It would be a better story if she'd brilliantly captured some weapons and enchanted them in order to demonstrate her value to the new regime, but that isn't what happened. What happened is that she notices the prickle of a crystal-ball scry while she's hiding in a village three days' travel from Corentyn. The villagers refuse to sell her food but haven't gathered the nerve to try to drive her out yet. (She's undecided on whether to Fireball them if they do try it.)

It's an officer she once served under. Jehanes is looking for arms and armor enchanters who can do tricky things, and he remembered her, and wondered if she was dead.

She isn't, yet. 

She gets the job offer, if you could call it that, five months later when she's returning home from services at the Iomedaen church that replaced the Asmodean one that was looted in the first days of the fighting. Jehanes never misses it, so she hasn't either. Jehanes does not seem to actually believe it, so she doesn't either. 

          A tall man - presumably a wizard of some power, he has a headband - stops her on the way out. "The Lord-Marshal's secretary for internal security would like to meet with you," he tells her. " - to offer you a job, you're not in any trouble. Are you free this afternoon?"

'The Lord-Marshal's secretary for internal security would like to meet with you' is the kind of phrase which makes the mind go blank with terror and more or less miss the rest of the sentence, not that it actually makes her feel any better when she belatedly processes it. She cannot possibly refuse. She should not want to refuse. She briefly contemplates saying she'll be there and then fleeing the country, but only because terror has made her temporarily too stupid to notice that 1) that wouldn't work 2) she doesn't know anywhere else to be safe and 3) she should not be tempted. She isn't tempted. She's just - nervous. 

 "Of course," she says. "Where's the meeting?"

             "Westcrown. We can provide transport. We can go now, if you'd like - I understand there are security concerns -"

Is Jehanes going to be angry that she came to the attention of the Lord Marshal's government - probably, but if he did anything about it that might bring him to the attention of the Lord Marshal's government - he'll want to know what she did that got her attention but she doesn't know - 

"I'll arrange my own transport," she says, half surprising herself and definitely surprising her interlocutor. "I'll go to the meeting, but I don't know who you are and would be an idiot to run off with the first person who thinks of claiming to work for the Lord-Marshal."

           "That's very reasonable. I can get you a scroll of Teleport."

What. With that she actually could flee the country. To Absalom, maybe, off blind reckoning which sometimes works. They could scry her and come and get her. Maybe that is what they are testing for. "...why?"

          "Well, I think the secretary for internal security would really like it if you'd take the meeting but if you'll defect at the first opportunity anyway then you may as well not waste her time first."

"Two scrolls," her lips, which do not seem to be at all on the same page about the plan here as the rest of her, say. "I've never been to Westcrown before."

          He raises his eyebrows with the expression of someone not particularly presuming she was going to Westcrown. "Can you pay for the second?"

Not with money that's on her, and she - has no idea what'll happen, if she returns to the estate and explains. This interaction has gone sufficiently unexpectedly that she can no longer keep track of exactly what her plan was, here, but facing Jehanes is not appealing. She shakes her head slightly. 

          "One scroll, and I can try to give you the Teleport location by thought?" 

"All right."

She goes to Westcrown with the scroll of Teleport. She's loyal, and a loyal person would go to Westcrown. It's not even a decision, not really. 

"Sevar," says the woman across the desk, who looks Carissa's age and almost definitely isn't. "I wanted to congratulate you. A good many brilliant people have been working without success on figuring out how to lay the standard enchantments on firearms. As I understand it some of them had nearly a year's head start."

Carissa reminds herself that this ought to be the opposite of a frightening thing to hear, being as it is an argument against having her executed on the spot. It is still a frightening thing to hear, because Jehanes was keeping it very secret. "You are well-informed, ma'am," she says neutrally. 

"And you are underpaid. Have you considered working for the Reclamation government?"

Well, here I am not having fled the country. She can't say that. "It would be an honor to serve," she says instead.

The woman sighs impatiently. "We're working to establish a gun industry in Westcrown. One plan that has been floated is to send you and some other brilliant Chelish people to Vigil or Almas for the next year, to trade what you've discovered for tutelage in gunmaking so that we can build the industry at home. Explain the implications, please."

Carissa had instructors who liked to do this, call you up and ask a complicated question and burn you alive in front of everyone if you were bad at answering. Carissa liked those instructors, usually, but they were asking her questions about magic, not about politics. The worst an answer about magic can be is mistaken. 

