"Go for a walk," she says, delightedly. "You know, I'd confirm that, except at some point it'd be repeated to someone who has ever been to the Worldwound."

"Mm.  Rumor proclaims you a fair wizard, and rumor also says that wizards have ways of keeping warm, but perhaps one or the other is untrue."

"I was also speaking metaphorically, in such fashion as to include any number of other reasons to be one of a small handful of people going somewhere, but without intent to inquire any further."

"Endure Elements doesn't always cut it in wintertime that far north, but that's not the problem with your theory." She smiles in a friendly sort of way and takes another bite of food. Swallows. "Nor is the danger of travelling alone, though it's considerable. Perhaps if you track down a random soldier and present your theory they'll spot it, though of course you'd have to kill them, afterwards....I have to say, in the circles I've travelled in, a name being maybe punishable with final execution is a reason not to say it. But one assumes that the people here who can't stop speaking it have some justification beyond that they're very bored all the time."

Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune doesn't look particularly frightened.  He does wear a considering expression as he consumes more of his food.

"I think my own assessment would be that there are those wise enough not to believe your name alone that dangerous, and those less wise, who say they believe it, but don't then refrain from speaking your name."

"But if I am the foolish one myself, you will demonstrate that or not as it pleases you, no doubt."

It would please her to send him to the Worldwound for a tour of duty but this is a stupid desire that does not really advance Asmodeus's aims and she's not entirely sure where it came from. - well, if she happens to be coherent enough for speech at some point when she next meets Abrogail she can ask. 

She eats in silence.

She needs to get stronger as quickly as possible, everything is only useful to her insofar as it lets her have that. This has to be tradeable for that, somehow. 

Fox's Cunning wears off. 

"I think you're foolish, but not because my name alone is dangerous," she says. "I think you're foolish because you don't need to know this, and want to, and because fools saying something is dangerous made you decide it's safe.

And because, secure in the conviction that my name alone is not dangerous, you forgot you don't know in combination with what my name would be dangerous."

That seems like the sort of note to end on, so she stands up, nods to him. Smiles. 

He remains seated, of course, for his food isn't finished.  "You do seem new to this.  If I helped you at all, in this, it's customary to toss me a little bone of favor or knowledge.  I am content to collect it later if you don't believe me about that now.  Or if I've been of no use to you, of course, then you have Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune's apologies for wasting your time."  The emphasis on Thrune is barely barely noticeable.

It is noticed. 

(That advice was a favor.)

(Or maybe it was bad advice; she doesn't, actually, know how court works.)

Telling him anything true would be really stupid; the project is secret for reasons. And she doesn't have favors that aren't knowledge. And it wouldn't make any sense for arbitrary Thrunes to be able to get classified information by sitting with you at dinner - maybe it's a test? Except how many people are authorized to test her, even, at this point - 

- maybe it's the Queen? 

- no -

"I don't know if you helped me," she says, honestly. "We'll see. Repaying favors is much easier than identifying them, for ignorant girls from the Worldwound who are new at all of this."

He smiles, at that.  "I shall consider myself repaid, Sevar.  And would be pleased to deal with you again on future occasions, if you have gained skill and wish to test it, or if you have not gained skill and are willing to bargain for guidance.  Go with Asmodeus's blessing, if you do not already have it."

He does return his attention to his food, then.

Right. Okay. That was very fine and normal.

- actually, there's an obvious thing to do here, which is to report a potential Security breach to Maillol. It's so nice to have an obvious thing to do. She'll head off to do it. 

The pile of unread papers on Maillol's desk is larger than when Carissa left.

"Your copy of the contract came in," Maillol says, gesturing to where it's been carefully set aside.

"I just went to dinner and was greeted by a Alexite Gellius Rutilus Thrune who tells me that from the rumors swirling around our project - which include that I'm sleeping with the Queen and that I am a Princess of Hell and devils are executed for speaking my name in vain - he has inferred that I discovered a mini-Starstone at the Worldwound, on Asmodeus's direction, and that we've been testing it out on wizarding students in Ostenso, who it might or might not turn into pretty girls with random alignments. I'd be delighted to learn that all of this is acceptable for random Thrunes to know, or that that was Her Imperial Majestrix again, though I think she's bored of me."

