say this much:  I put a lot of work into breaking you, in hopes you would heal into a less broken shape than you once had.  If you fall helplessly back into your old shape I'll be disappointed.  I think that if dath ilan were Evil they would not make their Evil out of hollow shells of people.  And it would be genuinely difficult to do this to you a second time, so by my command, don't try to put yourself together again, not in the same shape as before.  I say that so early, while you ought to just be bawling, because I am afraid you will try to twist yourself up while you're bawling."

"Rest.  Rest.  You did well."

Abrogail's hands seem to be stroking Carissa's hair, while she's curled up and crying.

This causes her to cry more, which she is baffled at but understands she is not really supposed to fight. 

"....did well?"

"Yes.  Most importantly, you undid much of the conditioning that would hinder you in your new task and rank.  You suffered beautifully and satisfyingly for me, tried to live with the strongest will and determination I've felt from any mortal on whom I've used detection, I think you've hit fourth circle, and even taking that into account I'm still not over what you tried with that amulet.  What you were successfully doing with that amulet."

"You're not guilty of heresy, for trying to ensure that your soul reaches Asmodeus's embrace against a mortal's opposition is not that.  You are also not guilty of treason.  The most important reason is that I'm the Queen and if I say you're guilty of treason, you are, and if I say you're not, you're not, without which ability many fun bedroom games would become more costly for me.  But also, little sweet, I wanted to put you into a situation where it would seem that I was turning you into a statue and that it was your fault for betraying me.  So that's what happened and that's the part you played.  If I control your apparent situation to that degree and then hit you with a Suggestion, you end up making the choice I want you to make.  Period."

"...is what I'd like to say, but you very nearly awakened from the scenario multiple times and despite the Suggestion of an eighth-circle caster opposing that.  I think I saw a trace of dath ilan in it."

Carissa gasps and shudders and then turns to smile adoringly at the Queen of Cheliax before she can quite process that she is doing this and be confused about why. She is still crying. 

"good", she agrees. 

"....lying," she says vaguely after a minute, "in Evil dath ilan is going to be...such an art form...."

"I'm not sure that it isn't in actual dath ilan.  Would sweet Keltham know if it was?  Perhaps the real adults only tell boys like him how the world truly works after they turn twenty-five."

"...have to never tell them, I think. Just a small trusted circle. ...maybe not." She is, maybe unconsciously, leaning in to the hairpetting quite a lot. 

"If I have lots of feelings I'll probably have more for sweet Keltham. Not having feelings helps with not having stupid ones. - is stupid, right. confused about what's stupid now."

Unspoken thoughts say Carissa means, is it stupid to have feelings for Keltham?

"You can think on it later, little sweet.  Some feelings are stupid, yes, but it's often more useful to nudge them to something nearby that isn't, rather than hammer them away."

"Speaking of which:  I, Abrogail Thrune II, swear in Asmodeus's name never to make you a statue for true."

"I originally planned to qualify, unless you betrayed the House of Thrune knowingly, deliberately, and unambiguously - but after seeing how your thoughts turned to me despite an attempted reassurance or two, I think it is best left without loopholes.  I do not actually want you obsessing ever after about fear fantasies of how you might end up betraying me and then statued.  I've had my fun, and it would be disastrous for Cheliax if an untampered truthspell showed that you'd come to love me more than Keltham."

"Though at this level of breadth and consequence I'll make no oath of it without greater payment, I also promise not to seek particularly to destroy your soul by any means nor deprive it of its eternity."

Carissa stares at her for a while as if having a religious experience. 

"I'll be worth it. make you queen of the world."

Thankfully, Carissa's thoughts show that she means 'worth the oath', not 'worth all the trouble that'd come from me falling in love with you'.

"Just the one world?  Learn to think larger, Carissa."

"...you know, I considered having you wake up apparently a thousand years later, after Keltham's Civilization, divided between Lawful Neutral and Lawful Evil, had found your buried statue by using nearly a mountain of spellsilver to search for it; in accordance with Keltham's last wishes, before he'd ascended to godhood and vanished; and then have you told that Keltham had petrified me in turn, to be unpetrified if you were ever found, and delivered into your judgment; and then have the King of Civilization keep asking you questions about how you felt about Abrogail Thrune until you finally realized it was me."

Carissa being speechless is considerably less of an achievement than it usually is, but still, she's very speechless.

"Ask myself if everyone is you, these days," she says eventually. "Spent a while worrying if Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune was you just on general principle, because he's allowed to use the name and he talked to me. 

You - know how I feel about you. Right? You can read my mind."

"I do."  Gently.  "But you have to get around to actually thinking it, and feeling it, before I can see."