" - Cheliax would have its own weapons and not be relying on Lastwall and Andoran?" she says, aware this can't possibly be the answer but not thinking what could be. "...you'll get wildly ahead of Jehanes? …you may as well give me a Teleport scroll because if I want to defect I'll have the opportunity?"

"None of those are false. The implication which I would personally be attending to in your position is that what you figured out, yourself, in a few months of work, is something that Cheliax thinks it could trade for the secret of firearms itself. - with plenty of other wrangling behind the scenes, to be clear, but - how much are you currently being paid?"

"Forty Absalom pounds a week, in spellsilver," says Carissa, who has never been this rich in her life and who is navigating the currency crisis through mostly refusing to use currency.

"Let's make it four hundred. And you'll get to learn all of the secrets about how guns are really made, and you're vastly less likely to die in intra-Henderthane infighting."

Carissa is struggling to think of a reason to list off the ways you're bribing someone when you don't have to bribe them at all. "Yes, ma'am."

"As someone trying to improve recruiting for the Reclamation government, I am curious if there's anything that kept you from applying to us in the first place aside from your low self-esteem."

That stings, though Carissa tries not to show it. The truth is that she…didn't really consider applying to work for the Reclamation. She assumes it will be very terrible, and she assumed they didn't want to hire Evil people, and she assumes that going to work for the crown is still the kind of thing that brought you into close contact with the kind of people who wanted the crown and shortly after that got you killed.

None of that is a politically wise answer. Is the woman trying to give Carissa an out, with the suggestion it's a matter of thinking herself unworthy? She is dimly aware that 'I figured out how to enchant guns, but I thought myself unworthy of serving you with that' sounds ridiculous.

"Jehanes is a loyal servant of the Reclamation government and I assumed would tell me if I would better be of service here," she says. 

 "I don't think he'll dare retaliate," she says breezily, "but is there anyone we should protect on your behalf?"

Carissa's mother and sister died when Corentyn was sacked. Her father was probably smuggled out of the country safely, though she has no way to check. "No."

"It would take you about five months to save up for your mother's resurrection."

Is she being accused of caring about her mother? Do people accuse people of that? But Carissa wasn't, in fact, saving for her mother's resurrection. She hadn't even considered it. Her mother's better off in Hell - no, the new regime holds that no one is better off in Hell. Is Carissa being accused of not trying to resurrect her mother, when a person who agreed that Hell is bad would do so? That seems more likely. 

"I don't care if you do," the woman continues, casually. "But their trials will be delayed, if they have a shockingly wealthy relative who might, so it's not too late. Personally I do not love my sister but I would save her from Hell if it were convenient."

Because loyal people don't want their relatives among their enemies. She feels cold and sick and angry. She wants to yell at the woman that if she'd been in Corentyn during the sack she wouldn't have been trying to save other people. 

"I don't have the bodies," she says. 

"We do. It's too late for a Raise Dead, which is why it'll take you five months."

They can't possibly have done that for everyone. So the woman learned that Carissa was alive and valuable, and went to Corentyn, and - but that makes it not make sense as a loyalty test. The test worked fine without them being in possession of the bodies. 

That's the behavior of someone - and this is the affect of someone - who thought it might be a bribe.

Which makes sense, if Hell is bad, and Hell is bad, she's been told so. Only -

- only it feels very difficult, and very dangerous, to believe that Hell is so bad you don't want people to go there.

She does wish her mother and her sister were alive. When they died it was upsetting. Maybe she is overcomplicating this. If she'd thought of a way to save them at the time she would have, and now she has one. A bribe that is as a bonus a way to demonstrate her rejection of Hell. Or maybe the scheme is in fact even more complicated than this and she is undercomplicating it. Egorian was supposed to be full of games. You'd sometimes, at the Worldwound, meet the people who'd lost them, if they were lucky. 

"I try to be thorough about hiring people."

An answer compatible with all of those theories or none of them.

Carissa attempts a smile. "When - and, uh, where - do I start?"

"The Lord Marshal wants to see you."

Carissa feels cold inside, even though she's not important enough that that's what would happen if she'd done something wrong. She drops her project and reminds herself that this was inevitable from the moment she decided to Teleport to Westcrown and that the price of involving oneself in politics is that you come to the attention of powerful people and the benefit is unfathomable riches and interesting and important work and if she lives to forty she'll consider it the best decision she ever made.

She enters. She kneels.