She takes her copy of the contract. 

"Yeah, it's not good, but it's not as terrible as you might think.  I've lived through a couple of rampages of the rumor dragons.  I admit, this is worse than I've ever seen it.  But it blows over, and if it started in Asmodeus's inner circle it stays confined to His inner circle.  I wouldn't so much say that Asmodeus is overjoyed about random Thrunes knowing, as that part of tyranny is that random Thrunes get to delight in the privilege of knowing what their lessers don't.  People like that, you can't tell them to just shut up about everything that's none of their business, without taking away part of their pride as tyrants above the people who just have to shut up."

"To be clear on this, I only ever played that game when I had to in order to not look stupid, and if there was ever a true word in any of it, I never repeated that part on purpose.  But pride isn't mostly the direction in which I walk towards Hell."

Contessa Lrilatha's contract is headed up by a prominent seal saying that only Carissa Sevar is allowed to read it, on pain of Lrilatha keeping any violator as a toy for their rest of their mortal lives.  This probably didn't help the rumors any.

The interior contains another note saying that Lrilatha hopes it went entirely without saying that if Sevar ever talks about Keltham's no-tricks condition as something you should even dream of demanding from a devil, or publishing one word of this contract as having been authored by Lrilatha, then Lrilatha and Abrogail can have a contest to see who ends up as the one Carissa least likes to visit.

Lrilatha hopes that Sevar will duly advise the same to any other women who end up reading and signing this contract.

- ah. So it's not a trick. And Lrilatha is annoyed that it isn't a trick. Well, Carissa would be honored to preserve her pride.

That's not the expression of somebody reading a completely innocuous contract.

Hopefully the rumor mill will convey away that when Carissa Sevar read Contessa Lrilatha's contract she looked like it was the worst news she'd ever gotten, worse even than the earlier news that her nap annoyed every single powerful person in Cheliax all at once. Maillol is too reasonable to pass it along himself, of course, but there's Security standing around in the distance.

Hopefully Contessa Lrilatha will appreciate this and continue handing Carissa nice contracts that are in fact totally innocuous. 

She pulls herself together quickly. "Next question, is there anything I'm authorized to know about Asmodia? She was vague with me."

"Crown order to determine whether Asmodia came back with new special abilities, came back negative, my guess is either somebody being stupid or somebody being careful about all the rumors.  Asmodia reported having noticed her contract devil dying, which she would, but not knowing why that happened or who owns her now.  Detect Thoughts says she's being honest.  I am devoutly hoping that Hell's business is none of our business in this case."

"Sounded like a standard stay in Hell otherwise, she was put to work copying spell diagrams, which is normal for a soul they don't want to break before sending it back."

"I wanted them to fix her. Does that take too long?"

"In a word, yes, or they'd just do that to everyone."

Maillol has a lot more he could say about this but he is not sure if he should.  He is maybe legitimately at the point where he could properly, not proactively, declare himself insufficient to guide Sevar's spiritual growth, and kick her up to a sixth-circle priest of Asmodeus, maybe one stationed full-time at Project Lawful's new worksite.

"We don't know how, do we. Or - some people make it through and turn out well as devils, but we don't know how in the average case, and Cheliax knows even less than Hell. I assumed I'd be stronger after my punishment because - I know that not all punishment always makes people stronger but obviously in this context you'd do that if you possibly could do it at all. But it didn't surprise anyone else, that I was - that you are -"

His hand comes down on the desk with a sharp bang.  "I'm going to stop you right there before you say something insubordinate.  You've been tortured, you're going to be much more severely tortured, and I don't think you need any more torture in between, hmm?"

