"Sixty one."

She computed that answer faster than Keltham could check it himself, but maybe not faster than somebody with an Intelligence headband.  Definitely too slow for a precog.

Add that to the claim that Cheliax lied about Ostenso's closeness to the Andoran border this whole time, which has the feel of one of those made-up-in-retrospect stories -

There's a lot of calculations Keltham has been letting his wordless perceptions do, without thinking in words, hoping that it would defeat lesser mindreading or the sort of mindreading they can afford to use all the time.

Keltham didn't think in words why he had to be very careful of any Conspiracy attempt to get him to step outside Cheliax for a moment, why he had to check that the Gate led to a location still inside the interdiction, that only covers a relatively short distance around Ostenso (according to relatively early Conspiracy statements), and therefore still inside Cheliax (if none of this is real).

After all, invoking his compacted right to leave Cheliax without interference might not apply if he wasn't in Cheliax.

But this isn't that clever plot, apparently.

So it's just the one where they try to delay him for a day, until they can prep more powerful spells.

He turns to look at Carissa Sevar.

His Carissa.

For what may be the last time.

And then Keltham turns back to the old woman, who, if you look at her carefully enough, and try to see possibilities through your own faceblindness to Chelish faces, does not look definitely not like somebody he's met before.  If that person wore a wig and applied colored makeup, disdaining magical disguises, for fear of his Glimpse of Beyond spell that he still holds.

Gate is 9th-circle, and if anything they told him in Cheliax was true at all, there indeed aren't many people in the Inner Sea who can cast that.

To the old woman, then, he speaks.

"Do you really think that this doesn't happen in dath ilani stories?"

"There's a thing that the protagonist says, sometimes, at the end of a genre-aware eroLARP.  And I say it now."

It's hard to speak the words, for all that they mean giving up.

But everything he's giving up now is just an illusion in the first place.

"No.  This is also not reality."

"Aspexia Rugatonn, highest priestess of Asmodeus, who is god of Hell and god of compacts.  I invoke my compacted right to leave Cheliax, without interference, and to bargain without interference for my passage."

Sevar?  This is, to the end, your own command.

There's no further move, though, is there. They are indeed compacted to let Keltham leave. As he now wants to do. 

She isn't sure that the game is over - suspects, actually, somehow, that it isn't - but this act certainly is. 

"As you wish," Aspexia Rugatonn speaks aloud.

There is slow clapping from an armchair in the corner. 

It turns. 

"The problem," Nefreti Clepati says to Aspexia Rugatonn, "with attempting plans that complicated is that someone's pants will end up all the way across the continent."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was this plot supposed to be complicated?  At, what, four levels of recursion?  Well, I suppose we're hardly inside of reality now, so maybe I'm criticizing all y'all too early."

She halts a first impulse to yell "KELTHAM THAT'S THE REAL ONE!"

...is that the real Nefreti Clepati, Ione isn't even sure at this point.  Ione Sala is not out of Cheliax yet.

Rugatonn's power is about her already; she knew that to pretend herself Clepati was to court the real Nefreti Clepati's attention, but gambled on no worse than this coming of it.

"I suppose I should thank Nethys.  Thanks to Him, we've had Keltham for rather longer than we might have otherwise, and Cheliax is now greatly advantaged compared to many possibilities that might have been.  I don't suppose you know what He was doing, or Cayden Cailean, and would care to explain?"

"Right, wrong, technically right, yes, yes, no."

Ione takes a deep breath.  This is it -

Sevar, Rugatonn, Sala is defecting for real do we stop her.

Can they? Nefreti Clepati is here and might have some opinions about Nethys's oracle being prevented from defecting.

If Clepati's not acted before, she may be constrained, probably is, but I would not care to gamble -

Telepathy isn't a free action; Ione Sala is now already talking.

"Keltham, I think that's the real Clepati.  Not sure, obviously."

"Also, that was me breaking with Cheliax for real."

"Ione Sala, oracle of Nethys, of the library's curse.  I don't know what Nethys is doing but I expect He means me to follow you, wherever you go.  I've hated Cheliax since long before I was allowed to think that to myself.  I spoke to you that way in the library because Nethys had just cursed me, and I thought if I didn't - make it hard for Cheliax to vanish me - I'd just be vanished.  Security, Elias Abarco, gouged my eye out afterwards, as a punishment, and I lay there and hurt and was so so glad I wouldn't go to Hell."

"In the event that any of THIS is real, would anyone care to explain what I'm doing in Golarion and what's up with Snack Service."

"Unfortunately, I can't be helpful to you in any way!" Nefreti says cheerfully, and to Ione, "your Possible Doctrines of Nethys are incredibly popular in Sothis. Someone carved them on the Moon."

"I - my - WHAT?"  Wait, if Nefreti Clepati can't help them -

Lazily, with one hand, she opens a Gate in front of her, while simultaneously with the other hand she casts a Zone of Truth. "You know, sometimes I think about casting a permanent Zone of Truth over all of Cheliax," she says. 

Sure, he'll cast Detect Magic to figure out what that was... looks like an area version of his truthspell compulsion without the indicator on it, if he's passing his Spellcraft check.  But then, obviously, the Conspiracy can fool his Detect Magic.