Off she goes, even though she has a good guess what the extra task is.

Off she goes, even though she has a good guess what the extra task is.

They're going to fail. Maybe if they're very clever they can delay their failure - six months. And then she'll have to derive the rest herself. Can she? Can Asmodia? If they get six months she thinks yes. If they lost tomorrow, she thinks no. 

Failure feels unthinkable and not just because she'll definitely be executed about it. There's something wrong, in Cheliax, something they're doing profoundly wrong so they aren't unlocking people like Asmodia and Carissa, not using the most valuable resource that they have. She's the only person who can fix it and - if Keltham understood -

- he'd flip out about Hell. The rest he could maybe take in stride but he'd be all upset about Hell and refuse to work with them further, and -

- Ione's halfway to being the same way -

- not the time. Buy them a month, buy them another, then figure out how to work with whatever you end up getting.