"Sevar, you've got some kind of more-Lawful Lawful Evil vision that, I'm not saying is wrong, but whatever it is, it's as far beyond what we can do right now as dath ilani Law is beyond what we use.  If people didn't end up in the long run being more pleasing to Asmodeus from being threatened with punishment and actually punished, He'd tell us to stop doing it.  What happens in the short run is another matter.  You're apparently doing fine a few hours later, well, good for fucking you.  Expecting to be fine one minute afterwards is fucking stupid even so, unless you're Pilar Pineda and can rise up from being tortured with a song of gratitude on your lips.  Maybe someday we'll do dath ilan's thing and shape everybody's heritage into being her, but meanwhile you're not.  Don't plan on doing anything else useful the day the Queen gets around to you, and maybe not the day afterwards either."

"And you don't comment on how well you think I'm doing.  You see me making an actual mistake, you point it out, that's it."

"Of course it's good for us in the long run! But we'll be lucky if we manage to spin this out for a month, and by the end of that month the world is going to look so different that I only have half an idea what shape Asmodeus will need us in. Hell can be concerned with our long run; project governance needs to be able to operate at the very brink of what we're capable of at our absolute best."

And she can see it, then, what she should do, except -

"I propose a new project directive. No one, except me, Pilar, and one of the girls at the villa, chosen randomly, gets punished beyond whatever they do in fucking Taldor, without my express authorization, which I'll grant when it looks liable to make them better at the project, and not otherwise. Have you got some way to read my mind."

"Sounds a lot more than just slightly dangerous and heretical, but I'll hear you out as to why we'd do that."

"Every day there's fewer and fewer Security cleared to read your mind directly, for some strange reason, but I've got a Zone of Truth if you want me to believe you about something."

"I want to make sure this gets put down exactly accurately.

We matter far, far more right now than we will in Hell. If Asmodeus could in destroying all our future potential for Him make us better servants of Him right here and right now, I think He obviously would; in Hell there are millions of souls like us, but here and now we are the only people who can do the most important thing that there is to be done. I am not interested in our long-term spiritual improvement. I have not adopted some kind of heretical belief that punishment is bad for us, in the long run; it is good for us, in the long run, which isn't our priority at all. I have not adopted some kind of heretical belief that it is bad for people to suffer unless they grow from it; if this directive works better paired with some directive to round up a bunch of orphans and torture them, I'll do that, or delegate it if that's allowed because I am kind of busy. 

I have a theory, which is that punishment is in the short term particularly bad for the kind of acuity needed to succeed at this project, and I need this project to succeed, so I want everyone to stop torturing my project members without reason to think it will make the project likelier to succeed.

Exception for myself, because I don't think any justification short of Asmodeus personally saying so would protect me now, and I don't want there to be any question of whether I conveniently developed this conviction when facing down something I know I can't handle. Exception for Pilar, because as noted, she likes it. Exception for one random girl at the villa because everything is an eye, and if the girl who still gets punished normally is performing well then we'll go back on this. It's how Evil dath ilan would do it. 

I don't care about any of you, but I need to be able to use you if I'm going to win. You need to be better than Cheliax knows how to make people. And it needs to happen fast. So we try this."

She is getting very close to insubordination here.  Well, no, she's past it, and now he'll have to figure out what to do about that.

"My frank assessment of this idea is that it may pass as Lawful Evil, you're the expert on whether it's dath ilani, but Zon-Kuthon is also Lawful Evil and this proposal is not very Asmodean at all."

It's like one of those dreams where you can Fly but the spell runs out the instant you look down. 

"You're misunderstanding me," she says coldly. "It's not very Asmodean, not to torture Keltham, but it's what Asmodeus told us to do. It's not very Asmodean, to promise to let him go, but it's what Asmodeus told us to do, too. Asmodeus wants us to win. This is your new project directive."

He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, over the last day, that this was probably coming.

He probably should have thought it out earlier.  If he wanted to win this, he is far worse off trying to win this fight starting now, than if he'd set up his pieces for this conflict starting after the first moment he'd tried giving Sevar a taste of power.

