Carissa keeps not having known him for most of a century, it's very annoying. "If we are speaking in a language they do not comprehend except through wizardry, can they understand us through a scrying sensor?"

"It's possible but difficult to make Tongues function through a scry."

He nods. "Understood."

Anything else to bring up before spell preparation?

Carissa would in fact bring things up if she had any, she has noticed that he would prefer that, but she has absolutely no idea what the City of Brass might have on offer. In stories it contains mostly beautiful slaves and Wishes and genies and cursed jewelry that burns the bearer forever, even on into Hell.

She'll start preparing spells, then?

Yup! And he can surround her with a network of extremely fragile gold mesh, leaving her with enough room to wiggle and prepare her spells, and then go back to research and his briefing.

What a completely absurd powerset. She would previously have asserted that maybe Nex could do that but probably you'd have to be a god. 

The gold mesh is not painful or constraining. She'd really appreciate all this unsolicited considerateness if she wasn't waiting for the other shoe to drop; no Duke is in a generous mood forever. 

To outside observers, Carissa preparing her spells doesn't look like much of anything; occasionally like she's trying to thread a needle or ease a bead down a wire in the air. She looks content and at peace. 

She's not able to manage a fifth-circle Planar Binding once she's done all her required spells for the day, but that's not very surprising as you often struggle to hang spells immediately after reaching a new circle. 

He's glad she got the chance to hang out and enjoy herself! 

Next step: Calling reinforcements. He and his SFX can recreate the circle.

It has occurred to Carissa to wonder whether, seeing as this is the manner in which she presumably somehow accidentally summoned the Duke, she could send him home by concentrating for one minute. It's her last chance, if so; after this there'll be several of them around, and she could only get one before being noticed and disabled. 

She would then be stranded in the Elemental Plane of Fire. She does not try it. 

She draws the circle.

And Lucan reappears! He's wearing an extremely massive backpack and some kind of heavy set of straps from which mysterious objects dangle over his uniform, all of it precisely matching his monochromatic color scheme.

"All is as you desired, my lord," says Lucan, after a brief hesitation. "The four you requested stand by to be summoned."

(He briefly hesitates because Sikandros has drawn on the wall behind Carissa, in Chinese characters designed to look like purely artistic and decorative etching, something that roughly translates to "We might be watched - verbal translation maybe, textual unlikely, Avistani certainly.")

And Sikandros hands Carissa the deal she's supposed to read, which says that she has called him here to loyally serve Sikandros provided it is the uncompelled will of Lucan for the next hundred and one years, in exchange for this service and for his standard pay.

Why would you include 'provided it is his uncompelled will' in a contract, what kind of contract even is that - maybe it's a security measure of some kind so that the compact is broken if he's Dominated? And the Duke's just very sure that this one won't be bought? Or can't? You can't bribe devils to betray Asmodeus; maybe it's like that. But Asmodeus still wouldn't have a 'provided it is your uncompelled will' clause in his contracts, it undermines the entire point. 

What if the people who conquer Cheliax are insane and will do insane people things and run the country into the ground.

She reads the deal.

(It's to stop Carissa from banishing him with the contract incomplete, actually.)

And then it is time to summon the rest of them. Pala Lehali, tall and bright with golden eyes and translucent, gilded wings; the sword at her side is long and her eyes are sharp and she's wearing something that resembles 16th-century English men's clothing in shades of black and gold, and every step she takes is - confident and firm and inspiring, and she gives a confident nod to Carissa when summoned, like she's an equal. Mendax looks vaguely like artistic depictions of Mephistopheles, except more square-faced; red-skinned with spiky wings and a neat chin beard and elaborate plates of black armor that fails to cover his head, amused by every event that occurs, with a viciously curved saber by his side. d'Acier's red and gold armor (vaguely Roman in design) is made even more sinister by the black designs etched onto it; her angelic wings are armored, too, looking almost like plates of bone, and everything she does seems - sharp, deliberate, unstoppable. Lorcain looks vaguely elven, barring the feathered wings and the elongated canines and the extra digit on the fingers of each of his hands; his moves are confident and predatory, like he might leap on any flinch. 

All of them have wings, all of them have swords, all of them have massive backpacks, and all of them take the knee before Sikandros.

Since her life may depend on it, Carissa is trying to rapidly form impressions of the Duke's trusted followers. Lucan is the one he contacted first, perhaps the most trusted but possibly just the one who could be expected to promptly answer a summons and to be able to fetch the others -- or possibly for his movements to be undetected, if the Duke fears spies even in the seat of his power in some secret other dimension. 

Lehali seems like someone who probably wouldn't hurt you for fun, at least not in front of other people, as it'd get in the way of her vague air of paladin-ness.  Mendax looks like someone who absolutely would hurt you for fun and consider it entirely your own fault if you managed to die of it. The best strategy there is generally to be extremely not-fun to hurt, because you are obedient and boring and don't cry or beg at all. d'Acier seems like someone who'd be annoyed that her time had to be wasted on torturing you and would like Mendax to be less easily bored with his victims so she could just delegate all the tedious torturing to him. Lorcain seems like someone who will notice if you are afraid of him, and enjoy it, which sits inconveniently with trying to be as obedient and boring as possible so Mendax doesn't want to bother with her; people who want you to be afraid of them will sometimes decide if you are being obedient and boring you clearly aren't scared enough. 

He probably won't kill her about it, though. Dead people aren't scared at all. 

When she's summoned them all she does not rise from drawing the last circle, and remains there, still and quiet, in case there is any informative interaction between them and Duke Sikandros for her to witness. 

"Rise," says Sikandros. "Carissa. Lucan, Pala Lehali, Mendax, d'Acier, Lorcain..."

