Altarrin works long hours. He spends about half of his day on routine work, which is immensely frustrating but he's behind and he really needs it to not be apparent that Carissa is more interesting and important than the problems down south. He has spy-reports to digest, instructions to send out on where to investigate further and who needs to be detained or recalled or plausibly-deniably given new orders that will keep them out of contact with General Isktar, and also he recently had the benefit of cognitive enhancements and came up with some better ideas for how to intervene closer to the source. Which, in this case, is almost certainly the gods.

He's going to deal with this by minimizing Isktar's interactions with certain people in the newly-conquered territory, by sending him some 'extra staff', including a nobleborn diplomat-type who Altarrin very much does not like or approve of, and who will definitely have negative effects on the morale and cooperativeness of the conquered population, but who should be less susceptible to the obvious forms of manipulation, and will be selective about what he passes on to his superior. It's not a good solution but it should at least disrupt the pattern, and he doesn't think that gods are very good at reacting fast... 

About a candlemark before sundown, he sends a note to Carissa - polite, but brief and rather impersonal - apologizing for missing lunch and promising to join her for a late supper. The note is accompanied by about a quarter-pound of spellsilver, processed by the first iteration of a customized spell that his metallurgy-specialist mage developed. He would like Carissa to assess whether it's pure enough to work with. (It isn't.) 

He's back at the suite just after sundown, not especially trying to hide that he's tired. 

The spellsilver's not pure enough but they do have some spellsilver in this chunk of metal, which is honestly very impressive progress for day 1 of trying. She giggles gleefully but only in the suite where no one is likely to hear her or see her.

Then she starts poking at her Ring of Sustenance. Why are rings supposedly hard. (It's because of the requirement of continuity and symmetry, obviously, but why are those hard?) Is it one of things that's really hard or just that seems hard if you've never tried to do anything interesting.

If Altarrin is tired then she can carry the dinner conversation with some inane opinions about some of the books he left her. She's tense and on edge, but not really leaking it. She's decided fake Carissa wouldn't bring up the fight with Merda and would hope that no one told Altarrin about it.

(He's not so tired that he couldn't conceal it entirely and push through if he felt like it, but it's an excuse to retire to his bedroom early rather than lingering over dessert, and it's not like it's a bad idea to imply that he and Carissa kept each other up late last night.) 

No one has told fake Altarrin about the fight, yet, it's the sort of gossip where it isn't necessarily in the gossiper's interests to be first to inform him. (Ellitrea did tell him, as part of the rather abbreviated Mindspeech update they managed to squeeze in when he summoned her to mindread one of the junior officers recalled from the southern deployment to answer some questions.) He can tell she's not relaxed, but only because he's spent quite a lot of time with her in private and seen her in a wider range of moods; he doubts any of the servants can tell. 

He'll respond to her conversational overtures with the air of someone who's putting in some effort to be charming but not, like, really all that much effort, he's already confident that he's impressed her. 

And then they can head off to the bedroom so he can hear Carissa's side of how today went.  

"I didn't get explicit clarification but I assume it's bad if anyone knows what I did to your compulsions, they're obliged to report that or something?"

"It would have been rather bad if it had come up this morning, especially if there had been no way to warn me so that I could demonstrably have compulsions in place and claim you must have been confused. If it unavoidably comes up in future, it would be much better to imply it was by accident, while testing a spell I had given you permission to cast, and that they were damaged rather than entirely destroyed..." 

They're back in place now, he can confirm. Even Altarrin can't do everything on himself and get it perfect, and going to even one of his trusted mages with no compulsions would risk forcing them to report it to the Emperor, but he was able to go to one of his mages (who he had previously almost-fully filled in on Carissa's secret and Carissa's magic), with self-placed compulsions that were a little...loose...and explaining that it was an unexpected side effect of testing her ability to defend herself against a trap-spell, was enough to leave it plausibly deniable if not entirely believable. 

Sigh. "I already miss not having them, but - they are self-protecting, you should not interfere with them again." At least not while they're still committed to working in the Empire, he doesn't quite think even to himself. "Why do you ask - was there a close call? I assume I would know by now if someone had found out." 

"No. Ketar wanted to know if I'd used magic to affect you, but was satisfied that I hadn't done anything to you that wasn't done in your service and known to you. ...Chelish interrogators would have been more thorough."