Can he take her, if he contests her control of the project right now?  It's not at all clear that he can.  Yesterday he could've, at the villa where he was running everything and had all the reports.  Today he's in the Palace, where he's that pathetic guy who got tortured by Gorthoklek, and Sevar has now met the Queen and her advisers.  Paper lines of power count for a lot in a tyranny, but not for everything, not among the Inner Ring.  It's not entirely clear that the Security would obey him if Ferrer Maillol ordered Sevar cut down on the spot.  This Security isn't one of the older Security from the villa; this Security knows Carissa Sevar only as a Power at least on Ferrer Maillol's level, who always has been such.

Does he want to take down Sevar, does he want to fight back at all, would he rather just let her have it?  Maybe that question should've come first, but if he can't take her, it's a moot one.

He misses the Worldwound.

He misses the Worldwound because he knew how his mission worked, and what needed to be done to accomplish it; and what was needed was keeping a pack of nearly-adventurers in line with fire and lash so that they didn't run out on him and the demons didn't overrun them all; and he, whose concern among Asmodeus's domains was tyranny, was good at that job.

He never asked to be reassigned from the Worldwound to the Imperial Palace in Egorian, where the real games of power were played.  Pride never was the part of this he was best at.

Now all he is, is a fifth-circle priest with two relevant visions from Asmodeus and a job he doesn't understand.  And because of those visions, he's not getting away back to the Worldwound.  He's stuck with Project Lawful no matter what.

He doesn't have to be stuck at the top of it, though.  Does he want to be the one responsible for Project Lawful when whatever happens, happens, on Day #4?

"I neither have the power to put you in direct command of Project Lawful, nor would I want the responsibility of making that decision if I had," Maillol says coldly, and with as much dignity as he can manage.  "Get an order from my superiors saying you're in charge of and responsible for the overall direction of Project Lawful, and I'll work under you to manage logistics and personnel, as professionally as you worked for me."

"Unless and until that order arrives, I'm still the one who gets held responsible for your project directives and I will not be responsible for this one."

"If you need an order saying you have urgent business to discuss with Aspexia Rugatonn tonight, write it for me and I'll sign it.  I'll even throw in a free note saying that I do not have a very solid vision for this project myself, and cannot judge the solidity of yours."

"If you can't get anyone to put you in charge, you're not in charge and I will not expect this manner of insubordination in the future."

"Deal?"

"Understood," she says.

She sits down. 

Writes to the Grand High Priestess Aspexia Rugatonn that she has a time-sensitive inquiry regarding the project.

Passes it along to Maillol, silently. 

don'tlookdowndon'tlookdowndon'tlookdown

He signs it and hands it back, along with his note saying that he doesn't have a solid vision for Project Lawful and cannot assess Sevar's latest vision.  He doesn't include any remarks about how he is unlikely to be able to judge any future visions either.  That is perilously close to asking to be relieved of your command, and pleading like that is not at all a good look in an Asmodean tyranny.

He can't quite bring himself to wish her good luck.

Carissa Sevar who is not definitely not a Princess of Hell walks through the hallways to deliver her note to Aspexia Rugatonn's secretary.

What's the worst case scenario? Being tortured a lot! Which is good for you! Not good for the project, which is the entire reason she's trying to cut down on it, but good for her personally!

You are customer #14 in line.  The current wait time is:  43 minutes.

Long enough she'll have to return the shirt first. She heads back to Keltham's. 

Keltham sleeps the peaceful sleep of somebody who, to the extent he has offended his conscience during the day, has managed to get far out enough ahead of it that it hasn't caught up to him yet.

Perfect. She folds the shirt up next to him on his bedside table, Prestidigitates it clean, and tells Security to notify her if he wakes.

Asmodia is sitting in her peaceful, lovely bedroom in the Imperial palace at Egorian.  It is not the gardens of Erecura, and the main thing that makes it different is not that the gardens are nicer-looking or the air is fresher, it is that the gardens are, so far as she can tell, safe, whereas the Imperial palace at Egorian is not safe.  It can have the quality of not hurting you right now; it cannot have the quality of being guaranteed to still not be hurting you a few minutes later.

But she knows where to find safety, for a time, if she needs it.  Maybe somebody would be nice to her again 100 years later, maybe not; but what comes after 100 years hardly feels like it would still be real, still be this Asmodia who makes the choice...

