"Asmodeus has granted all of them His second circle, which is as much and more than any sane person would have hoped for.  All who've reached the second circle of wizardry are now training in mystic theurgy beside."

Which is another thing that Aspexia would laugh about maniacally under better circumstances.  Who would have thought that Intelligence, properly trained, could become a Wisdom bonus, to make for Asmodeus a cadre of wizard-priests?  Her eventual successor may have power enough to go toe-to-toe with Nefreti Clepati without two eighth-circles backing her up about it.

"But," Aspexia continues, "if twenty second-circles, of whom fourteen are training as bare-apprentice mystic theurges, are a military key to victory - the path is hidden from my sight."  Even if ALL TWENTY OF THEM would choose Hell over Elysium.

"You're almost smiling."

"You would almost smile too, in my position.  I've gotten them started on intrigues and backstabbing each other for pride of position, the stronger bending the weaker to their uses, and they are scrupulous about never doing so in a way that inhibits their group productivity."  Aspexia Rugatonn doesn't know why all this teaching matters, but it's so satisfying that she's not doing much questioning of Snack Service's claim that it does.

"Any good news from Korva Tallandria, that wasn't so good it had to be kept from you?"

Abrogail now deeply regrets having ever entangled herself with that woman, as now chains Abrogail to her management.  Abrogail had meant Korva to run the program for injuring Keltham with his asked-but-unwanted 144 children, but Korva's desperately-concealed revulsion at the thought was such that Abrogail doubted the tropes of forcing Korva to do what had been meant as a gift to her of satisfying revenge...

And as later attempts soon proved, Korva Tallandria seemed to be made desperately unhappy - Korva didn't voice it, of course, but it was unconcealable in her thoughts - by almost any possible task that Abrogail presented for her consideration. 

Abrogail's actual conclusion is that Korva is the walking emotional disaster that Keltham thought she was, that he in fact correctly identified her trope; and that Korva will remain an emotional disaster until Keltham somehow wins her back over, and fucks it out of her or beats it out of her or whatever he is supposed to do.

"Tallandria guesses that at her present rate of progress on diamond chemistry, she might in the best case be able to produce her first specks of diamond dust in another month or two, and greatly scale the process around a month after," Abrogail answers.  Every task Abrogail suggested had just made the jilted trope-girl tie herself into a tighter knot of unhappiness and self-hate, until finally Abrogail had left Korva to her own choice of tasks; and that had been what she'd picked, even before the news out of the City of Brass.  "Tallandria's alchemical investigation says that diamond is primarily a crystal of Element-6, the key ingredient of coal, possibly adulterated with some further element or quality that her spectroscopes can't detect yet.  If there is no hidden ingredient to it, she expects that the right use of heat and pressure should be able to form purified Element-6 into diamond, given that it seems to form naturally in the ground to be mined and what Keltham said of such 'geological' processes; but she guesses the synthesis results will come out as diamond dust and forming large pure crystals will prove much harder."

"Tallandria is skeptical of Keltham's maybe-capability to mate smaller diamonds into large ones.  She guesses that without knowing the exact crystal structure, Keltham shouldn't be able to Prestidigitation-alchemize two diamonds into one larger diamond, no matter how cleanly-cut their matched surfaces or if he's able to work within a vacuum. It didn't happen naturally when Tallandria tried it, nor when she attempted obvious blind manipulations of 'potential energy surfaces'.  Tallandria remembers, and transcripts agree, that Keltham at INT 18 said he couldn't think of any simple way to find crystal structures without advanced technology out of Civilization, specifically generators for ultra-tiny light particles and very fine detectors for those."

Aspexia doesn't bother to comment anything along the lines of 'Unlimited diamond dust for Permanencies seems enough to win this whole war', whether Cheliax obtained it first or Osirion did; this is obvious to both of them, along with the fact that they shouldn't take a few extra months to wait.

"It seems some evidence against the image of Keltham's apparent doings reported by Hell out of the City of Brass, I suppose, and the image of his purchase orders for smaller diamonds in Golarion.  I'm not Asmodia to say how much evidence in numbers."

"It's the sort of thing that a smarter Keltham would enjoy bluffing us about; that seems more than probable.  The probability that he could actually do it - Tallandria thought she'd have put 5% on it, if the question hadn't immediately made her think it more probable."

"I do presume you've instructed Tallandria that if she does have some unexpected breakthrough, she is to conceal it from you and report it first through Church channels?"

"Naturally," Abrogail says with considerable bitterness, all carried by the word itself rather than any slippage of tone.

"And the status of the rest of Project Lawful?"

"Doing no better or worse than I expected.  No great breakthroughs in chemistry since last you asked; no new information of Keltham's stolen from the Scientific Revolution beyond what we've spied already."

"Meritxell, Yaisa, and Gregoria, are all being maintained in a state that should fall well short of Keltham needing to rescue them.  Tallandria seems unalterably miserable; I've had her research section moved somewhere that Keltham seizing her wouldn't do as much damage."

"Maillol is not recovered, and will probably not recover fully, but I'm keeping him in best condition to be held as negotiating-material against Sevar, whom I read as possibly caring about him.  Likewise those Security besides Olegario who were most loyal to her; and that useless fool whom Sevar rescued from my dungeons.  We are not instructed by our Lord to hold no hostages against Sevar; and she earlier stated that the Lawful Evil form of 'decision-theory' should concede it no threat if you're the sort of person who'd enjoy wrecking somebody that Sevar cared about, but might refrain from doing so if paid."

"Careful.  That seems perilously close to stating a hopeful plan aloud; in fact I would say that you've gone and said it."