"A Thoughtsenser who wanted information to use against me would have been more thorough, too - which is why I want to keep you away from Thoughtsensers who are not loyal to me, or at least - inexperienced and reluctant to hurt people."

Altarrin immediately moved to sit down on the bed, but on reflection he kind of wants to be horizontal. He stretches out. "- I imagine that would be a serious liability, in Cheliax. Preferring not to hurt people, I mean. I think it is...not as serious a sign of hopeless naïveté, here, though certainly one needs to grow out of it in order to accomplish things. But it is less dangerous by itself, just - if someone is trying to plot as well." 

Sigh. "Do you think you have a better handle on the politics, here? Ellitrea said that she sent Merda to explain some things, and that she arranged a way to speak privately. I am curious what you think." And also curious if Merda mentioned her own history with Altarrin, but if not, he's not going to be the one to bring it up. It was a long time ago. 

"She explained some of the same people and complications you spoke of this morning. - from a different angle and with different emphases. She thinks it won't hold up forever but it'd take bad luck for it to fall apart particularly soon. She said I'm competent to lie to people, where that's useful, and she said she's going to learn more and then plan some excursions for me, to show you aren't worried enough to keep a particularly tight grip." Carissa assumes Altarrin is that worried, but that doesn't mean they want it to look that way.

Pause. "She speaks highly of you." Mostly by contrast to everyone else, who Merda had lengthy and detailed condemnations of.

"Huh. I do not think she ever spoke highly of me to my face, I was under the impression she dislikes but grudgingly tolerates me, which seems to be her attitude towards mages and nobles in general. That plan sounds reasonable. Maybe I will invite some people to dinners here as well, to give people a source we control for their rumors about you." 

He yawns. "I should ask you if you have ideas on spellsilver purification but today was very long. I can have the mage-engineer visit you here tomorrow?" 

"I can speak with him tomorrow. If you can use magic to get it halfway, as the sample today, I do know how to do the rest alchemically, though it's a slower process that way."

When he moves, or yawns, or smiles, she tenses very slightly, though she's mostly still projecting being competent and cooperative and intellectually invested in the project and so on. 

He's tired enough not to notice this immediately, but he notices it when, thinking of a question about the alchemical process, he rolls over to prop his head up on his elbow. (He is not quite alert enough to notice whether it's in response to anything that he's doing.) 

"- Is everything all right?" He frowns at her. "You seem - worried about something. I am tired but if we need to plan for a thread you are concerned about, I can manage that tonight." 

She is very slightly baffled by the question, and after a second of thought doesn't hide it. "...I'm in a precarious position, on a planet without afterlives. I have no more specific complaints." Just stupid internal injuries and the memory of Ketar's eyes widening when he saw them.

Ketar did not report those observations to anyone, and so Altarrin has no way of knowing about it and only the haziest guess of the sort of specifics that might be bothering Carissa. 

He blinks. "I know the lack of afterlives bothers you. It bothers me too. But - our position is really not that precarious, not right now. Your cover story is being spread all over the court, as intended, and seems to have gone over without suspicion and so far resulted in only mild curiosity. I think the Empire often fails to take foreigners seriously, we are very - self-satisfied in our position as the most advanced civilization in the world - and this is a weakness but right now in our favor. We underweight Wild Gifts that do not standardize, and to some extent mind-gifts in particular, relative to mage-gift; your transport magic does not overall look more impressive than Gates. Anyway, I am nearly certain that no one will consider it worth their while to try to grab you in the next couple of weeks, if I take the obvious basic precautions that would make it costly. And the gods cannot reach us here quickly or with any fine control, if they can reach us at all. We have time to - figure something out." 

- she nods. What else could she possibly do? A couple weeks, to put herself together and get secure enough to think and get over herself and then be useful and safe and someday immortal. 

And she lies down as far away as she can reasonably be without causing offense, and tries to rest.

Something is bothering Carissa. But there are a hundred things that really should be bothering her - that are bothering Altarrin as well - and it seems unlikely that pushing her any harder on the details is going to help. 

(She doesn't want to touch him - which is fair enough, really, and she won't be the first of the women he's sheltered in his bedchambers who felt that way. It's really not offensive, or surprising, and he has no choice but to touch her in front of spies, if he wants the ruse to hold, but there's no reason at all to touch her in private. 