She keeps on reviewing what she knows.  Maybe if she knew all that Keltham knew, as well as her own knowledge, she'd be able to figure it out; but she can't.  The shadows got her, she was revived in the Imperial Palace, she's next to Pilar so the project is probably still active.

The gardens were peaceful except for two events.  First, the disorienting sensation that, she was informed, not by Erecura this time, had been the sensation of her contract devil being destroyed and her soul being passed to whoever inherited it from him.  She'd figured, at the time, that he'd either asked too many questions about the Keltham project, or it was the Carissa Sevar thing.

Later, she'd been called closer to the center of Erecura's gardens, closer to Erecura Herself in the fullest place of Her power within Her home plane, and the seal on her thoughts had been placed in full.  Asmodia can't remember it well; she probably didn't originally experience it well, never mind memory.

When she'd woken - it apparently being possible to fall unconscious in Hell under sufficiently extreme circumstances - she'd known the rules.  How to put thoughts about the existence of the seal, but not the contents of the seal, temporarily outside of the seal and readable.  That if she needed to report defiance of the seal, she should go to the most senior outsider under Asmodeus, but not any archdevil or other being reporting directly to Him; and that she was forbidden, by Asmodeus's own Law, to pray to Asmodeus or turn her thoughts too much in His direction, while the seal lasted.

(No, she is not allowed to ask Aspexia Rugatonn what happened.  Not that she would, but it doesn't matter, it's not allowed.)

And she's been assigned her own room at the Palace, with a bed large enough to sleep four.  There was a Crown order on checking her for new or exotic special abilities, which has now been returned with a false answer that she has none.  There were way too many invisible people watching her when she came back.  Sevar was acting weird, asking weird questions that were almost like she knew the secret but didn't quite, and in other ways acting like she doesn't know what's going on around her any more than Asmodia does.

Around the only thing in the universe that still remains stable and true is that Abarco is a giant fucking asshole.

The main thing Asmodia is currently worried about is whether Abarco is right and her devil was destroyed to keep the Secret.  She found out that the devil was destroyed, before she found out there was a Secret, so all the explanations she thought up, had nothing to do with what happened to her being Secret.  But in retrospect maybe there was always going to be a Secret and she just found out about it later.  She shouldn't have mentioned the devil being destroyed.  Too late now.  Not that she'll ever tell Abarco he was right about anything, and he won't see it in her thoughts, either.

Asmodia knows what she has to do next, to figure things out, it's all too obvious, she just wanted to keep to her peace for as long as she could before...

Pilar is now returning from having found herself on yet another cake delivery mission, with no particular memory of how she got there.  The thought is occurring to Pilar that maybe dying and reviving has reset some kind of accumulated satiation of her curse down to zero, and she needs to throw a really big surprise party for somebody in order to placate her curse enough that she is not constantly delivering cake.

She gets to her room just as she spots Asmodia turn away from knocking on her door.  "Hi" "Asmodia," Pilar says.

Why is Pilar suddenly behind her, instead of in her room where she should be, Asmodia does not know.  Pilar didn't do this in Ostenso.  "Hey," says Asmodia.  "Can we talk?"

Pilar has never been quite as wary as some of the people around her.  It's not that she's stupid, or even fearless, as many people seem to think, it's that Cheliax is where she belongs at least during her mortal life.  "Sure," Pilar says, not brightly and cheerfully however.

Pilar's room looks a lot like Asmodia's, with just enough distinction in decoration that you couldn't accuse them of being overly duplicated.

"So, Pilar," Asmodia says.  She did take the chance to play out this conversation in her head, before she got here.  "If you're in the Palace same as me, does that mean you also died in the attack and got raised or resurrected?"

"Yeah.  Took a sword for Keltham."

"Not bad," Asmodia says neutrally.  More heroic than her own death, lovely.  "I know you've always said you were looking forwards to Hell.  Anything interesting happen there?"

Pilar hesitates.  She knows Asmodia did not want to sell her soul; a favor-offering Security warned her that Asmodia seemed like the sort who might be upset and spiteful that Pilar hadn't been forced to sell her soul, when Asmodia had been.  She should, probably, mock Asmodia for that; but...

