"You think it's about - ambition? Setting herself a price that he alone in the world could possibly obtain, if he makes a great deal of progress in his aim of selling all the knowledge of his own time?"

"I cannot speak for what it means to a cleric of Abadar, but it's an obvious guess for what it might mean to a woman of Irori."

"Or perhaps the huge price reflects some equally huge desperation.  I speak not from within vision here."

"Does Sevar know she cannot be forced to sell her soul?"

"Ah."

"No, she might not.  Probably would not.  It is not the sort of thing Irori would tell her even if Irori had a way to make Himself clear about it.  Irori would not urge her out of Cheliax, only try to ensure that her own steps could carry her out in time if that was where her Way led."

"So perhaps she has started hoping to escape Hell - not a safe thing to hope, in Cheliax - and made arrangements with Keltham that are not threatening to Cheliax as they look so unlikely. Or - perhaps it is meant as communication with Abadar, who can see compacts when they are properly done in the spirit of transparent trade."

"Of such things I cannot say.  I would wish them the best of luck in their plotting, but my wishes would be corrupted by the desire that they be anywhere outside the interdiction zone so I can happen to wander by in search of enlightenment."

"We, too, desire that," Merenre says, tiredly. "Though mostly because it is a great harm, to one with an innate instinct like Abadar's, to find themselves trading with those who will deceive them comprehensively. ...and, we believe, a great harm to one who would ask a country for a dozen pretty young women, if they give them to him rather than lay out by what commitments he can win them."

"If Keltham is the sort of man to care about that at all, one may hope he is more aware than Osirion that it may lie within a country's power to give him the bodies of women, but that their affection he must win for himself regardless.  And if he is not so aware, well, he is yet elsewise a man whom a woman of Irori would respect enough to look to as her teacher.  Let me think on the meaning of the word and the vision... yes.  Sevar is not simply or only exploiting Keltham for his knowledge; she regards herself as a student of his ways."

- that moves quite a lot of estimates. He notes them. Finishes doing so before he asks "you think Osirion is in error, in some regard to do with this?"

Wait, is she about to have to fight her way out of a palace again.

"I have not been in your country very long, and could not really say.  I suspect that the mores of Keltham and Carissa Sevar may be rather unlike those in Osirion.  You should, perhaps, have somebody who grew up in Cheliax, and somebody who grew up in - Absalom, maybe, might be most like I imagine a city of the future being?  Have them check over your gamblers' odds in all matters regarding Keltham as a man and the wizards as women."

It should preferably be a woman who grew up in Cheliax, but this she is not sure she is safe to tell a Prince.

" - that's good advice," he says, in the tone of one who means something very specific by that, and leaves a trail of marks down his paper. "But I do not seek instruction only on Keltham and Carissa Sevar, if you have it on other matters."

"I have learned more caution on some forms of instruction than others."  Namely, of nobles, inside palaces.  "Still, I think I should say to you, if there is anything in your Way to which matters the ways of men and women, you must in time leave this Black Dome and journey beyond Osirion to lay your gambler's odds upon marriages in Taldor and courtesans in Absalom."

"I will ask my wife how she'd feel about that," he says, but without any particular defensiveness. "All right, things that look more likely: Keltham is from another world. Because we have now postulated that if he's from the future then it is true both that Abadar is little known there or perhaps gone, while His teachings are widespread, and that Asmodeus has no ill reputation, and those are weighty in themselves and do not predict each other. Sevar does not know that Irori's protection has been extended to her and is maneuvering without it; there exists a romance between her and Keltham; Keltham's world perhaps possesses the means to give people cake-related powers, but it is not the key of his significance either to Cheliax or to us. There might be other girls who like Sevar haven't sold their souls, though probably only if other gods purchased their protection - that should've been on there sooner..."

"Lest I have been unclear, I do not think I am told that there is romance between Keltham and Sevar.  That is only what I thought upon hearing of the compact's details and imagining what it would mean to a woman of Irori, before you observed to me that she would not know of her protection.  Their Ways are entangled, surely; but the only part of what I have been shown, that I have yet decoded, is that Keltham is to Sevar her own true teacher."

"...this whole matter sounds like there might be quite the convocation of gods and mortals if they all ever get the chance to sit down and settle matters over cake.  I should like to be in the room where it happens, if it happens."

"I apologize. I understood you; but the branch of possibilities where there exists a romance grew greatly from what you said and observed. What you said of what the compact might mean, and that you said that she looks to him as a teacher, and shifts downstream of my growing confidence Cheliax gave him the girls as part of an effort to entice him to stay in Cheliax, which itself is accumulating because we lost a great deal of credence in theories where he was like a mini-Starstone, or has a transmissible superpower, or discovered some clever magic trick. - most people do not learn much from seeing all the odds move together, but I can show you, if you think you might."

"I too apologize then."

"If your Way is one that Irori can speak of so clearly to me, then it is worth a day of my pursuit at least.  Show me your revised book when the new odds are ready, and I shall bet most of the money that I carry with me, and then afterwards you may instruct me on my follies - such would be my own guess at how I may best learn.  Though also to be clear, I expect that Abadar has paid Irori for this service in full, and you owe me no such instruction."

"I expect He has. But the right Way for this is not for me to practice it alone in my office, it is for a hundred human minds to think on it from a hundred angles, and the truth to be its own teacher, and I would be delighted to have you try it." 

He stands, gathers his books, remembers halfway to the door. "I'll have someone prepare a room for you, and you should ask of them whatever else you may require."

"I am interested also in the way of magic inside the Black Dome, for I can manage a cantrip or two of my own at least.  I should like to be able to leave the Black Dome and return to it, that I may have a look about the academies I saw in Sothis.  And forgive me, but if it is possible, I should prefer a simpler room beyond this palace, even if within the Dome."

She doesn't actually have a positive dislike of fancy bedrooms, but it makes a good cover for her acquired palatiophobia.

Derrina is feeling better about this journey now, than she was when she walked into this fancy meeting room; there were no fights along His Way here, no obvious tests of her skill, other than the Teleport to come here swiftly and having a few coins about herself.  Now, however, she is feeling more like her real self has been well-suited to Irori's errand, and justly deserving of more than trivial reward for trivial effort.  There may have been no fell monster to slay along the way -

- but Derrina does suspect, that not many who communed with Irori could have thus focused and looked within themselves and inquired and drawn out subtleties of that vision.

It is a relief, in a sense, but also an instruction in her folly, for she should have known all along that it would be so.  If this task would have been a challenge suitable to some Irorian only with wealth enough to buy Teleports, and not much else needful about them, Irori would have given it to one such, who would have needed to exercise more effort along His Way and learned something more from walking it.

PL-timestamp:  Day 6 / Morning

The morning mail arrives on the Project Lawful site, possibly now named Dragonfort.

Carissa Sevar finally receives a certain lightly enchanted dagger, suitable for a county's heiress to stab anyone who commented on her appearance; it was supposed to arrive a few evenings earlier, but there was that whole Nidal attack.

Asmodia is called over to the true temple to discuss some minor Security matter having to do with her family's relocation.

Keltham, now refreshed by sleep and food, realizes that he's been an idiot.

Kind of a massive idiot, actually.

He owes some people an apology.

Carissa gets word of this and is - confused, honestly, which is the feeling she least likes having around Keltham. "I'll go find him." 

He can be found in one of the High Priestess's auxiliary offices, since that would be the appropriate venue for forwarding a Carissa-approved apology.

"So I've now realized exactly how clearly I wasn't thinking yesterday, and this would, in dath ilan, be considered an appropriate time for a girlfriend to whap her boyfriend if she deemed that necessary or simply pleasant."