She would read something into it if he offered to sleep on a camp-bed on the floor, though, and he has a sense it would bother her that he noticed, and even moreso that he offered to accommodate it. Carissa doesn't want to think of herself as someone fragile enough to need that – and she isn't. It's fine. He'll sleep over here, and - at least when nothing has happened recently to give him nightmares - Altarrin doesn't move much in his sleep. He won't come anywhere near touching her during the night.) 

As usual, he sleeps much longer, but there are books for her to read when she wakes, and paper for notes, and the sample spellsilver.

She wakes up. She prepares her spells.

At some point the stupidest and most dangerous mistake you can make is to not think, and that point sneaks up on you fast. She had a five minute window, maybe, when Keltham first arrived, to notice she wanted to kill Asmodeus, before she told Maillol and then everything became - not impossible, but very difficult -

Okay. Current situation: not one of the best she's ever been in. She needs substantial expertise and help to get spellsilver and without spellsilver she's flatly not very capable. Anyone capable of helping her get spellsilver is probably a mage, because these people just don't do mining and metal extraction any other way, and any mage can compulsion her, and they have already done so. The gods, if Altarrin can be trusted at all, oppose things like all the things she might want to do. There aren't afterlives. 

On the bright side, if dying here is sufficiently abrupt she'll just wake up somewhere else, if there's anywhere else, if the universe isn't structured such that you get one more chance and not two. Keltham was sure if the principle held at all it ought to go on holding forever. She - sees the argument, now, but it still feels chillingly plausible that the fundamental underlying structure of everything isn't the one that'd produce that behavior. Even given that she's here. It's - better than nothing but it isn't enough to quiet the part of her that screams when threatened with total destruction. 

Also on the bright side, Altarrin thinks she's useful and let her keep her headband and as long as she has his goodwill she will in fact get spellsilver access and then be able to do anything that doesn't make waves in prophecy, which probably at least includes 'being alive and well-defended'.

She never gave the end of prophecy a lot of thought. It was before her time. And it's obvious now that she thinks about it that it was a blow to Asmodeus, who has less ability to interface with mortals than many of the other gods, and prefers to operate more illegibly to mortals, and prefers mortals to shape themselves in a legible-to-prophecy fashion. Cheliax's existence was good for Asmodeus, of course, but it was a corrective at significant expense so he could win under more adverse circumstances. And of course Cheliax and the Church were not exactly going to concede that anything, ever, had been bad for Asmodeus, so they wouldn't have talked about it.

But in hindsight...without prophecy ended, the gods would have seen swiftly that many possible routes for Keltham destroyed the world, and stopped that. Which is good, if you like the world. Of course, they'd probably have done that by squishing him, which is bad if you like Keltham - and she does, she wouldn't've conceived this entire terrifyingly dangerous plan if she hadn't, she would've just told Otolmens to crush him but she owes him better than that - 

- probably she's not going to get much of anywhere by picking over the last six months. She made awful stupid horrendous mistakes, she did terrible things, she betrayed not just Keltham but more or less everyone who trusted her or believed in her or tried to protect her, she did all that for a lie she could have seen through at any time, she won't even get to channel all that knowledge into something emotionally satisfying and sufficient-as-punishment like selling her soul to right her wrongs, she just has to not do it again here, in this world, which is going to be enough of a problem without bringing all of the problems that she already has. 

Checking that the books weren't faked doesn't change how achingly devoid of context she is. She has exactly what Altarrin wanted her to see, and he's being very generous and reasonable and she cannot trust that at all and she doesn't even want to, trusting it feels like it would be even more terrifying than distrusting it is. And whether Altarrin faked it or not, he's given her the very convincing impression that even if she could run she has nowhere to go. The gods can see her and destroy her for anything she might do in any future they can see, and she's not a well-shaped kind of mortal for that. She could try to become one - she did make useful corrigibility progress for Aspexia, but -

- but the whole problem, right, is that devils don't care that much if they die, that to be corrigible and safe-in-the-eyes-of-the-gods is to not want things that span too much, that take too much to fulfill, that you'd go to surprising lengths for, and her wants span several universes at this point.

And it's not the kind of wanting you can silence. If she had a way to not want immortality she wouldn't use it, that's what wanting immortality means. She can't be small anymore, not really, and Altarrin has argued persuasively she can't live being ambitious without his protection, which he also doesn't promise will be sufficient.

