Asmodia is not sure whether she can get away with saying she didn't want Gregoria in Hell.  She is unclear on what heresies are allowed and which are still prohibited according to Carissa Sevar.

"Because we might want, for example, to keep our options open in terms of Hell sending Gregoria back later with no memory of what happened.  That's harder to do with her still being okay afterwards if she's actually in Hell."

Gosh.  That sounds like something an Asmodia who doesn't actually want to send her classmate to Hell might say.

She should distract Sevar in case Sevar's thinking that too.

"Better yet, Gregoria writes a suicide note, a Security reads it, he commits suicide, the next Security burns the note, and two days later they're both back from Hell with no memories.  That way Keltham's got more to worry about than 'maybe the whole point is the Fox's Cunning part'."

"You came back better," she says to Asmodia. But she doesn't push it. They don't have a lot of time. "Other options, not filtering them for being good: a powerful noble shows up to try to convince Keltham to overthrow the Queen and rule Cheliax himself."

Okay, yeah, Asmodia completely blew her game against Sevar before she realized the game existed.

"I'm not seeing - the powerful noble tells him to try on an intelligence headband?  Not to try on an intelligence headband?"

"No, sorry, I'm just thinking of things that are weird but not obviously weirder in the Conspiracy. We need a bunch and they can't all be pointed at the headband thing. - if Gregoria and a Security kill themselves I worry that looks like they had an attack of remorse about the conspiracy..."

"He won't finish concluding he's in a Conspiracy just from that, I think, and it - narrows down which Conspiracy world he lives in, in the wrong direction, if he thinks that's the reason, other Conspiracy things won't match up with it.  We want that.  I don't think he will but it's absolutely what we want, later I'll explain the math I saw."

"The main question is whether that makes total sense for alterCheliax, or maybe even, so much sense that Keltham thinks it's meant to point him at alterCheliax rather than the Conspiracy."

"And what else it makes be true about alterCheliax, that we have to live with after that."

"Though - now that I think about it - throwing a bunch of random weirdness at you - might be a tactic in the game between dath ilani that dath ilani would know about?  It's something you see more when somebody is trying to prevent you from narrowing in on true reality."

" - yeah, it might. Ugh. Maybe the best way to keep him busy this next week is evaluating new candidate project members and entertaining emissaries - I think alter Cheliax would let him entertain emissaries - how sure are you that if he tries Fox's Cunning it's over -"

"It might not end that moment, especially if he has something else to think about.  The problem is, he'll want more."

"Don't you see?  Wizards use Cunning for spells.  Dath ilani know how to use it for thinking.  The way you get more spell slots, a headband would amplify his ability to use the Law of Probability, the same way it's amplifying mine, only he must have so much more Law to use - Owl's Wisdom boosts it too, if he tries both at once and really tries to figure us out I think we lose."

"Okay. 

A thing I am tempted to do here is something with alter-Cheliax having - tension between the Church and Crown - only I don't think we're going to be smart enough often enough to pull it off.  The idea would be that we were told 'headbands might be compromised by Kuthites' but more likely is that headbands are being compromised by Egorian - I can imagine the Carissa that pulls it off but I think I'm not her."

"It sounded like a good idea to me, if it's not a good idea, you might have to explain why."

Ione is currently trying to pull her thoughts away from the fascinating idea of putting the Crown of Infernal Majesty on Keltham to see what happens to him.  She doesn't say anything to the others, she's sure that her helping to prevent that from happening would be heresy unto Nethys.

"I don't know, it just feels really difficult, it'd have a lot of moving pieces and I'm not sure I could think of them all. If you think you could, then we should do it. - maybe Her Infernal Majestrix will help us, actually, I bet she'd be great at it -"

"I don't know why it would be difficult and that's probably not a good sign.  Your other suggestion terrifies me.  What are you thinking."

"I don't have the skill to pull off a deception in which alter Cheliax has internal political strife, you definitely don't have the skill, the Queen does. Unfortunately she's very busy but I do think it'd work if she was doing it, because she's paying attention to all of the small details of reality that'd indicate a Crown and Church at odds all the time anyway. But we should make a plan assuming we don't have that."

"I've never heard it said that the Queen is, you know, generally safe to be around, in the same way as say Aspexia Rugatonn or Gorthoklek.  In unrelated news, I could use some more books, can I visit a bookshop in Ostenso coincidentally exactly during the time when the Queen happens to be visiting here?"

"She's more dangerous if you're scared of her."

Hearing the name Aspexia Rugatonn reminds Asmodia to check her pocketwatch.

"I need to - I need you to go, I was assigned a final task during my last fifteen minutes, I think it's meant just for me, and I need to get started on that."

Off she goes, even though she has a good guess what the extra task is.

They're going to fail. Maybe if they're very clever they can delay their failure - six months. And then she'll have to derive the rest herself. Can she? Can Asmodia? If they get six months she thinks yes. If they lost tomorrow, she thinks no. 

Failure feels unthinkable and not just because she'll definitely be executed about it. There's something wrong, in Cheliax, something they're doing profoundly wrong so they aren't unlocking people like Asmodia and Carissa, not using the most valuable resource that they have. She's the only person who can fix it and - if Keltham understood -

- he'd flip out about Hell. The rest he could maybe take in stride but he'd be all upset about Hell and refuse to work with them further, and -

- Ione's halfway to being the same way -

- not the time. Buy them a month, buy them another, then figure out how to work with whatever you end up getting.

Ione follows her out.

"You know what other things are more dangerous when you're scared of them?"

Carissa is incredibly not in the mood for smug Nethysians. "What."

"Me neither!  Because obviously if something like that existed you'd erase it from all the books and not tell anybody about it!"

Ione stalks off herself.  The Queen of Cheliax is among the things she does, in fact, still find scary, because no matter how much sense it wouldn't make for anyone to torture her to death, maybe the Queen does so regardless.  Knowing that being scared of the Queen makes that more likely doesn't exactly help.

Nethys has predicted all of this.  Nethys probably doesn't care, very much, but for the Queen to torture Ione to death wouldn't serve Nethys's purposes in an obvious way.  If Ione sees how that would cause a very large and interesting explosion, maybe then she'll start to worry.  She just has to hold to that thought.

...does she fall apart if she actually knows the Law that forbids her from convincing herself of anything?  Well, now she has something else to worry about.  Yay.

Correction, Ione: you wouldn't tell anyone you liked about it. 

"How's Keltham's date going," she asks a nearby Security. Probably something will have exploded there, too.

Keltham and Meritxell had some very strange conversations, fucked not very hard (Security rates it 4/10), cuddled afterwards, and then Keltham dismissed Meritxell, read a book for a little while, and went to sleep.

Well. At least one thing in her life is going right. 

Carissa takes out a notebook and writes down ideas for reasons Keltham wouldn't need a headband, in case the Grand High Priestess wants her on her way out. Otherwise she will go do Meritxell's debrief and then go to bed.