And then she'll trot back, with the Queen with her.

Abrogail Thrune looks distantly bored, as is a common appearance with her.

"If it's your will, your Majesty, tell him he can't Maledict my entire family to Abaddon - that's not Asmodean!"

"I'm Cheliax's Crown, not its Church, my beauty.  You'd want to make that demand of Aspexia Rugatonn, and she's a deal harder to seduce."  Abrogail chuckles, briefly.

" - he asked, your Majesty, if you'd permit me to - spend an evening with him -"

"In exchange for not Maledicting your family to Abaddon?"

The Mayor kneels, formality does not call for it here but he does it voluntarily.  "In exchange for not Maledicting two of them, of her choice.  Obviously I'd offer no such compact if it did not please your great Majesty, to whom I mean no disrespect; your overt manner this day was that you meant this thing to suffer.  Be that not your true plan, I offer no dissent.  She has offered me insult, treason, and heresy, on the surface of things; this, on the surface of things, would be my reply."

"Ah, yes.  She's offered me insult, treason, and heresy too.  One of her more attractive features when it came to bedding her, really."

"You have my leave to spend a night with this one, beauty mine.  Your choice, of course."

"Is it - he said - 'your manner was that you meant this thing to suffer'-"

"You look a little tired, my dear.  Shall we dance, and then perhaps close out your part of this evening, and send you to my bedchambers to await me?  I'll be along after I've had the time to hear out a few reports, and you look like you could use a rest before the night's rigors."

"As you wish, your Majesty."

She'll firmly pull Carissa off to the ballroom floor, and have a Security unobtrusively tap Carissa with Cat's Grace before she tries to dance.  "You're drunk and tired and having some trouble playing your part consistently even with glibness up," Abrogail murmurs to her by Message.  "That wasn't nearly a voice of horrified realization and resignation."

"I don't understand why you want to draw it out, your Majesty. I found who I want, what's the wait?"

"We need to teach you how to play with your food properly.  I suppose teaching you how to eat at all ought to come first, and maybe try when you're less of an adorable ball of exhaustion."

"Be it clear, I did instruct you to relax and have some fun, but, don't try any social maneuvers while drunk when you're not so instructed, Carissa.  I can choose myself to forgive your sloppiness, it doesn't mean that you weren't sloppy."

"I understand, your Majesty. I am not, actually, under the impression I know this game well enough to not immediately make a mess of it, if I were trying to play for real. ....do you actually want me to learn. In your place I'd be pleased about having some insurance against troublesome Carissae."

There's a lot of things Abrogail Thrune could say here, would've said here, in some less hazardous neighboring universe in which there weren't tropes pressing down about her, where she had nothing to fear but causality.  She never wanted to die of old age on her throne, for that would mean she'd played her game too conservatively and lost out on most of the possible fun.

"I think I don't want you to learn now because you don't have time," she settles on.

"I've said what was needful, now put those thoughts aside and dance with me.  Savor the moment, the impending reveal, the last moments of the game before it ends.  Your enemies think all is going well for them, and that was always your plan, and their pride goes before this fall."

"As you command, your Majesty." 

"I won't hurry too fast about those reports, so you've the time to close your eyes for a nap after this, if not a sleep.  And when the night's second part begins, I'll show you how to take apart a man to his core, if you mean to put him back together afterwards having learned his lesson and mostly intact.  And do a few other things, too, of course.  Are you the sort who'll enjoy him watching you in pleasure while he suffers?"

"I have no idea, your Majesty. Maybe. He did ask for a night with me, and I wouldn't want to not deliver what was promised."

"We'll see how it goes."

"What did you think of Cheliax's nobility?  I'm not going to be surprised or insulted if they fell short of your standards."

"They - aren't aspiring to my standards? The thing they're aspiring to seems messy, to me, and incoherent, but - I assume getting people to embrace Lawful Evil as part of their identities and motivations at all is hard enough, and it's too hard for some reason to make them embrace some version of it which is less petty and performative?"

"Petty and performative.  Yes.  There's a possible whole person who acts like the Mayor of Senara acts, out of a kind of pride and grandeur in being the worst person possible, more Neutral Evil than Lawful Evil, but whole.  There's a version of him who makes a threat like that because he takes an artistic pride in destroying somebody as absolutely as possible.  He's neither of those people, though, just grabbing at any thought of Evil that passes in his mind, the moment it passes his mind, even if the thoughts don't fit together."

"I won't say that the state of the nobility isn't my fault, or even that it wasn't my choice, but it was my choice out of a serve-yourself shit buffet.  With the triumph of Nidal's conquest, the external threat from Osirion, our internal explosion of spellsilver, I have the political momentum now to do some things I couldn't before.  Like issuing them with Intelligence headbands, and forcing them to actually wear the cursed things, if they can't otherwise keep up with changing times.  Wisdom would be better yet, but I dare not."

"...that's what I told the Mayor, actually, that he wasn't Evil either in service of Asmodeus or himself, that it was pathetic. No one in Hell is trying to prove how Evil they are. I think you can't risk Wisdom headbands yet but maybe once I have something to offer them that isn't heresy and that people don't notice is made of sand if they think about it too hard."