That - the not promising - it's decency, or a sign of Law, and both of those are good signs about him, she should be glad to have his not-promise, but she isn't, because there's still a part of her that believes what it is told and would believe she was safe if he promised AND THEN MAYBE THE INTERNAL SCREAMING WOULD BE A BIT QUIETER.

Current emotional state: also not one of the best she has been in. Thinking about it for five minutes, this is pretty plainly because in the last month Keltham discovered the truth, she spent a very long time being tortured about it, she got pulled out because Asmodia had killed herself, she came back to everything falling apart and hurt people she cared about indiscriminately in case it would help, and then she realized that literally everything she'd done in her life had been awful and insane and incorrect and incoherent, and then she showed up here and was taken prisoner.

If you made a baseline projection about her emotional state from that set of facts, you'd probably assume that her emotional state was pathetic. And you'd be right. She feels - lonely, which makes sense given that she is never again going to see anyone she cares about, but which is ridiculous given the considerable lengths Altarrin has gone to to give her people to advise her and fulfill her requests, plus the time he's himself invested. She feels tense and scared, which isn't making her more able to respond to actual problems and is getting in the way of seducing Altarrin which would obviously be a good idea if she weren't pathetic. She feels - this enormous cloud of doubt and horror, this conviction that all her own reasoning could be just as bad as it was last week and therefore might be worse than nothing - shame and misery and the spectacularly unproductive impulse to rehearse everything in her head as if she was going to get the chance to live it again - she got this brief glimpse of what it was to be ambitious, and now she can't go back on it but she's also not smart enough or capable enough to actually be ambitious, and the one thing that felt reliably true of herself, that she could endure anything, feels in doubt. 

She needs - what does she need. She needs to sell her soul to Hell in penance for her idiocy and worthlessness. She can't do that and also that's a terrible way to make decisions even if it was an available option. She needs Keltham to yell at her until she gets annoyed enough to start thinking about whether he's right or being an idiot. She can...try to do that to herself? But the problem is the enormous cloud of horror prompted by looking at all of her own past decisions and reasoning, and it's hard to get past the question "do I suck enough I just shouldn't do stuff" by listening to arguments you came up with yourself.

She needs to be useful and admired and valued and then she'll stop feeling so full of despair all the time. Well, that should really be attainable. She's in fact very valuable here. 

She needs to be safe. Maybe once she's admired, valued, etc. enough and they have a plan for dealing with the gods.

She needs to not be pathetic. All of this thinking doesn't even feel like a step in the right direction but if she doesn't do it probably she'll continue making mistakes of the magnitude of previous mistakes she has made, and that's really not the kind of mistake-magnitude you survive twice.

She needs...godhood. Immortality. Fifty pounds of spellsilver. And a unicorn familiar who'll love her forever.  At some point needing things is just an exercise in making yourself upset about the actual universe that actually exists where everything that matters happens.

What does she need that she can have. 

To make herself useful, mostly. The present situation is an imposition on Altarrin which he's abiding because she's very valuable; she'll feel less pressure as soon as she starts delivering the things he wants. She'll even be less upset about sex, probably, if it happens because he's pleased with her for her work instead of because she's conveniently right there or because he gets tired of her being flinchy at him. 

(Is that something she's going to aim for? Probably? The current situation doesn't seem very sustainable, not on the scale of years, and if she tries to make it happen then it'll be so much less upsetting if it happens. The obvious lesson of Past Events is that you should never put yourself in a situation where you've convinced yourself people won't have sex with you, because then if they do it'll be all upsetting.)

(Hey, emotional-pain-distorted-model-of-Keltham, is there something you want me to do about having promised to be yours and then ended up with my continuity of consciousness on another planet where you never existed?)

Probably he would say that dath ilan, having figured out the true nature of reality where people frequently find their continuity of consciousness on other planets where their loved ones never existed, carefully phrased everyone's romantic promises via subtle influences in fiction in such a way as to make it clear that on other planets where your loved ones never existed you should do what makes you happy. If he didn't tell her to go jump off the tallest available building. 

Well, that's a plan, of sorts. Make lots of impressive spellsilver things, bask in praise, get on a more stable footing, figure out what she needs to hack lichdom. Conveniently there's a person right here who knows the answer and might be persuaded to share it. 

