He first needs to figure out what his questions to Abadar would be.  By the textbook, Keltham gets nine to ten questions which must be asked (and answered) in nine to ten rounds.  If neither 'yes' or 'no' fits, the god can answer with up to five words, but you shouldn't try to abuse this, it should be a question where you mostly expect a 'yes' or 'no'.

Candidate yes-no questions...

- Is Keltham's apparent world more real than Cheliax's Conspiracy?

- Was the vision from Iomedae real?

- Did Abadar try to protect Keltham more than the minimum required to leave him in shape to teach?

- When Abadar traded with Asmodeus, did Abadar expect that to increase the percentage of mortals in Evil afterlives?

- Does Abadar have feelings, emotions, even if not human feelings?

- Does Abadar value mortals as sentients-that-have-feelings and not just agents-that-trade?

...It's only six questions, though some might take more than a round to ask, and Keltham is blanking on what more he wants to know and dares ask.

Yeah, he really isn't in his best mental shape right now, all poses aside.

Well, enough to send to the Pharaoh, then, to see if he claims that answers are already known for certain, or has anything important to add.  And Keltham can try to think about more while he - eats food, which is not really a thing that has happened to him all that recently.

Keltham thinks about Carissa for a few rounds.

Then Keltham heads out of his bedroom to request dinner; and to see if the Pharaoh had a better idea of what Abadar wanted Keltham to ask, or why Abadar wanted Keltham to have Commune; and to check on the status of the setup talk for Project Lawful Neutral, though he's not doing that part right away.

One of the concubines will bring him dinner and take a note to the pharaoh and take a different note to Merenre.

Keltham eats his dinner, looking sad and emotionally distant but not in active distress.

...he doesn't actually come up with any further questions beyond 'Are you Abadar?', which is at least short, though redundant with 'Was the vision from Iomedae real?' if the answer to that is Yes.

We are eager to talk to you mostly because We are intensely curious. We have wanted to communicate with you for a long time and been unable to because of the interdiction. The thing We want the most is probably prices for further direct conversations about, for example, what it is like to be a human (explained in the terms Abadar is familiar with), what human values are, what Osirion is doing wrong, what humanity will want to pay Us for once humanity grows up, whether humanity can be thought of as the kind of entity that will grow up, etc.

Of course the story would be like that.

If Keltham is still alive or if his soul is in Axis, a couple of years from now, maybe, they can have that conversation.  If Keltham actually does decide to exit this universe, he'll do that through Axis, if possible, so he can talk directly with Abadar first.

He'll try to teach the math, the way of thinking, to the Osirians, so they can answer those questions themselves, if Keltham can't.

It's - all he can do.

At least now he's not going to have try hard at all, to appear sad and upset during his conversation with Governance.  Though finding out more about children in Hell would've done that anyways, probably.

He'll head back to his bedroom, request privacy, write down the final form of his questions, and cast Commune.

"Are you Abadar?" Keltham says to his god, his eyes already watering.

(mortal's mental posture: opening negotiations, closing negotiations, regret of lost opportunity)

- that's very worrying. Every recent update He's gotten has been very worrying, but that especially so. 

The structure of Commune holds the god back from the mortal. Allows just the slightest information through, just the answer without any of the context or feeling that would properly surround it, because that's the only way to talk to mortals safely at all. 

Yes.

"Is the world Osirion is showing me real?" Keltham says, his voice cracking, crying freely, because gods seem like they should be there alongside girlfriends on the list of entities you can cry in front of.

(mental posture: satisfaction with value received in trade, concern over inadequate reciprocation)

Mortals who are concerned about inadequate reciprocation are almost always fundamentally confused!

He can't say that, and isn't entirely sure it applies.

Yes.

"Was the vision from Iomedae real and paid for by you?"

(mental posture: concern over inadequate reciprocation)

He did pay Iomedae for that conversation, though to the extent it was valuable to Her and advanced Her own interests, She didn't charge Him for it because they are responsible gods who just pay each other for utility, and in this specific case they employed protocols to protect the confidentiality of Keltham's conversation with Iomedae where Iomedae determined the actual cost She'd want to charge Abadar and then picked randomly from a distribution with that at the mean.