Brief introductions (all of them are polite and menacing - Lucan polite and stiffly formal while definitely looking like he'd like to torture Carissa, Lehali friendly, which is menacing if you're from Cheliax, Mendax rather distracted and d'Acier as if he has things she'd rather do, and Lorcain brief and informal) and then it's time for them to get to work! Lehali and Lorcain will begin on the inside, carving up the large body of the ship into multiple rooms (all of which rooms' walls, Carissa probably will not notice, have lead cores) while Mendax and d'Acier will drop off their backpacks, step next to the wall, begin creating a shell of a wall around them, and then, then pass out through the hull of the ship into the fire outside, "closing" the bubble behind them as they go, while Lucan adds more of the golden mesh everywhere people don't need to be.

Lucan also hands Sikandros a small plastic device resembling the tablet he gave her, which Sikandros will read, chuckling softly.

(It consists of the bullet points from the team's research into the libraries they studied, including a list of all other libraries mentioned in any of the books there, for the next demon summoning, the best descriptions of the gods that could be produced by assigning each god one angel with the complete text of all the libraries and warnings that the Chelish ones are infernal propaganda and a search function, and a list of all the research they've made on arcane magic - nobody's gotten it to work yet though some people insist they feel something. The text is in a language nobody in Avistan speaks and also very difficult to make out with ordinary human visual acuity, since it's two different shades of looks-like-black-with-normal-human-eyesight.)

Duke Sikandros, it seems increasingly clear, doesn't particularly like having people hurt in front of him, which is why for all the air of menace there's yet to be any actual violence. In a human, you'd suspect squeamishness, but she's pretty sure outsiders don't have squeamishness. But she can't hang around in Duke Sikandros's company like a clingy toddler forever, and for conquering a country he would not have brought along those of his staff with the same preference. 

Carissa's assessment is that she's safe at least while they're planning their adventure to the City of Brass; they have a mission, it's time-sensitive, they're not going to waste time making a point if she is basically cooperative. After that, she is definitely not safe. There's some obvious things - be competent and useful, don't be annoying, try to walk the tightrope of scared-enough-you-don't-need-to-prove-you're-scary and obviously-going-to-be-boring-when-tortured, but you don't get safety out of that. Maaaaaybe it's worth provoking someone while she's still needed to read a Plane Shift scroll, just to get a better sense of them and to make sure that any fun and exciting experiments with humans happen while they have to keep her basically intact. 

Once they get to Absalom...probably things will get a lot worse once they get to Absalom, actually. Right now no effort need be expended to keep Carissa from escaping; in Absalom, obviously, she could teleport to Egorian and warn them of the coming invasion, or if she can't hang a Teleport still escape with a Dimension Door. She isn't actually sure if she will try to do that, but they ought to expect her to, and it's not easy to hold a wizard securely.

And then there's the third favor. She thinks the Duke is quite serious about the favors, in his own way, and understands himself to have rights to only what he bargained for. ...and to all of Cheliax because they were rude to him. 

This is fine. 

"Then the next step, Carissa Sevar," says Sikandros, "is testing. Lucan?"

He tilts a head towards the Duke.

"Our objective is to determine what materials block Detect Thoughts." Which his flunkiest have, in fact, tracked down a description of. "Your duty is to be subjected to the spell and think nothing - indelicate."

"As you command."

"Carissa, if you are ready? We will change materials every four seconds; your duty is to maintain the spell while saying 'yes' and 'no' to materials tests."

"Ready."

How does her spell feel about steel the thickness of a tenth of an inch, a thin layer of lead, a thin layer of lead that is in fact part of someone's body and not actual lead, steel that looks like it's thick enough but is secretly hollow, very dense silk, gold, osmium, iridium...

(Lehali is in the room, incidentally, quietly keeping an eye on Carissa, since she has a higher Sense Motive than the Duke for some purposes.)

Carissa's goal appears to be cooperatively reporting experimental results and gleaning as much as she possibly can from reading Lucan's mind, and also everyone else's mind if they're standing in range and not encased in metal.

(She's not going to fake the results. Too easy to get caught, and wildly dangerous for very limited benefit.)

A thin sheet of steel isn't enough. Lead is, including if it's part of someone's body. Steel that's secretly hollow is not. Very dense silk is not. Gold is. Osmium is. Iridium is.

As it happens, everyone else is careful not to stay in a cone-shaped emanation with Lucan! (Lucan is Int 13 and, on the one pause where they get enough materials that don't work for her to read his surface thoughts, thinking song lyrics in a language she doesn't know.)

How thin can they make osmium and still have it block it?

About an eighth of a millimeter; thinner than that and she can get through it again. 

She's noticing that some of these clearly are meant to look identical from her perspective, presumably to catch her cheating, if she were cheating. She's absolutely not going to cheat. If she does decide to get herself into trouble before she's easily disposed of she'll do something totally harmless and just annoying, not something that makes her obviously a liability.

Then all the angels can integrate osmium into their uniforms and/or skulls!

And, once they've confirmed that the skulls work,

"Carissa," he says calmly, "I have a choice to offer you. I can make you an osmium helmet, an osmium wig, harmlessly transform part of your skull into osmium, or leave you on the ship whenever we are dealing with someone who might read your mind. The choice is yours."

She doesn't see the trap, though there has to be one. No one makes an offer like that without some tremendously clever joke in mind. 

"If it will do me no harm, my lord, having my skull made of that metal seems like it would be hardest for any adversary to reverse, and least obvious." How does he know it won't harm her. It seems like the kind of thing that would at minimum hurt very badly, not that she's going to raise that as an objection.

Because he took advantage of being immortal to get a medical degree and people want weirder things really often.

"Only a portion," he says, "but enough to shield you." And he will put one finger to her forehead and does the transformation.

(She feels slightly tingly very briefly.)