She shouldn't be able to get tired just a few hours after waking up, not really, not with a Ring of Sustenance. But she's abruptly exhausted, and crawls back into bed because it feels like the alternative would be hurting herself enough to prevent herself from bursting into tears, and Altarrin's going to be way more suspicious of that than of a nap.

In which case she might still be in bed when Altarrin wakes up, before dawn. He sits up and slides out of bed on the side opposite her. Doesn't look at her until he has his shirt on, at which point he - doesn't smile, exactly, but his expression is as unguarded as she's ever seen it. He looks tired and sad and - like someone she can really believe is centuries old, and has spent most of that time in the Empire he wishes were dath ilan instead. 

"I am meeting with the Emperor today," he says. "I can avoid showing you to him in person for weeks, I think, he is very busy - he knows there is a little more to the story than the public version, but not details, and he will trust me with them. I will demonstrate the Glibness pin today, but - as soon as we have enough pure spellsilver for it, I think it would be good to prioritize some real demonstration artifacts - the Emperor will be more willing to prioritize a large and expensive mining project once he sees more of your work, in the meantime we are more limited. The headbands are a good case, of course, but can you do the translation as a magic item as well, that works for others? Either one-time-use or permanent." 

Pause. 

"And the mindreading. I am not going to make it public just yet that you have this ability, but it would be very useful for me, even if it is shorter-duration than Thoughtsensing. At some point I may need to urgently travel for real either to deal with Iftel or with the south, and will not be able to bring a Thoughtsenser with me. ...Also, I want you to work on a magic item for a Teleport. While I am here, I can reach you and then have us five hundred miles away in seconds, if - conditions change rapidly - but I will feel more secure in our contingency-planning if you can do it on your own." 

This earns him a smile back. This is a totally acceptable-to-Carissa way to use her. "A headband I can do in a day with six ounces of spellsilver. Once I learn rings I can do a translation ring, so - two weeks, probably, and twelve ounces. It'll be permanent. Detect Thoughts...four days, ten ounces. I can probably just master a Teleport while I'm working on the other projects, it doesn't actually have to be an item, but I can try to make Boots of Teleport once we've got higher production. That'd be about two pounds of spellsilver. I was also going to make you a Ring of Sustenance, like mine, so you can sleep less. That's not much spellsilver at all but I do have to figure out rings so I don't want to promise I'll have it this week."

All of the timelines have some give in them in case he's a "do it in half that time or suffer" kind of person with project planning, which is a good thing to know about him now.

He's going to get out paper and start sketching a schedule! 

"Headbands are quick, take the least spellsilver, and are honestly more impressive than translation. ...Harder to explain as a Wild Gift, but I imagine the effects of the least powerful headband are less stark, and I could float a theory that it is like Healing, and increases mental sharpness by imitating a stimulant. Anyway, once we have enough spellsilver, I think it makes sense to have you focus on those for a few days, until we have a sample to show the Emperor and the ministers who would be signing off on funding a new mine site." 

He's frowning, completely focused on his paper. "I suspect it will take a few days before we have even six ounces to you in sufficient purity – I think the current sample will end up being half that – but we will probably have small-scale production running by the end of this week. The current limit on volume is how much of the ores we can redirect from existing mining sites without the Emperor signing off on officially funding a new mine site, but Delias - the metallurgy-expert mage I put on this project - thinks we can get three or four pounds per week of spellsilver, that way, so I am inclined to take our time and go through the usual approval channels for the larger project. Delias thought yesterday that he could have a spell ready for secondary processing in two days, which would get us to significantly higher although not perfect purity, but he tends to be optimistic on his estimates so - plan on three days, and then eight to ten ounces of pure spellsilver per day until our new mine begins producing. 

"In the meantime, you said you can purify it from here alchemically. How long would that actually take for this quantity? Does it take twice as long to do twice as much, or is it more efficient to batch it? It might make sense to have you working on that for the next few days, but I need to know what that would trade off against, you also need to study rings...?" 

"I do need to study rings but I'll learn rings faster with spellsilver to try things on. To do it alchemically, I'd need to grind the metal down to dust and then add calcium and wash it in acid through a few stages. I could probably get a few ounces out of it in the next few days."

Nod. "Could you do it faster with a mage's assistance on some of the steps? ...I am not sure this is a good use of your time - it might help Delias figure out his technique faster, if he can observe how you do it, but not by much. Do you think you would get more value from doing this or from reading more books on our magic?"