Pilar doesn't feel like it.  Maybe she'll assign herself a punishment for that later.

"My first journey to the afterlife wasn't all I'd hoped, no," Pilar says truthfully.

Asmodia probably really really does not need to hear either that Pilar went to Elysium, or that Pilar came back from it.

If it was anybody but Pilar that might have been a sufficient answer to what Asmodia really wanted to know there.

It's - not quite absolutely obvious, but it is one Abyss of an obvious guess, that Asmodia would not be in the gardens of Erecura if not for something somehow somewhere that is related to the project around Keltham.

Did it happen to Pilar, too?

"Because it hurt too much, or not enough?" Asmodia returns.

"Okay, if you're going to be that way about it, fine, I went to Elysium because of my oracle's curse and told them to fuck off and came back when I was Raised and Aspexia Rugatonn personally told me good job and I was allowed to feel proud about it, I wasn't going to shove it in your face but if you are going to insist about it then fine."

Asmodia would definitely have been a lot more angry about that before the gardens of Erecura.  Should she fake it?  She's not sure she can, somehow.

"It's okay," Asmodia says.  "I'd have sent you to Hell in my place, if I could.  Well, not to my contract devil, he wouldn't have been best for you, but maybe a nice erinyes or some such."

"Well, thanks."  Pilar hesitates.  "I - wouldn't have done it, but I wish I could have sent you to Elysium in my place."

"I'd have stayed."

"I know."

"That's heresy."

"I already had the heretical thought, already need to assign myself punishment for it, and it's not going to get any more heretical if I say it out loud to you instead of keeping it to myself."

"Do you have any idea what's going on?"

"Elysium told me that I wasn't going to be used against Lord Asmodeus, but for Him.  Aspexia Rugatonn thought that was credible but also very ominous, like, maybe they're planning to destroy Cheliax and afterward I'll have to prevent a new Worldwound from opening in the crater.  Which is, in fact, in Asmodeus's interests, if I'm there to do that, but it's part of a larger plan that's not at all in His interests."

"But no, I don't have any idea what's going on."

"Do you know why there were fourteen invisible people watching me during my resurrect?"

"I'd say that somebody opened a scroll and Explosive Rumors went off in their face, but I think it was actually more of a Symbol of Rumor or possibly that somebody Wished for there to be lots of rumors about Project Lawful and they didn't use a safe phrasing of that either."

"Honestly, I probably didn't help with that a lot.  But I don't even know what Carissa Sevar has been doing, except that it's somehow scaring people even more than suddenly cake."

"My contract devil was all like 'It would be contrary to the nature of Hell if you couldn't tell me everything you know, and if that requires a promotion so be it, and if I get promoted above my place and destroyed, so be it.'  So I told him about Keltham and what Keltham knows and you being Cayden Cailean's oracle and Nethys giving Ione book powers and Carissa Sevar fucking the Queen -"

"She what?  No, strike that, that makes perfect sense, continue."

"Anyways, my contract devil's reaction to all of that was:  Carissa Sevar?  Tell me more."

"Pffffft," says Pilar.

"It's true!"

"I believe you, I was just saying pfffffft."

"Anything else interesting happen while I was gone -"

"Not really, unless you count a day or so of moderately stormy weather, from the war between the gods that got kicked off by Nidal's attack on our villa, but it didn't destroy all the crops like the last god-war a century ago, and now Zon-Kuthon has been sealed away in a vault to which only Iomedae has the key."

"Yeah, that's not much.  Does that mean we're at war with Nidal and their clerics are still getting spells, though?"

"All of their diamonds ended up in Cheliax somehow, which I am sadly, utterly certain had something to do with Project Lawful in some way or another."

"Not much of a war then."

"Nope, but nonetheless tomorrow at dawn we're heading out to an old fortress that's being renovated for us, after another divine intervention by Asmodeus, because Project Lawful hadn't gotten even a single divine intervention that day and it was almost going to be a full 24 sequential hours there.  Being there is somehow going to protect us from the other gods interfering, so more people can be around and not get turned into oracles of the Stupid Good god of utter derangement and cake, like some previous unfortunate victims of Project Lawful."

