Keltham's face doesn't change expression.  "If I destroy Cheliax, some people go to Hell today, fewer people go to Hell later, my later dealings with Asmodeus are more fraught, and I'd need to delay to do something about the Worldwound once Cheliax can't help fight it and the Worldwound isn't needed to occupy Cheliax.  I've already had this argument with Carissa Sevar and she's smarter than you and has more complete information."

"My function for whether it's worth destroying Cheliax to destroy some number of unrecorded children there, given that I have a second number of untraceable children outside it, is a complicated one.  Tell me those two numbers straight.  Tell me the complete details on what Abrogail Thrune has done, in case I can think of a solution not apparent to the devils containing this negotiating-information."

Then the devil will turn to Abrogail, and ask these numbers.

She, herself does not know the exact numbers; unreported is unreported.  Based on - the broad orders she gave, the resources she assigned - there should be around five times as many children within Cheliax as without; and the fourth part of Keltham's 144 children will have gone unrecorded.  She - did say that there should be exactly 144 at the end, because tropes and irony, so - the officers that she designated to do this, should be able to reconstruct the exact numbers inside and outside Cheliax, if asked - probably - though there were three Modify Memory scrolls that she designated to be used, there.

This the devil will report, this time adding that Abrogail Thrune II did not think thoughts contrary to these, and that she believed what she thought was true.

His expression does flicker, barely, when it's said that he was to be given exactly 144 children.

"I'd speak to Abrogail Thrune directly, with her words made meaningful by your prior assurance that you'll speak out if her thoughts contradict her spoken words.  Perhaps she'll have something unforeseen to say that implies I should not destroy Cheliax."

"There is a thresholded binary outcome here and it is not presently leaning favorable to you; you should seek to expose me to complicated unknowns that stand a chance of changing that outcome, even if you cannot foresee their exact impacts, so long as they do not seem net negative in the presence of other unknown unknowns that might also save you.  If that goes against the grain of a devil who seeks predictable paths, we may negotiate whether you could bind a superior devil to the secrecy and information-nonuse conditions, and ask them for authorization; this is not the right time for the narrowly-thinking way that the lesser ranks of Hell deal with uncertainty."

And does Abrogail Thrune, with this assurance made, have anything to say for herself?

If she knew words to dissuade this Keltham from this path, she would have thought them at the devil already!  There are no brilliant strategems in her, that might outface this Keltham. Only horror and sickness in her that she cannot recall ever having felt, for never in her entire life has her future looked this dark.

Abrogail Thrune considers, as very few other people in Cheliax would even think to consider, telling Keltham that she's sorry; Abrogail has met more foreigners than the average Chelish citizen.  But she does not foresee it ending well for her, it wasn't like she injured Keltham by accident and regrets the harm to him, as might lead one non-Asmodean to forgive another.  She sincerely regrets the harm to herself, to her interests, maybe even to Cheliax; her feelings toward Keltham are poisonous hate and horror.

She considers begging, groveling - it wouldn't help, is the thing, even if he wants to see it, he wants to see it and then he wants to see her anguish as Cheliax is destroyed, in those cases.  Or should she try it, even if she doesn't expect it to work, because it's not sure?  Is that the message he was giving her, when he spoke it to a devil before her?  If so, she will do it, because - people often want vindication, the proof of their triumph and rightness and superiority, and it's worth gambling on the tiny chance he'd be satisfied -

"If you want me to beg, grovel, I will, and mean it, the only reason I'm not already is that I'm not sure what you want and I don't want to annoy you instead," Abrogail says.  Her face shows the real horror, her voice bears the anguish that's there.  It's not a familiar mode of thought, to her, but she does know what torturers look for in a victim.

"Why did you do that?  The actual cause and reason."

"A miserable, foolish attempt at trope-manipulation.  I had thought it would make the story a tragedy from a dath ilani perspective, irrevocably and whatever else happened, so that we would not need to fear - some twist leading to what the tropes would call the story's happy ending."

"And that was, as best you can recall at this intelligence level, the actual first thought you had about it?  No thoughts about how it would be amusing to give me my 144 children in a way I didn't want, and then you thought of the trope-manipulation reason afterwards?  I demand that you stop and think about it, and then tell me that you actually tried to recall the memory."

She does as he bids, but when she closes her eyes and recalls - it is the reason, she thinks.  "It - is the reason I did it that way, the only reason I scattered children where I could not find them - I did think, before then, that your children would be good for Cheliax."

"No thoughts about how it would be funny, even, to make it exactly 144?  You will stop and think and try to remember before you answer; you will tell me that you've done so, that the devil speak forth if you lie."

And she does, and says, "I knew it for a cruel irony, but it was the tropes I had in mind, for that irony, not you.  I don't think - I ever imagined your chagrin, on learning of it, as I'd have done if," it had been about you, the foolish boy, "I'd been amusing myself to think of your reaction.  The thought I had about you was about dath ilan's tragic ending, where you turned to Evil, and rose high in Cheliax, and how you'd embrace our children then as your own."

"If anyone had bothered to ask me about the tropes you were trying to manipulate, I would have warned them that a dath ilani tragedy isn't about the triumph of Evil over Good.  It's about the triumph of erroneous reasoning and ill-coordination over everyone."

"Why didn't you query Maillol?  How did Rugatonn let this happen?"

"Neither of us thought of it."

"Are there any questions I should be asking that would illuminate more of the causality here?  Close your eyes and think before you speak, then tell me that you sincerely tried to do so."

She thinks as she is bidden.

"Why Snack Service didn't stop us from doing that.  It stopped other mistakes that would've injured your interests."

Keltham doesn't say anything to that; perhaps it's a question that somebody at INT 29 would have considered long since, if at WIS 27 they dared to think of it at all, thought their own thoughts controlled sufficiently for it.

"Describe the entire procedure used to generate my children in as much detail as you remember.  Maybe there's some security flaw in your randomization, transparent to me but not to you.  I am still trying to think of a way out of this."

She does, in every last bit of possibly-relevant detail she can remember, all of it, all of it.

"You evoked your disaster too well, Abrogail Thrune.  I have no marginal hopes left; the matter is simple enough that I would have seen it already if I was to see it at all."

"Is there anything else you'd say to me before I destroy Cheliax?"

"Please don't?" she says, and permits her voice to crack, as is real.  "I beg you?"

There are tears that she lets come to her eyes, as she hasn't allowed forth since she wept that earlier time in Hell, just in case it's enough to satisfy Keltham just in case just in case -

"Can you say without the devil contradicting you that you care about one single person there who's about to die, rather than the effects on yourself if they do?  Call it curiosity."

"No single person there, but the country of Cheliax - is my own child."