Okay, that's kind of, um.  Attractive and worrying at the same time, really.

"Any other books on Cheliax, critical or otherwise."

"I have specialty trade publications? Chelish grain imports by year for the last decade, Chelish wizarding education, Chelish military contracts..."

"I'll take those too.  But just the four books on Cheliax, aside from the textbooks and trade publications?  Can you bring those out?"

A loss of internal cognitive control, a flash of betrayed thought; Keltham is planning to ask for literally any other books at all putatively by any of those authors.

That's very good to have advance warning of because they did not attribute those books to specific noted historians but they totally can do that on ten seconds' notice.

Out he comes with the four books.

Then he'll ask the question he was planning to ask.

A wordless flash of insight - people having different probabilities of using particular words, phrasings - it doesn't have to be that exact thing it just has to be any Law known to the far more literate dath ilan - or just wordless style or sheer assessed Intelligence -

KELTHAM MAY HAVE WAYS OF DETERMINING WHETHER TWO BOOKS ARE REALLY BY THE SAME AUTHOR!

Yes, occurred to me too. Just the way teachers deliver the same lecture differently, it doesn't have to involve any Law. The actual author of one of them also authored a fake history of Andoran and a fake history of Galt for us, and another one's going to have been coauthored.

Carissa is not in general faster than Asmodia to Wall concerns, but with the headband on she sure is.

"Oh, yes," the proprietor says. "- the author of The Revival of the Empire wrote a few other histories, which I thought were if anything even worse - I stock the ones for Andoran and Galt because people like reading those, they sell well, but they don't like reading the one about Absalom because it's so inaccurate, which should really make them think, if you ask me. And A Tactical Account Of Thee Chelish Civil War is coauthored by a Chelish general and the military historian Kaaris Thembley, and I know Thembley's put out one on the Galtan Revolution as well, though I don't  have it in stock."

He'll take those, then!  Sure, the Conspiracy could've thought of that, but it's more competence than they necessarily needed to have.  1.7x to Ordinary or so.

- now how many similar books does he have about Taldor, Osirion, or Nex?

"Well, not the textbooks, since they don't have standardized education. I've got - let me see for you - eight volumes on the Nex-Geb war, A Guided Tour Of the Mana Wastes, Magic in Quantium, The Last True Princes of Taldor, Rot Behind The Great Walls - that's Taldor - Taldor's War With Qadira in six volumes... Osirion: In The Shadows of Giants, Osirion Land of the Pharaohs.... and trade publications for all of them, I suppose."

All right then.  He'll pick all of those up.

How much does he have about theology, alignment, afterlives, such that Asmodeus or Hell would have significant coverage, like, at least one-twelfth of the book?

"Asmodeus isn't a big god here in Absalom. I've got Asmodean Teachings, and Towards an Asmodean State, and then it'd be - harder to assure you you're getting a twelfth of the book, say, if I sold you The War That Made The World - about the sealing of Rovagug - or On Earthfall And How Civilization Survived It, which is largely about the gods who perished in Earthfall though it does discuss all the other ones who were around - or The Death Of Aroden -"

That's five books with noticeable sections on Asmodeus, Lawful Evil, or Hell.

He'll take those, sure.

Any more?

A wordless vision of a cloud of density -

There's fewer alignments than countries!  Alignments are relevant in all the places including Absalom!  There should be more books talking about Lawful Evil in this shop then there are books about Cheliax or Nex!

"Oh, I don't know how I forgot it, Guide To Devils And Indentures. For people thinking of selling their souls. I'm sure I have a copy somewhere, the Church releases updated versions of that regularly - hey, wizard fellow, can you spare an old man a Locate Object, I genuinely have no idea where I filed Guide To Devils -"

"Didn't prepare it," says Fennelosa irritably. 

"Should I go look for it?"

A possible lie is that the Church formally disapproves of non-Church writing about Hell, because so much of it is incredibly wrong and misleading, sometimes hazardously so. What do you think, Asmodia.

He's going to consider the likelihood that Conspiracy doesn't want there to be any books, versus his prior expectation that Ordinary would manage not to have those books for any reason.  Then he's going to look at the reason and see if it's a surprisingly good one or a surprisingly bad one, and I'd say that one leans surprisingly bad.  If there's people running around writing books personally critical of the Queen, is he going to buy that everybody just fell into line about the Church not wanting people to write about Hell?

Well, there's a lot more access to information about the Queen than to information about Hell! And the Queen doesn't have power in Absalom but all Absalom's churches collectively do, and might agree not to spread nonsense.

Message:  One more book -

(and one the Conspiracy would have obvious reason to prepare)

- is not worth a lot of searching, no.  Keltham was hoping there'd be more like 20 books about comparative major gods, somebody's pet theory about the nine alignments, that sort of thing.

"Well, you'd best take that up with the churches, son, because I'll stock the books if they change their mind. Same goes for pornography, actually."

"The Churches object to there being books about gods?"

"The Churches object to books purporting to describe the gods and the afterlives which aren't issued by the Churches, because of how most authors will make up lots of details to fill out thin bits of the books and then you'll get lots of people believing nonsense. Now, I think there's a case to be made that maybe the gods should learn something from the kinds of stories about them that people want to tell. If people desperately want to believe Iomedae sends songbirds as signs, maybe She should start! If they want to believe Norgorber only does crimes that don't hurt people, maybe He should mind that! If they want to believe Sarenrae marked their enemies with an irrevocable blood taint back in the time of Rovagug - well, I guess I see how that one's no good. But you could only ban that kind of thing and leave the nonsense be."

"Have you by any chance got Church-issued books about each of the afterlives, then?  And are Asmodean Teachings and Asmodean State both Church-approved?"

"Yes, they are, that's why we carry them. Asmodean Teachings has a lot about Hell, some places it's published in two volumes where one is called Asmodean Doctrine and the other is called Hell. I can get you the approved books for most of the other afterlives except Abaddon, Norgorber's church doesn't bother putting one out and I've never bothered looking farther. It's not exactly a bestseller."