"Hope it's as nice as the last place but I know it probably won't be."

"Just to be clear, you were lying about everything up until the fortress part, right?"

"Nope."

"I'd say that I'm going to go back to my room and sleep and when I wake up the world had better make sense again, except I truly don't wish for that."

"Why not?"

She probably shouldn't have said that.  But -

"In a sensible world, nobody cares about you," Asmodia settles on.

Pilar snorts.  "Don't get exaggerated ideas just because I had one stupid thought and stupidly said it out loud."

"If you didn't really care you wouldn't be holding a cookie right now with pink icing and letters spelling out 'Asmodia'."

Pilar looks down at her hand in absolute horror.

...it's actually an ordinary cookie with pink icing, but no letters.

"You bitch.  I'm going to see if my curse does poisoned cupcakes if I focus enough on how much I hate somebody."

"Well, there you have it, now the world makes sense again.  Night, Pilar."

Asmodia departs, taking the cookie with her over Pilar's brief and muted protest.

"People are talking too much about the project and my opinion is they should all stop, including you."  Or, failing that, be executed and then turned into paving stones in Hell.

      "You were on Project Lawful, right?  From the start.  If I can't tell you -"

"You'll what, talk at somebody else?  You know what, fine, if you absolutely have to blabber to somebody about whatever this is, I suppose it does less damage with me than anyone else."  It is his considered opinon that the average Security assigned to safe temple jobs inside the Imperial Palace are noticeably less elite than those assigned to top-secret projects started by divine intervention.  Which, in fact, makes sense, but.  But.

      "So I was the Security in Ferrer Maillol's office when Carissa Sevar walked in on him, and tried to hand him a new policy for the whole Project.  I probably shouldn't repeat the exact proposal, but it was six kinds of heretical, and to be clear, she wasn't phrasing it as a suggestion."

"...you have my attention," he says reluctantly.

      "And Maillol protests, obviously, how heretical this is, and Sevar stares him down coldly and says, yes, I know it's heretical, but Asmodeus doesn't give a shit about what condition our souls end up in afterwards, Asmodeus wants us to win.  So this is your new project directive."

"And how'd Maillol take that?"

      "Looks silently at Sevar for a while, then says he's not taking responsibility for implementing that directive when it's actually hers.  He offers to write her a note to Aspexia Rugatonn asking for an urgent conversation about whether Sevar's in charge of Project Lawful or he is.  He's happy to serve under her if ordered, but if she doesn't come back with orders saying she's in charge and holding responsibility on the project, he expects Sevar to shut up and obey him in the future."

"And Sevar?"

      "Just says 'understood', takes the note from him, and heads off, presumably to talk to the Grand High Priestess."

"Lovely.  I concede that makes a great story, and now you've told it to me and you never tell it to anyone again and it doesn't get added to the rumor firestorm, clear?"

      "You're not going to die if you admit out loud how badass that was."

"Yes, fine, it was badass, now, are we done?"

      "It was incredibly badass.  Not a lot of people would be willing to just completely stare down Carissa Sevar like that."

Paving stones.  Hell needs more paving stones.

Carissa heads back to wait in line outside Aspexia Rugatonn's office. She can use the time anyway, honestly, she knows perfectly well the tack she took with Maillol will not work with the Grand High Priestess and she should really kick herself with an Owl's Wisdom and think through what might.

People are still acting just about exactly as deferential and wary as before, proving that it was not, after all, the shirt.

Noted.

In some sense the entire aim of Project Lawful is to produce Aspexia Rugatonns reliably. She's Asmodean, obviously, can't get more Asmodean, and she's - admittedly Carissa has only heard her speak a few times, but she's heard people speak of her more than that -

she thinks Aspexia Rugatonn might be Evil dath ilani. Or at least much closer than anyone else. But, obviously, Aspexia Rugatonn is not competent to train Aspexia Rugatonns; she must herself have ended up like that halfway by accident, with felt insights she can't share. More fragments of the Law inside her than inside anyone else but still not rules-bound enough she could teach them. At minimum Aspexia Rugatonn is proof that it's possible to reason like Keltham and reason about how the gods reason and not end up a heretic. 