" - right. Sorry."

She closes her eyes. 

She feels - 

- fragile, like even the slightest bit of torture, or possibly and embarrassingly even Abrogail's departure, could tip her over some edge - okay, she needs to fix that, she's pretty sure Abrogail did not mean 'please be so vulnerable and confused you require my ongoing personal attention' -

"Stop that.  It's okay to require my attention a little longer, and after I leave you're going to be kept in the bedroom with some tasty things and forced to recover quietly, since you have that few shreds of sense."

Lean. Yes your Majesty. okay. Carissa feels fragile and like she needs the Queen of Cheliax personally petting her hair to be okay, and that's just how she feels and she's going to do nothing about it, not a terrifying vulnerability at all.

Carissa feels happy. It's a distant kind of happy, it's not the happiness she is used to feeling, but - it was a beautiful story with a happy ending, and she was impressive and valuable and Abrogail had a good time. also she can apparently use spellsilver at a distance of six or eight feet. and she's fourth circle. that's a lot to be happy about, really. 

Carissa feels - overawed. The sense of being in something greater than herself. It's a good sense. It's where a lot of her loyalty is located, to Asmodeus and to Cheliax, the sincere conviction that the people in charge are better than her. Abrogail is a great Queen. She doesn't just think this because Abrogail staged an incredibly elaborate torture-execution and then petted her hair. That wouldn't be a good reason to think it. She thinks it because she's - starting to get a fraction of a sense of how hard it really is, to do things, and Abrogail does lots of things.

Her complaints while she was dying and yelling at Abrogail were totally true, though. Except the ones inapplicable because Security's bizarre incompetence was to reduce the pressure on Keltham-actor or whatever. But notably they weren't complaints about actual decisions Abrogail has actually made. Because those have been good. Including the decision to rent Carissa, which has paid some serious corrupting-Keltham dividends and also been good for the both of them. Abrogail's advisors who were opposed to this were unreasonable, and that's only a tiny bit protectiveness of Maillol which Carissa now feels because he's one of the tools she'll need for her project and people made him worse at it. Unlike this. This made Carissa better. This was a gift to Carissa, not an indulgence at her expense, and Carissa is so grateful, and so - assured, very deeply, in her faith.

Contessa Lrilatha is what Carissa wants to grow up to be in the long run but Abrogail might be what she wants to grow up to be in the shorter term while she's actually alive. Not in the sense where she wants to be Queen of Cheliax. She doesn't. She's really actually honestly loyal and if it ever comes up again that she is tempted to flee because she failed so badly, she'll instead turn herself in, because it's how Evil dath ilan would set up the incentives and it's also how Abrogail has, because she's wonderful.

"See, now those are the thoughts of a mind that is beginning to align itself behind its own passions, that won't fall apart in its inner divisions after Keltham gives you twenty more lectures on Law and taps you with an Owl's Wisdom."

"I'm not going to have time to work on all the other girls in his class, though, so good luck with that."

"It's amusing that you've only been a project manager for less than a day and already sound so much like the rest of them.  If you hadn't announced your current intention to use a heretically small amount of torture - well.  I would worry that Carissa Sevar was heading straight into that disaster which promising new project managers enact, when they realize everyone and everything around them is broken, and resolve to properly correct it with fire and lash.  Four days later all of their direct reports have been tortured past the point of usefulness."

" - I can see why that would be a popular failure mode. But no, I want to - do this, I guess, for all my other girls. Make them into something stronger and better. If it takes this much finesse, then I guess I'll practice on Pilar first. She's very forgiving."

Which Carissa is slightly jealous of. Carissa is actually only moderately into pain and her life would really be easier if she just loved it. But no, she's pretty sure what she has is a moderate amount of being into pain, a very high pain tolerance, an enjoyment of being pushed to her inconveniently far limits, and a strong desire to be in the power of someone who deserves to have power over her, and that's not actually a very convenient sexuality unless you happen to tempt the Queen of Cheliax with - what did she even tempt the Queen of Cheliax with. Not her personality, it apparently needed a thorough makeover. Maybe the Queen sees the same appeal in dath ilani people that Carissa does but Carissa doesn't have much of it, yet.

"I very rarely meet people who interest me who are that scared of me personally doing something it would interest me to do to them.  As I told you, it was only and ever your fear of that place which led you to it."

"Only slightly more commonly do I meet souls that, on a closer inspection, make me want that much to pry apart and reassemble them.  Usually the intended results are more amusing, but sometimes I see a broken thing that still has power in it, and potential for greater power if it could be remade."

Lean. 

"Did I actually drown a Security in a fountain."

A slight laugh.  "I think it's more amusing not to tell you."