She thinks about it.
She's not surprised, that devils can't be moved by torture; it may take more than knowing the Law, but it is part of Law, and beings that Asmodeus chose to shape would not be so. That part feels right.
It makes sense for Asmodeus to want more valuable devils. She doesn't need to understand Asmodeus to predict He wants that; whatever else He wants, if He has more valuable devils, it's easier for him to get. Torture making devils more valuable makes sense. If it's not the answer -
- separate out some instances of it not being the answer -
- maybe torture is good to Asmodeus when it makes devils more valuable, but that's a small share of what makes it valuable and she's being asked to identify the rest. That doesn't require undoing every bit of reasoning that starts with the assumption Asmodeus runs Hell in a way that enables Him to better achieve His goals.
- maybe torture doesn't make devils more valuable but otherwise causes Asmodeus to have more resources. For example, if Asmodeus had a deal of some kind with Zon-Kuthon and Hell were a blend of their tastes. ....no, feels wrong. For example, if torture is in some magical sense directly a source of power for Asmodeus, the way prayer is sort of understood to be. ....no, also feels wrong, if that were true it wouldn't be a complicated secret. Maybe torture makes minds more predictable to Asmodeus? Tortured minds are more alike, and so more useful? ....that's just a clever way to get back to her favored hypothesis that torture makes devils more valuable. Maybe torture makes the Good gods get all mad at Asmodeus and that in in some sense directly useful. ...also doesn't feel persuasive.
- maybe torture does not cause Asmodeus to have more of anything else he cares about, and the only reason there is torture in Hell is because of Asmodeus's fondness for torture, like Zon-Kuthon, if not wholly like Zon-Kuthon because He does apparently care about several other things. In which case there is torture in Hell because Asmodeus likes it that way and no new way of training devils could improve the situation because Asmodeus doesn't regard it as potentially benefitting from improvement.
That feels like an actually dangerous heresy, the kind of thing where if she believed it she'd - she's not sure what she'd do how about she stops thinking about that. What is it with her new urge to when she thinks of something dangerous keep thinking about it, like there's always a safe answer at the other end.
Keltham says once you've noticed you're flinching away from a thought it's too late not to have it.
Okay.
If the point of torture is that it makes Asmodeus weaker, makes His triumph less likely, but He likes it, so it happens anyway even though it makes devils worse, then Carissa thinks Iomedae kind of has a point. Carissa in that world is not going to betray the project because she mostly cares about Carissa and they are competent to make that not in the interests of Carissa, but she'd cease feeling like Good was obviously and plainly her enemy. Good would kind of deserve to win, if Asmodeus wasn't trying to because He was so busy torturing people in ways that undermined his other goals. The contempt that Carissa feels for anyone else who undermines Asmodeus, she feels for this hypothetical Asmodeus, undermining himself.
There; she thought it; now it's obviously not the answer to the puzzle, so keep thinking.
The answer is not that a Hell with torture leaves Asmodeus weaker than a Hell without it; now that she's actually thought it it's self-refuting.
So it leaves Asmodeus stronger, or at least the same.
But she's not supposed to just again give the answer 'to make devils better', that would be - failing to engage with what the High Priestess is trying to say to her -
What does pain have to do with tyranny?
Well, someone who can hurt you without reprisal is above you. Maybe that's important; maybe in a sense there's no real chain of command, if everyone's seamlessly working together to advance Asmodeus's goals, and for it to be a tyranny at all it has to be clear who can hurt who. That explains why torture is allowed; it doesn't explain why it's a particularly common proclivity. Is torture unique in having that property? Or maybe another way of thinking about it is - is everything which has that property torture?
If so, then this tea was torture; it was, after all, orchestrated in significant part to make it clear to the girls on the project who could hurt who. And the elaborate rituals of formality among nobles are torture too; they are after all about establishing who can hurt who without reprisal, communicated with every degree of incline of one's head -
- yeah, that's not a useful definition. Torture is one way to communicate that, but not the only one. But maybe the others bottom out in torture. Or, they could just bottom out in final execution, but that would be horrible and wasteful; better for everyone if they bottom out in torture. Except people like Asmodia.
Carissa's authority on the project, she is well aware, is located in significant part in the girls' knowledge that an experiment is being run, and that if they're incompetent even when barely punished then they'll be properly punished. She's doing without much torture, but not without the threat of it; the threat of it underlies the whole thing.
That feels like it might be as close to an answer as she's going to get on the spot, but the thought of backtracing inferences into spoken words is suddenly quite intimidating. Well, presumably the Grand High Priestess is reading her mind.