If Aspexia Rugatonn thinks this specific policy is bad, Carissa will drop it. If Aspexia Rugatonn thinks Carissa is thinking about this all wrong, she'll listen. She doesn't think she's magically the best person around for the project, she knows that many people are better than her, she knows that the Grand High Priestess would be better than her, but the Grand High Priestess doesn't have time. They don't have ten of her, yet.

I can give you ten.

She isn't sure it's true, but she's sure it'd be a winning argument, if she could, in fact, do it.

Sevar's turn still hasn't come up when Aspexia Rugatonn happens to take a step out of her office, between appointments.  Same doompunk outfit as the last time Carissa saw her; but on any occasion where Aspexia Rugatonn is not smiling cheerfully at an outworlder, and bending all her Splendour to the goal of apparent amiability, she does not come across as a grandmother-gendertroped kindly old lady.

Rugatonn glances around, spots Sevar, and frowns.

"When were you planning to tell me Carissa Sevar was waiting on me?" she says to her emotionless-appearing secretary.

      "I was not informed that I should interrupt -"

"Whether you interrupt me depends on who I'm with, but if Sevar shows up in my office I at least expect to be notified between appointments."

Rugatonn turns to Sevar.  "Step inside," she says, her voice no less stern and harsh than would be expected of the Grand High Priestess, even when talking to Carissa Sevar.

- okay this has gone beyond 'there's an energetic palace rumor mill', because Aspexia Rugatonn would not care if there was an energetic palace rumor mill.

And it's not the shirt, which she's no longer wearing. 

????????????

This confusion is probably (hopefully) not visible to anyone other than Aspexia Rugatonn. She stands, and follows her in.

Aspexia Rugatonn's office is not a throne room, and was clearly designed with the constraint in mind that it needed to not be a throne room. It's shaped as a perfect pentagon, with high pillars at each of the vertices, supporting a ceiling high enough that Carissa can't see it without more gawking than she's really willing to do. The floor and walls are reflective, glossy black stone; Aspexia's side of her desk has a thick carpet and cheerfully blazing braziers and looks almost comfortable, but the other side does not.

She kneels.

When the door is shut, all noise outside stops.

Rugatonn sits.

"You tell me," says Rugatonn.  "Why did I do that?"

It is of course an open question whether she's reading Carissa's mind, or even Carissa's face, given that it's such an obvious question to be thinking about.

"...people think I'm important. They're - mostly wrong - or, I'm important because of things they aren't permitted to know about, and less important than they think, not actually important enough to disrupt your schedule. Is it - bad for the Church, if it looks like I'm being prioritized below my assumed station -"

Her thoughts match this exactly. She is not going to attempt to get something past the Grand High Priestess.

"It is in fact bad for the Church that you are being prioritized above your written place in the system.  Other considerations dominate.  Try again."

She wouldn't have done this for a fourth-circle cleric of Asmodeus. She doesn't know what to think about that. Last time they met the Grand High Priestess was very keen on doing exactly what Asmodeus said to do with Carissa. 

"Am I actually that important."

"If you were that would be irrelevant to the question of what they should believe."

"These rumors exploded faster than I anticipated, and it is likely that they will at some point reach Lastwall.  Some leak of that form became inevitable when we ordered emergency military response on the villa.  The true hidden nature of Carissa Sevar is one of the less productive avenues they can investigate."

"Asmodeus's blessings to you on this evening, Sevar.  I expected the ordinary course of Asmodeus's Law would bring you to my chamber in time, but not this quickly."

"Sit."

There are comfortable chairs on this side of the desk, but one kneels until ordered otherwise. 

She sits. 

The rumors make her uneasy. Maillol said they were inevitable, that you couldn't just order nobles to shut up, but she doesn't actually see why not, though she expects he'd know. If they're being directed, in order to achieve actual political goals, that's much better.