" - to be clear, I am not sure that the same approaches would work on having been tortured by your bosses because you are in Cheliax."

"I don't really see how having been raped by an Osirian royal who owns you is any different."

"- that's fair. I think the thing I mean to say is that things are very specific. Some things that look very bad from the outside don't hurt too much, and some things that look like nothing, next to other things you've been through, can be too much. I know lots of specific things that happen to girls in this palace. I don't know much about Cheliax. I can tell you the things I know, but they might not work for you."

Carissa has obtained a dress and is scrubbing blood off her hands in one of the fancy mosaic basins. "Yeah, I'm not going to try offering lemon water."

"It's not about the lemon water, it's about - little decisions, that you get to make, that go the way you expect. Do you want this, or that? And you get the one you want. Consistently. It helps people reorient. It has to be something that couldn't possibly be a test or a game or have a right answer. If you weren't in a hurry I'd do it with the clothes, too. Do you want the blue dress, or the pink? Do you want to lace it up, or do you want me to do it? Do you want me to do your hair?"

"...I think if you hurt someone enough that comes across as a game no matter what the question is."

"Well, if you hurt someone then you certainly shouldn't be their recovery person! That should be someone who doesn't have power over them, who they feel safe around, who doesn't report to you, and who is going to be willing to stand up to you and tell you to lay off if you're about to damage them further. I don't have the authority to tell your ride to Keltham that you're ready to go, but I do have the authority to say that you aren't, yet, if it seemed like actually going to Keltham was a terrible idea that was going to damage everyone involved and maybe lead to an Inner Sea war."

"My not going to Keltham is a terrible idea that might spark an Inner Sea war."

"You don't have to convince me, I'm not going to stand in your way. But if you were curled up in a ball crying then I'd tell your ride I wasn't releasing you yet. Not because I want an Inner Sea war, mind, I really really don't, but because people who have hurt themselves into weird twisted pretzels that can go up in flames at the first spark start more Inner Sea wars than people who haven't."

Carissa's hands are clean; she's dressed. She notices herself being slightly sad about this fact and decides it's fine to stay thirty more seconds. "What would you do for someone who was - betrayed, by someone they loved and trusted, and was really, really, really twisted into a pretzel about it?"

"You can't follow a script, for that. You just have to let them steer, and be there, and listen, and hurt with them, and be angry with them, and be sad with them, and make sure they're not alone."

"Right. 

Thanks. That was interesting. I don't suppose you want to come help do injured-people-repair in Keltham's secret lair."

"What's the pay like."

"You know, I should really be getting used to that by now. I will get back to you about the pay. Where's my ride." 

"Outside the Dome, I think."

She opens the door.

Then if someone will show her the way, Carissa will depart. At a bit of a run. 

Indeed, he's not getting paid the nearly infinite amount required for him to go inside the Black Dome, and be unable to cast spells for the several minutes it might take him to figure that out.

He's just hanging around right outside the Black Dome until Sevar shows up.  Idly playing with some spellsilver, it having become much cheaper nowadays.  Seeing if he can figure out what it would take to put together an assembly line for +2 Intelligence headbands, as Sevar is reputed to have personally invented.  (Keltham says he mostly thinks she did, but doesn't know for sure because of the Conspiracy; it might've been somebody else, to impress him more, to make up for other demands on Sevar's time.)

She steps out of the Black Dome in an Osirian-style beaded blue dress, an illusion making her look like a normal Osirian woman leaving the Dome for normal Osirian reasons, a +2 Splendour headband on her head. 

Illusions.  Heh.

"Good afternoon.  I am Keltham's employee.  I am to Mind Blank you immediately, will you not resist?"

The illusions aren't to fool him.

" - understood. I won't resist."

He flicks an enormous powerful day-duration abjuration loose at her, which promptly settles in.

He didn't use a scroll or item; so this person must be at least an eighth-circle wizard, or maybe a priest with an unusual domain.

Incidentally, Carissa's Arcane Sight isn't seeing anything magical about him.

"Ri-Dul," he says.  "Eighth-circle necromancer.  Keltham says you are supposedly recently fourth-circle and supposedly quite good at Spellcraft for that; though he does not know, now, what was truth and what was lie, in that, save that Ione thought it probably true."

Are they making small talk? Why are they making small talk. Is he professionally interested in whether she's actually good at magic or whether that was made up to impress Keltham? Carissa's - focus of thought, the set of people she's paying even the slightest bit of attention to - has been narrowing and narrowing, this morning, and now it's just Keltham, and it's hard to think of anything else. 

Her deeply unreasonable Splendour of course means she's answering despite this, with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I hit fourth shortly after meeting Keltham, and fifth this morning. I haven't met anyone better than me at Spellcraft, but Cheliax, you know, has a dearth of high-level wizards due to our defection problem." It was immediately obvious once she thought about it that that was what explained the differential between fourth and fifth-circle scarcity. 

"Fifth, at your age?  My my.  Perhaps we shall have somewhat to discuss once we are settled in."

"Well, do you want to take in the sights of Sothis, make some purchases, with your newfound freedom, or shall I conduct you straightwise to Keltham's lair?  Keltham has not, in fact, extended any promises that you will be allowed to leave anytime soon after entering.  Its location is terribly secret, you see."

" ...of course he's not going to let me leave. No reasonable nation-state at this stage of this game, having gotten hold of me, would let me leave, and I'm pretty sure Osirion's only doing it because they can't afford to piss him off when he's their defense against Cheliax, and because I told them very tearfully that I was scared Keltham was going to scare Asmodeus into destroying the world. I don't have shopping to do. I'm not free. Let's please go."

"I do expect Keltham would let you fly free if you asked now, being still that sort of person.  Though without me to Mind Blank you, you'd obviously be kidnapped shortly after..."

"Well, let's be along then.  Prepare for Teleport."  He pokes her shoulder.