For this reason Abadar is tempted to answer 'mostly', but Khemet will tell Him that was confusing and the mortal wants to abstract away details like that. 

Yes

"In your bargain did you pay to protect me more than required just to let me teach Osirion?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into nature of trading relationship)

No.

That's something.  The story is not forcing him to betray his benefactors to the greatest extent possible.

"Did you net-expect that trade with Asmodeus to increase-even-by-a-tiny-bit the fraction of mortals in Evil afterlives?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into entity's other trading partnerships)

It's not a calculation He ran at the time; He can, of course, recall that state of information and try to run it. More trade and prosperity means more people. So far, as people have become more prosperous, more of them have been Evil. This is confusing; you'd think that one of the things an agent would purchase with more prosperity is their preferred afterlife. Abadar's theories include that people prefer the Evil afterlives, that people prefer other things they can buy even though those things cause them to go to the Evil afterlives, or that people are failing to be coherent agents. It's probably the latter. it almost always is.

But at the time, that Keltham would make mortals richer wasn't obvious to Abadar; Abadar considered it a possibility, but expected most utility from Keltham to come from Keltham's understanding of coordination. If the reason that wealth makes mortals Eviller is related to their incompetence at coordination, then if they were more ideal agents they'd be less likely to go to the Evil afterlives, and Keltham would decrease the agents going to the Evil afterlives. Abadar's extrapolation from his own state of knowledge at the time suggests that He would have wrongly expected this effect to dominate the wealth effect He then considered unlikely.

Then there's the question of the resources transfer to Asmodeus; Asmodeus having more resources causes more people to go to Hell, drawing disproportionately but not wholly from the other Evil afterlives, and Abadar has some sense of the exchange rate. Inconveniently this number is within an order of magnitude of the expected effect from Abadar's early state of information from more coherent agents going to the Evil afterlives less. 

Then there's the question of whether Keltham at the time would predictably oppose people going to the Evil afterlives or the actions of their agents. That Abadar did calculate at the time; he quoted Asmodeus the evidence he'd observed over the prior that Keltham would oppose Asmodeus or Cheliax. Presumably Asmodeus attempted to price that in with respect to Hell, but not with respect to Abaddon or the Abyss. Keltham was at the Worldwound at the time, and most mortals at the Worldwound oppose the Abyss, though not usually through particular opposition to people going to the Abyss, which they mostly don't do as a product of the actions of Chaotic Evil agents with that aim in mind...Abadar thinks this factor will be smaller than the others and can be neglected. 

So time to return to the first calculations with more of His attention, as they're close enough to matter. Some chance of wealth causing more Evil, some higher chance of coherence causing less Evil, predictable expected Evil caused by Asmodeus....

Yes

He says when He's got an estimate He's reasonably confident in. 

"Do you have feelings, emotions, even if they're not human ones?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into entity's trading algorithm)

Khemet thinks some of them are human ones. Curiosity, a tradesman's satisfaction in their work, frustration, delight-at-the-successes-of-a-trade-partner.

Yes.

"Do those feelings value mortals as, things with feelings themselves, and not just agents that trade?"

(mental posture:  inquiry into trade-partner's utilityfunction)

The question doesn't come across very clearly. It's asking whether Abadar would pay for something, but He's not sure what. Would He pay for mortals to be richer in a way that wasn't a trade with them? ....well, He would and then He'd tell a Good god who'd pay Him for it. Would He pay if He was entirely sure no one including the mortals was going to pay Him back, and that the mortals were not going to grow up into anything that could pay Him back, and that the mortals weren't even as a consequence of their newfound prosperity going to trade more? For example, because all mortals are on separate islands with no way to influence the situation of any other mortals? Is that the question? 

....uncertain leaning no.

He's out of questions to ask, and the connection is still live, he can feel it there.

What Keltham does then is not very Iomedan, it's foolish to act spontaneously in a conversation with a god, he hasn't calculated what this question or his feelings while saying it might give away -

"Would you feel sad, if I stopped being your cleric, not just a loss to your utilityfunction expectation, but, sadness, or, an unpleasant emotion?"

Many of the responses haven't been immediate; this one is.

Yes. 

The connection ends, and Keltham folds over himself and cries for a time.

KHEMET I NEED HELP UNDERSTANDING MORTALS