Abrogail's lips press together thinly, but she makes no reply to this.  "Any news of Pilar Pineda that I'm permitted to know about, since that, too, is now apparently being routed through your offices?  It can be good news so long as it's sufficiently enigmatic and confusing, remember."

"I expect many of the reports I'm receiving are false.  Either that, or Pineda has gotten herself into an amount of salacious trouble that I would have sincerely thought required time dilation."

"It's probably that second one."

"If they're all true, Pineda has gotten herself into way more salacious trouble than I expected even taking into account that she's a trope-girl."

"I'm sure people end up saying that in 'eroLARPs' all the time.  Are there any new major political implications of Pineda's deeds, that I should know in order to do my job as Queen?"

"Pineda was spotted in Wanshou.  In other news, the elder kraken who ruled that land has perished, and Wanshou's new government has declared themselves Lawful Evil now, with a state flag depicting a great city amid flames.  Quite the remarkable decision for a land claimed for the last century by Chaotic Evil, though they declare themselves strictly independent of Cheliax if not Hell."

The words are no lie, but they are very finely sliced.  It's the sort of thing that the Queen genuinely needs to know about, that Wanshou has been claimed in the name of Hell; that's going to affect her affairs of state.

Aspexia wants to try and see if it's possible to keep from Abrogail the news that Pilar's involvement was merely her self-prophesied kidnapping, in a scandal leading to the downfall of half of the Wanshou government's ministers...

...almost immediately after those ministers had been appointed...

...by Carissa Sevar.  Who had come to Wanshou's small mortal government amid their ruined capital Numijaan, presenting herself in Archmagi's Robes, with IOUN stones orbiting her head; claiming that she in single combat slew their former ruler Zhanagorr; whose vast eyeball, scorched and ruined, she cast down before them as a proof; and proclaiming that She now claimed their country in the name of Hell, to be ruled by and for Her cult; and that any within Wanshou who reached at least Neutral Evil from Chaotic Evil, and did Her service in life and called Her name in death, would have their souls claimed by Her.  Exactly one former governing-slave of Zhanagorr did challenge Sevar, but he died upon the spot and without Sevar having turned her head in his direction.

Sevar worked upon a gate of ruined Numijaan that had faced Zhanagorr's waters, setting in place prepared ornaments but enchanting the whole; a gate, she said, to sear the exact words of her compact with Asmodeus onto the skin of any who walked through; and none could join her government or lead in her cult who had not walked through.

Sevar then departed without fanfare, her appearance having lasted less than an hour.

'If Teleports were free', as the saying goes, quite a lot of Lawful Evil people would already be in Wanshou, Rugatonn doesn't doubt.  As it stands, an impressive number of Lawful Evil indivduals who can afford Teleports have appeared in Wanshou; and some of those were appointed by Sevar to be its new government answerable to herself as sovereign, in the name of Hell.

...Only half of those ministers, however, had political careers that survived Pilar Pineda's advent shortly after: posing as a Sevarist, young, beautiful, seemingly innocent, exuding timid submissiveness and frightened sexuality.  Witnesses interviewed by a Church agent afterward reported a level of seductive appeal more often associated with literal succubi than with Splendour 21.

That Pilar was promptly kidnapped and abused by some of the new government leaders is not what caused the downfall of the ministers responsible - Wanshou's new government is Evil.  Rather, apparently, those ministers were inept kidnappers and got in each other's way rather than sharing, which proved them to be bad at coordination and operations work.  Pilar, it is said, revealed her true identity as She-Who-Bears-Cake and told all her kidnappers to resign; and threatened the remaining ministers that if they didn't do better at Lawful Evil, she'd come back and get kidnapped again.

Some of the disgraced ministers hesitated to obey (the story continued) but in that very moment a roar had resounded as the capital was attacked by one of Zhanagorr's spawn; whom Pilar slew, and then provided condiments for its roasting and distribution to the citizenry.  The disgraced ministers had obediently resigned, then, after Pilar returned and eyed them meaningfully while hefting a bag of salt.

All this news should basically not be possible to keep from Abrogail, unless the tropes can prevent Abrogail from hearing, somehow.  Aspexia is curious to see if they do.

"How nice of you to fucking tell me, Rugatonn.  That's going to be so much fun to navigate in international relations, especially on the swift heels of Pineda's doings in Korvosa.  I suppose we're invading Osirion anyways, and that takes us past the point where Cheliax can present itself to even the most gullible countries as not being an expansionist threat.  But it would have been nice if the more distant lands had deluded themselves for longer into thinking that only our immediate neighbors stood in danger."

"I told you not that long after I heard."

Abrogail's lips press together bitterly; that it's deliberate doesn't make it any less her true emotion.  "I cannot rule like this, Rugatonn!  I can hardly think like it!  It is stifling to the point that I might as well be a statue myself, for all the good I can do!"

"You know," Aspexia remarks conversationally, "I have never been able to understand, on some deep level, why it is that mortals - other than myself, of course - find themselves compelled to think so many harmful thoughts, as will bring them injury or discontent.  I just don't think thoughts like that, haven't my whole life.  I've never truly understood why others don't do the same.  You are not Wiser than me, but you are Wiser than I was when I was twelve years old and doing better than this.  Have you tried to just not think those thoughts, and also not feel stifled about not thinking them?"

The Queen does not dignify this with a response.  "Those were all the lesser questions I had of you."

"And I of you.  Now what's this news you said you had of Keltham, that should have proceeded through the Church before it came to the Queen?"

The Queen lifts the sheaf of papers in her hand.  "I pray this report about the recent Whisperwood incident was routed to you literally at all?"