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"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."
-- P. C. Hodgell, Seeker's Mask.
is actually rather a lot
lawful chaotic
...part of him is apparently pretty scared here, if he emotionally-updated that fast.
"Weird time-sensitive task! Five books in five different non-Taldane languages from the Ostenso library, can you tell me their titles as soon as you know them, without borrowing them yet?" That gives them less time to run a search while she's in the bathroom.
He didn't consider this exact possibility. Call it 2 bits for mindreading!Conspiracy... not great, but fine if the rest of his day doesn't go like this.
know-it-all
"Okay this is new! I have a vague sense of what books like that are in the library and roughly what's in them, and I can pick from five different languages, but I can't actually read the titles! You want me to pick five and tell you what they're about?"
Keltham is planning to pick three of the five and ask Ione to summon two others instead of whichever other two she named.
someone-somewhere
She should have thought of that.
Instructions to Security on book-alteration: We need 7 books, not 5, and produce up to 11 as quickly as you can.
someone-somewhere
This is literally the most suicidal thing she'll ever do in her life. But it's the end of her game, and she wants to play it to the fullest.
"If the Queen of Cheliax is available and the Most High's instructions permit it, I request her in this loop cautioning me on which clever things Keltham might think of next. I'm not thinking of them fast enough." Asmodia is on Fox's Cunning, besides her +6 Wisdom headband, and Eagle's Splendour without which she would never have dared that request, but that set of stat boosts wasn't enough before and won't be enough now.
Queen's ETA 2 minutes, your request will be relayed.
(...this Security now respects Asmodia a lot more than he did 30 seconds earlier. She's insane, but the kind of insane you don't mess with until they go down in flames of glory or dishonor.)
lawful chaotic
Choose your random numbers now, fresh method and means; if you choose them in advance the mindreading!Conspiracy may know them...
Keltham picks 3 of 5, asks Ione to choose 2 others.
"Ione sorry for the weird request, will owe you a favor or just pay you a cheerful price if you want to name one, but I want you to summon those books immediately and get them to me outside the bathroom regardless of personal inconvenience thereof! Literally as fast as possible! I'll turn away from the door so you've got some privacy on that!"
It's a spontaneous thought. There's no warning.
someone-somewhere
Do it! Now! We'll alter the borrowed books, somehow, Keltham wasn't planning to use the books until later - use Major Image if you haven't altered dates on front matter, and he looks at that before we get a chance to alter them later -
know-it-all
She'll obey! Suppressing the huge smile on her face when she shoves the borrowed books out of the bathroom door, just in case Keltham is peeking!
This is going to be so great and she will absolutely do everything she's ordered enthusiastically and with maximum cooperative competence while it all goes down in flames.
lawful chaotic
"Thanks, Ione! Owe you one!"
Keltham will now rip one page apiece out of each of the borrowed library books - overriding the flinch any dath ilani would feel, at doing such a thing, it's been represented to him that changes to Ione-borrowed books don't damage the originals - and cast Comprehend Languages, while he reads those five pages. Afterwards, he'll tuck those five pages into a relatively protected interior jacket-shirt pocket.
Keltham's thoughts indicate that he's doing this to be able to verify that it's the same five pages later, when he casts Tongues and does - something that's going to take him a while - possibly something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other?
someone-somewhere
She's not seeing it at all, and prays to Pharasma that this means Keltham is checking the reality of something they did not fake.
...she admits fault in having not foreseen this line of possibility, having not tried to produce an extensively Law-trained mathematical-adept Security who could cast their emergency Heightened Detect Thoughts and successfully understand what Keltham was thinking.
to-let-you-in
- something about how the meanings of different words relate to each other - something that'd be hard to fake -
Baseline is invented but Golarion languages borrow words from each other? No, that's not the right kind of thing. Good places ought to have systematically different languages from fake-Evil from real-Evil? Baseline seems to work like that, with the most important words shorter, but no Golarion language does because none of them were deliberately engineered - what would she even learn, if she suddenly could read Kelish -
to-let-you-in
Now Carissa speaks Kelish. What does that even give her. Can she say 'my insane idiot boyfriend who's going to ruin everything' - yes, she can. What about 'my Queen' - nothing's discernably very different about saying that. What about 'we're all going to die in horrible agony'. The word lengths don't seem particularly different.
She hopes he's just checking if the languages have the right sort of shared language history but somehow she doubts it.
The vast Things watching all this from orthogonal angles to ultimate reality are talking so fast among themselves that Nethys is finding it hard to keep up with their nearly incomprehensible Thoughts; they are - possibly speculating on what Keltham could try next to pierce the veil, given what he already knows?
Keltham's clearly visible Security detail requests instructions about how he's supposed to be reacting to this whole business with Ione Sala. He doesn't think his alterSelf is particularly alarmed yet, Keltham is an odd person and this doesn't seem out-of-character for him, but he requests confirmation on that, these are unusual circumstances.
to-let-you-in
Yep that's correct. After he does another odd thing Security can inquiry as to whether Keltham wants additional, or alternately no, Security while he's running around doing things but not yet.
Keltham's thoughts indicate that he was planning to maybe get a bite of breakfast before his next step, but the bump in mindreading!Conspiracy / alerted!Conspiracy from Ione not being present at her usual place in the library has changed his mind.
He's currently heading to Maillol to make some inconvenient and embarrassing demands. Cheliax is diverting serious national energy to mining spellsilver, and Keltham needs to just get over his sense of embarrassment about asking Cheliax to burn Teleports or scrolls on reassuring him in weird ways.
...he's also trying not to think about specifics, and apparently internal thought control is something dath ilani are trained in. Keltham doesn't think like somebody who has actual training in resisting Detect Thoughts, and is probably going to think of what specifically he's planning in like another minute or two, but he didn't think of it immediately.
to-reign-in-Cheliax
And she's here, already being updated on the situation by Security.
She can't originate plans, can't suggest plans, she can say things she thinks she sees but that's the limit of what the Most High thinks she's allowed to do without becoming too much of a primary opposed force to Keltham.
That doesn't sound like a very winnable game for Cheliax, and while they're probably going to lose, here, Queen Abrogail II of Cheliax can try to make it a little more dramatically satisfying if Carissa Sevar wins this, a little more of a fallen-flat buildup if she loses.
There's only one obvious correct next move in this game, then. She should've seen it before now, but there are some thoughts painful enough that even to her they do not come easily to mind.
It's a risk to her throne itself, and you don't want to take too many of those over the course of your entire career as a Queen. You could say, the length of your career is delimited by how many risks like these you take.
Abrogail Thrune II is not, actually, a coward.
It's going to hurt like the flames of deeper Hell.
She's not, actually, weak.
"Aspexia. If I do something that risks my life and throne, in pure service to Asmodeus and Cheliax, in this moment, will you protect me and my reign even with your own life, until this emergency is done and the risk to me is over?"
